The girl he loved : or, Where love abides

By Adelaide Stirling

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Title: The girl he loved
        or, Where love abides

Author: Adelaide Stirling

Release date: October 30, 2025 [eBook #77154]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Street & Smith, 1900

Credits: Demian Katz and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (Images courtesy of the Digital Library@Villanova University.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GIRL HE LOVED ***




  NEW EAGLE SERIES No. 1174

  _THE GIRL HE
  LOVED_

  [Illustration]

  _Adelaide
  Stirling_




  The Girl He Loved

  OR,

  WHERE LOVE ABIDES

  BY
  ADELAIDE STIRLING

  Author of “Saved from Herself,” “Her Evil Genius,” “A Forgotten
  Love,” “Love and Spite”--published in the NEW EAGLE
  SERIES.


  [Illustration: S AND S
  NOVELS]


  STREET & SMITH CORPORATION
  PUBLISHERS
  79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York




  Copyright, 1900
  By Street & Smith

  The Girl He Loved


  (Printed in the United States of America)

  All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
  languages, including the Scandinavian.




THE GIRL HE LOVED.




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER I. SWEETHEARTS.
  CHAPTER II. THE PERSON IN BLACK.
  CHAPTER III. A GIFT OF JUDAS.
  CHAPTER IV. “A HORRID OLD MAN!”
  CHAPTER V. HER WEDDING-DAY.
  CHAPTER VI. A VERY CLEVER PERSON.
  CHAPTER VII. HER LADYSHIP SHUFFLES THE CARDS.
  CHAPTER VIII. “A BIT OF THE TRUTH.”
  CHAPTER IX. REVENGE--AND A BALLROOM.
  CHAPTER X. A TIRING DAY.
  CHAPTER XI. NEWS OF ADRIAN.
  CHAPTER XII. THE ICY BARRIER.
  CHAPTER XIII. IN LEVALLION’S HOUSE.
  CHAPTER XIV. A DOVE-COLORED GOWN.
  CHAPTER XV. A WOMAN’S RING.
  CHAPTER XVI. THE SIN OF SYLVIA ANNESLEY.
  CHAPTER XVII. THE SEALED LETTER.
  CHAPTER XVIII. A GROWING CLOUD OF WITNESSES.
  CHAPTER XIX. IN OUTER DARKNESS.
  CHAPTER XX. A WICKED WOMAN’S TONGUE.
  CHAPTER XXI. WHITE POPPIES OF OBLIVION.
  CHAPTER XXII. THE MOONLIGHT PICNIC.
  CHAPTER XXIII. THE DARK GLASS.
  CHAPTER XXIV. ALONE WITH THE DEAD.
  CHAPTER XXV. A DEAD MAN’S SWEETHEART.
  CHAPTER XXVI. TRIFLES LIGHT AS AIR.
  CHAPTER XXVII. THE EVIDENCE IN THE CASE.
  CHAPTER XXVIII. “I SAW--NO ONE!”
  CHAPTER XXIX. “WILFUL MURDER.”
  CHAPTER XXX. A CLOUD OF BLOOD.
  CHAPTER XXXI. A BAD MOVE.
  CHAPTER XXXII. A TRIVIAL INCIDENT.
  CHAPTER XXXIII. LEVALLION’S HEIR.
  CHAPTER XXXIV. “FALSE AS A PACK OF CARDS.”
  CHAPTER XXXV. GOOD-BY.
  CHAPTER XXXVI. A MOUSE-HOLE.
  CHAPTER XXXVII. A GRAY-LINED CLOAK.
  CHAPTER XXXVIII. ARRESTED.
  CHAPTER XXXIX. MR. JACOBS.
  CHAPTER XL. AT THE HINGES OF DEATH.
  CHAPTER XLI. “I LOVED YOU BEST.”




CHAPTER I.

SWEETHEARTS.


“Thomas, my son!”

The voice came darkly from the scullery window, and Sir Thomas Annesley
gave a guilty start where he knelt in the kitchen garden.

“Oh! It’s you!” he cried, with relief. “I thought it might be her
ladyship, and I didn’t want her.”

He hastily covered in a small grave he was making in the parsley-bed,
and his sister poked her bronze head from the open window with some
curiosity.

“What are you doing?” she inquired.

“Oh, nothing! Just putting away something. There is nothing like a hole
in the ground. What on earth are you doing in the scullery?” eying the
unwonted smartness of as much of Miss Ravenel Annesley’s toilet as was
visible. “What have you got on your Sunday frock for? Have you been
blacking the family boots in it?”

“If it’s anything to eat you’ve buried, the cats will dig it up again!”
loftily ignoring his question, except for a guilty glance at her lilac
muslin gown.

“No cat”--calmly--“will dig this up, for I’m going to do it myself
first! Come out, why don’t you?”

“I’m coming.” Miss Annesley vaulted nimbly from the window with much
display of her only pair of black silk stockings. “You don’t see her
ladyship anywhere, do you, Tommy? Because I’ve an--an errand in the
quarry, and I don’t want her to sniff it out.”

“She can’t sniff a quarter of a mile”--comfortably. “She’s gone down to
sit by the lake without any hat; said she had neuralgia. But I know
she’s gone to bleach her golden hair.”

“She does bleach her hair,” Ravenel remarked thoughtfully. “It was the
most awful color yesterday--a sort of green! I heard her giving it to
the Umbrella for making a mistake.”

Sir Thomas Annesley lit a contraband cigarette.

“And yet,” he said blandly, “it was not the Umbrella who changed the
bottle! Her ladyship kicked Mr. Jacobs, and any one who kicks my dog
has misfortunes. I’ll walk over to the quarry with you!” affably.

“No, Tommy dear!” with guilty haste. “I--I don’t require you.”

Sir Thomas coughed.

“Don’t blame me then if her ladyship sends the old Umbrella all over
the country for you when you’re missed. I’ll have to kill that maid
some day! Do you know, she listens at the door when we’re alone?”

“Much good she’ll get!” contemptuously, marching on under the
blossoming apple-trees with the sun flecking the lovely bronze of her
hair with red gold. “Look here, Tommy, you come as far as the hedge,
and just give a cooee if you see the Umbrella or her ladyship.”

“Can’t. I’m going over to the barracks to see Gordon.”

“I wouldn’t! It would be”--she was not looking at him--“a waste of
time.”

“Oh!” Sir Thomas winked vulgarly, as he observed a lovely carnation
grow and deepen in his sister’s cheeks. “I see. Well, go on, my dear!
I don’t blame you; only,” in hasty addition as they reached the hedge,
“keep your eye peeled. The Umbrella is active, and also far-sighted.
I don’t recommend the quarry myself; it is too like being a mouse in
a bowl. Give me a wood for such undertakings! And mind you’re back
by dinner, for if her ladyship sees you sneaking in with your Sunday
blouse on she’ll put two and two together. Meantime, I’ve gone over to
the barracks to see Gordon. You mind that when you come home!”

“You’re a duck, Thomas, some day I’ll reward you,” returned the vision
in mauve muslin, disappearing with some pains through the whitethorn
hedge.

But Sir Thomas only grunted. He approved of his sister’s adorer
because Lady Annesley did not, but he privately considered that meeting
a handsome, penniless hussar was wasting time.

“However, Mr. Jacobs,” he observed, as that disreputable bull-terrier
joined him, “anything for business, and we’re growing old. And it is my
belief that my lady wants to marry Ravenel to that old Lord Levallion,
and I’ll see her blowed first.”

He sat down on the bank at the foot of the hedge and pulled his hat
over his eyes. They were worldly wise eyes for a boy of sixteen; but to
have Lady Annesley for a stepmother was a liberal education. Old Sir
Thomas had married her in haste, and, fortunately for himself, had died
too soon to have time to repent at leisure. He was poor; his new wife
had been supposed to be rich; but her fortune turned out to be about
as real as her complexion--there was just enough of it to swear by.
Annesley Chase was mortgaged too deeply for the widow’s small income
even to pay the interest; when young Sir Thomas came of age it would be
foreclosed and sold over his head, unless money came from the skies.
And yet Lady Annesley, even while she sat and saw the interest piling
up against her, had no idea of letting Annesley Chase go. A snug old
age in the dower-house appearing to her more inviting than spending her
declining years in a semidetached villa, she was even now taking steps
to secure it by the simple scheme of a rich marriage for Ravenel, and
later and harder, for Sir Thomas. In the meantime, she provided the
stepchildren, who were her only stock in trade, with bread and butter.
Thin bread and thinner butter, perhaps; but still she fed them. And
they hated her cordially--Ravenel from having seen her father’s last
days made wretched; Tommy from a far-sighted distrust that grew on him
every day.

But Ravenel just now had no thoughts for her stepmother, nor of how
she was improving the long hours of the May afternoon. Over the short
grass of the field above the quarry pits she was walking with the air
of one having an infinity of time and no particular destination. Her
heart might be galloping before her, but it was not good for captains
of hussar regiments to know it. She sailed on demurely under the shade
of an ivory-white parasol--it was one of Lady Annesley’s, and her
stepdaughter hoped devoutly there would not be a hue and cry for it
while it was out--as if she had not a care in the world. Yet a sharp
color came to her clear cheeks as she neared the quarry pit.

Suppose he had not come!

The thought made her feel chilly in the warm May sunshine. For one
breathless moment she was afraid to lift her eyes from the short grass
lest she might look in vain for Adrian Gordon. And so nearly walked
over him where he lay stretched on the warm, green sod at the edge of
the quarry.

Miss Annesley dropped her pirated parasol.

“Oh!” she cried, as he sprang to his feet. “I nearly walked over you.”

“Tread lightly then, for my heart is under your feet,” quoted the man,
with a little laugh of pure pleasure. He took both her hands and looked
down into her gray-blue eyes.

“I began to think, Miss Annesley,” he remarked gravely, “that you were
not coming. Another ten minutes and I should have walked up to your
hall door and paid a polite visit,” his strong, fine hands holding hers
with utter content.

The girl looked up at him where he stood bareheaded, the sun on his
close-cropped, fair hair. How tanned and strong and good to look at he
was! And how sweet his gray eyes and his mouth under his fair mustache.

He caught her hands a little closer.

“You see,” he said; “you were just saved having to receive me under her
ladyship’s nose. I would have braved even her tea rather than have gone
back without seeing you.” He stooped to pick up her parasol, and she
drew her hands from his left one that held them both.

“It wouldn’t have been any good your coming in state,” she returned
calmly. “You would only have had ‘not at home’ said to you. Her
ladyship is engaged to-day in renovating her charms.”

“I should have met you at the door if I’d started when I first thought
of it! Would you have sent me away?” seating himself beside her in the
shade of a flower-filled thorn-tree on the sharp slope down to the
quarry. “I believe you would!” rather dashed.

“I should not, for an excellent reason. I didn’t come by the front
door, but out of the scullery window,” gaily. “Her ladyship supposes
I’m darning table-cloths. I’ve left Tommy down by the hedge to warn me
if my flight is discovered.”

The laughter left Captain Gordon’s handsome eyes. He laid his brown
hand on Ravenel’s white one.

“Tell me, my Nel,” he said softly; “do you love me, ever so little?”

“No!” very low. “Ever so little!” Did she not love him with all her
soul and body, as she loved no one else in God’s world?

“How much do you love me? That much?” measuring off a tiny space with
her two hands, for he had them both now, and Lady Annesley’s lace
parasol had rolled where it would down the quarry.

“Not at all?”

“Not at all,” but she barely whispered it.

“Do you mean that, Nel?” he was whispering, too. “Because I love
you--oh, you know how I love you!” he let her hands go. “Tell me,
quick, do you mean it?”

Miss Annesley made no answer, only raised her eyes to his for the
briefest instant. But it was long enough for Adrian Gordon.

“Sweetheart,” he said, and kissed her. “Nel, look at me; won’t you kiss
me?”

“I--I don’t know.” But she did look at him, and, somehow, without
either of their wills, their lips met. And at that long, gentle touch
of the man’s lips on hers Ravenel Annesley gave her heart and her soul
to his keeping, forever.

“My sweet,” he said, letting her go, “do you know, I’ve no right to ask
you to marry me? I’ve no money.”

“Neither have I,” gaily. “Would you like to be off your bargain?”

“Don’t say it!” quickly. “It hurts too much. But money I must and will
have to marry you. I mean the girl of my heart to have all she wants
in this world--gowns and horses and happiness. It would kill me to see
you as I’ve seen the wives of lots of poor men. Can you wait for me,
sweet, for two years, while I go out to India?”

“India! What for?” the color left her face.

“Well! I’ve a second cousin, who has some influence. He’s not a man
I like much, but he surprised me the other day by telling me that
a friend of his out in India would offer me an appointment on his
staff--he’s a general--if it were certain I’d accept. I--I said I
would. It’s more than three times the pay I’m getting now and a chance
in a thousand to get on in the service. I’d have to leave my regiment,
but I’d do that--for you.”

“Adrian--not now!” she whispered. “We’re so happy.” Her heart fairly
turned over at the thought of Annesley Chase without Adrian Gordon
quartered ten miles off, of the long, empty summer days.

“We’ll be as happy again,” he answered wistfully, “and the sooner I go
the sooner I’ll be back. But I wouldn’t go at all if I saw any other
way. I’m afraid to leave you with your stepmother.”

“She can’t marry me out offhand to a slug or a snail, and those are the
only visitors we ever have. My charms”--dryly--“have doubtless not yet
been noised abroad.”

“I believe you wish they had been!” quite as dryly. “You’re a bundle of
vanity, Miss Annesley, and I believe you’ve got a temper--and you’re
proud----” he paused eloquently.

“Go on,” returned his charmer calmly. “Don’t mind me! And when you’re
done I’ll tell you what I am--quite good enough for you!”

Her eyes met his with sweet insolence, fearless for all their softness,
and the man’s face changed.

“You’re too good, that’s one thing,” he said slowly. “And for another,
you’re too proud. I know you! If anything went wrong between us, and it
was my fault, you’d never give me a chance to explain.”

Ravenel looked at him, as he sat beside her, with the May sun full on
his face, that was meant to be fair, but was turned a clear pale-bronze
by wind and weather; full on his tawny, gold mustache, and the
clear-cut lines of his cheek and chin. Strong and cold and proud that
face was, till you looked at the man’s eyes or saw him smile. But now
he was not smiling, and a quick pang caught at the girl’s heart. Adrian
Gordon to talk of pride!

She flung out both her hands to him, as she had never done before.

“Listen!” she cried passionately. “It’s you who are proud; not I!
Offend me, and I will give you all the chances on earth to explain; but
you--oh, I don’t believe you would ever forgive anything.”

Her eyes, that had been so gay, so full of sweet mockery, were brimming
with tears, and Gordon caught her to him jealously.

“There will never anything come between us,” he said as he kissed her,
“not between the girl I love and me!”




CHAPTER II.

THE PERSON IN BLACK.


Behind a rock, not two yards from Captain Gordon’s flat young back,
something stirred--stirring so faintly that even a thrush in its nest
in the hawthorn bush did not hear it. Perhaps the sour-faced person
in black who knelt on the grass, ostensibly digging dandelions for a
complexion salad, had been there for a long time; or, perhaps, it had
not been hard to evade the sentry on the hedge and bring up in good
ear-shot of the two people who were blind and deaf to everything but
themselves.

“Heaps of things can come between us,” Ravenel was retorting dolefully.
“Lady Annesley can. And Tommy says the Umbrella--that beast of a maid
of hers--tells her everything we do.”

The person in black bridled angrily behind her rock. She had come from
curiosity; she would stay now for spite. The Umbrella, indeed!

Gordon laughed.

“Why do you call her that?”

“Oh, because she’s a framework of bones with limp black silk over
them--just like an umbrella shut up! But she’s a vicious wretch, too,
and I hate her.”

The unseen listener’s eyes narrowed in her flat face.

“Well, never mind her; she can’t worry us!” hastily. “This is the only
thing that matters just now. My cousin wired to General Carmichael that
I’d accept his offer, and--got an answer. Nel, I must go in a week!”

“Well?” she did not look at him.

“Well, I’m going!” his handsome face drawn and hard. “But I won’t leave
you like this. I want you to marry me before I go.”

“But you couldn’t take me with you?” a wild hope made her voice shake.

“No! But I could send for you, or come when I could get leave and carry
you off. Look here, my heart,” with gentle strength, “if I must go I
want to leave my wife behind me. Then I shall know nothing can ever
come between us.”

“Oh,” her cheek reddened, “I can’t marry you! How could I?” though the
very thought of being Adrian’s wife made life heaven.

“There’s Tommy.”

Gordon smiled.

“Is that all? Only Tommy! When I come back for you we’ll take Tommy,
too; will that do? Or, do you think you’ll find me an insufferable
husband? Tell me. Why don’t you look at me, sweetheart?”

“Because I don’t want to,” returned Miss Annesley, with scarlet cheeks
and a truthful tongue.

“Say you’ll marry me!” he demanded. “Say yes--unless you don’t love me.”

Very deliberately she looked at him, saw the love and truth in
his eyes, the strength and beauty of his face, that was pale with
earnestness.

“Yes,” she whispered, so that he could hardly hear; but he knew without
hearing--and the silent woman behind the rock knew, too, and strained
her ears.

“Then will you do this?” said Gordon. “The curate at Effingham went to
school with me. He’ll marry us if I get a special license. All you’ll
have to do is to walk over to Effingham--which is really your parish
church, though you don’t go there--with me, and be married. No one
will know, unless you like to tell Tommy. And I’ll bring you straight
home from the church door. But you’ll belong to me, and I can defy her
ladyship or any one else to make trouble between us. Will you do that?”

She nodded, her face like a crimson flower.

“Yes, Adrian,” he prompted; but she spoke with a sudden flash of her
spirit.

“Your wife or no one else’s in the world!” she cried, “unless--you
change your mind and throw me over.”

Gordon caught her up like a child.

“Oh, you silly, silly!” he cried. “I’ll not give you a chance to be any
one else’s wife; don’t flatter yourself. But I’ve no right to so sweet
a thing as you. What you ought to do is refuse me and marry my cousin.”

“I don’t even know his name.”

“That’s a trifle. He has money enough to buy this county and not know
it.”

“He hasn’t money enough to buy me!” with a quick flash of her eyes.
“Oh!” with sudden remembrance of the world about her, “I must go! Look
how long the shadows are.”

“Wait--just one second! I’ve something for you,” he was feeling in his
pocket. “I meant it to be diamonds, but they say these things--though,
of course, it’s nonsense--lose their light if things go wrong with--any
one you care for!”

He drew out a velvet case, and there shone into Ravenel Annesley’s eyes
the green fire of a half-hoop of emeralds, curiously set in a kind of
mosaic of small diamonds and opals. The thing was wonderful in a queer,
barbaric way as it blazed in the sun. The girl who looked at it stood
speechless.

“Don’t you like it?” his face falling, for he had searched London for a
ring unlike any others.

“I--I love it! But----” she stopped with dismay.

Opals--every one knew what luck opals brought. And emeralds all the
world over meant “forsaken.”

“Opals aren’t lucky,” she said hastily, and left the green stones out
of the question; “but this is too beautiful to bring bad luck. And I
suppose it’s all nonsense really! Adrian, do you know, I never had a
ring in my life?” shaking from her the senseless dread she felt of this
one.

“You’re going to have two now. This to-day and another next week,” he
was slipping the fiery-green wonder on her third finger. “‘Till death
do us part,’” he quoted softly. “That belongs to the next ring, but I
can say it with this one.”

“Death, or Lady Annesley!” sharply, her eyes full of quick tears. “She
hates me, Adrian, and she doesn’t like you.”

“It can’t hurt either of us, Nel!” with the little backward jerk of his
head the girl loved.

“Why do you never call me Ravenel?” she said irrelevantly, for there
was no sense in wasting good time talking about her ladyship.

“Not like you!” promptly. “Means some one quite different. Mind you,
never let any one call you Nel till I come back again,” with a sudden
curious jealousy.

“No one will want to,” dolefully. “Oh! Adrian; do you really mean to go
next week?”

“I must,” his face grew dark, hard-bitten; for it was like dying to
leave her. “And the worst of it is I’ll be so busy. I’ll have to go
to London to get my kit, and say a decent word to my cousin, and sit
through a farewell dinner at mess--that’ll be about as lively as a
funeral!--the night before I leave, when I shall be mad to be with you.
But we’ll have one day together if everything goes undone. And you’ll
go with me to Effingham, Miss Annesley, and come back Nel Gordon!”

But she sat pale and quiet.

“It seems so mad, so impossible!” she said at last, as if it were wrung
from her. “And I believe my stepmother would kill me if she found out.”

“That’s about the only thing she couldn’t do,” shortly. “Do you think I
won’t take care of her claws for you? Look here, besides, the day we go
to Effingham there’ll be the duchess’ garden-party. I’ll manage to get
there. If I can’t, I’ll send you a note to say what day I am coming to
take you to Effingham. After that, sweet, we can laugh at her ladyship.”

“You’ll be gone! We won’t be able to laugh at anything!” forlornly.

“You’ll be my wife,” something flashed into his eyes that boded no good
to any one that dared lift a finger against Adrian Gordon’s dearest.
“I’ll be able to write to you and you to me. Some day I’ll come and
carry you off, no matter what Lady Annesley may be pleased to say.
The only thing is,” a sudden pity in the masterful protecting hand on
hers, “it’s a pretty poor match for you, my Nel. And a doleful wedding
in an empty church to a man who can’t even keep you is a selfish bit
of work--it makes me feel a beast! You ought, you know, to marry a
lord--with a choral service, and two bishops, and a church full of fine
people to make it all proper,” his voice was jesting, but his eyes were
sad enough, and he held her hand as if he never could let it go.

“Don’t talk like that!” she cried sharply. “It makes me feel as if some
one were walking over my grave. What have I got to do with lords and
bishops at my wedding? I’d be miserable. I’d----” she could not go on.
What made her see, as if in a vision, a strange church, filled with
sweet people, whispering indifferently while the organ pealed, and the
bride, all in white--with a heart of stone--came up the aisle on feet
that would hardly carry her, since it was not Adrian Gordon who waited
at the altar? There was a look on her face as she stared in front of
her, wide-eyed, that made Gordon catch her to him. A prescient look,
as of one who sees for a shuddering moment the curtain lifted from the
future.

“What’s the matter? You’re not afraid?” he whispered. “I’ll take care
of you, my sweet; you know that! May God treat me as I treat you, my
wife.”

Lip to lip, soul to soul, they kissed each other. She was shaking when
he let her go; afterward it was small comfort to him to remember it,
nor the real terror in her voice when she spoke.

“Oh! I’ve stayed too late. And the ring, I daren’t wear it. You
mustn’t come with me. She mustn’t know you were here.” She dragged up
her neck-ribbon and put the ring on it, slipping it round her neck,
inside her collar, pushing it out of sight with miserable care. And the
watcher behind the rock--who was stiff and much fatigued--saw her do it.

“Rings!” she reflected, coming cautiously out as the pair vanished,
and rubbing one foot that had gone to sleep, “and weddings at
Effingham--we’ll see!” pins and needles adding vigor to her thoughts.
“Old Umbrella, indeed!” and her ladyship’s confidential maid moved
stiffly off in a devious direction that took her to Annesley Chase
quite unobserved.




CHAPTER III.

A GIFT OF JUDAS.


“Oh!” said Ravenel Annesley to the empty schoolroom, the ill-spread
breakfast-table. She stared at the small envelope that lay on her plate
with a breathless, helpless joy. Since this four days past she had
hoped for it in vain.

“I never thought he’d write by post!” she thought, pouncing on it and
inspecting every inch of it, from the London postmark to the last
letter of the address. “But her ladyship couldn’t have suspected it was
from Adrian, or I never would have seen it! It was just that London
postmark that saved me!”

She turned it over sharply with the horrid thought that perhaps she had
only got it after Lady Annesley knew what was in it, for the post-bag
always went to her bedroom, and her ladyship’s prejudices were few. But
the clean, red seal on the back of it reassured her no one had tampered
with that clear-cut A. Tommy, sauntering in, whistled as he looked from
his sister’s face to the envelope she was tearing open.

 “My Nel,” she read breathlessly.

 “I find I can go to the duchess’ to-morrow. I was afraid I couldn’t
 manage it. My ship sails on the 15th, so the 14th is our only day.
 I have arranged everything, got the license, seen the curate at
 Effingham, and I’ll come to the back gate for you at three on the
 14th, which is our only chance for Effingham, as my ship sails a day
 sooner than I thought. Will it be very hard for you to get away? But
 you’ll do it, won’t you? Bring Tommy if you like. It does not seem
 true that the next time I see you will be on our wedding-day, does it,
 sweetheart? I feel as though I were hurrying you brutally, but it is
 our only chance. Excuse pencil and haste, but I’m writing in another
 man’s rooms, and his ink won’t work.

 “Always yours--my very dearest,

                                                         “ADRIAN.”

But Miss Annesley bestowed no attention on the pencil-scrawl or the
dates written in figures, which Lady Annesley would have considered
tempting Providence.

“To-day is the twelfth,” she thought joyfully. “I’ll see him to-morrow
at the duchess’. Oh, if I only had something fit to wear!”

“Look here,” said Sir Thomas suddenly. “When you have done moaning
over that precious letter I wish to discourse. Are you going to marry
Gordon?”

“Shut up, Tommy!” she was scarlet. “Some one might hear.”

“Who could?” scornfully. “The Umbrella’s at her breakfast. Are
you? Because, I should if I were you! it may be your only chance,”
significantly.

“Yes, I am!” she said defiantly, and afterward was glad she had told no
more.

“But what do you mean?” for his face was sober.

“Only that somehow I think her ladyship’s in mischief. She’s been eying
you like a cat lately. I feel afraid she may be on to you and Gordon.”

“I don’t care if she is.” Somehow she could not tell all her wild plan
to Tommy. “I’m engaged to him. Why should I care?”

“You don’t now, but you will when her eye’s on you,” shrewdly.

“I’ll soon find out. She wants me after breakfast,” bestowing Adrian’s
note in a safe pocket. “I suppose it’s about the duchess’ party
to-morrow. Do you know I’m to go?”

The boy nodded.

“Good old duchess!” he said disrespectfully. “Ever see her on a
bicycle? She’s gorgeous. You’ll never be a fine woman like that unless
you make her ladyship give us more to eat,” dolefully.

“What do you bet--she’s having sweetbreads up-stairs?”

“Don’t bet,” concisely. “Met them going up. I’ll go up myself now,
Tommy, and hear the worst.”

She marched out of the untidy old schoolroom, where she and Tommy had
their meals, and through the bare passages to the only luxurious room
in the house. It was like going into another world, a world of scent
and rose-colored hangings and mirrors, silver-topped bottles and
cushions. On a sofa sat its owner and in the tempered light she was
beautiful still. Yet she looked enviously at Ravenel standing in the
doorway. With half her looks Sylvia Annesley would have married a duke.

“You wanted me?” Somehow Ravenel was nervous.

“Yes,” pointing to a chair; “about to-morrow. Have you anything to
wear?”

“My Sunday frock,” coloring as she remembered when she had last worn it.

Lady Annesley let a gleam of amusement come into her eyes, since her
back was to the light.

“That lavender thing! It can’t be fit.”

“It’s all right,” hastily. “It doesn’t matter what I wear.”

“Except that I fancy the duchess would like to see you decent.” So
carelessly that no one would have dreamed that all her schemes might be
made or marred by her step-daughter’s toilet at a country garden-party.

“It’s my lavender or nothing!” returned that young person not too
amiably.

Lady Annesley’s answer made her jump.

“Not at all! I am going to give you a gown. I sent for you to try it
on.”

“You!” It sounded more candid than polite. “Why? What for?” For her
life she could not get out any thanks. Lady Annesley, who let her go
cold in winter, to suddenly present her with a new dress. “I--I’d
rather not,” she ended stiffly.

“Oh, you might see it first,” rather dryly. “Adams, Miss Ravenel’s
gown!”

Ravenel watched the Umbrella go to a wardrobe.

“If she made it,” she thought, “I’ll never put it on!”

Sylvia Annesley read the obstinate face like print.

“You see,” she said lightly, “the whole county will be there to-morrow,
and all the soldiers! You simply can’t go in a tumbled old muslin.”

All the soldiers! And Adrian had never seen her in a frock that was
even new. Lady Annesley saw her waver.

“That is the little gown,” she said quickly. “Slip it on and decide
afterward,” thinking that mention of the soldiers had done the
business, and blessing the discretion of her maid without which she
might have given her stepdaughter ten gowns and not known how to make
her wear them.

For Ravenel had risen and was staring at the ivory-white, silk-lined
muslin the Umbrella held.

There was not a spot of color about it, and as she gazed the girl knew
that Adrian had never even dreamed of her as she would look in that
filmy white frock.

“I can’t take it,” she faltered, but she let the Umbrella put it on her.

“The hat, Adams!” cried Lady Annesley quickly. “In the next room. Give
me the scissors first. The collar is too high in the back.”

She snipped hastily once or twice, but Ravenel hardly felt the cold
scissors as she stared down at her long skirt.

“There, look at yourself.” With a curious lingering touch, Lady
Annesley pushed her to the glass. But the girl gave a little cry of
astonishment.

Was this her very own self who stood so thin and tall, her bronze hair
gleaming, her cheeks rose-red, her eyes--she turned from the mirror
with sudden passion. No matter who gave her the gown she would wear it!
would go all in white for Adrian Gordon’s eyes.

“Do you know it is very good of you?” She faced the woman in the yellow
silk morning gown honestly. “I don’t deserve it.”

“It is not new. I had the things,” slowly. “Just turn and let me see
how the train hangs.” She stooped gracefully, pulled the bodice down
under the skirt, settled the train. She also had not been prepared
for the dream of peach and carnation the girl looked in the white
gown; had doubted if her one card were strong enough to play against
the world-worn shrewdness of a man grown old in society. But she was
confident enough now.

“I can snap my fingers at Captain Gordon, I fancy,” and she tightened
her small hand. “He can’t blame any one but himself,” but she kept the
scorn off her face till Ravenel had put on her every-day clothes and
departed.

“Tommy,” the girl cried, bursting into the schoolroom and recounting
her extraordinary tale, “fancy her giving me a dress! Do you think it
means she’s beginning to like me?” wistfully.

“I don’t think--I know,” said Sir Thomas bluntly. “It means Lord
Levallion. You bet your boots he’s going to that party.”

“What do you mean?” blankly. “I never heard of the man.”

“Her ladyship dropped that out the window,” producing a torn envelope.
“It blew slap in my face. Dark-blue coronet, ‘Levallion’ on the back
and ‘Lady An----’ torn through in front. And, sent by hand!”

“I don’t see what that’s got to do with the garden-party!”

“Don’t you?” getting up. “You’re a girl and can’t see past your nose. I
tell you Levallion’s staying with the duchess. Aren’t you hungry? I’m
going out to get that ginger beer I buried. I hooked some buns, too. We
hadn’t too much breakfast.”

“We’ll get less after to-morrow,” following him briskly into
the garden. “For I’m not going to speak to any nasty old Lord
Levallion--not for ten gowns. I’m going to----” She stopped short,
white with terror.

“My ring!” she cried wildly. “I took off my dress before her. She must
have seen it.”

Both hands at her throat, she fumbled for her treasure; and leaned back
against a convenient tree with her knees giving under her.

Ring and ribbon were gone!




CHAPTER IV.

“A HORRID OLD MAN!”


Lord Levallion was bored.

He hated garden-parties, and he had patiently endured the Duchess of
Avonmore’s country omnium-gatherum from four o’clock until six. He
could not go home, because he was staying in the house, and, retreat
being impossible, he had revenged himself for his martyrdom on his
old friend, Lady Annesley, by departing hastily on her eager offer to
introduce him to her stepdaughter.

“I don’t see her just now,” Sylvia Annesley had said, with the smile he
had once known so well, “but if you will come with me we shall easily
find her!”

“No, thank you, Sylvia; I don’t care for little girls.”

Lord Levallion had the rudest drawl in the world when it pleased him,
and he enjoyed Lady Annesley’s rage at it now. It was all very well to
write her a note by way of amusing himself on a wet day, but it was
another story to have her introduce him to a bread-and-butter miss.

“The woman wears well, though,” he reflected, as he adroitly drifted
away from her. “Who would imagine it was fifteen years since I loved
and rode away! I think a cigarette might assist me to endure to the
end, if I can get away from this madding crowd. I’ll get back to town
to-morrow, that’s one thing certain. The country is less in my line
than ever.”

He pursued his leisurely way through the magnificent old gardens, round
the end of the lake, and finally found a seat on a retired bench in
the heart of a grove of trees. There was not a soul to be seen, and if
it had not been for the mellow sound of a distant band Lord Levallion
would not even have been reminded that he was at a party. He had smoked
one cigarette, and was lighting another with a contented sigh, when he
heard a quick step and a rustle of silk which caused him to look up
sharply. Pray the gods Sylvia had not tracked him!

But it was not Sylvia. It was a strange girl, all in white from her
hat to her shoes, and she did not even see him as she walked toward
him along the quiet path where the light came dim and green through
overarching boughs. She was magnificently handsome--and she was blind
with tears that streamed down her face. Her white gown trailed unheeded
on the gravel as she fumbled in her pocket for a handkerchief.

“Something must be very wrong,” Levallion reflected swiftly, “to make
her ruin her skirt round the hem!”

But even in her tears she was gloriously beautiful, and he was not
going to let her pass him.

Lord Levallion got up, dropped his cigarette, and took off his hat.

“I beg your pardon,” he said gravely. “I will go.” But he did not move.

Ravenel Annesley started furiously.

“I didn’t see you,” she said, with a sob in her throat. “I thought
there was no one here. And--I wanted to be alone.”

She wiped the tears from her eyes savagely, with a morsel of a
handkerchief; but they came again, and Levallion saw her chest lift
with an uncontrollable sob.

“Do you want to stop crying?” he said quietly.

Ravenel stamped her foot.

“Of course I do, but I can’t!” she cried childishly.

“Then don’t be alone,” he returned. “If you stay by yourself you will
cry till you are not fit to be seen. Sit down here by me instead, and
talk. Oh, I know you’re wishing me miles away; but just try it! When
you get to my age you will find it is always better to stop crying.”

His voice was cool and hard. It came on her nerves like iced water. She
did not answer him, but she sat down on a corner of the bench limply,
as if her feet could carry her no longer.

“Do you mind my cigarette? No,” as she shook her small, averted head.
“Then I will smoke. Don’t rub your eyes unless you want the whole world
to know you’ve been crying,” looking down his nose at the cigarette he
was lighting. “And the more you have been crying the less you probably
want people to know it.”

“No one would have known it if you hadn’t been here!” she said angrily.
“Now I suppose you’ll tell the duchess.”

“Why the duchess?” Anything to make her talk. It was a sin to let so
lovely a face be cried into hideousness. He hoped devoutly she would
not blow her nose! Women usually did when they cried.

“It’s her party, so you must know her. And I don’t know whether you
know any one else or not.”

“I have not the honor of knowing you, at all events,” he returned
coolly. “So that I couldn’t tell the duchess if I wanted to--which I
don’t.”

“It doesn’t matter who I am.” She bit her handkerchief desperately. “I
wish I was anybody--I wish I were dead!”

“That is a wish you are certain to get--in time! It’s not worth while
to cry because you despair of it,” blandly.

“I’m not crying.” She turned her small, white face to him, and her eyes
were dry, if her lip still quivered.

“No, but you are extremely unhappy,” looking at her as indifferently as
if he were not taking in every point in her lovely, mutinous face.

“So would you be. At least, I don’t know,” with frank rudeness.
“Perhaps at your age you would not care.”

She bestowed a look on him for the first time, but without a shade
of coquetry. The man might have been a tree or a stone for all she
card. It was not the way women usually regarded Lord Levallion, and it
interested him. He turned his high-bred, worn face, with the lines of
forty-seven years on it, toward her with a keen glance which somehow
reminded her of Adrian. The thought brought a fresh lump in her throat.

“I wish I could go home,” she said miserably. “I--I’ve lost something,
and I’d like to get home and look for it. If it wouldn’t make a hue and
cry I’d walk home now.”

She had not had one happy minute since discovering her ring was gone.
Had turned from the wondering Tommy, digging for his beer in the
parsley, and run up-stairs like a frantic, raging child, to the door of
Lady Annesley’s room. And there something stopped her like a tangible
thing. She stood motionless, with clenched hands, felt cold in the warm
May air that flooded through an open window. Why had she come running
up here like a fool, when she knew she dared not open that shut door
in front of her and demand her ring of the woman inside?

“If I said Adrian had given me a ring she’d never let me set eyes on
him again!” she thought, with more truth than she knew. “She knows I
never had a ring. She’d ask--and what could I say? I might lie, but
it’s no use to lie to a liar; they know too much. And, perhaps, she
hasn’t taken it--perhaps I dropped it! I was out in the garden before
breakfast. I’ll wait! I’ll tell Adrian to-morrow. It’s no use to give
myself away for nothing.”

And here was to-morrow--and no Adrian. Man after man of his regiment
she had seen, but she knew none of them. She could not go up to strange
men and clamor for news of Adrian Gordon. Her heart felt like a stone
when it grew too late to expect the man for whom she had come in that
white gown that felt as if it burned her. She had slipped away from the
crowd, away from Sylvia, like a child who cannot keep a brave front
any longer. Where was Adrian? And how was she to bear the rest of this
dreadful party?

“How far is ‘home’?” Levallion said suddenly.

“I don’t know. Five miles and more. I can’t walk in these,” with a
sudden glance at her white suède shoes. “I’d ruin them--and they’re not
mine. They and everything else were put on me in hopes that a horrid
old man might admire me. Thank goodness, I haven’t even seen him! And I
wouldn’t have spoken to him if I had!”

A sudden light arose on Lord Levallion’s horizon. This must be Sylvia’s
stepdaughter.

“Ah!” he commented grimly. “What old man? Levallion?”

Ravenel nodded.

“She did not say so, of course, but I feel sure of it. Why? Do you know
him?”

“As well as most people.” But he said it without much spirit. It did
not somehow amuse him to be considered “a horrid old man.” He got up,
rather stiffly.

“If you want to go home,” he said, “I will drive you. I am no more
interested in this party than you. I will get a pony-cart at the
stables and meet you at the turn of the avenue. It will fill up my time
till dinner.”

“There isn’t going to be any dinner,” crossly. “There’s going to be
supper, and the duchess has asked me to stay and dance afterward. If I
have to stay here till eleven o’clock I sha’n’t be able to stand it.”

“Then don’t stay. You don’t”--the “horrid old man” rankled--“look fit
to be seen in any case! If your chaperon is going to stay to supper, I
will find her when I come back and tell her I took you home.”

“Will you?” Her face grew almost happy. She cared nothing at all for
appearances, or that she had not been introduced to this stranger, who
stood looking at her with cynical kindness.

“Yes! Come along,” he returned abruptly. “You needn’t thank me. I’m
very much bored, and I’m going for my own amusement.”

“But how can you tell my stepmother, Lady Annesley? Do you know her?”

“You can write it,” producing a neat gold pencil and note-book and
tearing out a leaf.

He watched her while she wrote. Truly Sylvia had done well to dress her
all in white! Most women tried to please you without consulting your
tastes, but Sylvia had not forgotten that he thought white the only
wear for a pretty woman.

“There!” The girl handed him a scribbled note nervously. “You will be
sure to give it to Lady Annesley?”

“I promise you,” with grave politeness. “Now, if you will be at the
turn of the avenue in ten minutes I will have the cart there.”

Ravenel nodded. If it were twenty miles she would go home. She could
not bear another half-hour at this miserable party.

There was not a soul to be seen as she sprang lightly up into the high,
two-wheeled cart, never even asking how her strange friend was able
to order out the duchess’ own pony. She leaned back wearily as they
started, and the man beside her was too wise to try to make her talk.

In silence they drove through the quiet country lanes, the setting sun
reddening the bronze of the girl’s hair and lending a false color to
her listless face. When they reached the open door of Annesley Chase,
she was down like a flash before he could get out.

“Thank you--oh, a hundred times!” she cried gratefully. “You will give
Lady Annesley her note at once, won’t you?”

“At once,” lifting his hat. But the girl had run into the house.

Now was her time, while Lady Annesley was out. She tore off the smart
white gown she had put on so carefully, and threw it on the floor. Then
she got out Adrian Gordon’s letter and looked at it feverishly. There
it was in black and white: “I can go to the duchess’. I was afraid I
couldn’t manage it.”

Well, something must have happened! But at least she was at home again;
she could look for her ring. And suppose he had not been able to go
to-day, what did it matter? To-morrow would be her wedding-day, and
after that nothing could come between them any more.

Pale, trembling, her heart heavy as lead, in spite of herself,
she stole like a thief to her stepmother’s room. The Umbrella was
down-stairs, and Ravenel hunted quickly in every drawer and box. It
never struck her as being odd that they should be all unlocked, exactly
as if the more thoroughly they were searched the better for their
owner’s plans. And the girl, after thirty minutes, knew she looked in
vain. Her ring was not in the room. Somehow and somewhere she must have
lost it. She remembered that, like a fool, she had tied the ribbon in a
bow. It was utterly inexplicable except for that.

As Ravenel crept away, utterly hopeless, Sylvia Annesley was standing
in the duchess’ drawing-room, with a heart that beat high in joyful
surprise.

“What!” she cried incredulously, “you drove her home? But you did not
know her!”

“I met her,” Lord Levallion returned dryly, “during the afternoon. You
had decked her out to meet the eye, hadn’t you?”

But Lady Annesley did not flinch. Instead, she did not seem to have
heard his fleering voice. She had grown pale under her rouge, and she
laid a quick, insistent hand on his arm.

“When did you go? What time?” she cried sharply. “And did you meet any
one on the road? Was there any one waiting at the Chase when you got
there?”

“No. There was not, to my knowledge--any one!” with an exact imitation
of her tone. “No one either met or waylaid us.”

So that was the reason of the tears! Madam Sylvia had somehow tricked
the girl into coming here, and now was frightened into her little shoes
for fear she had not stayed long enough. For Lady Annesley’s smile, for
once, was absent.

“Tell them to get my carriage, will you?” she said slowly. “I must go,
too. That foolish, headstrong girl of mine may be ill. Perhaps you will
come over to-morrow?”

To-morrow Lord Levallion had meant should see him in London. He shook
his head for sole answer, but decided to wait a day all the same.

“Your stepdaughter seemed in excellent health when I left her,” he
observed, turning away to send for her ladyship’s carriage. “But, all
the same, I dare say you are wise to get home!”

She looked quite old, he saw, in her sudden anxiety, and he wondered
cynically just what ailed her, for she scarcely said good-by as he saw
her into her shabby fly.

That vehicle seemed to crawl to its impatient occupant. But at last she
reached her own door, with as quick a step as Ravenel’s own, her room,
where the Umbrella sat limply waiting.

“Adams, what time did Miss Annesley get home?” she demanded sharply.
“Was there any one here? Quick! Any one?”

The Umbrella rose stolidly.

“Not when Miss Annesley came,” she said slowly, and her hearer thought
she did it on purpose. “Everything has been all quite right, my lady. A
gentleman called, though, and left his card.”

“It doesn’t matter,” sharply, but she glanced at it with such relief
that her head swam, before she tore it to pieces. “It was no one I
minded missing.”

“No, my lady.” And if there was the familiarity of a confidante in
the woman’s tone Lady Annesley did not notice it, nor that she neatly
collected the bits of torn card off the floor.

Her ladyship felt really dizzy with fatigue, or emotion, as she flung
herself into a chair.

“I’ll dine up here,” she said slowly. It was all right and her net
seemed to have caught Levallion, but such days were ageing. She had
fought her Waterloo, and she felt the reaction even of victory. Tired
to death, the weight of the rings on her slender hands felt unbearable.
Her ladyship rose softly and hastily and locked the gorgeous things
away.




CHAPTER V.

HER WEDDING-DAY.


Half-past two o’clock, and her wedding-day!

Ravenel Annesley looked at herself in the glass curiously as at
another person. She had on a clean white duck dress--having looked
with a shudder at yesterday’s unlucky silk and muslin--nothing of her
stepmother’s should go to her adorning on her wedding-day! But in her
plain white gown she was lovely, and with a keen thrill of joy she knew
it. Thank God, Adrian’s bride was pretty, even if she went to him in a
cotton gown!

And in half an hour she would see him; tell him of her lost ring--for,
think as she might, she could not see how either Lady Annesley or her
maid could have taken or even seen it; her cotton slip bodice had been
carefully buttoned over it--of yesterday’s party, and of how she had
waited vainly for him. She opened her door and stole through the house.
She would not take Tommy. She would go alone to church with Adrian; all
alone, would promise and vow to be his always. She hurried through the
garden and down to the back gate.

It was early still, and silly to expect him; yet she had a foolish
pang of disappointment as she looked up and down the empty white road
outside.

“He’ll be here in a minute,” she said to herself confidently, “and then
I’ll feel happy again. I hope he won’t be angry about that ring. And I
wish I knew how I lost it!”

She sat down in the shade just inside the gate and lost herself in a
happy dream. Some day--soon perhaps--Adrian would come back from India,
and carry her and Tommy off under her ladyship’s nose, who could go
anywhere she pleased, for the Chase was certain to be sold over her
head.

“And I shouldn’t care. I’ve been too wretched here,” she thought
passionately. And then something startled her.

The stable clock had rung. Why was Adrian late, who was always so early?

“I never knew how awful it was to wait!” she cried, springing up. “I
feel as if I couldn’t sit still. I’ll walk up and down till I count a
thousand steps, and then I’ll look at the road again.”

But she paced a thousand steps, and a thousand again; there was no sign
of Adrian Gordon.

“Oh!” in spite of herself she trembled, “it can’t be going to be like
yesterday. He must be coming.”

Her heart quaking, she wished she had brought Tommy. This was too
awful. The tears came to her eyes. She could not walk any longer, yet
how could she sit still? She shivered in the hot, sweet sun.

“Oh, Adrian, hurry!” she whispered childishly, as if he must hear her;
and then sat down on the green bank by the road as if she were suddenly
weak. For the stable clock had struck four.

It was a long lane, and no one passed by to see a girl in a white frock
sitting on the grass, careless of greening the spotless whiteness
of her wedding-gown; no one looked with a wondering eye at the sick
despair in her face, as she sat dumb and motionless--waiting for the
man who by this time should have been her husband.

When the slow clock rang six, Ravenel Annesley got up, steadying
herself carefully. She was chilly and stiff, and though she did not
know it, broken-hearted.

Truth and honor and love, dead letters to her, she looked once more
down the quiet lane to the quarry, where she and Adrian Gordon had
kissed with lips that were quick and kind. Well, he had spoken the
truth when he said she would have but a poor wedding-day!

She crept home at last, white as her cotton gown. With only one
thought--to get unseen to her own room--she went into the house through
the open window of the drawing-room, where no one ever sat. But to-day
it was, for once, occupied.

Fairly inside the French window before she saw the two people in the
room, she turned whiter than ever.

Lady Annesley, in her best tea-gown, drinking tea; and beside her, the
low sun full on his handsome, sneering face, the strange man who had
driven her home last evening. Ravenel, by instinct, put up her hand to
cover her trembling lip. In her white gown, with her whiter face, she
looked like a ghost as she stood staring.

Lord Levallion had the grace not to look at her as he came forward,
and took her cold, indifferent hand. Lady Annesley put down her cup
pettishly.

“Why do you never come in by the door like a Christian?” she said.
“You quite startled me. Lord Levallion has come over to ask how you
are--after yesterday!”

Lord Levallion? So this was he. Well, it was all one to her! There was
only one man in all the world who mattered to Ravenel Annesley, and he
had forsaken her. She turned to go, stumbling on the window-sill.

“Come and sit down. You look tired to death,” commanded Lady Annesley,
and the taunt stung her stepdaughter. If her world had gone to pieces
like a pack of cards, there was no reason that her ladyship should know
it! She turned, sat down on the first chair she came to, and met Lord
Levallion’s eyes turned on her curiously.

“Have you been walking? It’s too hot to walk,” he observed languidly.
“I got up early this morning and took my exercise: rode over to have
breakfast with Captain Gordon of the ---- Hussars. Do you know him?”

Lady Annesley was livid in her fright. She had not dared confide in
Levallion--and what was going to be the result?

“Yes, I know him,” Ravenel said evenly. She had her hat in her lap and
was playing with the pin out of it.

“You know he went off to India to-day, then, by the first train for
Southampton. I rather took him by surprise, for he left me in London. I
can’t say I had a cheerful breakfast. Every one seemed so cast down at
his leaving--but I enjoyed my ride.”

Thank God she could not get any paler! And the Annesleys were ever
proud. This one, who was but a child and hurt to the heart, kept her
face steady.

“Yes,” she said, and her voice sounded quite natural, for she heard it
as though it were some one else’s. “Why? Was Captain Gordon dull?”

“Extremely noisy, on the contrary. Delighted, evidently, to be getting
away.”

But she heard Levallion’s answer through the whirl of a hundred
thoughts that seemed to sound and move in her head. Adrian had gone
to India!--gone without a word of good-by, broken all his promises,
forsaken her with a false, lying letter. Oh, Adrian, Adrian!

Desperately, like a savage, Ravenel stuck her steel hat-pin straight
into her finger, and the sharp pain steadied her. She must not--dare
not--think of him now. Whatever happened she must be brave before her
ladyship and Levallion. And that wild cry at her heart was stifling
her. Oh, Adrian--Adrian!

“What’s the matter? Have you cut your hand?” cried her stepmother
shrilly. Levallion was no fool; he had probably put two and two
together already! She was thankful to see a tangible reason for the
girl’s strange pallor and quietude.

Ravenel nodded. Not for anything in the world could she have spoken
without giving voice to that cry in her soul to Adrian Gordon, who was
on the sea.

If Sylvia Annesley had known it, nothing else in the world would have
so softened Lord Levallion’s heart to the girl she meant him to marry
as the sight of her sitting pale as death and as proud.

“God! there’s stuff in the child!” he reflected swiftly. “And I’ll
help her. Madam Sylvia’s been up to some low trick with her, I’ll lay
my life!” but his voice was cooler than usual as he quietly cut off
another question from that much-tried woman.

“That pin has gone through your finger, Miss Annesley,” he interposed
quietly. “You should go at once and bathe it with hot water. They are
nasty things--hat-pins,” and he rose composedly and opened the door for
Ravenel to leave the room.

If any one had told her three days ago that she would ever have been
grateful to Lord Levallion she would have laughed in their face. But
now she looked at him as a caged bird might do when suddenly set free;
like the bird, slipped through the door he had opened for her, dumb
and dazed, but--thank God!--safe away from Sylvia’s eyes.

Lord Levallion returned to his seat.

“What have you been doing to that child, Sylvia?” he inquired harshly.
“You have delicately suggested you would like me to marry her, but I
warn you it is no use trying to force either her or me into it. If I
want to marry her I shall, but it’s not any too likely. And the more
you scheme the less I shall probably oblige you.”

“What makes you think anything so absurd?” angrily.

“My dear lady, I put two and two together. First, you write to me, and
I have not heard from you for years. Then you are eager that I should
meet the girl. Last, I come here, and find you poor--unbearably poor,
for you! And a good marriage for the girl would mean a competence for
you, and I am the only man you know with money. So you find out I am
staying with the duchess, dress your lamb for the slaughter, and make
her life miserable so that she will fly to my arms. Eh, Sylvia?” slowly.

Lady Annesley grew redder than her rouge. Levallion was too shrewd for
once, and overshot himself. But it was better he should think Ravenel
unhappy at home than suspect she was sick for the sight of Adrian
Gordon.

“I--we--don’t get on! It is a grief to me,” she said prettily.

Levallion smiled. Any other man would have laughed outright; but he was
not given to laughter. Fancy Sylvia--Sylvia!--scheming and match-making
for him. It was better than any play. She had been clever, too, to have
found out that he was thinking of marrying. He was forty-seven years
old, and had no one to inherit either title or estates but his second
cousin. If Lady Annesley had known her peerage better, she might have
thought twice of meddling with Adrian Gordon’s love-affairs.

“I should advise you to try and get on--while I am here,” he broke the
pause abruptly. “I do not like jars and tears.”

Lady Annesley trembled. She saw her dreams of Levallion’s country
houses and a comfortable allowance--above all, a position as Lady
Levallion’s mother--fading into thin air.

“The girl is dull here,” she said. “I can’t help it. She wants a
change, I suppose, and I can’t give it to her.”

“Take her to town for a week.”

Her ladyship looked at him, her beautiful delicate face for once
sincere.

“Walk there, camp in Piccadilly, walk home again!” she observed. “What
a delightful program! That is the only way I could manage it.”

“Perhaps so,” returned Lord Levallion equably, and rose to go. He
had his own thoughts on the subject, but as yet they did not burn to
be made public. He meant to come over again before he went to town
himself, but he did not mention that, either. He would not come to see
Sylvia, nor did he wish to be considered her ally.

Sir Thomas Annesley, from a convenient post on the stairs, watched the
visitor’s exit, and then repaired with haste to his sister’s room.

“Ravenel, let me in, I say!” he demanded, pounding on the door.

But he got no answer.

Ravenel, face down, lay on her bed convulsed with rage and shame to
think that she should be crying herself sick for Adrian Gordon, who had
left her like a dog he was tired of--left her with lying promises he
had not cared to keep--and taken the best part of her with him.

“Ravenel, let me in, can’t you? I want to speak to you!” Sir Thomas’
persistent pounding reached her deaf ears at last.

She got up trembling and began to bathe her stained face with cold
water.

“I can’t, Tommy! I--I’m washing,” she called out angrily.

“Well, hurry up and I’ll wait!”

Ravenel, sponge in hand, flung the door open.

“Come in and be done!” she cried. “What is it?”

Her face was blotched and patchy with crying, and the boy’s eyes
kindled as he saw it.

“What’s that brute Levallion been saying to you?” he demanded. “And
what’s Gordon gone off for like this?”

“He’s gone off because he’s sick of me; he’s thrown me over.” She spoke
brutally. She was not going to gloss things over to Tommy. “And Lord
Levallion hasn’t done anything. He’s the only decent person I know,”
with which the door banged once more in Sir Thomas’ face.

Gordon sick of her--and Levallion decent! The boy was dumb with
amazement. She would be praising her ladyship next. He went slowly away
and sought Mr. Jacobs.

“My good dog,” he said disgustedly to that villainous animal, “there’s
going to be trouble!”




CHAPTER VI.

A VERY CLEVER PERSON.


Lord Levallion and the Duchess of Avonmore sat at breakfast in the
duchess’ own sitting-room. It was one of her habits seldom to breakfast
with her guests, but to have one chosen companion at her own table.
Avonmore was Liberty Hall since the death of the duke, who had not been
exactly a comfortable partner for his handsome wife. She never allowed,
even to herself, that she was happier without him, but the world knew
it, as it knows everything unpublished.

She sat now in a Norfolk jacket and a short skirt, making an extensive
breakfast. Since seven o’clock she had been tramping from her dairy to
her hen walks, as thriftily as any farmer’s wife. But her handsome,
weather-beaten face, with its shrewd, keen eyes, and her beautifully
dressed white hair, made her look dignified, in spite of her short
skirts and her full-blown figure.

Lord Levallion was drinking a cup of tea--very slowly--and looking at
some dry toast with distaste. He had not been trudging in the morning
air, and had had a bad night into the bargain. But the duchess and he
were old friends, and he did not trouble himself to make conversation.

She shook her head at him as she saw his untouched breakfast.

“That’s not the way to get to a green old age, Levallion!” she observed
as she took a second helping of bacon. “But I suppose it’s London
habits that stick by you. Are you really off this morning?” He nodded.

“Surely you’re coming up again soon?” inquiringly, for she had been
tempted into the country for a week by the perfect weather, and had
stayed to give her yearly garden-party and get it over. “You will be
losing the cream of things!

“I’m going up next week. To tell you the truth, Levallion, I feel
lonely when I get to my town house and haven’t my dairy and my
chickens to amuse me! It’s a big, desolate barrack, you know, and I
hate it. If I’d had a daughter to bring out it might be different,”
wistfully, “but without a chick or a child what are town parties to me?”

“Adopt one!” said Levallion, not unkindly.

The duchess shook her head.

“Too risky! But I thought of having some girl to stay with me, if I
could find the right girl.”

“You’ve two nieces!” Levallion was clever; not a tone of his
uninterested voice betrayed that he had an object in his idle talk.

“Odious brats!” returned the duchess sharply. They were the late duke’s
nieces, not hers. “I couldn’t stand either of them for a day. The only
girl I’ve seen and taken a fancy to is that nice-looking child of
old Tom Annesley’s. But I don’t want to have any dealings with that
yellow-haired stepmother of hers. I beg your pardon, Levallion! I
forgot you were a friend of hers.”

Lord Levallion looked up, a curious expression on his pale, handsome
face.

“You need not beg my pardon,” he said. “But I assure you Lady Annesley
is--a very clever person!”

“She’s a detestable one!” retorted the duchess smartly. “And I don’t
think those children have much of a life with her. I declare, you
might have knocked me down with a feather when I saw the girl here in
a decent gown the other day! Usually her clothes are disgraceful; last
winter that woman used to let her go about blue with cold.” Her grace
of Avonmore, being a duchess, did not trouble to talk like one, except
to people she disliked. And she had a soft spot for Levallion, in spite
of his record.

His lordship hid a grin in his teacup. So he had been correct in his
little idea that it was for him Sylvia had prepared her lamb!

“Miss Annesley looked hopelessly unhappy in her fine clothes,” he said
smoothly, “but extraordinarily handsome, in spite of her tears.” He
pulled himself up sharply as if the last word had slipped out unawares.

“Tears!” The duchess stared at him. “What do you mean? I remember now.
She never said good-by to me. I don’t like to think of Tom Annesley’s
girl crying at my party. How do you know?”

“Saw her,” laconically. “Gave her some good advice and drove her home.
She never spoke to me the whole way.”

A light dawned on the duchess.

“So that,” she observed slowly, “was where you went to! You’re not a
good friend for any girl, Levallion, and I won’t have it with Tom’s
daughter. Mind that! I shall drive over and see that child this
afternoon. I’ve been a neglectful old woman not to have looked after
her before.”

She pushed away her empty plate and got up. Levallion strolled meekly
to the window, where he lit a cigarette. The duchess was a good woman,
and Sylvia Annesley was--otherwise! But it was the latter who had
discovered he was ready to marry and settle down at last. The duchess
only remembered the women he had compromised; it never struck her that
he might actually think of marrying a little country girl of eighteen.
If it had, she would probably have put a spoke in his wheel; to have
known Levallion for thirty years was not to envy his future countess.

Yet to marry Ravenel Annesley was the only thought the man had. The day
before he had cleverly evaded Sylvia and paid an impromptu visit to
Annesley Chase by the back gate; a piece of diplomacy for which he was
rewarded by coming straight on Ravenel in the garden.

She was alone; her little chin had lifted angrily when she saw him,
but the next moment she was ashamed. After all, he had been kind to
her twice. She had nothing against him except that he was a friend of
Sylvia’s.

Levallion was too wise to stay long, though there were no tears--and no
hat-pins!--to-day. Her face was as cold as his lordship’s own, and her
indifference more real. He might go or stay, as he liked--and he knew
it.

But he carried away with him the memory of her strangely quiet face,
uncannily, clearly pale as she walked up and down the garden paths.

“There goes Lady Levallion!” he thought, as certainly as if she stood
by him at the altar. “And the sooner she is away from that devil Sylvia
the better. Sylvia was always a genius at making people miserable, and
the girl looks as though she beat her!”

In spite of his acuteness, he never thought--or, perhaps, would not
have cared if he had--that another man had been the cause of that white
face and somber eyes; nor that he himself had never seen the real
Ravenel Annesley, all life and laughter, but only the ghost of a girl
whose youth was dead in her. It annoyed him to fall in with Sylvia’s
schemes, but, after all, that was a trifle; and he knew how to cut her
claws a little. Therefore, with security and determination, Levallion
laid siege to the duchess; and he smiled calmly as she bade good-by to
him.

“Au revoir till next week,” he said, as they shook hands.

“Humph!” her grace coughed dryly. “I’ll send for you when I want you,
my dear Levallion.”

Levallion chuckled when he got, rather stiffly, into the carriage. He
was warned off. That meant Tom Annesley’s daughter was to be asked to
Avonmore House. His lordship was more pleased than by a dozen cordial
invitations.

The duchess, the instant his back was turned, proceeded to Annesley
Chase in state, though she would far rather have gone on her bicycle.
Lady Annesley was, providentially, out. Miss Annesley--Adams did not
know.

“Then find out, my good girl,” remarked the duchess calmly sweeping by
her into the house. She was not to be turned from Tom Annesley’s door
by the servant of his twopenny second wife. “And fetch Sir Thomas,”
majestically.

But Tommy had seen her coming and arrived hastily on the scene. He
looked worried, and the duchess saw it.

“Where’s your sister, Tommy?” she said kindly.

The boy looked at her. She was the oldest friend they had, but even so,
his sister’s secret was her own.

“She’s in the garden; she’s not very well,” he returned loyally. If
Ravenel were fretting for Gordon there was no good in saying so. “Shall
I call her for you?”

“Suppose we go to her!” slipping a stout arm through his. “Not well?
What’s the matter with her?”

Tommy was appalled for one instant.

“Dyspepsia,” he said stoutly, with a flash of genius.

“Oh!” commented the duchess dryly. “Very like a whale in a
butter-boat,” she added to herself, as she glanced at Ravenel, who rose
from her knees in the garden as she heard the rustle of the duchess’
silk-lined skirts on the gravel.

“I beg your pardon for not coming in,” the girl faltered. “I thought
you were Lady Annesley.” She looked doubtfully at her earthy hands and
the visitor’s smart, white gloves.

The duchess, in spite of her parting words to Levallion, had not come
with any definite purpose; but the sight of the girl’s white face and
hard-set lips--more than all the glance of shuddering aversion she had
given her, thinking she was her stepmother--brought a sudden rush of
motherly tears to her kind, worldly-wise eyes.

“Never mind your hands!” she cried, sitting down on a wicker chair
that creaked under her; “nor Lady Annesley either. I didn’t come to
see her--I suppose there’s no one about to hear such treason!” with a
hasty glance behind her. “I came to see you. I didn’t think you looked
well the other day at my house”--really, the girl’s fresh beauty had
astounded her--“and I came to ask you and Tommy to take pity on a
lonely old woman and come to London with me for a month,” with a nod
at the two which set the green and pink feathers on her smart bonnet
wagging. “What do you say?”

“Oh, my eye--rather!” Sir Thomas forgot his manners in his joy. But the
duchess was looking at Ravenel. She had not been prepared to see such a
change in the pale, sick face.

To get away from Lady Annesley and the place that had grown hateful to
her for a whole month--she and Tommy! A slow red burned into her cheeks
at the thought, but a second after her face fell again. She could not
go; she had no clothes fit to wear. Tommy was different; a boy did not
matter. But she herself had not so much as a decent pair of gloves to
wear up in the train.

“We--that is, I can’t!” she blurted out miserably.

“Why not? Because you’ve nothing to wear?” shrewdly.

“No!” with no truth and a red face, for her old friend must not think
she was begging. “I just can’t.”

“Do you want to come?” slowly.

No answer. The girl’s lip was trembling at the kindness of the motherly
voice.

The duchess looked at her.

“You do! Then that’s all right,” cheerfully. “As for gowns, I mean
to give you those. I haven’t got any one to spend my money on except
some horrid chits of nieces who don’t need it. That will be half the
pleasure of having you. And I’ll settle it with your stepmother.”

But Ravenel was crying--sobbing from her sick heart against the
duchess’ smart shoulder.

“My dear, I know,” said that soft-hearted lady incoherently, muttering
to herself things about “that woman, who did not know how to treat
Tom’s child.” And she had, like Levallion before her, never an inkling
of Adrian Gordon’s part in the play.




CHAPTER VII.

HER LADYSHIP SHUFFLES THE CARDS.


Lady Annesley sat in speechless fury over the note that arrived from
the duchess the very next morning.

About her was spread her whole wardrobe, which she had been looking
over with the eye of a born milliner, quite certain that Levallion’s
hints about London had meant he would give her the money to take
Ravenel there. And this--with a vicious glance at the duchess’
letter--was their real meaning!

“For, of course, it’s all Levallion!” She drummed angrily on her knee
with slim, white fingers. “I have half a mind to checkmate him. He
might, considering everything, have sent me to town. But for me he
never would have seen his pink-and-white doll.”

She threw the duchess’ letter on a table, where it hit a pile of
other letters--blue enveloped, ominous--and sent them rustling to the
floor. They were merely the quarter’s bills from the butcher and the
wine-merchant for those luxuries Sylvia Annesley could never deny
herself, but she picked them up with a vicious hand.

“It’s well for you, Levallion, that I haven’t a penny to pay these, or
you might whistle for my lovely stepdaughter!” she said aloud. “But I
can’t stand five more years like this before Tom comes of age. Five
more years of dulness, of skimping, without a soul to speak to, and
then the prospect of turning out of this and living on nothing a week
in lodgings--no! it’s not to be done!”

She went to the glass and looked at herself feverishly, pushing back
her curled golden hair from her temples, dragging up the blinds till
the unkind daylight made her look every hour of her age.

“I’m getting old--old and hideous!” she stamped with passion. “I who
love youth and good looks and life. Why did I ever bury myself here
with the old fool who’s dead? Oh, I want to go out into the world
again--to live! To dine, dress, and gamble, to make fools of men--that
is life. And that girl’s marriage to Levallion is the only way I shall
ever see it again. He shall marry her if I have to swallow my pride ten
times over. He’d have to give me an allowance that would not disgrace
Lady Levallion’s mother! Ravenel shall go to the duchess; Levallion
will take care no other man gets a chance at her”--in spite of her rage
with him, she was secure in her old knowledge of his cleverness--“and I
will stay here and try to help things on!” with a pale smile.

She went to the door and locked it, then to her dressing-case and
dragged out a photograph. For a minute she stood and stared at it,
biting her lips.

“I can’t do anything with it,” she thought angrily. “And I daren’t
trust any one--but----” With swift inspiration a thought had come to
her.

“Hester Murray!” she cried half-aloud. “Hester can tell her a bit
of--truth! The silly old duchess will never imagine that Hester and
I are old acquaintances--Hester, who runs in and out of Avonmore to
help me; if she doesn’t I’ll make an unpleasant squall in the Murray
mansion. This match-making,” with a little laugh, “is most amusing.”

Her ill humor gone utterly, she sat down at her writing-table and
constructed a letter to make her old friend shake in her shoes, in
spite of its affection. She sealed up her letter and the photograph,
for Hester might not have one, and then turned her attention to
something else.

“I have a great mind to get rid of Adams,” she thought. “She is getting
beyond herself. But I’ll wait a little; she might talk. And, after
all, ‘better a devil you know than a devil you don’t know’!” forcibly.
“Though I doubt if Hester will think so,” with a curious look, as if
something had come back from the past and pleased her.

“Well,” she said half-aloud, “I suppose the duchess will deck out my
dear stepdaughter in purple and fine linen, but unless I want to look
a beast, I suppose I ought to provide her with at least one gown. I,
who haven’t two coins to rub together nowadays. She wouldn’t wear my
clothes if I gave them to her, and I’ve no desire to part with them.
I don’t care to interview her, either. She does hate me so!” for her
ladyship’s wits at least were young still, whatever her eyes might be.

“I must do the best I can,” she said thoughtfully; and there alone in
the little rose-colored room did a curious thing, for Lady Annesley,
not for a woman who loved her dead husband’s child. She took a ruby
ring from her finger and slipped it in a note quickly written and
addressed to her stepdaughter. It was a simple little effort enough,
saying merely that she had received from the duchess an invitation for
Tom and Ravenel to spend a month with her in London and would accept
for them with pleasure if they cared to go.

“As for gowns,” it ran, “I will do the best I can for you, but as that
may be small just now, I send you this ring, which you can wear or turn
into money, as you choose. It is one your father gave me. I would send
for you to talk over your frocks, but my neuralgia is terrific to-day.”

She rang for Adams to deliver the note and waited for her to come back
with a curious anxiety. It looked well to be generous, but she hated
giving away her rubies. It seemed half a year before the maid returned
with--yes--with a note!

Lady Annesley tore it open, and her strained lips grew triumphant. She
had been generous at no cost whatever.

 “Thank you very much”--Ravenel had written with furious haste, having
 no mind for any more of her ladyship’s gifts--“but I don’t want
 to keep your ring. I send it back in this. You had better wear it
 yourself.

                                                        “RAVENEL.”

That was absolutely all. Lady Annesley slipped her recovered ring on
her finger.

“You can go, Adams,” she said carelessly. But when she was alone she
laughed a laugh that showed her gums.

“I’ll have my house in town,” she gasped. “You’re a clever man,
Levallion, but you’ll never know who is helping me to get you married.
I’ll take care that you go on thinking me a fool. But to make Hester
Murray help to get you--it’s too good!” She wiped her eyes where she
sat helpless with laughter.

“Hester!” she murmured, “of all people.”




CHAPTER VIII.

“A BIT OF THE TRUTH.”


The Duchess of Avonmore was worried.

She had carried her point and walked off Tom Annesley’s children to her
big town house in Park Lane. She had given Ravenel such dresses as her
own nieces would have sold their souls for, had done her best to make
each day more pleasant than the last, and the only result was that one
fine morning she sat alone with Ravenel, absolutely at a loss.

Sir Thomas was perfectly happy, new clothes and a horse to ride having
made his countenance to shine as the sun. But Ravenel! the poor duchess
sighed.

The girl was pathetically grateful for the benefits showered on
her, and showed a clinging affection for the duchess that came near
to bringing the tears to that good woman’s eyes; but there was no
happiness in her face. She went everywhere; she was gay as if by an
effort that sapped her strength, for each day she grew paler, her
lovely lips more hard set. There was neither elation nor triumph in her
eyes when women envied her or men admired her.

“Most girls would be off their heads with pleasure,” reflected the
duchess. “That woman must have broken her spirit somehow. I wish I
could find out what ails her.”

Tommy could have enlightened her, but he had been sworn to keep his
mouth shut. And in the dark the poor duchess did the very worst thing
possible.

“Ravenel,” she said cheerfully, “here’s an invitation for you. Mrs.
Murray wants you to lunch with her to-day. She is a great friend of
mine--poor little woman! She will cheer you up.”

“I don’t need it,” with a grateful glance. She would rather have stayed
with Tommy, but the duchess did not like her plans gainsaid.

Ravenel, getting out of the carriage at the door of Mrs. Murray’s small
house in Eaton Place, stood on the doorstep just long enough for her
pale-pink gown to catch the eye of a man lounging at a window in the
opposite house.

“Humph!” said Lord Levallion curiously, “what’s the meaning of this?
Nothing, I suppose, but that Grace Avonmore’s an idiot!”

He watched the girl in and rang for his servant.

“I’ll lunch up here, Lacy,” he said curtly, “and I’m not at home to
visitors.”

At that moment Ravenel stood in a small room so full of flowers and
pale silk cushions that she wondered why the duchess had said Mrs.
Murray was poor. Even Ravenel Annesley saw the money that had been
lavished in that luxurious drawing-room.

Mrs. Murray rose to greet her. She had every reason to oblige Lady
Annesley by being civil to her stepdaughter. Sylvia was a poor
friend and a good enemy, and Mrs. Murray’s footing in smart society
was precarious enough. Little did the duchess imagine how much her
countenance did for “Bob Murray’s poor wife.” Without it people might
have said for “poor Bob Murray’s wife.”

“My dear Miss Annesley,” she said--and was nearly overwhelmed at the
dazzling beauty of the girl--“this is too good of you. I have been
longing to see you, but I have been so unlucky.”

“It is very kind of you to have me. The duchess is busy to-day,” and no
one would have known the voice and manner for Ravenel’s.

Something in the air of the room seemed choking her, something cried
loudly in her ear that the very pains of death lay waiting for her at
the hands of this small, dainty woman with the clear blue eyes and pink
cheeks.

“She is so energetic.” Mrs. Murray laughed wonderingly. “I don’t know
how she does it. I hope you won’t be bored lunching alone with me. The
duchess said we might go to Hurlingham afterward!”--where Mrs. Murray
in the Avonmore carriage would sail serenely over her detractors.

“Whatever you like.” Ravenel looked at the slight figure of her hostess
in an innocent fawn-colored gown, and wondered why she did not like
her. Lord Levallion could have told her, but so far he had not shown
himself on the Avonmore House horizon. She sat down at luncheon almost
sullenly, and by degrees, in spite of herself, thawed. Few people had
Hester Murray’s manner when she chose, and on her success with this
listless, beautiful girl her future depended. Sylvia was viciously
unscrupulous, and the trifle she asked should be done well.

Besides, it was amusing! Mrs. Murray hated girls, and this one looked
at the rich appointments of the dining-room far too cleverly when her
hostess murmured something about her small means.

“I don’t call this poor,” Ravenel said calmly. “You should see us at
home.”

“Oh, I try not to look poor!” sweetly. “I really manage my poor Bob’s
income very well. I am quite proud of my housekeeping.”

She had excellent reason, if drunken Bob Murray’s uncertain income paid
the bills. Every one--but the duchess--knew it did not, but no one was
clever enough to know just what did. If Sylvia were not pleased all
London would know--and more besides. Mrs. Murray rose gracefully from
the luncheon-table.

“It is a crime for you to be poor,” she said with pretty flattery, “for
a middle-aged person like me it doesn’t so much matter; though I don’t
know,” sighing. “Physical comfort makes up for a good many sorrows.”

“I don’t think so.” Ravenel, with every wish gratified and a raging
pain at her heart, could not keep back the cry.

“You will some day,” musingly. “But, my dear girl, don’t let us
moralize! I will go and put on my hat. Perhaps you can amuse yourself
till I come back.”

There was a glass over the mantelpiece, and under it a long row of
framed photographs. Mechanically, as soon as she was alone, Ravenel
looked to see if her big black hat were straight. Even misery does not
allow a girl to go about with a crooked hat.

But after the first glance at the crowded mantelshelf, where gold and
silver and ivory frames jostled each other, she took no more thought to
her apparel.

In front of her, staring her in the face, was a likeness of Adrian
Gordon. She had no photograph of him and this strange woman had. The
girl’s throat thickened--filled.

He had played with her, thrown her over, made her a laughing-stock to
herself; yet his pictured face sickened her with longing. She could
have followed him through the world, just to see him sometimes, never
even asking to speak to him. In a passion of despair she seized the
photograph and kissed it as she had never kissed Adrian Gordon in life.

“Adrian,” she whispered, “there must have been something I didn’t
know to make you leave me like that! You didn’t really--Adrian!” The
incoherent, senseless words left her shaking. She had no time to put
down the photograph as Mrs. Murray came in, but stood with blazing
cheeks and the living light of passion in her eyes, that had been so
indifferent.

“Do you know him?” she said, caring for nothing but to hear whatever
she could of him, even from a stranger.

Mrs. Murray laughed.

“Adrian--Captain Gordon--do you mean? He is very good-looking, isn’t
he? Of course, I know him; do you?”

Ravenel turned and, very carefully, replaced the picture. Her back was
toward her hostess, but her face was plain in the mirror. Her mouth
felt so stiff she could scarcely speak.

“I know him--a little; he has gone to India, I think.”

“Yes; poor man, I fancy he had to! Mrs. Gordon,” airily, “is not a
cheap luxury.”

“Mrs. Gordon!” the room swam. “Do you mean he was married?”

“It was a boyish madness, if he was; but Mrs. Gordon exists, I’m
afraid. Don’t, for Heaven’s sake, say I told you; it would ruin him
with Lord Levallion. She is very unhappy, and has been a frightful
drain on Captain Gordon. But I must say it hasn’t prevented his
enjoying himself. Poor Adrian is one of the most hopeless flirts I
know. You won’t,” pleadingly, “say anything to Levallion?”

Ravenel looked at her. It was queer how cold she felt, and how
passionless--now she knew why Adrian had not come.

“The ‘gay Gordons’ are a proverb, aren’t they?” she said, and found she
could smile quite easily. “Captain Gordon is only an acquaintance of
mine; you may be sure I shall not mention him to Lord Levallion, whom
I barely know.” For a moment her manner staggered even Hester Murray,
till she saw the girl’s face had grown haggard.

“One can’t tell all one knows,” she said lightly. “Shall we go out now?”

She was elated as she followed her guest to the carriage, for she had
obliged Sylvia and not told one lie. Adrian had certainly given Mrs.
Gordon money he could ill spare. And she knew Ravenel would never
mention the subject to Levallion. It had been a good day’s work. But if
Hester Murray had only known just what she had done at Sylvia’s bidding
she would have cut off her right hand sooner than have meddled. If she
had even known why Lord Levallion was looking at her from the opposite
window, as she got into the carriage, would have given all she owned to
undo her work.

“It’s time that child was looked after,” he reflected as the open
carriage drove off. He had a dislike to seeing anything ill-treated
that was odd in so hard a man; and Sylvia--“I think it’s time I took a
hand in the game,” he said aloud. “And I do not consider Mrs. Murray a
proper friend for the future Lady Levallion.”

And it might have been better for all concerned if Hester Murray could
have heard him.




CHAPTER IX.

REVENGE--AND A BALLROOM.


The Duchess of Avonmore was giving a ball, and she prided herself on
giving the best balls in London.

The big house was a fairy-land of flowers and lights, the staircase was
impassable. Ravenel, standing by her hostess in a white satin gown with
a string of the Avonmore pearls round her neck, was beautiful enough
to take away a man’s breath. The duchess, swelling with pride in blue
velvet and diamonds, was enraptured at her looks, for there had been no
want of animation in Ravenel ever since that visit to Hester Murray.
She was feverishly gay and full of laughter. Not even Sir Thomas knew
her spirits came from pride alone.

No wonder Adrian Gordon had jilted her, and no wonder he had wished to
keep that mad plan of marriage a secret! He had had excellent reason.
It all held together too plausibly for doubt. No one--no one should
ever know what a fool Ravenel Annesley had been, to believe in the
sweet lies, the passionate promises of a lover like Adrian Gordon. She
was glad she had lost his ring; she thanked the fate that had made him
repent at the last moment and leave her.

No one seeing her to-night would have dreamed she had a care in the
world; yet behind her smile her teeth set suddenly. Two men of Adrian’s
regiment, his best friends, were coming up the stairs. They should not
have to tell him if they wrote that the girl with whom he had amused
himself in the country was either sad or sorry for his sake.

She looked about her sharply for a weapon, for some man whose outspoken
devotion should let these men see how little she cared. And there--at
her side--was Levallion.

He bowed to her with his old half-mocking politeness. He was very
handsome for all his years, and his evening clothes seemed to take from
his age. His keen eyes were full of admiration. Ravenel held out her
hand, nearly touching those two men, who knew her by sight from seeing
her with Adrian Gordon.

“You!” she cried. “At last! Do you know you have never come near me?”

“I was warned off,” calmly. “I am not supposed to be a good playmate
for little girls.”

“Now, Levallion, do move on!” cried the duchess over her shoulder. “You
can’t talk here,” for he was calmly blocking the way.

“I told you so,” he commented, perfectly unmoved; he took Ravenel’s
program, where it dangled from her fan, and wrote his name on it four
times in succession.

Two hours later the whole room was agog.

Levallion, who never spoke to a girl and had not danced for years, was
doing both.

And he danced admirably. Even the duchess, who was furious, allowed
that. But she was so angry with him that she even snubbed her dear
friend, Mrs. Murray, who--looking her innocent best in white--was most
uneasy at the sight of Sylvia’s stepdaughter on such excellent terms
with the only man who ought not to hear of “Mrs. Gordon.”

“Dear Grace,” she said pathetically, “do tell that poor child that she
will have no reputation left if she makes herself conspicuous with the
most notorious man in London.”

The duchess gave her a stare.

“Tom Annesley’s child and my adopted daughter,” she remarked calmly, if
untruthfully, for she had no idea whatever of adopting Ravenel, “has
reputation enough to do anything she pleases.” And she turned a stout
shoulder on her friend, to the joy of the onlookers.

But, nevertheless, she went post-haste in search of Levallion and his
partner, who had mysteriously vanished. And in her own house looked in
vain.

Lord Levallion was no novice. He had found the only dark place in the
conservatory, and there he and his companion remained long after their
four waltzes had crashed out and died languorously.

He was wise from experience. He had stayed away from the house till the
girl wondered why he never came. Even now they had been seated for
minutes behind a flowering orange-tree before he spoke. Then he stopped
fanning her and looked at her.

“When are you going home?” he said.

“Home!” Her face was suddenly wild. She had forgotten! She must face
Annesley Chase, her stepmother--perhaps gossip that had leaked out; for
a curate who is asked to marry a couple who never come might be excused
if he spoke about it.

“Yes, home! Back to Sylvia?” drawled Levallion.

“Oh, I can’t! I can’t!” she said in a sick whisper. “I had forgotten.”

“But you go in a fortnight,” coolly.

The girl laid a trembling hand on his coat-sleeve.

“Lord Levallion, you know the world! You know--Lady Annesley! Can’t
I--isn’t there anything I could do to earn my living, and Tommy’s?”

“No!” and for once he spoke bluntly. “There is nothing you could do.
You are too handsome; women would not have you in their houses!”

She thought of the long, long summer days at the Chase, with thoughts
of Adrian wherever she turned, and was frightened--at herself. Here
she could live it down, there--a sob rose in her throat. But she said
nothing. She sat like a stone, her hand lying as it had fallen from
Levallion’s coat-sleeve.

Somehow, she had thought this man might help her, friend of Sylvia’s
though he was.

Levallion glanced at her pale face. There was certainly more than dread
of Sylvia there, but it was no concern of his. And without it the girl
would never have been here.

“You don’t want to go home, and you can’t work,” he said brutally.
“There is one other thing you can do--marry me!”

“Marry you!” she gasped. She sat staring straight in front of her, her
hands clenched in the folds of her satin skirt. “No, no, no!” she cried
fiercely. “I can’t marry any one. You don’t know me; you can’t want
me--you----”

“Are a friend of Sylvia’s!” he finished for her quietly. “Listen! I do
want to marry you, and I want to know nothing”--emphatically--“about
you that I do not know already. Do you understand?”

A terror shook her. Could he know what a fool she had been, what a
laughing-stock she had made of herself for a married man? She could not
speak.

“As for being a friend of Lady Annesley’s, I may tell you that the only
reason I do not wish to marry you is that it will please her. But that
will not matter. She will go out of your life as she came into it. You
need never see her when you marry me.”

“But I don’t love you,” she said, with hard eyes.

Levallion smiled.

“I haven’t asked you for love,” he returned indifferently. “I don’t
know that I expect it. I am forty-seven years old, and I have no home
but grand empty houses, no relations but Adrian Gordon”--if she winced
he did not see--“and I want you--and Tommy!”

“Tommy says you are an old beast,” said Ravenel, with despairing
frankness.

“So I am!” watching her. “But even I have my good points, though I
would not reform even if you married me; it would bore me. I think,
though, I might leave Adrian a decent legacy to make up for my
astounding daring in getting married.”

He spoke more to himself than to her, but the sense of his words made
her face grow suddenly dangerous. Adrian--who had said he must go to
India because he was too poor to marry her--was this man’s heir! If she
married him would be so no longer. And every pulse in her body beat
for revenge on Adrian Gordon, who had deceived her and made her name a
laughing-stock in her old home; for there is never anything that is not
known in a village.

A curious, slow gleam came into her eyes.

“If I marry you,” she said dully, “can Tommy go into the army?”

“If he can pass his exams. Certainly!”

For a long moment they looked at each other in the dim rose light, the
man covertly triumphant, the girl strangely vacant-eyed.

Levallion was not imaginative, but the curious quietude of her
crouching attitude in her chair made him think suddenly of a panther
he had seen trapped in India. The beast had been dull-eyed, quiescent,
like the girl, till a man came within her reach. Then--Levallion moved
uneasily--he had never willingly thought of how that man looked when
they got him away. Yet the very wildness in her face pleased him. Even
at forty-seven, Lord Levallion preferred excitement to calm in his
love-affairs.

“Well,” he said gently, “is it Sylvia, or I?”

For a moment she did not answer, then her voice came harsh and changed.

“I will marry you, if you like,” she said slowly, for, now that her
revenge was in her hand, it sickened her; “but I’m a bad bargain.”

“You please me,” calmly. He was too wise to kiss her; he did not even
touch the hands that lay so still on her lap. He rose silently, and
without any will of her own Ravenel Annesley followed him. She never
felt him take her hand and lay it on his arm; never saw where he was
leading her, till she stood in the door of the ballroom, the center of
all eyes, face to face with the righteously angry duchess.

“You had better stay with me, Ravenel,” she said coldly, without a
glance at Levallion. But it was he who answered her, not the girl who
stood at his side dazed and silent.

“You are too late, dear lady.” Levallion smiled into her cross face. “I
have stolen her--for good!”

“What!” The duchess could not get out another word to save her life.
The people about stopped talking and listened.

“She has promised to marry me,” said Levallion, laughing.

If there had been a convenient chair her grace would have dropped into
it. Levallion! of all men! And yet, why not? He was richer than any man
she knew, he was probably no worse than a great many of them, and he
had not always shown his evil side to the duchess, who had a sneaking
affection for him under her virtuous disapproval.

“My dear Levallion,” she cried, “I wish you joy! But--well, you have
surprised me!”

Levallion smiled. His marriage would surprise a good many
people--disagreeably--but that affected him not at all.

“Take me away,” said a husky voice in his ear. “Oh, take me away!”

The lights, the staring people, the publicity of it all, were like
separate daggers in the heart of the girl, who only a month ago had put
on her wedding-gown for a bridegroom who never came.

The duchess patted her shoulder kindly. No wonder she looked pale and
shy!

“Give her some champagne, Levallion,” she said. “I see I am not the
only person taken by surprise to-night.”

Levallion nodded. But even he did not know how hard it was for his
promised wife to lift her head and walk by his side out of the room.
And no one in the crush of wondering people on the stairs guessed that
the pale girl on Levallion’s arm was taking the first step on the
bitter path that leads to the very gates of a shameful death.




CHAPTER X.

A TIRING DAY.


A week after every fashionable newspaper had a flaring announcement
of the approaching marriage of Miss Ravenel Annesley and the Earl
of Levallion, which was to take place at once--that “at once” of
upholsterers and milliners, which means in a month’s time.

Lady Annesley, with joyful hands, tied up a copy of _The World_ and
forwarded it to Adrian Gordon. But if she had known it, her pains
were wasted. Trouble had broken out on the Indian northwest frontier
and Gordon had moved heaven and earth to get there. The neatly tied
newspaper never reached him any more than a note from Levallion
himself. Sir Thomas was the other person who remembered Adrian Gordon,
but he said nothing about him. As for the bride, the only thing she
had in her mind was that the wedding was to be in London, and she need
never go back to Annesley Chase again; also that she was paying off
that debt of treachery with interest.

“I suppose you know your own mind,” Sir Thomas remarked to his sister
the night before the wedding. “So I haven’t said anything. It isn’t me
that’s going to be married.”

“You’re going into the army, and you’re going to have the Chase
redeemed for you,” she returned wistfully.

“If you’re doing it for that,” he sat up and glared at her, “you can
let it alone! I don’t want that kind of rot.”

“I’m doing it because I want to,” her voice sharper than his. “Lord
Levallion’s kind; and I’m sick of Sylvia!”

“So am I,” returned Sir Thomas dryly. “But I wouldn’t sell my soul to
spite her, all the same.”

“I’m not selling anything,” wearily, for was she not putting behind her
the burden of her humiliation?

“Tommy, you’ll stick to me, won’t you? You won’t speak little like this
again?”

“Of course, I’ll stick to you.” He got up and kissed her awkwardly. “So
will Mr. Jacobs!” and he tried to laugh, conscious of angry tears in
his eyes. For it seemed to him that this was no way to get married, to
an old man you hardly knew.

“Good old Tommy!” said Ravenel unsteadily. She little knew that he and
his dog would be her last chance of salvation in dark days to come; but
something in Tommy’s honest face had gone near to shaking her purpose,
even on the night before her wedding. What she was doing looked
suddenly mean and paltry to her, as she knew it would to Tommy, if he
guessed it. She looked at the clock, that marked eleven. Twelve hours
more, and not even shame or repentance could undo the wreck she had
made of Adrian Gordon’s fortunes. And all that night she sat by her bed
and deliberately let those last hours go by, till, at dawn, she said to
herself, with cold lips, that, after all, Adrian Gordon’s future was no
business of hers.

Lady Annesley--come up to town on Levallion’s money, and almost off her
head with the excellent allowance that was to be hers for the future,
with escape from Annesley Chase forever--could not believe her eyes
when she actually saw her stepdaughter go up the aisle of St. George’s
on Sir Thomas’ arm. “It was that white gown!” She bowed her head
devoutly as the service began. “It was an inspiration. And the little
fool should go on her knees to thank me. That Gordon man could never
have given her a wedding like this!”

He could not, indeed.

Ravenel had never lifted her eyes as she passed up the aisle, whiter
than death under her lace veil. Adrian Gordon would have taken her to
an empty country church, where the scent of the May would have swept
through the open windows; where her soul, as she knelt beside him,
would have mounted the very steps of heaven--and, now----

For the first time she lifted her head, remembering, with agony, that
day in May when she had seen, as in a vision, what her wedding would be
with any man but Adrian Gordon.

It was on her; she was in the very center of it. The cold air of the
church seemed to strike on her face like a breath from the grave, as
in that dreadful prescient moment when the veil seemed lifted from the
future. She stood, helpless, just as she had known she would, when
Adrian forsook her.

The crowd of smart people, in gorgeous gowns and frock coats,
whispering indifferently; the bishop, whose words were chaining her to
Levallion forever; the organ pealing through the church; the bride with
a heart of stone!

No one ever knew how near that quiet bride came to screaming aloud
in a nightmare of terror; nor how she had all but turned and run,
frantically, from the very altar.

But something struck her dumb and powerless where she stood.

Only Levallion’s level voice, as he spoke out before all the world,
in words that stopped the very blood in her: “I, Adrian, take thee,
Ravenel----”

The bride heard no other word of the service. She clutched Levallion’s
hand like a vise that she might not fall; a gray mist swam before her
eyes. She muttered after the bishop something that meant nothing,
but was all of a piece with this awful travesty of marriage that was
binding her to an Adrian Gordon she had never loved.

Saddening, the crash of the wedding-march came on her dazed ears; the
gray mist lifted, cleared. She was walking by Levallion’s side to the
vestry, to sign, for the last time, the name she had grown to hate.

Ravenel Annesley was dead now, and decently buried under a pile of
wedding-presents and a bridal wreath. It was the Countess of Levallion
who lifted her veil with a hand that was perfectly steady, despite the
burden of its new ring; the Countess of Levallion who bent forward that
the duchess might kiss her on both cheeks.

If she was a little drawn about the mouth, no one saw it but the
bridegroom; and he in a curious, cynical way, was sorry for her.

Curiously, too, he had meant every word he had said at the altar.
To his life’s end, Adrian Gordon, Lord Levallion, means to love and
cherish his wife.

He was proud of her very listlessness as he led her down the aisle;
prouder still of her absolute immobility when something happened that
tried even his nerve.

In the porch, blocking the very way of the bridal procession--and
to this day Lady Levallion could not tell you the names of her six
bridesmaids!--was a woman.

Exquisitely slim and small, she stood waiting, a little boy clinging to
her hand. Her dress was black, a lace veil, with a heavy border, hid
her mouth, but not her eyes. As she moved, silently, gracefully, to
give room to the happy couple, Lord Levallion met those eyes full on
his.

“Hester!” almost he said it aloud. “And in black. Can the little fool
be going to make a scene?” And for an infinitesimal moment he held
his breath. Ravenel, as she passed Mrs. Murray, drew away her skirts.
She had obstinately refused to let her be asked to the wedding, and
wondered that she should care to stand on the church steps with the
curious crowd. But that was all. She never noticed the look the
duchess’ friend gave the bridegroom. For just one instant her eyes had
held his; the next she and her boy had disappeared in the crowd. Lord
Levallion was absolutely sick with relief, as he followed his wife into
the carriage; and yet he was not sure that it was relief, for it felt
uncommonly like apprehension.

“Hester,” he thought, “to dare to come here with the boy! It’s enough
to make all sorts of scandal.” (That only a secrecy like the grave had
been able to keep down!) “What can she mean?” He wondered, sharply, if
Ravenel had noticed.

“I’m afraid you’re tired. The crowd at the door was so thick,” he
said, stupidly for Lord Levallion. “I did not notice,” and, to his
huge relief, the words rang true. She had not taken in what to other
women would have been plain as print. With a curious respect, Levallion
kissed his wife’s hand.

“It has been a tiring day,” he said, almost absently, and put Hester
Murray’s melodramatic appearance and her angry eyes determinedly out of
his mind. Before he brought his wife home to Levallion Castle, three
months later, he had absolutely forgotten both.




CHAPTER XI.

NEWS OF ADRIAN.


“Talk of monkeys,” Levallion said to himself on the morning after their
return, “they’re not a quarter as imitative as women!” and he looked
at his wife across the table with a tenderness no other woman could
have got from him. Who would think it had been a raw schoolgirl he had
married three months ago when they saw his wife.

For, if she looked very little happier than when he had carried her off
from Sylvia, she had gained a manner, an assured self-possession that
made him proud of her. And by this time Lord Levallion was used to that
curious, pathetic look she had about the eyes.

“You are a lazy wretch!” she said, looking up. “You’ve not opened one
letter or one paper out of all that heap.”

“You’re very truthful,” he said lazily. “How many women do you suppose
would call me an old wretch to my face?”

The greatest charm he had found in her was that, let him be as
cynically outspoken as he liked, she never cared; so that her answer
surprised him.

“I wasn’t truthful; it was a silly joke. I think, if you want to know,
that you’re a thousand times too good for me.” Lord Levallion walked
around the table, his handsome, worn face curiously soft.

“To tell a man he is too good for you is a fatal mistake,” he remarked
gravely. “It makes him presume on you--like this!” kissing her slim
hand: “I shall make a note that, to keep you contented and superior, I
must beat you once a week. By the way, Ravenel, why do you never wear
any of your rings? If you’re going about without your wedding-ring, you
really ought to paste your marriage lines on your back.”

“I haven’t found a certificate of respectability necessary in your
society!” hastily. “And--I hate all rings!” with a vicious glance at
her slim, bare hands. “You’re changing the subject, Levallion. I was
saying I was an odious wretch to marry you. I had no right to do it,
just to get away from Sylvia!” It was the first time she had ever
uttered the self-reproach that grew on her each day, with each fresh
proof that Levallion’s love was real. That other thought of revenge on
Adrian Gordon that had been so quick in her once, was dead enough now,
if repentance could kill it. Not for Adrian’s sake, but for the petty
meanness of it. She hated herself for having made Levallion a tool for
her own ends, a convenient escape from Sylvia and a support for Tommy.

“You might engage a father confessor, if it would ease your mind.” His
lordship returned to his place and lowered his eyes to his plate. For
it seemed to him that his indifferent wife was beginning to care, which
meant heaven opening before his incredulous middle-aged eyes. “I assure
you, I’m quite satisfied with the result of your motives, however low
they were, my dear child. You don’t propose I should read all these, do
you?” with a nod at his pile of letters.

“Every one. It’s your own fault there are so many. You should have let
your letters be forwarded while you were away. Now you must turn them
over, and begin at the oldest.”

For, kind as he was, his very goodness fretted her, just as Levallion
Castle, that she had stolen from Adrian Gordon, felt like a prison.
She could never bear the long days here unless Levallion interested
himself in something that was not dependent on her. She pushed away her
plate, and was strolling to the open window, as if she longed for air,
when something in his attitude caught her attention--with an utterly
senseless dread.

He had opened the first letter on the pile, and was staring at it, his
face quite vacant.

“You haven’t bad news!” she cried involuntarily. She who never had been
known to ask him anything of his private affairs. She glanced at the
blue paper that crackled in his hand.

“Yes--poor devil!” he spoke just half his thoughts; the other half was
that, after all, it had done no one any wrong for him to marry, and
might be the saving of the name. “This is from the War Office--my
cousin, Adrian Gordon--I think you knew him?--is----”

Lady Levallion stretched out her hand and deliberately picked a late
rose that hung in the window. It pricked her finger, but not sharply
enough to steady her as a hat-pin once had done. Her voice shook as she
answered:

“Is he dead?” She knew she was muttering, but, for once, Levallion
scarcely heard her.

That Adrian had been in all the fighting on the northwest frontier in
India idle talk had long ago told her; and she had said to herself
that she did not care; had never read a newspaper, lest she might find
herself hunting for his name in despatches.

“Dead? Yes, poor soul, by this time!” said Levallion absently. “This
says he is missing. He went out of the fort with a small party that was
surprised by the Afrides and nearly destroyed. He carried one man in
and went back for another, and that’s the last they ever saw of either.
It’s the best men who go like that,” grimly. “They would have given him
the Victoria Cross, they say, but for that trifle of his never coming
back.”

“I”--would she never find her voice? To her horror, the next instant
she knew she was turning on Levallion furiously, insistently.

“Why do you say he’s dead?” she cried. “That letter doesn’t say so.”

“Because it means it,” gently; “far more! The women in the hill tribes
come out and butcher wounded or strayed men. Usually there’s not enough
left of them even to prove who they were----”

“Oh!” said Ravenel; she covered her eyes. “Don’t tell me,” wildly. “I
hate blood. I----” In sheer panic terror of what mad thing she might
cry out, she ran straight to Levallion. “Never tell me awful things,”
she panted. “I wake up in the night and think about them. And he--oh,
Levallion, he was young! It’s wicked, wicked, that people should die
young!”

“I forgot you had known him!” said Levallion, reproaching himself for
a fool that must needs draw out raw head and bloody bones before her.
“This letter’s three months old,” he said. “I will wire to see if they
know nothing more. Or--if you wouldn’t mind, I would go to town myself
this morning and find out about this at the War Office.”

She nodded silently, and, to Levallion’s surprise, all the shocked,
strained look was gone from her face.

“He was your heir,” she said slowly. “Of course, you had better go and
inquire about him.”

“Yes. Will you come, or stay here?”

“Oh, stay here!” said Lady Levallion, with a shudder breaking through
that queer calmness born of conviction that Adrian Gordon was dead.
When Levallion was gone, she noted dully that he had only read that
one letter of all that waited for him, and wondered if he would be
so concerned about Adrian if he knew all about him. And then, with a
curious feeling of returning to consciousness, she realized with a rush
that she was glad--glad!--that Adrian was dead. She need no longer
reproach herself that she had stolen his inheritance, and never shrink
with shame at the remembrance of how she had sold herself, body and
soul, to be even with him.

“He’s dead!” she said to herself, with an inexpressible peace. “Dead
and happy, and some day I shall be like him. Not for a long time, for
I’m young and tough, but every day will bring it a little closer. But
if only he and I were lying in the same grave now, I would not care how
long God put off the Judgment Day.” And there was no grief in her face
as she thought it; only the deadly longing that saps a woman’s soul
more than tears.

That strange, uncanny peace was still on her as she sat that afternoon
on the lawn under the yellowing trees. She had forgiven Adrian
everything she had against him, as she had no fear that he would not
forgive her sin when she should stand beside him in her very flesh on
the day of doom; for there would be no space wide enough to keep her
from him when the earth gave up its motley crowd of men and women, of
whom none would creep more gladly to the side of the love they had
forgiven than she.

She looked up, clear-eyed, from the book she was not reading--and
saw Adrian Gordon standing in front of her. Adrian, whose bones were
whitening in the Afghan hills!




CHAPTER XII.

THE ICY BARRIER.


Ravenel Levallion, who had once been Ravenel Annesley, got up with
weak and shaky legs and stared at the brown shadow of a man who stood
between her and the sun. For man it was, and no spirit. When ghosts
arise from the dead they are not ushered to their dearest by an
obsequious butler, while two footmen with the tea things bring up the
rear. Dreadful, inappropriate laughter that meant more than any tears
shook the Countess of Levallion as she stood up in her white serge and
Mechlin lace.

“Captain Gordon!” the butler repeated a little reproachfully, for this
was not the way to receive his lordship’s cousin.

“I--I see him!” was all she could find to say; all the greeting she had
for the man to whose side she had meant to creep on the resurrection
day.

“Ravenel!” he whispered, and if her face were white, his was gray; all
the wild, incredulous joy that had shone there at the first sight of
her dead as ashes. “For God’s sake, how do you come here?”

But he knew. With a swift and dreadful certainty he remembered the
butler had said Lady Levallion was at home--though he had not known
there was one before--heard in the pause that came as she tried to
answer him the smooth voice of a servant saying, “Tea is served, my
lady.” Desperately the girl caught at her breath that would not come;
and her first word was for the footman, and not for him.

“Yes,” she said, “you can go,” and then, with a coward’s courage,
turned to Adrian Gordon.

“I live here. I’m his wife.” For her life she could not look at him
with the triumph a woman should have in her revenge on a man who has
deceived her. “But you--you died! We heard it this morning.”

We! Captain Gordon--and that man must have been a fool who first
christened the Gordon’s “gay”!--grew as black and sour and stern as
Levallion at his worst.

“You,” he said, “cannot have read the papers of late, since you only
knew this morning that I was missing. I never--except to you--was in
the very least dead, though, God knows, I wish I had been!”

“How did you get here?” She was still standing, holding herself up with
tense hands on her wicker chair.

“Sit down,” said the man, because she was a woman. But she never moved.

“Tell me,” she said thickly.

“It can’t interest you.” He felt suddenly listless, utterly
indifferent; looked not at her, but the grass. “I turned up one morning
at the fort. They invalided me home, and I got here yesterday. This
morning,” and he might have been saying a lesson for all the feeling
in his voice, “I reported myself at the War Office and found Levallion
had been there, thinking me dead, so I came down after him. I would not
have come if I had known----” He did not trouble to finish.

“He’s not here. You must have caught an earlier train,” incoherent from
anger that he should own he had been afraid to meet her. “But he’s
coming.”

“Naturally,” with ugly quiet.

He never looked up, and he could not feel her eyes on his face,
half-wild with the joy of seeing him and the horror of knowing--face
to face with him--what he was. Oh! if she could have gone back to the
May that was gone forever, how she would have cried out at the dreadful
change in his face. The hollow cheeks, the sunken eyes, the----

“Why is your arm in a sling?” she cried, with scorn of herself that she
could not be glad of his pain.

“Shot,” with an inward curse that might have made the man who did it
turn in his grave, since it was that shattered arm that had brought him
here.

“Sit down,” said Lady Levallion, and she said it so tonelessly that in
astonishment he obeyed her. “You are not fit to stand.”

“Why should you care?”

“I don’t,” she returned calmly, and for an instant did not think it was
a lie.

The callousness of his manner had hardened her heart; her forgiveness
that had been so real vanished. She felt old, old and weary, where she
sat in her Worth dress. If she had dared she would have cried out that
to be Nell Annesley again in her Sunday frock, thinking the man she
loved was true, she would give the soul out of her body. She gripped
herself hard, and spoke to him as to any one of those friends of
Levallion’s who were here to-day and gone to-morrow----since she could
not call him “contemptible” to his face.

“May I give you some tea?” Her voice stung like a whip. Almost he had
had it on his tongue to say, “Why did you do it--who taught you your
woman’s game?”

But as he glanced at her across Levallion’s old silver and Crown Derby
he had his answer. A secret marriage and a twopenny emerald ring were
well changed for all this.

“I must be going,” he said. But as he rose a twinge caught him, and he
sat back stiffly.

“You were foolish to come,” she said, with a coldness that hid a mad,
shameful longing to ease his bodily pain, for any other he could not
have, since he had done everything by his own free will.

“You had better have wine than tea,” striking a little silver gong!

Her bread and salt were choking; but before the footman who brought
the wine there was nothing to do but swallow it. Not six months ago
she would have looked at him as he raised the glass to his lips, cried
“My love to you,” as he drank it. To-day--without a glance at him--she
filled her own teacup with a steady hand.

The silence when the servant was gone was like something tangible; a
barrier that could be felt. Gordon had absolutely nothing to say, and
she was no better. While he gulped down the unwelcome wine, without
which he must have fainted, she was back again in that country lane,
counting her thousand steps; back in the drawing-room of Annesley
Chase, where “Levallion had been kind.” Her heart was like a stone in
her as she watched Gordon covertly. How drawn and hard his face was,
and he was only nine and twenty. He did not look so very far from
death even now, and the thought hurt her, for all her shame that she
could care.

“Did you get the second man?” she blurted out in the sudden knowledge
that she must say something, anything.

“No!” with a grim surprise that she should ask. “I may say that he got
me. It was he who took me back to camp.”

If she could have realized the pitiful return of those two scarecrow
skeletons who had been prisoners with the Afghans, known how they came
home in the darkness, crawling, worn out, despairing, when the blessed
challenge of their own sentry came on their ears, for sheer pity she
must have broken down; have asked him without shame, as one asks the
dead, why he had left her to break her heart; have said things that
might have been the beginning of an end bad enough, but better than
the one her girl’s feet must tread. But the scanty sentences drew no
picture for her. Instead she saw only that there was a line of gold
wire round his third finger that was half the size it had been, and
wondered if it were his wife’s ring.

“They will give you the V. C. for the first man,” she said hastily, and
wondered how many men would get the V. C. if it were given for truth
and not for valor.

“I don’t know. It was nothing. Every fellow would have done it. Who
told you, about the V. C., I mean?”

“Levallion” was on her lips, when she saw the gold wire of his ring
catch the sunlight. The shame of a woman who has loved a man who jilts
her caught her at her heart.

“My husband,” she said quietly.

And this time it was Adrian Gordon who quivered where he sat.

“I must go!” he said, cursing himself for a fool that he should be here
talking to the girl who had seemed to him the very flower of the earth,
and was only a woman who loved rank and money. “I must get back to
town.”

Back to his lonely rooms, where the tint of her cheek and the curve of
her eyelash, the bow of her young mouth, would rise before him line by
line and make him revile the fate that had let him find her out.

Back to loneliness, to pain that racked him, to the fever that would
make him drain his water-jug before the morning, but each and all of
them better than seeing, as he did now, how she would not meet his
eyes. But the last person who should know he cared was Levallion’s wife.

“You will tell Levallion”--after all, he was not as callous, or,
perhaps, as brave, as she; he could not say “your husband”--“that I had
no idea I should not find him here. Perhaps he will look me up in town.”

“Is that all?” she said stupidly, seeing only how very ill he looked as
he stood before her.

“All!” surprised. “Yes, I wanted to thank him; it was through him I got
to the front.”

“I thought.” She was faltering, and she hated herself.

“Do you know,” she said with sudden, vicious cruelty, “that you have
never congratulated me on my marriage?” and then could have died of
shame, for he was answering her as a man does who is born, not made, a
gentleman.

“Levallion is one of the best,” quietly. “Certainly I congratulate you.”

Yet the words were hardly out of his mouth before she was angry again
that he, who had deceived her, should say them.

“Here is Levallion,” she cried. “You had better congratulate him!”

He bit his lips that he had not gone before; turned sharply, and struck
his shattered arm against her chair. The grinding torture turned the
daylight black--he was going--going----

With a quick cry Lady Levallion leaped forward and caught him as he
fell in a dead faint.

Long afterward the scene came up before her husband’s eyes, just as
those two had looked against the sunset. And at the memory of her
quick, inarticulate cry he buried his worn, handsome face in his hands.
But now Lord Levallion only lifted the weight that was too heavy for
his wife’s strong young arms and laid his cousin on the grass.

“The returned hero is not out of the graveyard yet!” he remarked. “Let
him lie, Ravenel, and ring for the servants.”




CHAPTER XIII.

IN LEVALLION’S HOUSE.


“What shall I do?” said Lady Levallion to herself. “What shall I do?”

She stood on the grass and watched them carry Adrian into her house,
making not the slightest attempt to follow. The sun dropped below the
ledge of the rose-garden, and as its rim disappeared a chill crept to
her bones. In a minute the servants would be back to take in the tea
things, the wicker chair that fate had stuck in Adrian’s way. They must
not find her here standing motionless. And she had nowhere to go that
she might be alone. There was no room in all Levallion Castle where she
could lock her door without question and fight down the bewildered pain
that was making her sick. Her maid would be in her bedroom, Levallion
would come, as usual, to her dressing-room when his toilet was finished
and hers all but done. Truly Ravenel Annesley had been freer than
Ravenel Levallion, for she had dared to lock her door and cry.

She had not been as brave, though! Lady Levallion set her teeth and
walked slowly into the house and up-stairs to her goggle-eyed maid. The
romantic return of his lordship’s cousin had set every servant in the
house agog, but her ladyship looked so listless that her maid dared not
speak till she was spoken to, which was some time, for Lady Levallion
went straight to her dressing-table and stood staring at herself in the
glass.

Her face looked strange, vacant. It was not so she had dreamed she
should look when Adrian rose from the dead; not so she would dare look
when Levallion came in. She turned with despairing courage to make a
toilet that should cover her changed looks, and saw a pale-lilac gown
laid out on her bed.

“Oh, not that!” she said--and naturally, to her eternal credit, for
she could have screamed so like was the thing to that long-gone Sunday
frock--“I’m too tired and pale. Get me something else--pink! There’s a
pink thing somewhere.”

As she bathed her face in scented water she hid her drawn mouth in the
sponge, for one blessed instant let it work as it would. Oh, lucky,
lucky Nel Annesley, who had only cold water to wash in, and could
let her eyes swell if she liked! But when Lady Levallion laid down
her damask towel and stood to be dressed in a loose dinner-gown of
pale-rose crêpe de chine she was far more lowly than even that far-away
girl had been. If her eyes were somber it was only natural when she had
seen a man drop like death at her feet. At Levallion’s knock her cheeks
blazed suddenly.

“Well?” she said, as he entered and her maid discreetly vanished. She
wondered if Adrian were going to die, or if--and she almost laughed out
hysterically--he were coming down to dine with her and Levallion. What
a cheerful dinner-party he and she and Levallion!

“I put him to bed. He’s only just come to.” He sank down into a chair
as if he were tired and lit a cigarette.

“Poor devil. I feel sorry for him! He wasn’t fit to travel in the first
place, and it must have been a shock to him--coming here!”

“Why?” She was almost inarticulate. Did he know? Had Adrian told? Oh,
of course, not. No man is likely to tell another that he has behaved
like a villain to that other’s wife. “How do you mean?” and she sat
down opposite Levallion in the full light of a rose-colored lamp. She
was not afraid, no one should ever say she had been afraid. If it would
serve any purpose she would tell Levallion everything now! And with a
sudden tightening at her heart-strings knew she could not betray Adrian
Gordon in Levallion’s house.

“Well,” observed his lordship dryly, “it would have been a shock to
most men to come home thinking themselves sure heir to eighty thousand
pounds a year and find out--it seems he didn’t know I was married!”
hastily, and leaving his sentence unfinished at the scarlet on his
wife’s face.

“You very absurd person,” he said, with the impassive manner she knew
meant tenderness, “don’t look so appalled. He may come in for it yet.”

But it was not a girl’s shyness that had flamed out in her face, but
hot shame for Adrian, who had said he was too poor to make her an
offer openly. She moved restlessly. How long was he to stay under her
roof?--that should have been his.

“He looked very ill,” she said.

“Men do with a splintered bone in their arm, and fever,” Levallion
returned, rather dryly.

“He can’t be moved for some time, I fancy. You will have to do the Good
Samaritan, Ravenel, and cheer him back to life.”

“I hate sick people!” cried Ravenel hastily, and grew red again at her
lie. “Yes I do, Levallion. Don’t ever dare to get ill.”

“Well, there’ll be ‘dearth of women’s nursing and lack of women’s
tears’ then!” dryly. “I can’t say I ever saw any great restorative in
the latter, except, perhaps to the woman,” throwing his cigarette into
the grate. He had always known she was hard. Why did it come on him now
like a dash of cold water?

“God knows I’m hard enough myself!” he thought, as he made his way to
his own dressing-room. “But she did not seem to have any pity for the
poor devil.”

It was odd sorrow he felt himself for Adrian, who had been so
incoherently anxious to get back to town and not be a nuisance. Lord
Levallion was rather ashamed of his own weakness; it would have pleased
him to have had his wife fuss pityingly over his ousted heir and let
him take refuge in cynical comments.

“Though he mayn’t be so ousted after all.” He did a little cynical
remark on his own account. “I may be rejoiced with squalling brats.”
But something dark came into his face as if a past folly had suddenly
crept from its grave and faced him.

“It is better to strike into a new life and go to dinner,” said Lord
Levallion aloud, to the bewilderment of his servant.

He made an excellent dinner certainly, for he had a new French cook,
who had disdained to stay with royalty on account of being limited in
butlers. Lord Levallion was tired, as well as worried about his guest
up-stairs, and the Frenchman’s cooking appealed to him; which was more
than it did to his wife.

For at the fish the doctor was ushered into the dining-room. She had
not known Levallion thought Adrian bad enough to need a doctor. She
shook hands mechanically with the good-looking, clear-eyed man whom
Levallion introduced as Doctor Houghton, and mechanically motioned the
butler to set a chair for him.

“I’m afraid you will have a hospital on your hands, Lady Levallion.”
Doctor Houghton was looking at her with real pleasure in her wonderful
beauty that was anything but girlish to-night. “There is trouble in
that arm.”

“And likely to be,” interrupted Levallion, “and you are going to send
over a nurse, two nurses if you like, for he’ll stay here till he is
well. Eh, Ravenel?”

Lady Levallion crushed her hands together under the table.

“Oh, of course!” she said. And she felt as if fate must be standing
behind her laughing at Adrian Gordon’s unavailing efforts to get rid of
her.

“Have some of this, Houghton?” said Levallion, as she refused a dish.
“My wife is delightfully honest--and hard-hearted. She does not like
made dishes, or people when they’re ill.”

“One will lead to the other with you,” Ravenel returned calmly, and
laughed, for she had seen Houghton’s quick glance at her averted face,
and she felt as if he could read there all that Levallion could not of
her horror at this guest, who might be dying under her roof.

But Doctor Houghton was looking now at his plate, just as if he had not
seen her dilated pupils, her hard, set mouth.

“It’s very good, but it tastes almost too much of almonds!” he observed
frankly. “What is it?”

“Only chicken, done with almonds and chestnuts. I’ve a new cook, who
can manage almonds. I shall have something made of them every day.”

“Which will probably send you to your grave!” laughing. “But I
congratulate you on the artist. By the way, Lord Levallion, if you
could keep me to-night, I should like to stay with Captain Gordon.”

“We would be infinitely relieved if you would.” (How Sylvia would have
marveled at the kindly voice, the glance without mockery!)

Both made Ravenel feel an unutterable sneak.

Why had she never told Levallion all about Adrian?

It would have been better than this. To sleep, to live, to eat with him
in her house, and to be a stranger to him; hating him in one breath,
loving in the next, false either way to the bread she ate.

“What was that?” she said feverishly, longing for the time when she
could leave the room. “I heard the bell ring.”

The dining-room was close to the hall door, its own door open; and a
dull murmur of voices came from outside. Levallion half-rose--and sat
down again. The thing in his thoughts was idiotic, impossible.

“It’s late for a visitor, but you can do anything in the country!” he
remarked cheerfully. “What was that, Masters?” for the hall door had
shut and no one had come in.

“A lady, my lord. Come to inquire for Captain Gordon.”

“A lady!” he looked utterly taken aback--for Lord Levallion. “Who was
it?”

“I couldn’t say, my lord.” (Every servant in the house but Levallion’s
valet was new, perhaps with reason.) “She was walking.”

“Well, we live and learn!” said Levallion piously, as the servants for
the moment disappeared. “And I, who thought my young friend had nearly
killed himself to come and see me!” he had had time to go over the list
of his country neighbors, and knew Adrian had come to see none of them,
even as he spoke. She must have come down with him.

Doctor Houghton glanced quite purposely at his hostess and looked away
with haste, for the Lady Levallion sat white and speechless. It was not
enough for Adrian to come and confront her brazenly, but he must needs
bring a woman down with him--the woman probably of the gold-wire ring.

“She knows who it was!” Houghton reflected swiftly, and then felt sorry
for her.

“Most romantic!” Levallion broke the silence with a lazy laugh. “They
say ‘he travels the fastest who travels alone,’ but in my experience,
company adds to the pace. I hope the lady’s anxiety will not keep her
awake.”

And, clever as he undeniably was, it never occurred to Houghton that
where Lady Levallion was angry by guesswork, Lord Levallion was in a
black rage, born of certain knowledge.

“Though I can’t understand what she has to do with that young fool
upstairs!” he reflected grimly, as Houghton returned to the invalid.
“Nor why she came. But I may find out!”




CHAPTER XIV.

A DOVE-COLORED GOWN.


But if he had any idea of finding out from Adrian, the morning
effectually banished it. The splinters of bone in his arm had put him
in agony, and he lay as he would lie for days, stupid with morphia.

Lord Levallion looked with a queer pity on the haggard, pain-drawn
face, and went softly away. He must find out for himself why that woman
had come down in his cousin’s company.

“For, of course, she did!” he mused. “The only thing that brought her
to ask after him was that she got tired of waiting in the village, dear
creature! Adrian was always a quixotic ass about a woman.” And he set
forth on an apparently aimless ride through the village, which for once
he did not ask his wife to share.

But his idle and cheerful conversation, by the way, were curiously
astounding. His lordship whistled as he turned his horse’s head down an
unfrequented lane, where he might collect his thoughts.

No one had come down with Captain Gordon, whose arm, in its black
sling, had excited the pity of the whole village; there was not a woman
staying at the inn or at any of the lodging-houses. Lord Levallion was
annoyed that he could not put two and two together and fit the coming
of Adrian Gordon with that woman’s voice in his own hall.

“If she’s living in this neighborhood, she’ll not do it long!” he
reflected angrily. “But, as far as I know, there’s nowhere for her to
live. Unless”--he stopped his horse, gave a stifled exclamation, as the
lane rounded a sharp turn.

On his left hand, where a vacant field had run up to the outlying
edge of his own woods, stood a brand-new, gim-crack bungalow in a new
garden; and strolling about it leisurely was a woman in a dove-colored
gown.

Levallion’s worn, handsome face turned absolutely bloodless, but his
insolent stare never turned from that small, dainty figure in the
garish garden.

“Gad! This is a charming surprise,” he said softly. “Charming. And if
Adrian had nothing to do with it, how the devil did she know he was
here, when I thought he was dead? Ah!” he smiled--a smile Sylvia would
have known, but not Ravenel.

For the woman in the garden had turned, had pretended not to see him,
and incontinently vanished into the house. Lord Levallion got on his
horse, and cantered through the gate.

“I think not,” he observed to himself acidly. And if he were
middle-aged and worn, he was yet a sufficiently terrifying figure to
the eyes that surveyed him through the lower blind of the drawing-room
window as he sauntered up to the house. Without the slight formality of
knocking, he opened the door the dove-colored fugitive had not thought
of locking, and walked in.

“I am here,” he observed politely. “There is no occasion to stare out
of the window for me.”

Hester Murray gave a frightened start in spite of herself. She
turned with two bright, pink patches on her thin cheeks, and
tried--unsuccessfully--after his pretty manners.

“Oh! How do you do? I was not sure it was you.” Her outstretched hand
was not steady.

“You may reassure yourself as to that. It is I--and I am quite as
usual, thank you.” He put down his riding-crop and his hat with
neatness, and, very quietly, closed the door.

“Now,” he said--and if ever a devil looked from a man’s eyes it was
from Levallion’s--“may I ask what you are doing here?”

“Living here.” Levallion could have laughed aloud as he remembered how
many times she had assured him she was never afraid of any one. “But
you knew that or you would not have come to see me.” She sat down, her
one ring--that was a wedding-ring--shining oddly conspicuous on her
nervous hand.

“How long have you been here?” he leaned against the window with his
back to the apricot-colored blind.

“Two months,” unwillingly. “But I’m really hardly settled. I did not
want you and Lady Levallion to know of me till I was all arranged. But,
of course, now I shall be delighted to call on her.” She was not sure
whether she was taking the right way or not, but surely Levallion would
prefer this one.

But he did not answer for a moment.

“I dare say you would,” to her surprise he broke out into a sarcastic
chuckle. “But you are not at all likely to. Now tell me what you meant
by coming to my house last night and raising the devil about Adrian?”
The sudden change of voice turned her cold.

“I--I heard in the village,” she stammered. “I was anxious.”

Anxious indeed! Even Lord Levallion had no notion how she had run
breathless through the fields, hoping the rumor her servant had brought
from the village was true that Adrian Gordon had fallen down dead at
Lady Levallion’s feet.

“Why were you anxious?” with a slanting lift of his eyebrow. “And how
did you know he had come home?”

“I always told you it was foolish not to read newspapers,” she
retorted, “even if you are in love!”

Levallion shrugged his shoulders.

“For a man who concerned you not at all, I think you wasted
shoe-leather,” he said, and in his eyes was a kind of amusement that
confused her.

“I--he was good to me once!” with a momentary flash of inspiration. “Is
he--is he dying?” for she must know, since if he were not particularly
ill, she would have her work cut out to hide how she had paid him for
that honest kindness by doing Sylvia Annesley’s dirty work. For, of
course, that girl would tell him. And--there were other things. Oh! why
couldn’t the man die?

“It would do you no good if he did die, which is not in the least
likely,” remarked Levallion blandly, having seen her last thought on
her face. “It would not soften my heart toward you; though I grant you
it might have, once.”

The woman sprang up as if he had struck her.

“You are a devil, a cruel, cold devil!” she said between her small
teeth--and he had never noticed before how sharp and feline they were.
“You’ve no heart, no pity----”

“Neither had you,” interrupting her with so much more truth than
he knew that she was frightened and sobered. “But I have not come
to discuss either of our personal attributes, but to tell you,”
slowly, “that there are six trains a day by which you may leave this
neighborhood--and stay away;” his voice was perfectly level, but yet
Mrs. Murray drew away from him before she answered.

“I’ve nowhere to go,” she said sullenly. “I came here because it was
cheap.”

“I can assure you that you’ll find it remarkably dear,” dryly, “and
where’s the London house?”

“I couldn’t afford the rent any longer.”

“I consider you’ve plenty of money,” shortly.

“It costs more every day.” She did not say what, nor did he ask her.

“Where’s Murray?” Levallion, he best knew why, was holding himself hard.

For the first time she looked him in the face and told the truth.

“I don’t know and I don’t care!” she said viciously. “He said he was
sick of the business--and me--and he never meant to set eyes on me
again.”

“Poor devil,” said Lord Levallion slowly.

It was the last straw. Hester Murray quivered from head to foot with
ungovernable rage.

“You can’t send me away from here!” she cried. “You daren’t make a
scandal now--at this date. There’s no reason why I should not live
here. You can let me call on your wife--and--I’ll go on holding my
tongue.”

Levallion leaned forward and spoke almost in her ear.

“I dare do anything,” he said evenly. “Kindly remember that. And also
that my wife,” emphatically, “shall never know Mrs. Murray or call on
her if she lives here forever.”

“People will talk!” she gasped.

“If they do,” coolly, “I sha’n’t hear it; but you’ll feel it. I think
you had better go, if you’re wise.”

“Suppose I tell your wife--what will you do then?” it was her last
shot, and it had a curious effect.

Levallion laughed.

“Please yourself; stay here, tell anything!” he returned, still
laughing. “And I’ll tell, too. It would make an amusing story--in your
favorite newspaper.”

“Levallion!” it was all but a scream; she clutched him as he turned
away. “You can’t, you won’t, you’ve--oh, God! haven’t you any honor?”
for to ruin one’s own reputation is a very different thing to having it
done for you.

“I have exactly as much as you have,” he answered, moving quietly
from her appealing hand. “You can remember that. And if you like,”
carelessly, “you can stay here. Only be good enough not to come to my
house on any pretext whatever. I won’t have a woman like you under my
wife’s roof. You understand?” sharply.

She could only nod. His sudden acquiescence in her living so near him
had somewhat dumfounded her, together with his refusal to recognize her
in any way. Levallion, who had always wanted to keep things quiet! Yet
it was simple enough.

“After all,” he had thought swiftly, “she’s as well under my eye as
anywhere, while we rejoice in a penny-post!” Yet if he had seen the
face of the woman he left in that dim drawing-room, it is to be doubted
if Lord Levallion would not have preferred himself removing her and
her belongings on a barrow, rather than have had her within a hundred
miles. And yet she was only crying to herself pitifully, that she loved
him still.




CHAPTER XV.

A WOMAN’S RING.


It was a wet day. A cold, steady autumn rain that made Levallion Castle
chilly and shivery, and so lonely that its mistress had no desire
to look at the dark corners of the room where she sat at tea-time.
Levallion was out. She had hardly let him from her sight for three
days; she scarcely knew why, except that he was all she had in the
world to cling to. Lady Levallion pushed away her untasted tea and
went out of the big, lonely drawing-room up-stairs. Rain or no rain,
she would get her hat and go out. She could not sit alone for another
minute.

She was hurrying down-stairs as she had hurried up, passing a closed
door without so much as a glance, when something stopped her as short
as a hand on her shoulder.

“Oh!” she said aloud. “What was that?” She wheeled in the dim passage
and stared in sick horror at the door which must shut in something more
dreadful than she knew, for never in her life had she heard a cry like
that.

As she stared, the door opened. A nurse in a white uniform came out.

“Did you----” she began. “Oh, my lady, I beg your pardon! I thought it
was the doctor.”

The passage was nearly dark; she could not see how white her ladyship’s
face was, nor how startled her eyes.

“The doctor!” Ravenel said sharply. “Do you mean you sent for him? Is
Captain Gordon worse?”

“No, not exactly. But he’s very restless and delirious. I’m afraid he
may injure his arm.” She looked curiously at the slight girl in rough
tweed, who was so young to be mistress of Levallion Castle.

It was odd that in all these days the countess had never sent to ask
after the invalid. But fine ladies had very little heart, as a rule.

“There, do you hear that?” she said, rather desirous of harrowing the
feelings of this one. “I must go back. He’s getting another bad turn.”

Hear that! Every drop of Lady Levallion’s blood stood still. For in
that dreadful voice she did not know Adrian Gordon was calling on a
woman’s name.

“Nel, Nel!” he cried. “I want my Nel.”

Fascinated, drawn as if by ropes, Lady Levallion followed the nurse
through the half-closed door she had sworn to herself never to enter;
stood in the middle of the room, wide-eyed, dry-lipped.

Unshaven, grim, haggard, Adrian was tossing from side to side in his
bed. He turned his eyes to her unseeingly, and said again, in the very
face of the very woman he called on:

“Nel, I want my Nel. Can’t you stop this pain? I’m making a fool of
myself. For God’s sake, bring Nel!”

And then he cried out in the screaming groan that turns every woman,
but a nurse, sick with horror.

Ravenel made a wild step toward him, in another minute would have flung
away all she had by drawing the tossing, restless head to her breast,
by crying that she was here--his Nel, who loved him still. But between
her and him the nurse had slipped quietly, and was touching his burning
forehead with a professional hand.

“The poor soul wouldn’t know her if she were here!” she muttered. “Yes,
yes; she’s coming.” But if she had glanced over her shoulder she would
not have known Lady Levallion’s face.

“Can’t you get him some morphine?” Ravenel cried.

“I only had a certain amount. The doctor ought to be here soon. I sent
for him an hour ago.”

An hour ago! Lady Levallion clenched her teeth.

While she had been sitting in comfort, he had been in this pain. It was
true he had behaved vilely to her, but she could not bear any living
thing to suffer like this.

“Let me try!” she said, and the nurse looked up with surprise at the
pity in her voice. She could feel, then, little interest as she had
seemed to take in the patient.

At the touch of the shaky hand she laid on his forehead Adrian lay
quiet; but only for an instant.

“Where is she?” said that dreadful voice. “Nel!”

She dared not trust herself to speak. If only the nurse would go!

“I hear some one.” She got the lie out somehow. “Go and see if it’s
the doctor,” and as the woman hurried to the door, she stooped and
whispered in Gordon’s ear:

“I’m here. It’s Nel. Do you want me?”

“Nel,” he said, so naturally that she thought he answered her, and was
terrified of what he might say before the white-dressed woman, who was
all eyes and ears. But the next minute she saw it was accident. He did
not know her.

And yet something had quieted him; whether it was her voice, her touch,
she could not say. He lay still, only wincing now and then. The nurse
came to the bedside.

“You really seem to have soothed him,” she said incredulously. “Perhaps
you would stay a little.”

“I can’t--not long!” stammering. For, suppose Levallion came and found
her here, she who had vowed she hated illness. She put the cowardly
thought from her.

“He wouldn’t think anything,” she said to herself, “for he’s a thousand
times too good and too proud to imagine what a beast I am. For I am a
beast! If Adrian were well I should hate him. Oh, why does he call me!
Me, that he threw away like a squeezed orange.” But even as she thought
it she never stopped her involuntary mechanical smoothing of the
short-cropped hair she had never thought to touch again in life. And
the feel of it sent a thrill through her that made her start back. What
was she doing? Levallion’s wife had no right there. Any other woman on
earth might soothe Adrian’s pain, but not she!

“Please don’t stop, your ladyship,” said the nurse quickly. “I must
keep him still on account of his arm. There are some splinters of
bone in it that don’t come away as they should. When the doctor comes
we must get that ring cut off--it’s cutting into his swollen hand.”
She pointed to where a tiny bit of gold gleamed at the edge of the
bandages, and Lady Levallion started.

The other woman’s ring! That mysterious woman who had come to ask after
him. She had forgotten them both! She moved slowly away from the bed,
her face once more as hard as the nurse thought a great lady’s should
be. Let him suffer as he might, die if he liked; it was no business of
hers any more!

“I don’t think I had anything to do with quieting him,” she said
shortly. “I fancy the pain just happened to grow less.”

“Very likely,” said Sister Elizabeth dryly. “Delirious patients are
peculiar; probably that girl he seems to want so much is some one he
really hates the thought of.”

“Really!” said Lady Levallion uninterestedly. But there was fright in
her face as she stared at the nurse’s broad back. Had she spoken by
accident, or had Adrian let out more of a name than that one syllable?
A queer terror ran through her, though there was little enough the man
could tell. Sister Elizabeth could not have dared to refer to it if
he had; and yet Ravenel doubted. The nurse did not look like a stupid
woman.

“I will go out and send some one to hurry Doctor Houghton,” she said
coldly, moving toward the door.

“Nel!” the sudden cry made her stop short, for it seemed so certain
that he must know she was here and was leaving him. “Don’t let the band
play any more waltzes. I never danced with you, only with fools--hair
full of scent--you know the kind. Nel, Nel, Nel!”

Lady Levallion stopped her ears and ran.

White and shaking, she leaned against the wall of the passage, that
was light enough now, for the servants had lit the lamps. Her hands
still at her ears, her eyes shut, her mouth drawn into that awful bow
that means helpless pity, she stood, her face an open book that any
passer-by might read.

“Talk of the pains of hell!” she thought. “They don’t wait till you’re
dead. They say every one builds their own fire there, and Adrian’s
seems to be a pretty good blaze. Only why should I burn in it? I never
put one stick to it,” without knowing it, she was muttering, but
unintelligibly enough.

“Ravenel,” said a quiet voice in her ear, as some one took her hands
away, “my dear child, what is the matter?”

It was Levallion, in a streaming mackintosh, his handsome face really
old in his surprised concern. She would sooner it had been a mad dog.

“It’s him, it’s----” she caught her breath, steadied herself, “Captain
Gordon! I’ve been in there, the nurse called me. Oh, I never saw any
one in pain like that, or delirious! I couldn’t stay.”

Levallion stripped off his wet coat and dropped it. How could any nurse
be such a fool? He would settle with her presently. There were sights
no girl like Ravenel should see.

“You poor child!” he said softly. “No wonder you look queer. I’ll go in
and see him.”

She caught his arm.

“No, no!” she cried frantically. “Don’t go. He’s off his head. He keeps
calling for some woman, and it doesn’t seem fair--oh, don’t listen,
Levallion! Take me away.”

“Darling,” Levallion was not given to endearments, but the word fell on
deaf ears. He slipped his arm round her, furious that she should have
been made so unhappy. His eyes, that were always bad to meet, blazed as
he thought of that senseless fool of a nurse.

“Come away and rest. Here’s Doctor Houghton; it will be all right now.
And there’s some one else come I’ve been to meet at the station.”

Some one else! And Houghton’s step in the passage. Lady Levallion
steadied herself with the courage that had never failed her. She even
met Levallion’s eyes.

“I’m silly, but it upset me,” she said quite naturally. And above her
voice came Adrian’s loud one through the closed door, as he called her
name. “Who else has come?”

“Me,” said a voice, suspiciously and determinedly troubled. “Didn’t you
know?”

“Tommy!” she said stupidly, as the boy kissed her. A week ago she would
have been wild with joy, to-day--Tommy knew! It would be awful to have
any one who knew in the house.

“Exactly. And I want my tea. Do you habitually,” he made the slightest
possible pause, and went on, cheerfully, “reside in this passage?”

Ravenel shivered, for Tommy’s eyes were hard and stern on hers for all
his careless voice. He had made sense enough of that reiterated cry
that was Greek to Levallion.

“No, come on!” she answered hastily. “I was just speaking to the nurse.
You come, too, Levallion. Doctor Houghton doesn’t want you.” And she
held his hand tight behind the shelter of Tommy’s back as she smiled at
the doctor.

“Want him? No,” Houghton returned hurriedly. “I’ll see him by and by.”

But before his quick hand was on Adrian’s door Ravenel had dragged
Levallion away.

“I don’t want you to feel--left out--with me and Tommy!” she whispered,
and loathed herself. “It was so good of you to bring him.”

The man’s hard eyes grew kind. Tommy whistled as he followed them to
the drawing-room and fresh tea; but Levallion did not know Tommy well.
He never whistled unless he was angry. All through her tea-making
Ravenel knew that Tommy was storing up wrath against her that would
break out the second Levallion left them, which he did on a summons
from Doctor Houghton.

Ravenel prepared for battle, and then felt wretched. Never in all her
life had she really fought with Tommy.

“Look here,” said he, and, to her surprise, quite coolly; “I suppose
you can’t help having Gordon in the house, but if I were you I wouldn’t
be found outside his own door looking like a sick cat.”

“I couldn’t help it,” angrily. “I was passing and the nurse came out.
You needn’t put on silly airs about it; nobody hates him worse than I
do. And he hates me. He wasn’t even civil that day he came.”

“If I hated him, or anything else,” dryly, “I’d keep my face
straighter--before Levallion!”

“If you think of me like that you can hold your tongue over it,” her
voice very low and furious.

“I don’t pine to talk about it,” unpleasantly. “But other people than
me have ears, and I heard fully well what Gordon was calling out,” with
ungrammatical force.

“Don’t you ever dare to call me that!” she sprang up and caught his
arm. “Listen to me. I tell you the girl Adrian called is dead--dead! Do
you hear me?”

“‘R. I. P.,’ then!” said Tommy, with a curious catch in his voice.
“Mind you, Ravenel, I’d sooner that was true than that you----”

Lady Levallion forgot she was a countess.

“Shut up!” she said. “There’s somebody coming, and you’re making a fuss
about nothing. I haven’t any dark secrets, except that I was engaged to
a man who--threw me over,” quickly. “If you want to know, I hate him.
There!”

“Then you’d better do it with less fuss,” returned Sir Thomas in a
casual tone of brotherly conversation, as the door opened on Levallion
and Houghton.

“Do what?” the former asked idly, looking with a curious pride at the
two handsome, flushed young faces.

“Argue,” coolly. “Ravenel never will own she’s wrong.”

“A woman is never wrong, my good sir!” said Levallion piously.
“Ravenel, you’ll be glad to hear Gordon’s asleep.”

“Oh,” said Houghton, “that reminds me! I forgot to give you this, Lord
Levallion. I fancy it is valuable, and it might be lost. I had to cut
it off Captain Gordon’s hand. I beg your pardon, Lady Levallion; I
interrupted you!”

“I didn’t speak,” she said quietly, and she best knew where she got
her composure. For Houghton was holding out to Levallion her own
emerald-and-opal ring.

Bent, filed through, dulled by a fevered hand, she still could not
mistake it. It was her very ring and no other, but how--a voice that
sounded like a real voice was sudden, insistent, in her ears.

“You mustn’t, you daren’t think, here.”

Dazed, she looked to see if Tommy had spoken; but Tommy was gaping
silently at that long-lost ring. No one had opened their mouths. It was
her own mind that had warned her.

In the sudden, causeless silence that had fallen on the room Levallion
slipped the broken ring into his pocket.




CHAPTER XVI.

THE SIN OF SYLVIA ANNESLEY.


“My ring--it was my ring he wore all the time, with the stone turned
inside his hand!”

Alone in her dressing-room, Ravenel’s head whirled.

“But how did he get it, and why did he wear it after the way he treated
me? I can’t make the two things match.”

All dressed for dinner, she stood looking at herself in the glass as
being a ladylike and thoughtful occupation to be discovered in by
Tommy or Levallion; and the silver-strewn luxury of her toilet-table
suddenly reminded her of another table, in the one sumptuous room of a
poverty-stricken house.

“Sylvia!” she gasped. “It must have been Sylvia.”

A light flashed into her eyes that had not been there for many a day.
Adrian was in the house, must get better, and the very first day he was
fit she would have the whole story--his story--out of him. And then----

Lady Levallion, with a sudden numbness, a curdling of her young blood,
dropped heavily into a chair. Not even God’s own truth could matter to
her now. The work, whether her ladyship’s or Adrian’s, was done--and
done thoroughly. And Levallion--she straightened herself as at a sudden
wound--Levallion had been a friend of Sylvia’s! But the thought passed
as it had come, and left her ashamed. Levallion could have had nothing
to do with Adrian’s passing himself off for an unmarried man.

“Adrian lied to me and threw me overboard,” she said to herself, “and
Levallion picked me up out of the sea. That’s all I dare remember now
out of the whole jumble. But I’ll find out about the ring, anyhow. Even
Levallion,” clinging obstinately to that senseless trust in him that
had grown up in her, “would not mind my knowing the truth--if Adrian
can tell it.” And, with that queer numbness in her that she did not
know was despair, she went down-stairs to face the new world she had
made for herself, which the sight of a battered ring had shattered in
her very hands.

But to get at the root of the matter was not so easy. There was
Levallion, who had nearly annihilated Sister Elizabeth and forbidden
her on pain of instant dismissal ever to allow Lady Levallion to behold
horrors. And there was Tommy. Tommy, dogged, cheerful, and ubiquitous;
his sister’s aching impatience almost turned to hatred of Tommy, who
drove and rode and talked with her--on indifferent subjects--till he
nearly sent her frantic. And Adrian was mending every hour; any day
might take it into his head to get up and go away with a bare good-by.

Pale and big-eyed, Ravenel stood by the library window and stared out,
so that her back was turned to the policing gaze of Sir Thomas. It
was a fine day, but she never noticed. She twisted her ringless hands
hard together that she might not turn round on Tommy and tell him, for
Heaven’s sake, to let her be for one-half hour.

Levallion, coming in, spoke to her twice before she heard him.

“Yes!” she turned guiltily, for of all the things that hurt her the
most was the look on Levallion’s face, where happiness and content
seemed to have ironed out the sardonic lines. There was no guilty
conscience at work in Levallion--and once she had thought Gordon a
better man than he!

“Yes! I was looking at some one. Who’s that?” She had that very minute
caught sight of a figure in the garden.

“Gad!” Levallion’s hawk eyes looked over her shoulders. “The fellow’s
cool. That, madam, is your cook, and, if I am not mistaken, he is
picking your flowers and smoking a cigarette on your lawn. Delightfully
at home is Carrousel! But,” his quizzical gaze darkened suddenly. The
chef, arrayed in tweeds remarkably like Levallion’s own, and bearing a
large bunch of the best of the late autumn flowers, had let himself out
of the garden by a gate sacred to the use of master and mistress and
departed, leaving behind him, under their very noses, a half-smoked
cigarette and a copy of an old, pink newspaper.

The window was open, and to his lordship’s nostrils came the dying
aroma of his own tobacco, the while the pink and atrocious newspaper
fluttered softly in the breeze.

“That gentleman requires occupation.” In withdrawing his head Levallion
bumped it, which did not allay his irritation. “I don’t require my cook
as an ornament in my private garden, nor his garbage papers on my lawn,
and so I shall inform him. I wonder where the devil he’s going! I’m
certain he’s got on my clothes.”

Sir Thomas forgot he was Sherlock Holmes.

“Gorgeous, ain’t he?” he observed rapturously.

“He can be as gorgeous as he likes--in the kitchen,” Levallion drawled
acidly. “Which reminds me, Ravenel; Houghton says there is no need to
put off having people here any longer; Adrian won’t mind a noisy house;
he’ll be quite recovered in a day or two. So I suppose we’d better ask
some people for the pheasants--a house-party will be an excellent tonic
for Monsieur Carrousel, and cheer up Adrian.”

A house full of people! Ravenel’s heart contracted. Farewell to all
chance of speaking to Adrian then!

“Cowardy, cowardy custard!” remarked Sir Thomas, with more tact than
elegance. “Ravenel is afraid of being a hostess, ain’t you, my dear?”

“I am. I’m terrified,” snatching at anything that was true. “I don’t
want them much, Levallion!”

“I don’t want ’em at all,” returned his lordship dryly. “But, being
over head and ears in debt for invitations to every soul I know, I
don’t see how we can avoid asking them. And Tommy and I can shoot all
the pheasants ourselves.”

“Tommy has to go back to his crammer’s!” ungratefully.

“Fortunately, he hasn’t,” with a glance of real liking, which the boy
returned. “I forgot to tell you. Two of the men there have scarlet
fever; and the house is quarantined. Therefore, Sir Thomas and the
inestimable Mr. Jacobs--who had killed two rats and broken three
priceless vases in the business!--will have to stay with us. Sad, isn’t
it?”

“You bet!” said Tommy cheerfully. “I’ll help you through, Ravenel. I
like women; it’s funny most women don’t!” thoughtfully.

“Have I got to write the invitations?” her voice was curiously sullen,
unguarded; for surely it was the very irony of fate that should make
her summon a lot of people, under whose eyes she and Adrian would have
to meet day in and day out, with everything unexplained between them.

Levallion chuckled, but his eyes were very sweet.

“You are not a beast of burden,” he observed, in that slow, soft way of
his. “I’ll summon the heathen for next week, in your name. And I trust
their requirements will occupy our cook--at least, what’s left of him
after I see him,” looking with unabated annoyance at the scurrilous
sheet the breeze had fluttered to the very window.

Sir Thomas, seeing Levallion in possession, had retired on business of
his own; and Levallion laid his fine hand, that, if it were not young,
was still beautiful, on his wife’s bronze head.

“You’re not really afraid of your party, are you?” he said with a
tenderness that sat oddly on him. “For you know it is I who should be
that! If I were wise I’d shut you up alone with me, and save trouble.
You’re too good-looking, little mouse, for women not to hate you, and
men”--he shrugged his shoulders--“and you’ve only my battered old bones
between you and a somewhat overrated civilization.” There was something
wistful in his voice, despite its cynicism, and it hurt her.

“Don’t speak like that!” she cried sharply, passionately. “It wasn’t
that I meant. Only that I’m eighteen and an ignorant fool. How do I
know how to entertain people? Suppose I disgrace you!”

He laughed, still stroking her hair; and the laugh had the ring of
Adrian’s, and hurt her.

“I will frown at you when I see you eating with your knife. Dearest,
I wish you would do a little now in the hostessing way, if you don’t
mind! Go and see Adrian; he’s up, and it doesn’t seem kind not to
take any notice of him. Would you go? I know you hate illness, but
he really does not look very dreadful. And would you give him this?”
drawing something from his pocket. “I dare say he would rather you knew
of his love-tokens than I,” smiling.

Ravenel’s heart banged against her ribs. He was holding out to her that
ring that was her own.

“If--if you want me to,” she said. Almost she could have let
Adrian go with that ring unexplained rather than have had
Levallion--Levallion!--put her opportunity in her hand.

“He will think it odd if you never go near him, I fancy. But just as
you like!” and his hand with the ring in it moved toward his pocket.

“I’ll go,” she said quickly, involuntarily; for after all she was not
brave enough to let the knowledge she longed for go by forever. She
dared not look at Levallion’s face, lest she should forget herself and
pour out the whole reason of her reluctance to be sent--by him--to
Adrian. An appropriate and delightful confidence it would be, too, for
her husband’s ears. But if she did tell he would not hear her; he had
no opinion of confessions. Had he not said once that “he wanted to know
nothing about her that he did not know already--nothing!”

She held out her hand for the emerald ring.

       *       *       *       *       *

At the quick faint knock on the door a man looked up from a paper he
was pretending to read.

“Come in,” he said impatiently, wishing Sister Elizabeth and her messes
elsewhere.

But it was not Sister Elizabeth.

Gordon jumped up and sat down again, furious at finding how weak he
was, and how his heart jumped at the sight of her face.

For Ravenel stood in the doorway; and yet not Ravenel, but Lady
Levallion. His eyes went over her, losing not a point of the dainty,
artificial look she had in her fine clothes.

Her bronze hair she had been used to twist carelessly was dressed
exquisitely, in the rippling smooth yet fluffed outlines that were the
fashion; her gown, that had been cotton, was finest white serge now,
and the frou-frou of its silk lining reached him as she closed the door
behind her; her little feet--but he could not look at those little
feet. Truly, she had done well to leave him for Levallion; he could
never have given her shoes with silver buckles like those!

“This is extremely kind of you,” he said awkwardly. “Will you excuse my
not getting up?” and even as he forced out the words he was thankful he
had let Levallion’s man shave him clean of his scrubby, week-old beard,
and bring him decent clothes instead of a dressing-gown. But Lady
Levallion’s eyes were on his haggard, weary face and not on his toilet.

“Are you better?” she asked, standing yards away from him, and he
remembered how she had come closer indeed last May. “Is the nurse here?”

“No!” wonderingly. “At her tea. Won’t you--sit down?”

She shook her head, and he saw with a queer listlessness that she was
shaking from head to foot.

“I didn’t want to come,” she cried, as if his indifference had thrown
her back on herself. “Levallion sent me. I was to ask how you were,
and--give you this!” Flushing, trembling, she held out his ring.

Gordon held his tongue. No wonder she had not wanted to come. And then
his temper nearly betrayed him.

“He could not have found a messenger more charming,” he said, with icy
politeness.

Ravenel caught her breath.

“Oh, I know you hate me!” she cried. “I know how you changed your mind
at the last minute--though that was the only decent thing you ever
did--and never came for me; left me like an old shoe for any one to
pick up after you had made my name a by-word. But I mean you to tell me
one thing in spite of my--self-respect.” Her voice shook like her body.
“Where did you get my ring?”

He gazed at her in blind stupefaction.

“You sent it back to me,” he said bluntly, “in your anger. I can’t see
why you ask.”

“I!” said Lady Levallion. “I sent it back to you!” The ring fell from
her hand and rolled where it would on the floor. Her gray eyes seemed
suddenly to come alive, to blaze in her pale face.

“Where’s the letter?” she cried scornfully. “Show me the letter.”

“I can’t; it’s in town with my things. God knows why I was fool enough
to keep it, but I was. And more fool still, for I know it by heart. But
you can’t need to hear it.”

“Say it!” She stamped her foot.

 “Thank you very much for your present.” In spite of his puzzled anger,
 he obliged her, in a voice utterly flat and lifeless. “But I don’t
 want to keep your ring. I send it back in this. You had better wear it
 yourself.

                                                        “RAVENEL.”

“And, as you see, I did, being, as I said, a fool.”

“Lady Annesley! It was Lady Annesley’s ring,” she said, standing as
if her wits had gone from her, wild, shamelessly truthful. “Listen! I
never wrote to you; I didn’t know your address, since you never gave it
to me. And if I had written I couldn’t have sent you back your ring,
for I lost it the day before the duchess’ garden-party. Yes, two days,”
marking them off on her fingers, “before that afternoon I waited for
you and didn’t know you’d thrown me over to sink or swim!”

“You waited--you!” Sister Elizabeth would have screamed with wonder to
see the invalid get up like another man, cross the floor between him
and his hostess in three strides, and catch her by the shoulder with
his sound hand. “For God’s sake, Nel, speak out, since you’ve begun!”

The old name, the old voice with the passion in it broke down her
courage, made her forget for one short while that more than lost
rings lay between him and her. With a lump in her throat that made
her hoarse, she told him all the sorry little story in quick, husky
whispers, lest some one might overhear.

“So when you said in your note that you’d be at the duchess’ I went.
Lady Annesley gave me a gown. You were not there, and I came home. You
said you would come the next day and you never did. And Levallion
told me you had sailed--without a word to me. And I’d lost that ring,”
passionately.

“Levallion! How did he come across you?” with a ghastly wonder if
Levallion were quite clean of the business, and heedless that he had
never said why he was not at the duchess’. But Ravenel noted.

“He was at the party and was kind to me.” With a sudden aside she
remembered, and faced him stonily. “But there’s no earthly sense in all
this! Of course, when I heard you had a wife already I knew you had
excellent reason to leave me. It was the first honorable thing you ever
did.”

“A wife--me!” His hand on her shoulder relaxed suddenly. “Who told you
a lie like that? And how in the name of God did you dare to believe it?”

“Mrs. Murray--Hester Murray--told me. As for believing it, it seemed
all of a piece.”

“Hester Murray told you--Hester!” His face had been pale enough, but
it was blanched now. He remembered suddenly that he was in Levallion’s
house, talking to Levallion’s wife--that at any cost no one must come
in and find her like this.

“Sit down,” he said. “And I can’t stoop; would you mind picking up that
ring?” for it looked like a glove cast down for battle. “Now, tell me
about Mrs. Murray. What did she say?”

“That you found Mrs. Gordon very expensive and a drain on you, and that
it had been a boyish folly of yours,” she said from her chair at a
decent distance from his. “Who did she mean, if not your wife?”

Adrian Gordon was dumb. In Levallion’s house Levallion’s wife asked him
this!




CHAPTER XVII.

THE SEALED LETTER.


“She was not my wife,” Gordon said at last, for there was no reason he
should not clear himself, if he dared not answer her plain question.
“I never had a wife and never will have. The woman Hester Murray meant
was nothing to me, though it was true she was in trouble and I helped
her, till I found out she was a worthless liar. If Mrs. Murray dared,”
he hesitated, “to tell you that, some one must have made it very much
worth her while.”

“Adrian,” said Ravenel, her eyes straight on his, “you mean that?
Because we’re just as if we were dead, you and I. We’ve got to tell the
truth.”

“You know it’s true,” he answered heavily. “That woman lied to you.
Only I can’t see how it was her business,” with the vile conviction
on him that only at Levallion’s own bidding would Hester Murray have
helped him to take a wife, and with pressure even then. He roused
himself sharply.

“Never mind that, it doesn’t matter.” Since it was too dangerous to
touch on! “You say I didn’t go to the duchess’. Well, I wrote to you
that I couldn’t go; that it was my only day to marry you.” She could
hardly hear him, saw him as in a mist through scalding tears of relief
that was yet worse anguish. “I waited all day. I came back that night
and threw gravel at your window, tried every door in the house, and
couldn’t wake you or Tommy. Jacobs came out to bark, and found it was a
friend--but no one else. And at dawn I had to go. Surely you must have
heard, or Tommy must! I made all the noise I dared.”

“I never heard,” she answered, with a tearless sob, “and Tommy could
not have heard any one in the garden, for he slept on the other side
of the house.” She would not tell him how she had cried herself to
sleep on the floor that night, and never waked till dawn. She went
on sharply: “If I had heard Jacobs bark I should never have thought
of you, because your letter said the next day was--was when you were
coming for me.” Not the pains of hell could have made her say “our
wedding-day.” “I was only wretched because I’d lost your ring and had
such a dreadful disappointment at the party. I never dreamed you had
come for me while I was out.”

“But, of course, I came! I wrote I should.” He stared at her with a
puzzled frown. “And you said you got my letter?”

“Oh, I got it,” slowly. “But you must have made a mistake in it. It
said you would come for me on the 14th, and be at the duchess’ on
the 13th. Look!” with an uncontrollable impulse she did what she had
meant not to do, and threw on the table that lying letter she had kept
because she was not brave enough to burn it. “Read for yourself.”

Tear-stained, rubbed out with long poring over, it lay in his hand, but
he was looking at the envelope instead of the enclosure.

“You see it was sealed!” she cried. “No one could have opened it.”

“That is just it,” said Gordon quietly. “I never sealed a letter in my
life. I never owned a seal with ‘A’ on it. That was some one else’s
work, Nel, not mine.” He shook the letter out painfully with one hand
and let the light slant across it. “Look,” he said, “the dates have
been rubbed out and altered. Just five minutes’ work and a bit of
sealing-wax, but they’ve ruined you and me. See, I wrote, ‘I can’t go
to the duchess’!’ And one flick of a rubber made it, ‘I can go!’ But
who could have done it? Who could care?”

“Lady Annesley.” There were no tears in her eyes, just as there lurked
no doubt in her heart. “The letters all went to her first. I thought
it had escaped her notice, because of the London postmark, and the
seal--like a fool!--for in an Annesley house there must have been
plenty of seals with ‘A’ on them. And Tommy warned me that very morning
that he thought she had her eyes on you and me. I might have known
it--when her ladyship was kind!” bitterly. “She couldn’t have dared do
it. She had no reason.”

Lady Levallion laughed, and it was ugly laughter.

“She’s allowed a thousand a year now, and a house,” she said, in a
voice like her laugh. “She has been able to shake the dust of dulness
and Annesley Chase and mortgages off her feet. Oh! she had reason
enough. Tommy said she meant Levallion to marry me, but the funny part
of it is that in the end she had nothing to do with it.”

“What do you mean?” with a dull horror at the look on her face. “And
what did you mean just now about Lady Annesley’s ring, when I said you
sent mine back?”

“I meant just that,” she answered bitterly. “I thought I lost your
ring, but I never did, since it’s here in my hand. Who could have
sent it to you but Sylvia? And I know now how she got it. She cut
the ribbon off my neck when she tried on that wicked dress she gave
me. She pretended to arrange the train just to pick the ring off the
floor. I thought even then I must have dropped it in her room, but I
was afraid to ask. And then when I was going to stay with the duchess
she gave me a ring of hers--and it was the note I sent that ring back
to her in that you know by heart. She simply enclosed my ring in it
to you. Oh”--she was getting out each jerky sentence breathlessly--“I
see it all now! Just like A, B, C, one thing after another. Except,”
listlessly, “how she found out about it in the first place; but she
was always suspicious. It all began with my trying on that dreadful
dress--that I only took for you to see.”

“And Levallion saw you instead,” quietly.

“You’re wrong!” she cried. “It was all Sylvia. Levallion had nothing to
do with it. It was I! I, who, after you went, got wicked. Married him
with my eyes open, to hurt you.” She covered her face.

But all he said was almost to himself.

“Nel, my Nel all the time!”

“Not now,” fiercely, “nor ever! Adrian, can’t you see it? We’re done
for, just as though we were dead.”

“I’ll see Lady Annesley first,” grimly.

“You can’t!” she whispered. “Not now. She lied to me, but I--I married
Levallion of my own accord. And he was good to me. I can see now that
if I’d had the sense to tell him he might have--but what had I to
tell?” breaking off with a sick sob. “Only that you had thrown me
over. I couldn’t expect him to write and ask you to take me back again.
And I thought you were married and had lied to me.”

“You couldn’t do anything,” feeling sick as he saw himself as he had
been all this time in her eyes. “I wouldn’t wonder at anything you did.
Tell me, is Tommy also thinking me a scoundrel?”

A penciled letter seemed such a little thing to be able to drag a man’s
honor in the dust, and take away from him all that life held. There
were both dismay and anger in his eyes as he waited for her to answer.

“Tommy only knows I was engaged to you, that I lost my ring and
you left me without writing. You needn’t think I told any one the
rest,” simply. “Adrian, what are we going to do? Levallion--he’s been
good.” She faltered, stopped. Yet he knew her white lips were not for
Levallion.

“We can’t do anything. I must go away,” and he touched the lace at her
wrist as if the very hem of her garments were sacred to him; his eyes
swept with the old look from her bronze hair to her little shoes. But
from the sight of her wet eyes, her trembling lips, he turned away,
cursing himself that in blind madness he had believed even her own
handwriting against her; wincing at the remembrance that “Levallion had
been kind.” Levallion, whose kind acts, to his knowledge, had been two,
and one of them might very well bear another significance. He could not
forget that it was Levallion who had sent him to India.

“Go? You can’t go! You’re not fit!” She was frantic as she looked at
his changed and ravaged face. How worn he was--how like, with quick
horror--to Levallion! “Where can you go?”

“Town,” laconically. “Rooms, till I’m better.”

Like a flash she saw him sitting alone in those rooms, with a broken
ring, a lying letter, in pain, old in his youth.

“You can’t go. It would kill me!” she said quietly. But she drew away
from him so that her lace was out of his reach. If he touched the flesh
of her wrist she knew that not Tommy, nor honor, nor Levallion, could
keep her from following him to the end of the world.

“I must. I can’t stay here!”

“I could nurse you, take care of you!” wildly, her face bloodless over
her lace tie, her collar of Levallion’s pearls.

“Any one on God’s earth but you!” said Gordon, with a quick shudder.
He leaned back in his chair as if he were faint. He had known the
light of his life was gone out, but he had not known alien fingers had
extinguished it against Ravenel Annesley’s will.

The hard words, the exhaustion in his face, steadied her, as pain
always did.

“You’re worn out. I had no right to tell you,” she said miserably.
“I’ve only hurt you.”

“You’ve shown me heaven,” he answered, and bravely, for all his pain of
body and mind. “Just that, after being through hell and out again. Go
now, Nel. They’ll wonder--you’ve been so long! Give me the ring. I can
keep that, can’t I? It’s all I have, you know.”

“But I’ll see you again?”

“Not alone,” gravely. “It isn’t likely. So this is good-by.”

Good-by! After to-day, then, she would see his face no more. Would
never hear his voice, that could move her as no voice on earth would
ever do; would be alone till she died, the ungrateful, unloving girl
Levallion had been good to. And he would be alone, too, but out in the
world where he could forget her, as men forget and women never.

Ashy pale, she put that unlucky ring in his hand; silent,
broken-hearted, turned away from him; and had never loved him so much
as now, when he bade her go.

“Nel!” he said, and she turned at the door. But not to go back to
him, not to touch his hand nor to kiss him but once before she went,
for she read his face aright and knew he would have died a thousand
deaths first. Only to stand and look at him as he at her, the truth
for the first and last time spoken between them. After this it would
be Levallion’s wife who met him, never Nel Annesley who had loved him
neither wisely nor well, but madly and in the bitterness of her soul.

“Good-by, sweetheart,” he murmured. “Be good. Don’t forget me,” and
shut his eyes that he might not see her go.

And neither of them heard the quiet breathing of Sister Elizabeth,
where she stood goggle-eyed in Adrian’s bedroom.




CHAPTER XVIII.

A GROWING CLOUD OF WITNESSES.


“My dear child, how are you?” cried the duchess and kissed Ravenel on
both cheeks.

She was the last arrival of the house-party, and she sank into a low
chair by the fire and surveyed the scene, covertly and without her
long-handled glasses.

The big hall of Levallion Castle was lit by two fires and a
sufficiency--no more--of shaded lamps. There were plenty of cozy
corners and secluded chairs behind the great square pillars supporting
the low roof, where dull gold gleamed fitfully in the fire flicker.
Among the orderly disorder of chairs and tables and palms, people
were sitting in twos and threes--occasionally drinking tea, laughing,
warming themselves, and wondering what sort of a married man Levallion
made. His past record happily did not point to a dull sojourn under his
roof.

But the duchess, like Gallio, cared for none of these things.

Her red, comfortably handsome face was turned to the sumptuous figure
at the tea-table, all white velvet and Russian sable and floating, wavy
chiffon.

“I am Annesley’s little girl, turned into an accordion-plaited angel!”
thought her grace, blind to everything but surprise. For Ravenel under
her wing had been only a remarkably pretty girl, rather quick, almost
shy. And here stood a beautiful woman, utterly self-possessed, and a
work of art from her carefully dressed hair to the way her great gray
eyes looked up from her tea-making.

“A maid, that’s the reason of those beautifully done waves!” thought
the duchess. “But how much prettier she is than I imagined. A
woman with those eyebrows and that upper lip might do anything.
But what color there is in her face, with those gray-blue eyes and
black eyebrows and that surprising bronze hair! She looks--eh,
what--Levallion? Oh, tea!”

“It’s usual at this hour--or would you rather----”

“Don’t worry me, my good man!” smartly. “She looks well, Levallion;
happier, I think!”

“She is very well.” He glanced at his wife across the buzzing room. The
duchess was right, she did look happier. The queer, stony look that
had been in her eyes was gone. It seemed to him that the change in her
dated from one evening when he had found her sitting alone in her room,
with a burning color in her cheeks and quick unwonted questions on her
tongue. He remembered them now. “Levallion, you really love me? You
didn’t marry me because Sylvia arranged it--nor just to have a wife?
You would have married me all the same even if I’d told you why----”
but she had never finished.

“I married you for love, and nothing else,” he had answered quietly,
and she had watched him as he said it, then turned from him and spoke
laboredly, over her shoulder.

“I’ll do my best to be a good wife to you.”

But even now he never imagined how at that moment she come of her
own accord to believe in what was true, that he had known nothing of
Sylvia’s maneuvering. And her duty lay plain before her. To take up
the life she had deliberately made for herself and be a loyal wife to
the man who had always “been good” to her. Very barren, very dreary,
in spite of Levallion’s kindness that life lay before her, but she
would tread it faithfully to the very end. And unconsciously a great
joy leaped to her eyes and ever since had burned there steadily. Adrian
might be lost to her a thousand times more than ever, but in her soul
she could worship him, for he had been true.

But Levallion, poor fool, had thanked God for that rapture in her eyes;
a man, too, who was not in the habit of thanking God for anything.

“There’s peace in her face,” said the duchess shortly, having followed
his eyes in that long pause. “Well, well! You’re a better man than I
thought, Levallion. Send Tommy to me with the tea cake. You make me
nervous when you watch me eat.”

Sir Thomas came without much alacrity. He had a better opinion of the
duchess’ shrewdness than Levallion; and he was not easy in his mind.
He knew quite well that Ravenel’s renewed beauty and the quiet of her
face dated from that interview with Adrian Gordon, that he had not
discovered in time to prevent. He was uncomfortably conscious that for
all he knew the household might be sitting on a volcano.

“And how are you?” inquired his friend with her mouth full. “I hear
Lady Annesley is cutting a dash at Harrogate. I don’t suppose you miss
her!”

“Not much!” stolidly, though he would rather a hundred times have been
back under her ladyship’s rule and been sitting half-fed at Annesley
Chase with the old Ravenel, than here in Levallion’s house with a
sister who would not meet his eye.

“I’m not pining away for Lady Annesley.”

“She’d give her eyes to be here,” the duchess chuckled unkindly. “You
seem to have an extremely cheerful collection. By the way, how’s young
Gordon? I hear he’s been very ill here?”

“He’s better,” shortly. “He had a sort of relapse last week. But he’s
coming down to dinner to-night. We”--hastily--“haven’t seen anything of
him. He’s had a nurse.”

But the duchess merely murmured that it was a sad case, a man with a
shattered bridle arm being of no further use in a hussar regiment; and
passed serenely on. She had no intention of telling Tommy that she had
found out all about that marriage that never came off. The curate at
Effingham had talked, and the whole parish knew about the couple who
had never come to be married, but had wasted a special license and
the curate’s time. Ravenel’s past was no business of any one’s but
Levallion, who would never hear it.

“If she has any sense she knows by this time that Levallion’s little
finger is worth a whole string of lovesick soldiers,” she thought.
“I never saw a man so softened and improved in all my life. He looks
twenty years younger. But all the same, if he’s wise, he won’t press
his distinguished young relative to an indefinite stay.”

But even the duchess felt a shocked pity that night at dinner as she
looked across the flowers and gold plate and saw how very ill and worn
Captain Gordon looked. Why, the man was a death’s head. A romantic,
undesirable death’s head, with its arm in a sling. She glanced at
Ravenel and saw to her infinite relief that she was not so much as
looking Gordon’s way. Exquisitely fair in ivory satin and burned orange
velvet, she was talking to the man on her right hand with her old
childlike mirth. But the duchess was near-sighted. Sir Thomas Annesley
could have told her that there was anything but mirth in Ravenel’s
steady eyes. And truly repentance, impotent pain, and fear were doing
their work. Under that smart bodice Lady Levallion’s heart was aching
dully while she made conversation, as many a better woman’s has done
and will do while the world goes round.

She knew quite well that the width of a white table-cloth separated
her from Adrian as utterly as a gulf of a thousand miles. Knew that
after dinner he would never speak to her, except in the few sentences
decently demanded from guests to hostess; that as soon as he could he
would get away from the house.

“Oh, I’ve simply got to speak to him!” she thought. “If I have to make
the chance myself,” for there were two things she had forgotten to ask
him, and one of them rankled. Why had he said he was too poor to marry
her openly, and all the while was Levallion’s sole heir? The probable
successor to the richest earldom in England is not usually considered
a bad match, even by more greedy people than Ravenel. And who was the
woman who had come to ask after him; though she cared very little, or
she determined to think so. She came out of her thoughts with a jerk,
suddenly conscious that she had not the least idea what the man beside
her was saying.

“I was thinking how pretty all the women are,” she observed quickly, to
avoid having to say. “I beg your pardon.”

Lord Chayter surveyed the table. It was quite true, every woman there
was a picture in her way; and nearly all he saw were dark; and made a
foil to the peachy loveliness, the curled bronze head of their hostess.

“My own wife’s the only one of ’em I’d care to kiss though!” he
remarked, rather after the manner of Levallion, who was his dearest
friend.

“That’s very charming--and proper--of you!”

“No! It’s the ‘hard kalsomine finish’ that appals me,” coolly. “Come
now, Lady Levallion, you don’t mean to say you can’t see it?”

For Ravenel, who owned no rouge-pot and eschewed powder, was looking at
him bewilderedly.

“I thought----” she began, and then laughed, but not too gaily, “was
everything in the grand world a sham, even down to the lovely color on
the women’s cheeks?”

“That all things were what they seemed? Well, they ain’t unfortunately!
You really ought to be congratulated on your cook, Lady Levallion. I
never ate better chicken done with almonds than this.”

“I hope you won’t get tired of it,” she returned. “Levallion is so fond
of almonds. He arranges the dinners, you know. I should have roast beef
and plum tart, he thinks--and so I would!”

Lord Chayter thought she looked as if she lived on peaches and cream;
but he did not say so, for something caught his attention.

“Do you never have the blinds down in this room?” he inquired suddenly.
“Oh, I see, there are none. But don’t you think it’s rather uncanny
to look over the table and candles and things, and the ladies’ pretty
frocks, to those blank, dark windows? It makes me feel creepy,”
frankly. “As if ghosts might be peering in!”

“We never use this room when we’re alone. The windows must be a fancy
of Levallion’s. I don’t see very well how we could have blinds on them.”

For the state dining-room was on the ground floor in the oldest part of
the castle, and the windows were sunk deep and narrow in the six-foot
wall which slanted away from them till each foot-wide window-glass made
the apex of a wide stone V.

“I should!” said Lord Chayter, who was fat and fair and screwed-up
eyed. “Makes me nervous. Now look, just opposite us! Couldn’t you swear
some one was looking in? though, of course, it’s all fancy.”

Lady Levallion’s glance followed his and grew suddenly startled. For,
though it was gone in an instant, even as she looked at it, there had
been something like a white face, like gleaming eyes, pressed to the
window-pane of the embrasured window.

“There, you see! Though it’s either imagination or a gardener’s boy,”
said Lord Chayter. “Don’t look so frightened.”

“I’m not frightened,” quietly, “but I think you’re right. Those blank
windows make the room uncanny. I’ll have something done to them
to-morrow,” but like lightning her thoughts had flown at the sight
of that face against the glass to the strange woman who had come to
inquire for Adrian; though there could be no earthly connection.

“Let her look!” she thought contemptuously. “She won’t see much to
please her. And not a soul in the house knows anything about Adrian and
me, and that’s all I care about.” Quite unconscious that Tommy and the
duchess suspected what Sister Elizabeth knew; and that every wind that
blew, every hour that passed, was pushing her nearer to the greatest
horror any woman can face.

“Screens would do it,” returned Lord Chayter serenely, turning some
attention to his dinner, and determining to drop a hint to Levallion.
For there were windows on both sides of the big room, and it seemed a
coincidence that if any one had looked in they should have chosen the
side behind and not facing Lord Levallion’s sharp eyes. He gave the
subject what he considered a happy turn.

“Captain Gordon looks pretty shaky! He ought to be careful, if he
prefers earth to heaven,” he observed. “Better keep him here and let
some of these charming ladies take him in hand. He wants a course of
petting, the platonic kind, you know!” Ravenel caught the duchess’ eye,
and rose thankfully.

“Any one on earth to nurse me rather than you!” Adrian had said. But
her punishment would be more than she could bear if she must stand by
and see any of these women do it. She utterly forgot that white phantom
face at the dark window.




CHAPTER XIX.

IN OUTER DARKNESS.


And yet it was not such a phantom after all! Inside were women in satin
gowns, sitting at their ease among lights and flowers and frivolous
talk. Outside in the damp chill of the autumn rain stood another woman,
raising herself uncomfortably to the level of that unblinded window.
Cold to the bone, sick with envy and despair she saw the lighted room
as the stage at a theater, where she should have been among the actors,
but had been cast out into the pit.

Oh, the night, and the rain! What a fool she had been to come out in
her house dress without a mackintosh; she would be wet to the skin.
Suddenly, fiercely, she knew she did not care; and she raised herself
on tiptoe on the stone terrace, clinging with one trembling hand to
the sharp stonework round the window. It was senseless, useless, yet
she must see. And, perhaps, if luck were in her way, if she came night
after night, might see something that, if it did not turn Levallion to
her again, might at least turn him from some one else.

There was Levallion with his back to her. She had tried the other
side of the room first and left it hurriedly for fear of his eyes.
And over his shoulder, opposite him, she could see the girl who had
supplanted her; whom she--Hester Murray--had helped to do it. A sheer
physical pang made her move back from the window. Lady Levallion in her
ivory and orange, her exquisite young throat and arms bare, her face
immaculately fresh and young, was not a sight the woman who shivered
in the rain could bear to look on. Ten years ago she had been within
an ace of sitting in her place; a year ago would have been hand in
glove with all that well-dressed company who surrounded her. To-night
she knew quite well that not one of them but would have cut her in
the park. For things had come out! Her not being asked to Levallion’s
wedding had set a match to the train, and poor, kindly, drunken Bob
Murray had made a scene one night before a lot of people, and said
things that made even Hester’s gods of money and smartness look at her
askance. He had named no names, it was true; but he had said quite
enough. And then he had departed from her house, from her and her boy
forever; saying they were no concern of his. And though Levallion did
not believe her, for excellent reasons, when she told him she had no
money, it was quite true. Her debts--that she had made sure would be
paid for her--had swallowed up all she possessed. It took all she
could scrape to keep her boy at school, and her tenancy of the raw new
bungalow in Levallion’s own village was her last throw, her forlorn
hope. When he was tired of his new toy, perhaps he might come back to
her; at all events she would give him the chance and trust to luck to
pay her rent!

But she was not thinking of those things now. Only that her downfall
had been all her own fault. A little carelessness, an unskilful lie
found out, and her life had toppled about her ears. And even this
marriage of Levallion’s was partly her work. She could still see
Ravenel Annesley’s face as it looked in the glass the day she had told
that mad lie about Adrian Gordon.

“The girl cared then,” she thought, pressing her hand to her burning
eyes. “And he’s here still. If she cares now Levallion will get rid
of her. I know him. Oh, I hope she’ll care! I wonder what there was
between them, and if Sylvia told the truth about their meaning to get
married.” Once more she raised herself to peer through the barren
window, and saw Adrian Gordon plainly enough to catch with a fierce
leap of her heart how very ill he looked. “He may die yet! But it would
be better if he lived, perhaps, and made love to his old flame,” with
the coarse thought of a woman who habitually speaks daintily. “If he
does Levallion shall see it, shall----” She had been so occupied with
Adrian as not to notice that two faces, Lady Levallion’s and Lord
Chayter’s, were turned curiously in her direction, but she felt their
eyes with sudden intuition and moved swiftly away into the dark. It was
no part of her schemes to be seen looking at Levallion’s dinner-party
like a dismissed servant.

“All that for her,” she thought bitterly, “and nothing for me and the
boy! I would have done better to have stuck to Bob. He never drank till
I ran away from him; he would have been kind to me. Oh, Levallion’s a
devil! a devil!” It was all she could do not to cry it aloud. “If I
can’t get anything out of him, I’ll be even with him. I’ll find some
way to make him feel. If I know anything of faces that pink-and-white
girl won’t be able to keep away from her old lover. And then we’ll
see. Levallion in a rage would do anything, anything! Oh! I’m not done
yet, I’m not despairing yet. Not with Adrian Gordon in the house and
Levallion in love with his wife. Oh, my God!” and this time she spoke
in a dreadful croaking whisper. “What a fool I was ever to imagine for
one instant that he was in love with me!”

She drew away into the scant shelter of an evergreen, and pushed her
wet, uncurled hair out of her eyes. She had no motive for staying here
shivering and drenched, but the air and the rain even were better than
sitting alone by her solitary fireside, when no one of all the people
she had ever asked to dinner would dream of coming to see her. Once
start the truth about a woman who lives by her wits, and a hundred
things true and untrue come up to confirm it. Hester Murray’s pitcher
had gone once too often to the well; it was broken for good and all
now. And Levallion, who had once been her slave, had forbidden her to
come within his gates.

“Well, he can do it,” she thought defiantly, “but he can’t make me
obey him! I’ll try one more window and then I’ll go. I don’t want to
kill myself.” And the sharp shiver that went through her made her move
hastily through the darkness. It was odd, but the drip of the rain from
the house made her think of earth falling into a grave. It was ghostly,
terrifying to lurk outside in the dark, while women no better than she
sat at their ease on the other side of a window-pane.

Stumbling, for all her slim grace; weary, for all the passion that
burned in her, she made her way round the house in the pitchy darkness
that had somehow got on her nerves. There was a little alcove in the
drawing-room, whose modern French window reached the floor--it was odd
how well Mrs. Murray knew the house--it would do no harm to glance
in there, if the blind was up. They would be coming out from dinner
soon; and she might as well see all she could before going back to that
lonely house where no one ever came. And once more that pang at her
heart sickened her. All this might have been hers once, and had been
thrown away.

There was no standing on tiptoe to reach this second window. Before she
neared it she saw the square of light it flung on the grass, saw the
convenient rose-bush which would shield her from any one inside. And if
there had been any one to see the fierce white face, so changed from
that of the Hester Murray who had been all smiles and softness, they
might have shrunk away as if they saw an evil spirit.

“Ah!” she drew in her breath sharply, for she had builded better than
she knew.

Dinner was over; the men were coming into the drawing-room; one, with
his arm in a sling, coming straight to this alcove, unconscious, though
Hester did not know it, that it already held his hostess looking for
a book for which the duchess had asked her. He had sat down wearily
before he saw the gleam of orange and ivory the watcher outside had
seen long ago, as she saw Lady Levallion drop the just-found book and
turn to him quickly, breathlessly.

Yet her words might have been shouted on the housetops; there was no
need for Mrs. Murray to strain her ears to catch those compromising
utterances through the glass.

“Won’t you go to bed? You look so tired!”

He nodded. He could hardly bear to look at her whom once he had never
wanted out of his sight.

“I’ll go directly. I meant to go away to-morrow, but the doctor won’t
let me travel till the end of the week.” His eyes on her wistfully,
saying what his lips dared not--that it was not his fault that he was
making things so hard for her.

“He’s quite right,” she answered, for the benefit of any one who might
be outside the curtained recess. “We are very glad to have you,” but
the hard-held look of her face told Gordon what he knew--that the words
were a mockery.

Mrs. Murray remembered suddenly that she had not seen Levallion come
into the room. An unreasoning and instinctive terror caught her heart,
and sent her noiselessly, invisibly in her dark dress, yards away from
the lighted window. And just in time.

Levallion, sauntering with apparent aimlessness, an Inverness cape
thrown over his shoulder, an unlit cigarette in his mouth, came round
the corner of the house, Lord Chaytor’s recital of the half-seen face
at the window having set him wondering if it were real or not. But he
had seen no one, and in front of the window he stopped and lit his
cigarette, deciding Chaytor had looked upon more champagne than was
good for him.

His unseen neighbor slipped behind him, paused for one second to look
under his upraised arm before she took to her heels. And both of
them saw the same sight. A girl turning from a man with a curious,
pitiful gesture, stopped half-way; and the man, left alone, covering
his haggard eyes with his hand. Levallion turned like a flash and had
Hester Murray by the elbow.




CHAPTER XX.

A WICKED WOMAN’S TONGUE.


“I heard you breathing,” Levallion said composedly. “No, don’t you
struggle; I’ll let you go! Only be kind enough to tell me what earthly
pleasure it gives you to look in my windows.”

“No pleasure,” said Hester Murray, after a minute, when her frightened
heart had seemed to choke her, and the quick withdrawal of his
contemptuous grasp to make her a thing of no moment. “Only misery. Oh,
Levallion! Won’t you be less hard on me? If you let me come here and be
friendly with your wife it would set things right again. It kills me to
be alone without a friend in the world.”

“What things? What do you mean?” sharply.

She dared not tell him. He would never help her if he knew.

“Nothing much,” she said, shivering, only half-artificially. “I’ve lost
all my money, and--and people seem to have dropped me! To stay in your
house with the duchess might help me.”

“Has she dropped you, too,” he inquired, wondering if, after all his
careful analysis, she was not such a fool as she seemed.

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her lately,” though she knew well enough.

Levallion’s hawk eyes narrowed as he peered at her in the rainy
darkness. Her wet hair strayed in lank locks down her face, that for
once was not smiling. (How he had grown to loathe Hester’s smile!) He
put up a suspicious hand on her thin shoulder and recoiled. She was wet
to the skin, her thin house-dress a sticky, sopping mass.

“Look here, Hester!” he said almost kindly. “Better give up this
business and go home. You won’t mend matters by being seen hanging
about here after dark, merely get some very unpleasant illness.”

“I wish I’d died long ago.” There was something strained in her voice;
even in the dark she did not look at him.

“I see what you mean about having no money.” It was odd how that queer
note in her utterance killed the pity in him. “You had plenty.”

“There were debts--old debts,” she gasped, eagerly grasping at this
chance, at least. “Debts from ten years ago----”

“You told me there were none,” he shrugged his shoulders. “If there
were, ten-year-old debts are outlawed.”

“I had kept on paying a little on them. I didn’t know that obviated
any time-limit. They sold me up for the principal and interest.” Only
desperate hope made her speak the truth. “I tell you, Levallion, I
haven’t a sou!”

“For an astute woman you haven’t managed well,” he said, after what
seemed a long time. “If you had five hundred a year allowed you,
quarterly, do you think you would be able to stay at home in the
evenings?”

Five hundred a year to the woman who had had five times as many
thousands spent on her! But she swallowed her rage, her contempt at his
beggarly offer.

“I suppose--I could,” she said slowly. “But--oh! it’s not my poverty
that hurts me, it’s----”

“Do go home, I beg of you!” said Levallion coldly. “You are not
yourself. And, remember that you shall be supplied with what I
consider an adequate income if you will leave this place and live
elsewhere”--for, after all, he could not let the woman starve, dire and
evil as had been her sins against him.

“I’ll go--I’ll do anything,” she muttered, with a sudden exhaustion
that made her clutch the dripping bushes beside her. “But listen to me
first. In spite of everything, I care for you still. I’d do anything
for you. I’ve no pride left. If you will come and see me sometimes,
your marriage shall be as if it had never happened----”

“Have the goodness,” interrupted Lord Levallion icily, “to leave my
marriage out of the question. It concerns you in no way whatever.”

“It concerns me, because it kills me to see you taken in, deceived!”
she cried fiercely, and so quickly that he could not stop her. “You
could have seen it for yourself, not ten minutes ago, if you had not
been besotted about her. Ask your wife what she knows about Adrian
Gordon, and why she did not marry him,” utterly reckless now as to
whether her lie about Adrian’s wife were found out or not. “She was
engaged to him fast enough; but he was poor and you were rich. It was
better to marry you, and have him come and stay in your house. Ask
Sylvia Annesley--but she’ll lie to you! Ask that big-eyed brother of
hers, who never lets his sister out of his sight. She never loved you,
and she can love--in her girl’s way! Not like me, for I’ll love you
till I die. Oh, Levallion!” panting, wild, she seized his arm, “don’t
throw me over! Think of the boy, think how I have no world but you!”

“Don’t touch me,” said Levallion, with sudden acrid fury, as if he had
waked from some bad dream in which he was bound and speechless. “Go!”

“Say that if you’re ever miserable--unhappy--you’ll come back to me!”
She was pleading for her very life, as a fool does when death is
certain. “Levallion!”

A curious stiffness came over the man from head to foot. When it broke
he would have no power over tongue or hand; and this was a woman.

“Go away. Be quick!” he said hoarsely. “Because of what’s past you
shall have your money, but not if you stay in my village. Your lies----”

“They’re truth,” contemptuously. “Ask, ask, and you’ll see!” She was so
close to him that he felt her breath on his face. “Then perhaps you’ll
come to me.”

“If you were dying in the gutter I would not come to you,” he spoke so
evenly that she did not know that death stood closer to her than even
Lord Levallion. “If you crawled after me on your knees, I would not
change to you--or the boy! No matter what happened, neither you nor he
shall ever get anything from me but the bread I would give to a beggar.
Do you understand?” and in the dark she could not see his face.

“Oh! you think so now, I know. But when you find her out----”

That curious strained rigidity seemed to drop from him like a garment.
A dreadful, fiery pain shot through his heart, ran in his blood, curved
his fine hands.

“Go!” said Levallion thickly, “before I kill you with my hands.” But as
he turned on her she had seen his eye.

She shrank away and ran, madly, where she neither knew nor cared. She
had gone too far with him! He would murder her out here in the dark.
Her dry, shut throat could make no sound in the terror that would not
let her scream. Trembling, stumbling, falling and getting up again,
Hester Murray fled through the darkness and rain. Her gown, that
had been a soaked whisp, was a mass of filthy mud, her hands were
caked with the clay of the roads, but she ran still, round and round
sometimes, but, by degrees, more in the right direction. It was not
till her breath absolutely would not come to her aching lungs, and the
blood beat in her face, that she came to herself, and realized where
she was. Alone on a country road, nearly at her own house, with not a
soul following her, not a sign of those devilish eyes that had gleamed
murder at her through the dark.

“He would have killed me!” she said to herself as soon as her choking
heart-beats would let her. “I’ll never get anything from him but that
five hundred a year that’s no use. Does he----” but a noise startled
her, and she ran again like a drunken woman, staggering from side to
side till she reached her own door.

Her wet hair down her back, her hands filthy, her black, gauzy gown an
indescribable mass of mud and twigs and tatters, the blood purple in
her pulsing face, she burst into her own drawing-room, where a lamp
burned dimly, though there was no fire in the grate.

“Does he think I’m a fool? That I won’t pay him out, if I have to break
myself to do it?” she cried fiercely, since her one maid went home at
night, and there was no one to hear her.

But she was wrong, for a man’s voice answered her from the depths of a
high-backed chair that was turned away from her.

“A fool! No one could see you and think that,” and the owner of the
voice rose, looked at her, and recoiled with a quick word.

“But what is the matter with you? You are hurt--drowned--tell me
quickly.”

Hester Murray, in her wet, unspeakable gown, sat down on one of her
clean chintz chairs and told him. Whether the exact truth, or not, does
not matter; but crimson-faced, glittering-eyed, she was a dreadful
sight as the quick words came from her lips.

What he said, what she answered, she could not remember half an hour
later, as she dragged her exhausted body up to bed, with a curiously
compounded drink in a tumbler, which was to counteract the effects of
exposure and fright. She fell asleep as soon as she felt the comfort of
her warm bed, only muttering now and again as sleep gained on her:

“I’ll do it. He brought it on himself. It was--his fault. I hate him.
I hate him!” and the fury of the thought wakened her for one burning,
choking instant till her queer potion took hold of her, and she fell
fast asleep, as they say men have done in the rack.




CHAPTER XXI.

WHITE POPPIES OF OBLIVION.


Levallion, left alone on the wet grass, had never made one step after
her.

Alone, in the night and the rain, he had fought down that dreadful
passion, that loathing that had made him forget everything but the
desire to be rid of a venomous thing. He fought down, too, a harder
thing; the shame that comes after the breaking out of a devil’s temper,
whose leash has given way under strain; and at last could turn and go
into his house, join his party, as if nothing had happened.

“Well! Did you discover any one?” Lord Chayter inquired covertly.

Levallion looked at him.

“There was no one there,” he said calmly, not knowing that to have told
the truth would have been to put a bar in the way his young wife must
travel. He could not tell Chayter what was none of his business, and
might work round through the women to Ravenel.

His eyes passed his friend and found his wife.

“By ----!” said the man’s mind heavily. “If ever I saw innocence, there
it sits. What do I care if she was engaged to Adrian twenty times over,
she did not marry me to be Lady Levallion! She married me because she
was wretched, and if I would have listened to her, she would have told
me the whole story. Ask Sylvia!” he smiled as he alone could smile when
his heart ached. “I would as soon ask the devil for holy water! And
if Tommy did not punch my head for impertinence if I asked him--gad!
I’d kick him. I’m not in my dotage that I believe the statements of an
angry, hysterical woman.”

But, in spite of himself, Levallion saw every action of Ravenel’s
through a magnifying-glass all the next day. It rained, and there was
no shooting to speak of; the men were at home by luncheon-time, and up
to that Lady Levallion had been with them, chaperoning Mrs. Damerel,
sick and against her will, since to kill birds for pleasure was to her
a crime. And all that afternoon she never spoke to Adrian Gordon, nor
he to her. They might have been utter strangers with a preconceived
dislike to one another. But Adrian looked like a haunted man, who
deliberately turns his eyes from the sight he dare not see.

“Levallion,” said a charming voice in his ear at tea-time, “I have an
idea!”

It was Mrs. Damerel, who had for years cherished a platonic--and
unreturned--affection for her handsome, sharp-tongued host.

Levallion repressed the obvious retort.

“Tell it,” he drawled; “I never have any!”

“Let us have a fancy ball to-night--oh! I know there are only twenty of
us, but it’s enough. The men can wear evening dress,” shrewdly, “but
the women must all dress in their favorite flower, and wear masks.
We’re nearly all the same height, and it would be so amusing. Fancy,”
with a delighted laugh, “if you were to take me for your wife!”

“You never gave me a chance! You refused to poison Damerel,” calmly.
“Every woman her favorite flower--delicious! But what a revelation of
character! What’s yours? The flower of silence?”

“Then we may?” cried Mrs. Damerel, and hoped she blushed, though it
would have taken sharper eyes than Levallion’s to see it. “I’ll tell
Lady Levallion. My flower, indeed! We will all be quite secret, and
you can guess when you see us,” abandoning her choice of the rose of
silence for the more exciting mistletoe of kisses. “Oh, Levallion!
don’t you think the duchess would be lovely as a cauliflower?” in a
wicked whisper. “She is so like one.”

“I’ll inquire,” said Levallion briskly, and he did, with Mrs. Damerel’s
compliments, perfectly aware the duchess detested her.

Ravenel jumped at the proposal, since it would be better than nothing,
would pass the time of which she yet grudged every hopeless, useless
minute since they only brought the day nearer when Adrian would
be gone. She looked at the tea-gowned women around her with some
interest, though before they had been to her little more than moving
shadows who yet must be entertained and amused.

There were only seven, counting herself and the Duchess of Avonmere,
for Levallion had no opinion of people who asked ten ordinary husbands
and wives to their houses and expected it to be a cheerful gathering.
Thirteen men, of whom only two were husbands, kept things stirring. It
was no business of Levallion’s where the three uninvited husbands had
betaken themselves.

“I believe,” she said to herself, “that I know what flower each one of
those women will choose!” and she laughed as she sent an order to the
greenhouse that every one was to have exactly what their maids asked
for.

The thought of her own favorite flower took the color from her cheek.
Oh, the white may that had filled the whole world that day that she
and Adrian parted--forever--without knowing it. Never again would Lady
Levallion smell may of her own free will. She looked up almost guiltily
as Levallion spoke to her under cover of getting Mrs. Damerel’s second
cup of tea.

“You look tired; slip away and rest,” he advised, with a look of
coldness that was not like him--to her. “And be wise in time, Ravenel;
don’t wear real flowers to-night, unless you want to resemble the
sweepings of Covent Garden!”

Lady Levallion nodded.

“It was that shooting; it made me feel sick,” hastily; and if he did
not believe her, seeing Adrian’s face and hers, he liked her courage.
If she had come to him and cried and confided, he would have despised
her, even while he dried her tears. To ease your own soul by piling
your indiscretions or sorrows on some one else was against Levallion’s
creed.

“I have no favorite flower,” she said, with a laugh, having crushed
down the ghosts of flowers she loved and hated, “and--listen,
Levallion, bend your head down, and--neither have any of them! They’re
racking their brains now to discover what their adorers prefer.”

Levallion laughed. He had not thought she knew so much, all his dear
friends being truly but mirrors of the pose of the moment, on the
tastes of the “man in possession.” And her laugh lightened his heart,
and made him remember that Hester Murray was, and always had been, a
liar.

“Mind you look better than the lot,” he remarked cheerfully, and
without much anxiety, for not a woman in the room could come near her
for looks.

“My favorite flower will depend on what Celeste has in her boxes,” she
thought, as she went up-stairs. Ordinary evening dress was to be worn
at dinner, as usual; but before the men came to the picture-gallery,
where they were to dance, the ladies could have time to change and put
on their masks, which Mrs. Damerel’s maid was making out of black silk,
exactly alike, with black hoods to match and cover the hair, which
might betray the wearers.

Celeste, with a face of despair, had nothing.

“There are pink roses, but they would be so ordinary, my lady,” she
said, rooting wildly in her stores. “Nothing else, unless----” She
opened a cardboard box doubtfully, and gazed at its contents. “They are
not gay flowers!” she commented.

“They will do, perfectly,” said Ravenel, after one second. “They are
very--appropriate. Sew them on firmly, Celeste, and make me a little
wreath that will go under my hood.”

An old tag of poetry had leaped into her memory as she looked at the
white mass in the box, but she had no tremors lest any one else should
remember and apply it.

She looked at herself narrowly in the glass when, after dinner which,
by the way, was anything but good, Levallion having had a fresh battle
with Carrousel on the subject of the disappearance of the first orchids
of the season--she achieved her toilet, and, with thankfulness, hid
herself in her thick, black mask. For behind it she could let her mouth
take what shape it liked, and, thank God! for one night need not be
always smiling.

Levallion was late. He stood at one end of the long picture-gallery,
whence he had coolly banished all his ancestors as being too hideous to
contemplate, and looked between the walls covered with modern French
pictures to the far end of the room.

There were the guests in a group--and for a moment he was honestly
puzzled, for the women were all of a height, as Mrs. Damerel had said.

Then he laughed, for he saw the duchess. And the duchess had taken Mrs.
Damerel’s words to heart and bedecked herself with real and veritable
cauliflowers--but with what a genius!

On the white velvet gown were bestowed wreaths and bunches of the white
part of her homely vegetable, which were almost as velvety as the gown
itself.

She disdained either mask or hood, and her curled, gray head rose over
her ornaments with the air of a woman who may be fifty, but has slain a
spiteful foe with her own weapon, and knows it.

“The blue one with forget-me-nots is Lady Chayter.” Levallion looked
again at the group. “Artificial! Artificial! I don’t believe she ever
picked a real one in her life.

“Yellow and Maréchal Niel roses--Mrs. Arbuthnot. That sweet vision of
chiffon and lilies is Betty Beauchamp! Betty--who has a new young man
every month in the year!” and he grinned.

It was more amusing than such nonsense usually turned out. But from
Lady Gwendolin Brook, in dull-orange and evil orchids, he turned his
head in disgust, commenting dryly, that she was too modern for future
parties of his.

“I always stood up for her, too, which is awkward. But I never
understood what she really was, till I saw those devilish brown-spotted
orchids,” and his eyes found Mrs. Damerel and laughed. Shy and modest
violets covered Mrs. Damerel’s lilac satin, mistletoe having been
unprocurable. Mrs. Damerel--who shot, and hunted, and smoked, and
usually put her conversation into plain terms! She might put six masks
on her face when she forgot not to stick out her self-asserting elbows.
And then he looked no more, for his glance had fallen on a woman in
white, standing alone at a little distance from the others.

It was Ravenel in a plain, ivory satin gown, covered with great trails
of white poppies with purplish-black hearts, and dull-green velvet
leaves.

Over a mass of the pallid flowers of sleep and death her face and head
were tragic in the black shroudings that he had somehow never thought
looked sinister on the other women.

And not her mask alone sent a chill to Levallion’s heart. Her eyes,
black and anxious in their narrow eyeholes, were fixed on Adrian
Gordon, who for once stood beside her, was whispering in her ear.

And as he spoke her somber eyes flashed with a sudden brightness, a joy
they had never had for Levallion.

“White poppies!” even at his own expense, Levallion was cynical.
“Well, I suppose I may be glad she does not wear the roses of rapture
and silence.” And he cursed with some thoroughness himself for his
suspicious thoughts and Hester Murray for her lying tales, even the
innocent white poppies, because they meant “oblivion”--the oblivion of
a woman who says to herself every morning that she has forgotten. As he
walked over to the duchess to congratulate her on her masterpiece of
decoration, he felt exceedingly cross and out of sorts. But, being Lord
Levallion, determined to keep his eyes and ears utterly away from his
wife throughout the evening. Every girl has a school-day love-affair;
let her bury hers to-night under her white poppies! To spite himself
and prove Hester was wrong, he had half a mind to ask Adrian to stay on
indefinitely, but even Levallion knew he could not do that.

“My dear Levallion,” said the duchess, as the music--obtained by a
miracle of money and a special train!--struck up, “pray don’t wriggle!
You’re not sitting on a pin, are you?”

“It’s Damerel,” returned his lordship affectedly. “Don’t look at the
egregious fool! He’ll make you ill.”

The duchess glanced at Mr. Damerel, who had turned his dress clothes
into a walking funeral with tuberoses, even unto the seams of his
trousers.

“He’s very funny!” she said doubtfully.

“He ought to be put into a hearse,” snapped Levallion. “I wish I’d
never read any poetry! I should not be able to remember so many
quotations about the idiocy of man,” but the particular verse in his
mind did not apply to Mr. Damerel’s trousers, and he never glanced at
his wife as she passed him, though her white train brushed his feet.

Slowly the words were putting themselves together in his mind, and he
knew more than Ravenel did:

    “Now, those are poppies in her locks,
       White poppies she must wear;
     Must wear a mask to hide her face
       And the want graven there.”

Ravenel had gone no further; Levallion’s vilely accurate memory
supplied two lines more:

    “Or--is the hunger, fed at length,
     Cast off the care?”

And at the memory of the quick and sudden glory of Ravenel’s glance at
Adrian, the man could not but wince. He looked up and saw her standing
beside him.

“Aren’t you going to dance with me?” she said. “You can pretend you
didn’t know it was I, you know!”

Pretend, indeed, when he would know her in her grave-clothes with a
cloth over her face! He rose a little stiffly, and put his arms around
her waist. He danced well for all his forty-seven years, and he knew
it; the two floated smoothly down the long gallery to the tune of “Bid
Me Good-by and Go,” and Adrian Gordon, who had never danced with the
girl he loved, had to step back as she passed him in Levallion’s arms.

“Oh,” said Ravenel, who had not seen him, “you’re holding me too tight!
And you’re out of breath, Levallion.”

“I am forty-seven,” he returned, rather grimly, stopping by the lower
door. “Now run off and amuse yourself. I must go and condole with Mrs.
Damerel. Did you know she wanted me to send seven miles after dark for
a bunch of mistletoe? In October!” and he deliberately, and of a set
purpose, never turned his eyes toward his wife during the remainder
of the evening, and, when “kitchen lanciers” rent the air, retired,
without ostentation, to the library.

It was dark, and he turned on the electric light irritably.

“What did you do that for?” said the cross voice of Sir Thomas. “Oh, I
beg your pardon, Levallion! I didn’t know it was you.” He rose from his
knees at the window.

“Why are you praying instead of dancing?” inquired Levallion, casting
himself into a chair.

“I was watching some one, Levallion. I wish you’d put out the light
and come here! I’m sure there’s some one trying to get into the
conservatory.”

The light went out as he spoke. Sir Thomas was much mistaken if
Levallion did not swear; certainly he groaned inwardly.

At first he saw nothing as he strained his eyes into the darkness,
and then, against the soft, rose-colored glow of the conservatory,
between him and it, he was conscious of a woman’s figure. Somehow that
restless, black shape touched Levallion’s nerves.

“Stay here; don’t say anything to any one,” he said, very low, as if
the woman could hear him. “It must be one of the servants, but I’ll
just find out!”

Whatever deviltry Hester had in mind should not be done. He would,
from a safe screen of orange-trees, that would keep him from view of
the people inside or out of the greenhouse, watch his chance, and
make her understand that, though his lawyer had that day received his
orders, a telegram to-morrow could revoke them. The woman was capable
of anything--as he had good cause to know--and suppose she frightened
Ravenel! Levallion was not long in getting to his covert. But, though
he stared through the leaves till his eyes ached, he saw no more of
that prowling wolf outside; he was just going away, when two people sat
down on a secluded seat not a yard away from him and effectually cut
off his retreat. For as he hesitated for one second, he heard his own
name, in Ravenel’s voice.

“I tell you Levallion had nothing to do with it,” she was saying
angrily. “If I thought he had, I’d want to kill him--or I’d go with
you.”

“What did you want to ask me?” Adrian Gordon made no direct answer.

“Two things, though they don’t matter to me now,” wearily. “I wanted
to know why you said you were too poor to marry me when you were
Levallion’s heir--though I didn’t know it.”

Levallion stood paralyzed. Hester, then, had not lied--for a wonder! He
felt as if something hurt him unbearably, but he did not even try to
escape it. He wondered dully what Gordon would say.

“I can’t tell you, except that I,” lamely, “always thought he would
marry.”

Levallion, white with relief, leaned against his orange-tub. Though,
of course, he had known Adrian would never tell his wife the thing she
asked.

“Can’t you see,” said Ravenel fiercely, “that it’s the only weak point
in the whole thing. I know about the letters. I know about the ring;
but this hurts me because----”

“Because it looks like a lie.” Perhaps Levallion was no more sick at
heart than Adrian. “Well, it is quite true! I never counted on being
Levallion’s heir,” though if she had not been Levallion’s wife he might
have given a different answer.

“I believe you--don’t be angry! I feel as if all the world were a lie
since--since Sylvia,” her voice, that began passionately, broke off in
dragging despair, “separated you and me.”

“What was the other thing?” said Adrian slowly. “Nel, for God’s sake,
take off that black hood and let me see your face! I am going away
to-morrow,” with quiet and jealous pain. “Why have you got on white
poppies? The real ones always smell to me like laudanum--and death!”

“I’ve got them on because they mean oblivion,” she answered bravely.
“I’ve got to live my life, Adrian. I made it for myself--and Levallion
has been good to me. The only way I can go on with it is to forget.”

“What about me?” very low.

“You can fight it out as well as I can,” bitterly. “I can’t get rid of
Levallion even to please you.”

“I don’t want you to. Two wrongs,” hardly, “don’t make a right.”

In the silence Levallion felt curiously and impersonally sorry for
them; mad as it seems, liked Adrian better than he ever had before.

“Ask me the other question,” Adrian said quietly, “and then you must go
on. I don’t want you to be missed, and found with me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” not knowing that one day every soul in the
house-party would remember just how many minutes she had been absent
with Adrian Gordon. “Oh, the question! I only wanted to know--though
your concerns are none of my business since Lady Annesley sent you away
from me--who the woman was who came down with you that first day and
asked for you that night at the door.”

“Asked for me?” in utter surprise that Levallion felt was real. “Came
down with me? Nel, be sensible; don’t imagine rubbish! You know
perfectly that what I thought you had done to me had made me loathe all
women. I don’t think I’ve spoken to one since. Lady Annesley sent me
back your ring. No woman could come and inquire for me.”

“One did,” obstinately.

“Then I don’t know who,” and Levallion was glad he did not. “Nel, you
distrusted me once with good reason for a great thing; don’t fuss over
rubbish now.”

Levallion heard a rustle of silk. Had Ravenel moved? But her voice came
from exactly the same place.

“I’ve got to go on till I die,” she said in a carrying whisper. “Go
away to-morrow, Adrian, or I can’t bear it. The only thing you can do
for me is never to see me again.”

“I know; don’t say it, will you?” roughly. “In old times I’d have
quietly poisoned Sylvia and killed Levallion, but now I can only go
away.”

“Don’t speak like that about Levallion; he’s more to be pitied than
either of us. If he died to-morrow----”

“If he died, would you marry me?” Gordon interrupted sharply.

“I’d cry myself sick. I wouldn’t look at you.” The loyal, grateful
voice fell till a listener farther away than Levallion could not have
heard it.

“It’s time for me to go,” thought Levallion; her loyalty, that was
not love, hurt him unbearably. “Let her say good-by to him, and
then--we’ll see! If I were not her husband I could make her love me
best in a week!”

Deftly, inch by inch, he made his way past their unconscious backs,
doing his best not to hear any more. He was a dishonorable eavesdropper
already, but he did not care. He would not have any one else hear,
though, and that rustling of silks had been unpleasantly close.

Whoever it had been was gone now. Levallion hurried to the library to
tell Tommy they had seen a kitchen-maid watching the quality; hurried
to the picture-gallery to see who was missing besides Ravenel!

“Gad, I wish it had been any one else!” he thought wretchedly. For the
only woman absent was Lady Gwendolen Brook, of the orange gown and the
evil orchids. And that she entered at that moment did not reassure him,
for with her was Scarsdale, and Jimmy Scarsdale believed in the honor
of neither man nor woman, and always said so--with examples.

“Levallion, have you seen Ravenel?” cried the duchess. “We’re waiting
for her to go to supper.”

The two latest arrivals exchanged glances.

“Then don’t wait,” returned Levallion lazily, with his best manner.
“She’s with Adrian in the conservatory. I don’t wonder you’re hungry,
I am quite a wreck. I interfered with my cook’s amours, and he quite
cowed me with his dinner to-night. Come, if you wish me to live till
morning,” and the duchess never knew that he was inwardly cursing
himself, fate, and two, if not three, of his guests, as he took her
down-stairs.

“She’s had time enough,” Lady Gwendolen and Scarsdale were close behind
him, “to say everything by now. She hasn’t been up here for an hour. I
wonder----”

Scarsdale hushed her by a look at Levallion’s back.

It was a gorgeous joke on Levallion, but not good enough to quarrel
for. Besides, Lady Levallion was meeting them as they reached the
dining-room.

Somehow every one stared at her as she let them pass her at the door.
She had taken off her mask and hood like the others, and, under her
crown of poppies, her face was white, exhausted, beaten, the face of a
woman who has said good-by to love and youth.

Lord Levallion helped the duchess to game pie, and finished the
quotation that had worried him all the evening:

    “Lo, these be poppies--not for you,
     Cut down and spread.”

He put his untasted supper of plain almond soup, which was all he
ever took at night, on the first floor for Mr. Jacobs, who licked the
plate scrupulously clean, and immediately after was as thoroughly and
scrupulously sick. Sir Thomas hastily removed him as a footman removed
the remains, and, being a conscientious master, dosed him till he was
sick again, for there was froth about his mouth, and Sir Thomas feared
fits.

It was not a pretty incident, but luckily only Levallion and Tommy
beheld it--unless the outraged cook peering through the pantry door saw
the insulting treatment Levallion gave his soup. No one else thought
anything about it.




CHAPTER XXII.

THE MOONLIGHT PICNIC.


Levallion, contrary to his custom, rose early the next morning and
repaired to Mrs. Murray’s house, meaning to strike terror into her soul
by threats of withdrawing her allowance.

There was no smoke coming from her chimneys, and, as he was about to
dismount and knock her up, an untidy female emerged from the back
premises and announced that their late tenant had decamped without
the formality of giving notice. She had, to the station-master’s
knowledge, taken a ticket for London on the preceding morning, and
Levallion decided, with some relief, that it must, after all, have been
a kitchen-maid whom he and Tommy had seen looking in the conservatory.

He was not to be pleased on reaching home to find he might have spared
himself his journey, for the post brought a letter from Hester, posted
in London, in which she implored his forgiveness for her foolish
outspokenness, thanked him for his bounty, and hoped “that one so
unworthy as she might never set eyes on him again.”

“Too humble,” quoth his lordship, in the seclusion of his drawing-room;
“means something.”

But the precise meaning did not occur to him. And Sir Thomas’ bleak
face at breakfast put Hester out of his mind. Mr. Jacobs had nearly
died in the night, was even now in a parlous state. Sir Thomas was of
the opinion that he must have been poaching in the afternoon and eaten
poison laid down for marauding cats; an opinion with which the vet.
agreed, going so far as to mention prussic acid.

“It could not have been on my land, then,” Levallion informed the
gathering that surrounded unlucky Mr. Jacobs. “I don’t allow poisoning.”

“It’s prussic acid, my lord, wherever he got it,” the vet. returned
obstinately. “But he’s round the corner.

“It’s likely that soup last night saved him.”

“I dare say,” said Levallion indifferently, but he stroked Mr. Jacobs,
who licked his hand. All dogs worshiped Levallion, just as every dog
Mrs. Murray ever owned mysteriously pined away and died under her care.

It was a gorgeous morning, clear and cold. Levallion had no special
desire to shoot, but anything was better than staying at home as
special policeman, under the amused eyes of Gwendolen Brook. He was
utterly astounded as he joined the other men to find Adrian, on a fat
pony, was going with them.

“Queer thing, honor!” he meditated. “A badly bred man would have stayed
at home. I’ll look out he doesn’t overdo himself.”

Afterward Adrian Gordon remembered that never had Levallion been to him
as he was that day. No mother could have looked after a child better
than Lord Levallion, the man he had good reason to hate. And Jimmy
Scarsdale saw it--with a grin that was wasted. Lady Levallion must be
as deep as the sea.

Lady Levallion looked anything but deep at that precise moment. She had
thankfully sent her flock of women to a golf tournament ten miles away,
and was seated in the garden with Tommy and the recovering Mr. Jacobs.
Wrapped up in a big cloak she looked very young, dreadfully tired. Sir
Thomas saw it downheartedly, and connected it with her silly and marked
absence with Captain Gordon the night before, a piece of idiocy he was
too angry to mention. Though he would have been angrier still if he had
known every word she had said had been overheard by Lady Gwendolen--and
others.

“Jacobs was poisoned,” he said moodily. “Just wait till I find out
where he got it.”

“Miles off, I dare say. Levallion won’t allow it. What’s he growling
at?” for Mr. Jacobs stood bristling, weakly ferocious.

“That beastly cook,” with exasperation, “what on earth do you keep
him for? Jacobs, come here, Jacobs!” But the dog had been through the
garden, and Tommy raced after him in time to see Monsieur Carrousel
launch an enormous stone that barely missed Mr. Jacobs’ head.

Sir Thomas seized his dog by the collar.

“What, the----” he began; and saw Ravenel standing by him, out of
breath, but looking inches taller than her height.

“May I ask,” she said to the bearded, elegant person who was kind
enough to cook his dinners, “why you are pulling my rockery to pieces?”
with a glance at the fern-covered stone on the path.

“The dog is dangerous. He threatened my life,” with a majestic rage.

“You are quite wrong, the dog is harmless. If you are afraid of him,
remember that you will be quite safe in your kitchen. This--is my
garden!” She turned her back with a manner the duchess would have
envied. “Come, Tommy, and bring the dog.”

“Why were you so down on him?” Tommy inquired when they were out of
ear-shot. “I really believe Jacobs would have bitten him. Goodness
knows why, but he hates the man!”

“So do I,” hotly. “There is not a seat in the garden where I can go
without finding him in the neighborhood. I feel as if he had the evil
eye on something; he makes me shiver. Levallion’s going to send him
away.”

“When’s Gordon going?” said Tommy abruptly.

“To-morrow.” She grew scarlet. “Tommy,” she said miserably, “don’t be
horrid to me! I don’t deserve it. I don’t mean even to speak to him
before he goes.”

“All right,” gruffly, but he slipped his arm in hers as he had not
done since he came. “I say, Ravenel, I’ll be glad when the others go!
They’re no good, except the duchess.”

“I can’t bear them,” with sudden viciousness. “I feel all the time that
if I were down in the world not one of them would speak to me--even
Lady Chayter. The others are--well, her ladyship was a good imitation
of them!”

“That reminds me,” he picked up Mr. Jacobs and rolled him in Ravenel’s
cloak. “I’m sure I saw the old Umbrella yesterday, in the village.”

“Oh, nonsense!”

“I did, then; looking mighty out at elbows. What do you bet she’ll not
be up here, whining to you?”

“She can whine,” deliberately, for whatever Lady Annesley had done, it
was sure to be no secret to the Umbrella. “Hateful old wretch!”

“Beats me how Levallion ever was a friend of Sylvia’s,” observed Tommy
idly. “By George, I get hot all over when I think how I used to hate
him.”

“He’s kind,” in a stifled voice. “But oh, Tommy! Sometimes I feel as if
I should scream with the shut-up-ness of being grand! The fine clothes
and too much to eat, and--it’s rather awful being Lady Levallion!”

“It’s better than her ladyship,” the boy said dully. “Brace up,
Ravenel! Nobody in the world is downright happy, I believe.”

He lit one of Levallion’s cigarettes to avoid conversation, and refused
to see she was crying. When he threw away the stump she was sitting
quite motionless, but she was dry-eyed.

At dinner he looked at her covertly and wondered why on earth she wore
a black gown. It made her eyes look dark and gave the red and white of
her face an unearthly clearness.

“She looks awfully old, somehow,” the boy thought uneasily. “I hope
she doesn’t go and make another break to-night. She looks----” even to
himself he did not say “desperate.” After all, he knew no reason why
she should be.

But when he went into the drawing-room, after putting Mr. Jacobs to
bed, something caught at his heart. Neither Ravenel nor Captain Gordon
were there; and all the women but the duchess had a furtive look.

“Beasts, women!” Sir Thomas retreated as suddenly as he had entered,
determined to fetch his sister to her senses, or die. But at an open
window in the hall something moving outside in the moonlight caught
his eye, and checked his hasty walk. He hung out recklessly, and saw
two figures disappear into the shrubbery, a man and a woman in a black
dress!

“She’s mad,” said the boy, with something like a sob in his throat. And
turned round to see Ravenel and Levallion looking at him.

“I--I felt dizzy,” he stammered, scarcely believing his eyes; for if
this were Ravenel, who was that outside?

“I don’t wonder,” said Levallion cheerfully. “In another minute I’d
have hauled you in by the legs. Come and play blind man’s buff with the
rest of the idiots I have taken into my house.”

“I think I’ll take a stroll. It’s hot in there. Where,” in pure blank
desperation, “is Gordon?”

“Gone to bed. He starts at seven,” and just as if he were sorry for
the girl who stood by in silence, Lord Levallion did not look at
her as he followed her into the lights, the scent, the circle of
women--enlightened by Lady Gwendolen--that made his own drawing-room a
place of torment.

Sir Thomas, in his thin shoes and no cap, slipped unnoticed out into
the moonlight, pure curiosity his only motive. The woman had looked
like a lady, a lady’s long dress and voluminous evening cloak had
showed plainly where she stood in the clear moonlight. The night was
bright as day, the air warm, almost balmy, as if the moon had brought
back summer when the sunset chill was gone.

“I don’t believe it was any old kitchen-maid last night,” he thought,
as he followed the path by which that mysterious man and woman had
vanished. “I could see very well, but I believe it was well--whoever
it was now!” rather feebly. No one had told him of the lady who had
come to ask for Gordon, and he had never chanced to pass that new
bungalow that had given Levallion such an unpleasant surprise. Against
his will there cropped up in his mind those old stories of Levallion;
if one-half of them were true, there must be several women ready to
eat their hearts by staring in at his respectable married windows! Sir
Thomas hoped devoutly there was not going to be any fuss. The path led
him from the gardens into the park, across the grass among the deer,
and into a thick tangled wood. But the boughs were leafless, and the
moon showed him that the path went on still, a dark thread between the
dead bracken under the crowding trees. It wound on and on, and the
night silence of the wood somehow quieted Tommy Annesley. Through the
arching boughs overhead he could see the cloudless indigo sky; the moon
peeped at him in uncanny suddenness from different directions as the
path twisted. He stepped more and more cautiously, as if the noise of
a breaking twig under his feet would have been a crime in the stirless
quiet of the wood.

“This is rot,” he thought, stopping once. “No one can be here,” but
something drove him on again even while he called himself a fool. The
curious awe that was on him deepened till, without knowing it, he was
moving noiseless as a midnight thief walking a strange road. With a
queer thrill he pulled up standing; slipped before the moon caught the
telltale black and white of his clothes in the surrounding dimness,
behind the trunk of a great girtled oak. The path had stopped, as
suddenly as the trees and undergrowth it ran through. Before him was
a clear, circular space, covered with wan, short grass, and drifts
of brown, dead leaves the moon made fantastic. In the middle of it
stood one huge oak-tree, where clusters of dead leaves still hung like
banners against the moon on the branches that stretched over a solitary
flat rock; dark, high, like an altar.

“What on earth,” thought Sir Thomas, peering cautiously. His
bewilderment could not put itself into words.

The oak-tree was between him and the moon. If there was any one beside
it, they were blotted out against its thick bulk of darkness. But what
was that clear, steady glitter on the rock? A crystal, starry glitter
that in one spot turned to worn gold?

A quick rustling behind him made him turn with apprehensive annoyance.
No one likes to be caught inspecting the world from behind a tree. But
the rustling was Mr. Jacobs.

“Lie down!” whispered Sir Thomas savagely. “What silly fool let you
out?” He grabbed the humble Jacobs--who had been vastly proud of
escaping from bed and scenting him out--in his arms, that he might not
bark; and suddenly felt that he was glad the dog had come. For the
place was ghostly.

“It’s impossible, though, to lug him and edge round a bit nearer!” he
thought, deeply interested in that glitter which was no business of
his. “By George!”

A man had come from against the tree, hoisted himself rather clumsily
on the breast-high rock, and seized the golden shining point that
had taken Sir Thomas’ eye. A familiar pop, and a quick gurgling came
through the quiet air; Tommy nearly dropped Mr. Jacobs as he grabbed
his jaws together to stop a bark.

“Champagne! a--well, I’m blowed! I’ve come all the way out here to
gaze on a moonlight picnic. Lord knows who they are!” as a woman swung
herself lightly, boyishly, beside the man and stretched her hand out
for the glass he held.

The two were whispering--and oh! if Tommy Annesley could only have
heard those muffled voices!--presently the man laughed, and a woman’s
laugh answered him; shrill, hysterical, strained; full of that fierce
madness that would change the sound of the laugh of the sister you grew
up with, and make it unrecognizable. The incongruous horror that was in
that laugh caught Tommy’s nerves, slacked his grip of Jacobs. He had
never dreamed any woman’s laugh could sound like the howl of a wild
beast.

Mr. Jacobs felt he could not bear it. He gave a low, shivery growl,
and before Sir Thomas knew it, was on the ground, running like a wiry
white devil straight to that picnic-party that sat unawares. He ran
quick--that was what froze Tommy’s voice in his throat. If he had
barked it would not have mattered what he rushed at, but a silent
Jacobs was another thing, as dogs and cats knew.

Before Sir Thomas could get clear of his hiding-place, the need was
over. Jacobs had flown straight at the man’s legs, where they hung over
the rock, but with a wild leap his prey had sprung to the top of the
mighty slab, where he stood upright, never making the slightest motion
toward the woman beside him, whose long cloak had hung over his menaced
legs. Tommy heard Jacobs fall back heavily as he missed his spring; saw
him pick himself up, trot deliberately back to his master, slowly and
with puzzled growling, as of a dog who had been deceived.

The boy stooped and took something from the dog’s shut jaws. He had
seized the woman’s cloak.

“Not her, or she’d have yelled!” he thought with relief. And then as
the man moved, a living silhouette against the cold moonshine, Sir
Thomas Annesley knew him.

“I wonder,” he thought, sick and shaken, “if the moon’s made me crazy?”
He made a step toward the pair on the rock--and oh! if he had only gone
close to them--and then drew back. It was no business of his. But the
thing was so unpleasant that he held his tongue about it.




CHAPTER XXIII.

THE DARK GLASS.


“Adrian’s gone,” said Lady Levallion to herself as she woke the next
morning. She knew she ought to be glad of it, thankful that he was no
longer in Levallion’s house; for which reason, probably, she dragged
herself out of bed and thought with blank loathing of the empty day
before her; of the women who must be amused; of Levallion, who must not
see she missed any one.

“I might as well pretend not to care if Tommy died!” she said bitterly.
“For it’s just the same. If I know anything about Adrian, he will never
see me again, of his own accord.”

There was a letter on the plate at breakfast, and for one-half second
she thought he might have written a bare half-dozen words of farewell
to the woman he had meant to live and die with. But the common
envelope, the scrawled address, undeceived her. It was a begging
letter, and she opened it listlessly, and hardly noticed some scraps
of torn pasteboard that fell out of it. But as she read the soiled
half-sheet of common writing, Gwendolen Brook nudged Colonel Scarsdale.
Lady Levallion’s face was a dull crimson from forehead to chin.

Even Levallion noticed it, as she stuffed the letter into her pocket
and gathered up those fallen bits of pasteboard. Noticed, too, that
the very instant breakfast was over, she went to her own sitting-room,
scarcely waiting to hear the plans for the day. Yet it was not the
letter that had brought the blood to her face. That was from the
Umbrella, as Tommy had prophesied; and the news in it was late for the
market, except that it gave chapter and verse of what Ravenel had only
guessed at.

Lady Annesley had turned Adams out, she had lost her savings, was at a
farmhouse half a mile off, with no money and--she thought--dying. Would
Miss Ravenel come to her, as she could not die with her wickedness on
her mind? It was she who had warned Lady Annesley of that wild dream
of marriage with Adrian Gordon, she who had shown him Ravenel’s torn
Sunday frock on the day of the duchess’ party, and said that as Miss
Annesley could not go to the fête for want of a dress, she had gone to
the country town with Sir Thomas.

“This is the card Captain Gordon left for you the day you was out,” it
wound up. “I send it so you may see it is true. Her ladyship cut his
ring off your neck that day you know of, and gave me five pounds to
post it to him. I kept the torn card just to have something to hold
over her. But she didn’t care, and she turned me off. I’m a dying
woman, I feel it. They’ll let me die here; if you’ll come over and say
you know me--and, oh, Miss Ravenel, do come and say you forgive me! For
I saw you at your wedding, and I wake up at nights and see your face,
which was like a dead person’s. I don’t want money, the parish can bury
me, only you to say you did not mind about Captain Gordon.”

“I won’t go,” thought Ravenel, laying down the letter.

“She always hated me. She’s only doing this to pay Sylvia out. I
couldn’t see her. I won’t let any one tell me things--or pity me,” but
even as she said it she knew she would go. She was never a good hater,
and the woman was dying--or thought so.

She laid the scraps of card on the table and pieced them together.
There was one bit gone. The Umbrella must have left it in her
ladyship’s rubbish-basket. But she made out the penciled pitifully
guarded scrawl, in spite of the missing corner.

 “Dear Miss Annesley”--it ran--“how have I missed you? Didn’t you get
 my letter? I sail to-morrow, but after mess. Please.”

“Forgive her!” said Ravenel, making sense well enough, for she knew the
missing words must have been, “I’ll come back to-night” and “meet me,”
because of Adrian’s story of his useless waiting in the garden. “I
can’t forgive her. I don’t believe I ever forgave anything in all my
life, or forgot, either. I’ll send her money, but I never want to see
her as long as I live.”

A sound at the door startled her into saying, “Come in” before she
swept the patched card off the table. It was only Levallion, but his
face grew gray as he saw her put her arm sharply over the torn card,
the scrawled letter. Something that had been on his lips died there,
and there flashed up in his mind, like an instantaneous photograph,
the memory of Adrian falling in a dead faint under the trees, and the
little inarticulate, dreadful cry with which Ravenel had sprung toward
him.

“Are you coming out?” he said. “They are waiting for you,” and he went
away without waiting for an answer.

Her back had been to the door. She had not seen his face, nor could she
dream that outside in the lonely passage he stood for one instant, and
hid his worn face in his hands. The next second he threw into a jar of
flowers a scrap of penciled card Lady Gwendolen had said sweetly was
his wife’s; “Lady Levallion had dropped it.”

“It’s not very valuable,” Levallion had answered, glancing at the
scrap, and taking in both sides of it with the quickness habitual to
him. But now, when he had seen her poring over some fragments exactly
like it, he cursed his quick eyes and Lady Gwendolen. For on one side
of the quarter-card was “Gordon--Hussars.” On the other, “I’ll come
back to-night. Meet me. ‘A. G.’” No wonder Ravenel had turned red and
torn it up.

“Quid pro quo!” said Lord Levallion slowly. “It’s my turn now, I
suppose, having taken a wife instead of borrowing one. But I don’t
think there’ll be any meeting!” He straightened himself, wearily, and
went out shooting as if his heart was not like lead. Somehow, he had
lacked either courage or inclination to tell Ravenel what he knew. And
she never dreamed he would have listened to the silly, childish story
that meant nothing now, except to her and Adrian.

She sent some money to Adams, with a carefully written note to the
effect that she knew of nothing she had to forgive, since nothing Lady
Annesley or her maid had done had caused her any harm. It was a lie,
of course, but there was nothing else Levallion’s wife could say. She
breathed freer when it was gone.

But when the shooting-party came home, Levallion’s face somehow worried
her. All the softness was wiped off it, and he talked as the old
Levallion had been wont to, not the new. She waited for him in her
dressing-room till the gong went for dinner, but he never came. And
when he passed her in the drawing-room on his way to give his arm to
the duchess, she stopped him.

“Levallion,” she whispered, her hand on his arm, “what’s the matter?
Aren’t you well?”

“Perfectly, thank you,” he said quietly, but he never looked at her. A
sudden gust of wicked temper shook him like a leaf; if they had been
alone he would have broken out in questions that would have ended in
relief; but here before every one made him shake off her hand as if it
had been a snake--to wish the next second that he had kissed her before
the whole room.

For as he looked straight before him he met Lady Gwendolen’s amused,
insolent eyes, and knew that all he knew she knew also; and his
knowledge of it besides. His lordship went into dinner with the
cheerful conviction that at forty-seven he had made a fool of
himself--before the people! And it did not soften his heart to his wife.

A curious second light, born of strained nerves, made him slip away
from the men some ten minutes after the women had left the dining-room.
And crossing the hall was what he had expected, Ravenel in a hat and
cloak, hurrying to a side door. Levallion’s heart turned over.

“Where are you going?” he said very quietly. But his hand that caught
her arm was not gentle.

“To--out--the man’s waiting----” she gasped, utterly terrified.
“Levallion, don’t look at me like that! It’s a poor woman who sent for
me this morning, and I wouldn’t go. She’s sent again to-day; she isn’t
dying, but she must see me. Thought I could go and be back before you
came out of the dining-room. The woman knows me, she used to be Lady
Annesley’s maid. Look!” she held out a scrawled letter.

But no one knew better than Levallion that any letter might mean
anything. He flickered it to the ground contemptuously.

“You have excellent reason to go and see your stepmother’s maid,” he
said, careless that he betrayed ill-gotten knowledge. “But I fancy
not to-night. You can drive over in the morning. Go back; take off
those things; try and remember that if I was blind other people are
not.” His low, furious voice carried farther than he knew, to where,
on the turn of the staircase, Lady Gwendolen Brook stood breathless
with laughter. Having seen the note delivered which sent her hostess
from the drawing-room, it had been a delightful way of passing time to
follow her. But she had not anticipated anything so amusing as this.

“Levallion,” said Ravenel, “you’ve no right to speak to me like this!”
She threw off her cloak and hat, and in all her white satins faced
him paler than he. “Now, if the people you’re afraid of do come,” she
whispered contemptuously, “they won’t see anything to amuse them.
But listen to me you shall. Even though I don’t know what you are
suspecting. Read those.” With a gesture that was superb, she stooped
for the letter he had dropped, put it and another into his hand;
“then go outside and speak to the boy who’s waiting to take me to the
farmhouse, and then tell me, if you like, what you are thinking about
me.”

“As you like.” He shrugged his shoulders, having in his day written
many a letter that meant other things than were in it. But as he read,
his face changed. There was nothing in those letters but their face
value.

“Ravenel,” in the stillness she heard the men rising in the
dining-room, heard a quick rustle of silk on the stairs, and moved
sharply round a corner so that she was out of sight. But Levallion was
quicker. They stood now in the porch of the side door, as much alone as
in Sahara, and she saw in the dim light that his hard mouth trembled.

“I have behaved abominably,” he said with a humiliation that sat ill
on him. “I--I found half a card this morning; and I heard something you
said to Adrian the other night. I thought----”

“Here’s the rest of it. It was six months ago I was to meet Adrian,”
she answered simply, for she knew what must have been on the card. “Did
you think it was to-night? That I meant to meet another man, and steal
out of your house to do it?”

“I feel like _Othello_, whom I always considered an egregious ass!”
said Levallion slowly. “You see, it was just what I should have done,
in Gordon’s shoes.” He slipped card and letter into his pocket.

To Ravenel’s own surprise, the tears came to her eyes.

“You wouldn’t,” she cried hotly. “Never! Why do you lie about yourself?
You know nothing would make you do a thing like that.”

“Nor you, either.” She had never heard his voice so slow, so gentle.
“I was a fool to doubt you. But I heard--the other night in the
conservatory. I thought you cared still; that this--that when I cared
at last, fate was having its revenge on me. But I know better now!”
Before she could stop him he stooped and kissed the hem of her gown.

“Don’t,” she gasped. “I’ve been wicked. I thought at first when I
found out--for I never found out till I saw the ring they cut off his
finger--and heard how he got it--that you had known all Sylvia did.”

“My poor little child,” he said soberly. And then wistfully: “You’ll be
as happy as you can, won’t you? I--I try, you know.”

“I’m happy, and I’ll be happier,” she answered bravely. “I--you know I
like you, Levallion?”

For sole answer he held her hand, hard. Hope waked in him somehow,
loyalty and liking were a good half the battle.

“We must go back,” he said. “You forgive me? I was brutal, but it cut,
you know,” simply.

Of her own accord Lady Levallion leaned forward and kissed his cheek;
afterward she was glad.

“What does this thing mean?” he asked, with a look at one of the
letters. “She says she isn’t dying, but that she thought to say so
might hurry you. What is it that you must know to-night, or it will be
too late?”

“It can’t be anything! All she can tell me is dead and gone,” said
Ravenel, with shame. “Oh, Levallion! I hate your knowing how wicked I
was, to worry you--and all that.”

“Hush, hush!” almost roughly. “Don’t talk like that. Look here, I’ll
tell you what we’ll do! We’ll go over to the farm when the others have
gone to bed. The hour won’t matter if they’re sitting up with her. I’ll
tell the boy, go, go now.”

There was a kind of awkward hush when Lord and Lady Levallion entered
the drawing-room. The duchess had gone away that day, and her absence
had loosened Lady Gwendolen’s tongue. Lord Chayter rushed into the
breach.

“Where’s that stuff you were talking of the other day?” he asked
Levallion. “You said it cured headaches, and I’ve a most infernal one.”

“I said it enlivened the soul, if you had one,” dryly. “It isn’t a
medicine. It’s a liqueur, Eau de Vie Magique. But I think I drank it
all. I don’t know where it is.”

“In your dressing-room,” said Ravenel promptly. “I’ll get it.” There
was something in the women’s faces that troubled her, something covert
in their eyes that she was glad to escape from.

Mr. Jacobs arose hastily from a secluded corner and followed her out;
and as he lumbered affably beside her she never dreamed that her life
hung on whether he came with her or not.

Five minutes later she was back; panting, white, with startled eyes, a
squat bottle in her hand.

“Have you seen a ghost?” said Levallion, from where he stood by the
liqueur-stand.

“No!” she gasped--and she looked as if she had seen murder!

“Jacobs frightened me--dreadfully! He--I think there must have been a
cat.” As she held the bottle out to him it shook in her hand.

“It’s a dead cat, then,” said Tommy. He rose and went to see where
Jacobs had gone to, but no one took any notice of his movements.

“I shall have to dose you!” said Levallion lightly. “Your nerves are
all off. There’s very little here. Chayter, I’d thought there was more.
And it looks muddy!” He poured it out and glanced at it. Instead of
being clearly green it was a little clouded.

“Seems so, somehow!” Levallion sniffed it suspiciously.

“Smells of almonds.” He raised the glass to his lips and tasted it,
giving the bottle to Ravenel.

“Levallion!” Her shriek terrified them, born of unreasoning terror as
it was. “Put it down, don’t touch it!” Wildly, frantically, she tried
to snatch the glass, but she was too late.

Levallion had mechanically swallowed the strangely flavored mouthful.
He turned to her, smiling. “It’s quite spoiled. You’ve----”

The empty bottle fell from her hand, crashed to atoms on the floor.

“Levallion,” she screamed, “speak to me!”

He swayed toward her, his handsome face convulsed; crashed, like a log,
to the floor. As she sprang to him he struggled, his teeth clenched.

“We ought to have gone!” he gasped. “Ravenel--she’s been--too much for
me!”

But when she would have lifted his head it dropped lifeless on her
breast.




CHAPTER XXIV.

ALONE WITH THE DEAD.


“He’s poisoned; he’s dying!”

It was many a day before any one in that room forgot the sound of Lady
Levallion’s voice. She crouched on the floor, holding Levallion as she
had never done, and his face was ghastly against her white satin gown.

“Hush!” cried Chayter roughly. “For God’s sake, Scarsdale, send some
one for a doctor!” but some one had gone already.

In the horrid silence that had fallen on the room each rattling breath
Levallion drew sounded harder than the last. All the men were round
him, there was a bustle of servants, a calling for useless remedies;
but toward their hostess not one woman stirred. It was sinister,
ominous, to see them crowded together in their smart gowns; a wide
space between them and the overthrown liqueur-stand, and Ravenel
huddled on the floor with a dying man in her arms. So it was that
Doctor Houghton saw them, when at last he came. The bare floor, the
rucked-up rugs, the litter of broken glass and silver round Lady
Levallion--white as her gown, against which Levallion’s black clothes
stood out in horrible limpness; and behind them and the kneeling men
about them, that wall of silks and satins, of inimical women’s faces.
Even as he stooped and touched Levallion’s hand that picture stamped
itself on Houghton’s brain.

“They think she did it,” he thought, like lightning, as he wiped the
froth from the stiff lips.

“Clear the room!” he said. “Send the ladies away. No, not you!” as
Ravenel only clutched Levallion more fiercely. But when they were gone
he tried none of the remedies he had brought with him. Adrian Gordon,
Lord Levallion, had been dead this half-hour past. Very gently Houghton
laid the handsome, dark head back on Lady Levallion’s knees; and no
one, she least of all, saw it was the living face, and not the dead,
that he looked at so long and steadily.

“They hate her, and, if I’m not careful, she’ll be hanged because a
handful of women don’t like her,” he thought, after that long look at
the girl Levallion had married. It was part of his trade to read faces.
This one, if he knew anything, was innocent. For no guilty woman would
ever have been utterly unconscious of self as this girl was; or could
have sat clinging to the dead man as did she.

“If she’d done it, she’d be crying on a sofa,” he was thinking, even
while he listened to Lord Chayter’s story of what had happened. “Or if
she had nerve enough to touch him her face would show the strain. She’d
bare her lower teeth like they all do when they’re guilty.”

“Don’t whisper, Lord Chayter,” she said sharply. “You can’t wake
him! Doctor Houghton, it was I brought him the bottle--and owed him
everything! He was kind--to me.”

Every man in the room but Houghton knew that she and Levallion had
quarreled that very night; not one of them knew how they had made it up
again. But at the dreary, tearless voice, perhaps, only Jimmy Scarsdale
did not feel a lump in his throat.

“Don’t talk,” said Houghton gently. “Never mind us. You could not help
what was in the bottle.”

“I--Jacobs frightened me,” she said vaguely. “But, oh! why don’t you do
something?”

She looked up, caught Houghton’s eyes, and felt frantically at
Levallion’s heart, that was stone cold.

“It doesn’t beat!” she cried, like a frightened child. “I can’t feel
it. Levallion!” the cry rang out as it has done since the ages of ages;
the useless, desperate call of the living to the dead.

“Dear Lady Levallion,” said Houghton softly, “he can’t hear you! I got
here too late.”

She looked at him as if she were dazed.

“Too late,” she said; “it’s all too late.” She swayed forward till her
face lay on the Levallion’s breast that could shelter her no longer.

“Let her lie!” said Houghton savagely. “It’s the only kindness we can
do her. Good God, are there no women in this house to come to her, that
she is left to men? To me, who barely knows her?”

“You sent the women away,” said Scarsdale slowly.

“And if one of them had cared for her I might have ordered her out
till I was black in the face.” But he dared not say it aloud. He was
tall, young, and strong; and he lifted Lady Levallion in his arms as if
she had been a child. But, though he rang and rang her bedroom-bell,
it was minutes before any one answered it. But the strong face of the
Frenchwoman who came at last pleased him, also the little cry with
which she ran to her mistress.

“Your master’s dead,” he said bluntly, “and your mistress has fainted.
Help me to get her to bed. Where’s Sir Thomas?” for it had suddenly
come over him that Lady Levallion’s brother was nowhere to be seen.

“He ran out after his dog that came raging through the servants’ hall a
long time ago. He knew nothing.”

With quick fingers she was loosening Lady Levallion’s gown. “Oh,
Monsieur Houghton, I did go to the drawing-room door to help my lady,
but Lady Chayter say to me you would not let me in. So I run out of
doors to see if Sir Thomas is anywhere, and he is not.”

“Don’t try to rouse her too much,” Houghton returned, as if he were
thinking of something else. “I’ll give her something to make her sleep,
by and by.”

He strolled into the next room as though to give Celeste time to
put her mistress into bed, but he did not stay there. It was Lady
Levallion’s dressing-room, and opened, as he knew, into a passage that
led to her husband’s. Doctor Houghton went in quietly, perhaps to see
if it was there they were bringing Levallion. But the room was empty.

Levallion’s dressing-gown that he would never wear again lay waiting
for him, his half-read novel was on the table by his bed; the trivial
comforts of the room were dreadful to the man who had been Levallion’s
friend, perhaps his only real one, except the Duchess of Avonmore.
Houghton looked deliberately round the room.

There, over the bookcase, was the shelf from which Lady Levallion must
have taken the bottle--that bottle which lay in flinders down-stairs,
that not the cleverest detective on earth could say had been the one
Levallion owned or not. There were other bottles left, chiefly curios
in the way of drinks which Levallion had been too wise to try. Doctor
Houghton did not look at them, did not touch anything. He scarcely knew
why he had come there, except that there might be something that would
tell a tale. And there was not one earthly thing.

“There’s no doubt that he was poisoned, and with some preparation of
prussic acid,” he thought, staring idly before him. “And he did not do
it himself, for there never was a man who loved life better than he.
And he loved his wife, if ever I saw devotion in a human being. Now
what, I wonder, made those women behave like that to her to-night, just
as if they knew something to her discredit! I’ll lay odds,” grimly,
“that when five women get together against one, there’s nothing they
don’t think they know about her, especially when her looks beat them
all. And every one of those women behaved inhumanly to-night.” He
pursed his clean-shaven lips as he tried to remember just on what terms
Lady Levallion had been with her husband, and the only out-of-the-way
thing that came to his mind was the night a strange woman had come to
the door, and Lady Levallion had looked inwardly furious.

“She probably had good reason to, if any kind friend had aired poor
Levallion’s past to her,” he thought, with wrong-headed shrewdness.
“Anyhow, I’m going to do my best for her till I find out she’s guilty.
If Levallion were here,” with incongruous reasoning, “he’d like me to.
I believe,” tenderly, “he would have given even the devil fair play.
At any rate, he wouldn’t want his wife’s name dragged in the dust, and
it sha’n’t be, if I can help it. Though, perhaps, I’m a fool with my
foregone conclusions. No one’s breathed a word against her.” And yet he
had known the second he entered the drawing-room that every soul in it
thought Lady Levallion had murdered her husband.

“I don’t believe it was any one in the house who did it,” the man said
to himself, because he was cross-grained to begin with, and had been
rubbed the wrong way. “I’ll go and find Sir Thomas. He ought to be
with his sister instead of chasing dogs,” and he turned the handle of
the closed door that led into the corridor, instead of going back the
way he had come. The door stuck, and he gave it a vicious jerk. As it
swung forward something dark fell soundlessly on the floor, and the
man’s quick eye saw it. With it on the palm of his hand he moved close
to the electric light, and saw what it was. A tiny triangular rag of
tweed, thin, rather worn, a small, irregular check of fawn and brown,
with a red thread in it.

“Now, where,” said Houghton to himself, “have I seen the trousers that
came out of?” And the cloth was so familiar that it struck him it must
have come from Levallion’s own wardrobe.

“Well, the only thing that looks like a clue is disposed of!” he
thought, shrugging his shoulders. But he put the little rag carefully
away in a pocketbook. It seemed hopeless to prove when and how it had
caught in the door, but less things than that rag had saved women’s
lives.

He hurried down-stairs at a sound of bustle in the hall. There were
boxes and rug-straps being piled there, and it may be forgiven Doctor
Houghton if he thought there might be some one among the house-party
who could not get away fast enough.

“A band of robbers could not be in a greater hurry!” he thought
bitterly. And then his face lit up.

Some one inside the drawing-room door threw it open. A voice Houghton
knew said authoritatively:

“What’s this, gentlemen? Surely you understand no one and no luggage,”
emphatically, “is to leave this house till I hold my inquest.”

It was Doctor Aston, the coroner. But before Houghton could move toward
him a hand caught his arm.

“I went for him.” Sir Thomas Annesley looked fifty years old. “Was it
right?”

Houghton nodded. But it came over him suddenly that if there were
things he did not know the coming of the coroner would be the beginning
of the end for Lady Levallion.

“Go to your sister,” he said gently. “But, stop! What’s this about your
dog frightening her, and----”

“Nothing,” said Tommy drearily. “He went up with her, and I suppose he
saw a cat or something. I found him raising Cain in the kitchen, and
some one opened the door and let him out. I ran after him, but I lost
him. When I came back they said you were with Ravenel, and I thought
I’d get the coroner. How on earth, Doctor Houghton, did that bottle get
poisoned? Levallion gave me some of it only a little before dinner.”

Houghton could only shake his head.

Half a mile off the only soul who would have told him sat up on the
death-bed that till now she had only half-believed in.

“Get Miss Ravenel,” she cried clearly, loudly. “Get her, or they’ll
hang her.”

“Hush, my poor soul!” said the farmer’s wife pitifully.

“Lady Levallion, then!” the Umbrella clutched at the air as if to grasp
the life that was leaving her.

“I want to tell--I----” She turned suddenly rigid, a dreadful stiff
figure, only its eyes alive.

“Tell her they’ll murder him! they----”

She fell forward on the bed.




CHAPTER XXV.

A DEAD MAN’S SWEETHEART.


“Levallion’s drawing-room!” said Houghton to himself bitterly. “Inside
his own house, that fools say is a man’s safest place.”

For he and his assistant had but now finished a hateful task, to
Levallion’s friend, and if there was doubt about who had killed
Levallion, there was none about the poison that had done it.

“There was enough prussic acid in his stomach to kill a horse, let
alone a man!” Houghton thought, as his assistant departed with his
ghastly paraphernalia. “And God knows what form it was given in,
perhaps, but I don’t.”

With his own hands he made Levallion’s body ready for his grave, but
not even Houghton’s skill could cross the dead hands on the breast. He
lay as death had found him, with his arms outstretched to the woman he
loved. Houghton drew the sheet up to the chin, and looked at the dead
man’s face.

Handsome, in a hard-bitter way, Levallion had always been. Dead, the
unearthly beauty of his face caught Houghton’s breath.

Every saturnine line, every sardonic curve, had been wiped off it. Over
the hard eyes the white lids were gentle; the lips that had been weary
so many a day under the dark mustache were set in ineffable peace. For
all the majesty of that still, set face, there was a strange youth in
it, as though death had brought him gently to a very far land, where
there were neither the lies nor the shams he had scorned--and the joy
of it was written on the dead man’s face.

“That was Levallion!” said Houghton involuntarily. Perhaps no one but
he had known that, until six months ago, when Ravenel came into it,
Adrian Gordon, Lord Levallion, had been weary of his life. Neither
goodness, nor fair dealing, nor common chastity had the man ever met.
Small wonder that his tongue was keen as his eyes, or that cynicism was
written on the corners of his lips.

“The real Levallion, who had to die just as he cared to live. Well, God
give his murderer justice!”

He did not know he spoke aloud, and he wheeled as some one answered him.

“There’s no justice,” said a voice that made his blood stop in him, “or
I’d be there, and not he.”

Lady Levallion, all dressed as if it were day instead of seven o’clock
in the morning, stood at his elbow.

“I beg your pardon!” said Houghton stupidly. For his life he could have
made her no more sensible answer.

“I married him. I didn’t love him----”

If he had not seen her speak he would never have known it was Lady
Levallion’s voice.

“I----”

He looked at her sharply. Every bit of color was gone from her face.
She was grayer than the dead man.

“Go and rest. You’re doing no good here,” he said sharply, as people
speak to hysterical patients. But there was no hysteria in her narrowed
eyes.

“How can I rest? It’s all my fault,” she said slowly.

“Why do you say that? It’s nonsense.”

“I don’t know why, but I feel--no, no! I don’t mean it!”

She had broken off with terror in her voice, and for the first time
Houghton doubted her. Yet a woman in grief will say anything. And in
grief she was, for, as if she were alone, she fell on her knees by
Levallion.

“I’d have died for you a hundred times, rather than this!” she was
whispering in the ears that could not hear. “If you could only know
that, I could bear it.”

Houghton turned away sharply to the door, so that no one else should
see what was between two people--the living and the dead. The
awful incongruity of the whole thing came over him. The man’s own
drawing-room, all flowers and silk hangings and carved ivory, where,
instead of rose-colored lamps, four unshaded candles burned at the head
and foot of the couch where Levallion lay covered with a white sheet,
where Lady Levallion knelt motionless in a plain serge gown that--or,
perhaps, it was not the gown--made her ghastly.

“What am I to do?” she was muttering. “Levallion, what am I to do?”

With a strange passion she kissed his lips, his shut eyes.

“You believed in me, you trusted me,” she said, very low, but in the
silent room the whisper carried. “Oh, wherever you are, trust me still!
Even if I--hold my tongue.”

Doctor Houghton felt suddenly and physically sick. Then he remembered
he had no right to have listened. No right to judge any woman who was
mad with grief, as this one was. He went to her, to try and get her
away, and something in her attitude made the suspicion in him die down
again. Lady Levallion was crouched close to the dead man’s breast,
pressed to him as a child in trouble to its mother. Whatever she meant
to be silent about it was not any guilt of her own. For, as if it were
her only refuge, she was clutching Levallion’s body.

“Come to your brother,” said Houghton softly. “Come away.”

“I only want Levallion,” she said very pitifully. “He was kind to me,”
in the old parrot cry. “Let me stay with him.”

The man nodded, because he could not speak. In spite of himself he was
assured that even if Lady Levallion got up at the inquest, and swore
that she herself had killed her husband, it would not be true.

“I wish I’d died for him,” she said, with a strange involuntary turning
to the man who a moment ago had judged her. And Houghton believed her.

In the silence he shivered, for the chill of death, as well as morning,
was in the great room. He had had a hard night’s work and no sleep, but
he could not go and leave Lady Levallion. Any chance comer might hear
her say something senseless, might retail it at the inquest.

“Why did you bring him here?” she cried suddenly. “This awful room--he
was alive here only a little while ago.”

“It seemed best.” The man could not say that one reason was lest he
should disturb her by taking Levallion to his own room, so that she
came in and saw him before he was made ready for his coffin; the other,
that here the jury would more easily view the body. He thanked God she
had not got here before he carried Levallion back from that bare table
in the justice-room, that she had no thought of what had been done
there.

“You must come with me,” he said, and for the first time she looked at
him.

“You care!” she said sharply. “Oh, I thought there was no one who cared
but me--and Tommy! And I never cared till to-night. God knows I’d sell
my soul to have him back--even to know what he would like me to do.”

“Tell the truth!” said Houghton involuntarily, and saw freezing terror
in her eyes for the second time that night.

Her answer was absent, curious.

“I’ve nothing to tell. In my inmost soul I believe, I will believe,
I’ve nothing to tell. Oh, if I’d only made you happy, perhaps----”

“Look at his face,” said Houghton simply.

But she barely heard him.

Once more she drew to her breast--now that it was too late for the man
who had longed for her love to feel it--the face she had never held
there in life. With anguish she kissed the shut eyes--for there are
two kinds of love in a woman’s heart, and if she had given one utterly
to Adrian Gordon, it was the other, that is best and highest, that was
Levallion’s now. If she cared this hour whether Adrian Gordon lived or
died it was not for his own sake so much as Levallion’s.

“Good-by,” she whispered. “I’ll never see you again. You were too good
for a little fool like me. And if I’ve brought you here, I’ll pay for
it.”

She took no more heed of Houghton than if he had been a stick or a
stone, as she let him follow her to where Celeste waited in the hall.
But though Doctor Houghton went to bed the thoughts in his mind kept
the sleep he needed away.




CHAPTER XXVI.

TRIFLES LIGHT AS AIR.


“The last jury on earth he would have wanted!”

Doctor Houghton looked at the country neighbors whom the very irony of
fate had assuredly brought together as jurors at the inquest on the
death of Lord Levallion. He had systematically neglected or despised
them all, and there was not a man among them who really wondered at the
tragic ending of a man who had been so notoriously unpopular. Since not
one of them owed either benefit or injury to Levallion they should give
a strictly impartial verdict, Houghton thought, as he was sworn; yet it
had struck a curious anger in him when, as they viewed the body, not
one of them had said “poor Lady Levallion;” and he realized that the
whole county thought her a victim to a loveless marriage.

He was apparently the first witness; and, stripped of its
technicalities, the gist of his evidence was that the late Lord
Levallion had certainly been poisoned with some form of prussic acid in
the liqueur he drank. The post-mortem left no doubt of anything but the
precise form in which the poison was administered.

“Some one, any one, might have been in his dressing-room during the
evening,” he finished slowly. “I found this in the door, caught in the
lock,” producing his little rag of tweed, “but I am afraid it is no
clue; for the stuff is familiar to me, and was very likely a suit of
Levallion’s own, which he might have worn that afternoon. Any thought
of suicide is out of the question!” sharply, as a juror murmured
something. “Lord Levallion was the last man to do such a thing. He was
a man of very superior intellect, and was, of late, supremely happy.”

He did not notice that a girl was sitting in a dark corner behind him
as he stepped down from the witness-stand, and stood where the face of
each fresh witness would be clearly seen. For the servants were called
in, and one by one dismissed as useless.

All of them had been sitting in the servants’ hall when Sir Thomas
Annesley’s dog had come through there as if it were mad, and run
all round the room and thence into the kitchen; where a terrified
scullery-maid let it out.

Mrs. Briggs, the housekeeper, almost inaudible for nervous weeping, had
heard nothing till told his lordship was dying. She had been sitting in
her own parlor with Carrousel, the cook, who had a toothache. He was
with her when the dreadful news came.

“No, neither of us,” she sobbed, “had ever left the room. I was dozing
by the fire, he was walking up and down. No”--again--“it was impossible
the chef should have left the room and come back without my knowledge.”

Carrousel came next, a tall man with a short, dark beard, and very blue
eyes. He was neatly dressed in a black coat and gray trousers, and
looked most unlike a cook.

On being sworn and interrogated, he shook his head.

“I can tell you nothing, monsieur,” he said. “I was not well; my teeth
were aching; I walked the floor in the housekeeper’s room. I heard
nothing.”

“What time did you go there?”

“At ten o’clock. At twenty minutes past eleven they came and told me
his lordship was dying.” His florid face paled a little.

One juror asked if he had not heard Sir Thomas’ dog barking in the
kitchen.

“No, monsieur,” respectfully. “The housekeeper’s room is some distance
from the kitchen. I heard no noise. I was glad to sit by the fire,
perhaps to doze. It was as well, perhaps. I have had no sleep since.
Milord was an excellent patron to me. He understood eating.”

There was a listless detachedness in his voice, as of a stranger who is
utterly apart from his surroundings.

“What did you serve his lordship for dinner?” the coroner said suddenly.

“It was not that which killed him,” Carrousel returned gravely; “since
the whole society partook of the same plates. My cooking does not give
even an indigestion, much less death. Monsieur does not mean that he
suspects me?” patiently.

“You are here to answer, not ask,” Doctor Aston returned coldly. And
with an extraordinary knowledge of cooking and flavoring and accidental
poisoning, he asked question after question of the chef, fruitlessly.
The man quietly, without anger, cleared himself. It was impossible that
he could have tampered with any portion of the dinner, since every one
of his four kitchen-maids had seen it all prepared. As for any of his
almond flavoring--which in sufficient quantity was poisonous--having
been put into the bottle which killed Lord Levallion, almond flavoring
was a thing for small pastry cooks. When he required it he used
almonds, of which his lordship was very fond. He had in his possession
absolutely nothing with a smell of bitter almonds, which could have
been stolen and added to the bottle to hide some other taste.

The jury stirred impatiently--there had been no question of poison
in the dinner--till it suddenly occurred to them that from the
coroner’s minute questions Carrousel had been obliged to account for
every instant of his time from six o’clock till twenty minutes past
eleven. If there had been any juggling with bottles in Levallion’s
dressing-room, the busy cook could have had no hand in it; for the
kitchen-maids’ evidence tallied with his.

Carrousel stood an instant, as if watching for a question that did not
come.

“You can stand down,” said the coroner, and for one second the cook’s
listlessness vanished. There was relief in his face, as of a man who
has patiently despatched a disagreeable duty.

The butler succeeded him, and, having charge of the cellar, was all but
turned inside out with questions, the result of which was that there
had been absolutely no other bottle of Eau de Vie Magique in the house,
which could have been poisoned and substituted for Lord Levallion’s
own, nor had he ever seen, or heard of, such a liqueur in his life.
There was no doubting his honesty, nor his distress about his master’s
death.

Levallion’s own man was called--the only old servant in the house. He
did not look particularly honest--Levallion had more opinion of brains
than honesty, perhaps--but Houghton thought, perhaps erroneously, that
he was the only clever witness they had had so far; and the first who
would not be content with clearing himself, but determined to find out
the murderer.

“My name, sir? John Lacy,” he said, his hard, light eyes taking in
every face in the jury, with as much scorn for their capacity as
Levallion could have had. “I have been with his lordship ten years.”

“Did you ever see the bottle of liqueur with which Lord Levallion was
poisoned?”

“I don’t know,” quietly. “I saw the bottle of Eau de Vie Magique which
he kept in his dressing-room. It was given to him this summer by a
gentleman in Aix.”

“Do you mean it was taken away and another substituted?”

“I couldn’t say that, sir. But I know the liqueur was all right last
night at seven o’clock, for Sir Thomas Annesley came up to my master’s
room with him, and his lordship made him drink a glass of it before my
eyes. Sir Thomas seemed very down, and as if he wanted to speak about
something. But his lordship put him off.”

A little rustle of interest ran along the jurors’ bench.

“Then if it was Lord Levallion’s own liqueur he drank, you contend it
was poisoned during the evening?”

“I’m certain of it, sir.”

“Did Lord Levallion to your knowledge possess any poison?”

“No!” said Lacy flatly. “If you mean he committed suicide, it’s out of
the question. His lordship was more contented than he had ever been in
his life--or since I knew him. Somebody gave it to him!”

“Was he on bad terms with any one?”

“Plenty of people!” calmly; “but none of them would be likely to do it.
I might about as well accuse her ladyship of doing it as sensibly as
any of the”--he stammered--“the others!”

“Do you mean Lord and Lady Levallion were not on good terms?” sharply.

“I didn’t mean to imply that, sir,” flushing. “I said, and I think,
Lord Levallion was more than happy. I never heard of any trouble
between the two, except that last night I did hear them having a few
words about going out or something, as I was passing through the hall.
But it was nothing at all, sir!” hastily. “I beg you don’t think I’m
insinuating anything against my lady.”

“Were you not in Lord Levallion’s dressing-room during the evening?”

“No, sir! I left it all neat, and was gone down-stairs almost as soon
as his lordship left the room. I never went to his dressing-room of an
evening till I was rung for.”

“You did not touch the bottle?”

“Yes, sir! I put it up on the shelf, and I scratched my hand on it for
about the tenth time. It was a rough-made, molded bottle, with a sort
of seam down each side, and time and again I’ve caught a scratch inside
my hand from that rough seam.”

“Were you alone in the room?”

“No, sir; his lordship’s second man was with me. It was not either of
us that tampered with the bottle.”

“Is that it?” The coroner pointed to some fragments of glass on a tray.

“I couldn’t say.” Lacy fingered each scrap slowly; none were bigger
than a shilling. He looked up suddenly. “In my opinion it isn’t!” he
said. “But you will understand that in the state the bottle is it can
be only my opinion. I wouldn’t like to swear to it, but I think it. All
I can say is that it is bits of glass and label which might be the one
that was in the dressing-room. I wouldn’t swear it was the same.”

“Will you swear it is not?” sharply.

Lacy took the fragments and dust of paper-labeled glass to the light;
went over each bit with the seeing fingers of a blind man, as well as
faultless eyesight.

“It’s not the same bottle,” he said, after what seemed an hour.
“There’s a pink smear on the label. His lordship’s bottle, when I left
it, was clean.”

“That does not prove it a different bottle,” judicially. “Only perhaps
that some one touched it.”

“To the best of my belief,” returned Lacy doggedly, “that is not his
lordship’s bottle. I can’t find the seam on any of the pieces.”

“Or in the dust,” said a juror scathingly.

But Lacy stuck to his opinion and was let go. For some reason, and to
Houghton’s wonder, the coroner never mentioned that rag of tweed.

A frightened footman took his place, who had taken coffee to the ladies
after dinner.

“Were all the ladies in the room then?” asked Aston.

“Yes, that is--no, sir! I took in coffee and a note for her ladyship,”
stammering, “and she gets up and leaves the room and Lady Gwendolen
Brook after her.”

“With her,” the coroner half-corrected.

“Just as you say, sir,” abjectly. “I’d got out in the hall with my tray
when Lady Gwendolen come out and run up-stairs after her ladyship.”

“Oh!” said the coroner quietly; “you can go.”

He called Lady Gwendolen for the next witness, and Houghton’s mouth
tightened.

He remembered how the women had stood when he arrived, how aloof, how
ironical. If he were not mistaken, the drama would begin with the new
witness.




CHAPTER XXVII.

THE EVIDENCE IN THE CASE.


Lady Gwendolen Brook, darkly handsome, exquisitely ready, even to her
hat, to leave Levallion Castle the first possible instant, took the
oath with a fastidious wonder as to where the little crowd of servants
had kissed the book.

It was quite exciting to be a witness; she felt aggrieved that the
jury were all “country frumps,” who might not appreciate the charming
picture she was making as she answered a few innocuous questions.
Presently she would give a dramatic recital of Levallion’s dreadful,
staggering fall as he drank the liqueur his wife had brought him. But
the gently spoken coroner suddenly put drama out of her head.

“Did you go to your room when you left the drawing-room last night
after dinner?” he said mildly.

Terror caught Lady Gwendolen by the throat. Did the man dare to think
it was she who had been to Levallion’s room to poison him?

“No!” she said sharply, angrily. “I went after Lady Levallion, to--to
ask if anything was the matter.”

“Why did you think anything was the matter--and how far did you go
after her?”

The second question made her ready to say anything to clear
herself--from what was not in any one’s mind but her own.

“I went to the head of the stairs outside her room,” she said, “and she
shut her door as I got there. I stood a minute in an open doorway, and
she ran past me in a cloak and hat--as I thought she would,” flurriedly.

“Why did you think it? And did you come down then? Did any one see what
you did, or where you went?”

Lady Gwendolen glanced wildly round the room as if for some one who
might prompt her. Jimmy Scarsdale had told her to hold her tongue
if she had to go on the stand, but Jimmy had not known this horrid
coroner would suspect her. She caught Houghton’s hard blue eyes, and
her last remnant of self-control left her.

“No, nobody!” she cried. “But if you think I went to Lord Levallion’s
dressing-room, I can show you I didn’t. I went after Lady Levallion
for fun, and to see if I could find out what her little game was. She
dropped a card--a torn card--at breakfast-time, and I picked it up; and
gave it for fun to Levallion. It had on it, ‘I’ll come back to-night.
Meet me,’ and I knew there was some lark on, I had almost forgotten
it, when Lady Levallion got a note in the drawing-room after dinner.
She was standing beside me, and she crumpled it all up in a hurry. She
said to herself, quite loud, ‘I’ll have to go,’ and she flew out of the
room.”

“All this has nothing to do with your movements, has it?” queried the
coroner politely.

“Everything!” She was what Lacy called “utterly rattled” and
frightened. “I thought Lady Levallion was going to slip out and meet--a
man--and I thought what a huge joke it would be on Levallion, who
had suddenly grown so domestic. When Lady Levallion passed me in her
outdoor things I ran to the turn of the stairs to see where she went.
And I heard Levallion come out of the dining-room and stop her. They
fought like cats and dogs, and I dared not go down till they moved. As
soon as they did I ran back to the drawing-room. I can tell you every
word they said if you like. I never heard him in such a temper. And he
had been annoyed all day, ever since I gave him that card.”

Houghton’s head was buzzing like a sawmill. There had been trouble,
then, of which he knew nothing. But he could not make it fit with that
memory of Lady Levallion’s face as she clung to the dead man. The
coroner’s voice steadied him to clear attention.

“Why did you give the card you found to Lord Levallion instead of his
wife? And how did you know it was hers?”

“Because I saw her drop it!” she answered the second question first, as
women do. “I gave it to Levallion for amusement, to see what he would
do. He had grown so very married and dull, and stuck his wife on such a
pedestal over us all, that I wanted to give him a jar. He told me with
all the air in the world that there was no one like her, and I wanted
to see if he meant it. I knew he must have heard every word she said
one night in the greenhouse to Captain Gordon about marrying him if
Levallion died. Colonel Scarsdale and I saw him----” She stopped. Jimmy
would throw her over for this, bag and baggage, and she needed him just
now. But the thing was beyond Jimmy’s jurisdiction already.

“Be good enough to say what you mean, clearly. You saw whom?”

“I saw Levallion moving away behind some orange-trees one night in the
conservatory. Captain Gordon and Lady Levallion were talking and he was
listening. They didn’t know he was there.”

“How do you know he was listening?”

“Because I heard some one behind me where I was sitting and I knew it
was not Captain Gordon and Lady Levallion, who were just in front of
us. I looked through the flowers and saw Levallion. He must have heard
every word they said. We did!”

“Who do you mean by we?”

“Colonel Scarsdale,” crossly. “He heard, too. He can say what he likes,
but he did!” for Jimmy would have to back her up now. This man meant to
know just why she had taken enough interest in Lady Levallion’s doings
to follow her. Otherwise she could not prove by any earthly means that
it was not she who had been prowling round Levallion’s dressing-room.

“Colonel Scarsdale will answer for himself,” slowly. “For just a few
moments more I must trouble you, Lady Gwendolen. Were you in the
conservatory by accident, or a thirst for amusement?”

“Accident--I don’t know,” she stammered. “Lady Levallion and Captain
Gordon had left the room where we were dancing, and they were gone for
such ages that they kept us waiting for supper. I went partly to get
cool, and partly to see if they were there.”

“And stayed to listen to their conversation?”

“I couldn’t get out,” angrily. “You don’t understand! They were on one
side of me and Levallion was standing still on the other. I could hear
his heart beat and his shirt-front creak. I couldn’t go past either
him or his wife.”

“Did what you heard repay you for your forced stay?”

“It was just the tail end of a silly flirtation,” viciously, “if that
is what you mean! Rubbish about her having to forget, and not being
able to get rid of Levallion to please him. And something about sending
Captain Gordon back a ring.”

“Yet you were sufficiently interested to listen.”

Lady Gwendolen shrugged her shoulders.

“It was interesting enough,” she said. “He said that in old times he
would have----” She stopped, her very blood seemed to stop in her; her
callous heart to turn over with horror. If she told what Gordon said,
and it was true, she was putting a rope round his neck. The thought
made even Gwendolen Brook sick.

“He would have what?”

“I won’t tell you!” she gasped.

“I am afraid you have no choice,” said the coroner quietly; and the
jury whispered together.

“He said in old times”--it was like dragging out every reluctant
word--“he would have poisoned Levallion, but now he could only go away.
I know he didn’t mean it!” wretchedly; “it was just flirtation.”

“Flirtation is apparently an elastic word,” Doctor Aston said dryly.
“Is that all?”

Lady Gwendolen had vices in plenty, but her blood and breeding went
against lying. She thought of her oath, of the Bible she had kissed,
of--and this went home--how useless it would be to perjure herself when
Jimmy Scarsdale might certainly give her away.

“I forget,” she gasped. But the coroner had seen her stop another
sentence on her tongue.

“I am very sorry, you naturally hesitate,” he said--and even Houghton
was not sure whether he was earnest or sarcastic--“but I must have the
whole, if you please.”

“Well, then, he said would she marry him if Levallion died!” defiantly.
“It meant nothing. I know a woman who gave a man a note about the same
thing. ‘I, so and so, promise that on the death of my husband I will
marry you, so and so, within a year.’ But, of course, she won’t do it!”

The jury gasped. They were not smart, but estimable county magnates who
were not accustomed to playing with the Ten Commandments.

Lady Gwendolen misunderstood the gasp, and rushed further into the mire.

“Of course I don’t wonder Captain Gordon was excited,” she cried
valiantly. “He was Levallion’s heir till his marriage, and the nurse
who looked after him while he was ill here told my maid that Lady
Levallion had been engaged to Adrian Gordon when she married Levallion!
The nurse heard them----”

“I think that is enough hearsay,” said Aston quickly. “You can step
down.”

“Cannot I go? Must I stay here?” with a disconcerted glance at the
roomful of servants.

“I must ask you to take a chair,” said the coroner absently.

“But you can’t want me any more!” wide-eyed. “You see, surely, that it
was only because I wanted to see if Lady Levallion was going out to
meet Captain Gordon that I went up-stairs after her.”

“Why did you think she had gone to meet him? He had gone to London.”

“Because the card said, ‘I’ll come back to-night’ and ‘meet me’; it was
signed A. G. What else could I think? But it was all silly nonsense.
You can’t think any of it had to do with----” But she did not finish
the sentence. Vain, heartless, empty-headed woman that she was,
Gwendolen Brook saw suddenly what her foolish evidence had done. She
had made a fool of herself, had brought Jimmy Scarsdale and herself
into a nice mess--and Jimmy would half-kill her. Of the anything but
nice mess in which she had involved her hostess she would not think.
She began to cry from terror and humiliation.

Monsieur Carrousel moved quietly forward from among the servants, and
handed pretty, foolish Lady Gwendolen Brook a chair.

Colonel Scarsdale came in stolidly, and when he saw Gwendolen’s face
hidden in her ring-laden hands was stolid no longer.

“She made an ass of herself!” he thought swiftly, and wondered what the
devil he was to do.

He pulled at his mustache as the questions began; he had no wish to be
mixed up in the thing, but, on the other hand, if Lady Levallion had
poisoned her husband--as he honestly thought she had--she could clear
herself. Downright lies, too, would be no use if Gwendolen had told all
she thought; which was probable, since she would not look at him.

“Will you be good enough to tell us what you heard one evening in the
conservatory?” said the coroner, blandly, and Scarsdale made up his
mind.

“There were so many evenings in the conservatory,” he said slowly, “I
don’t remember any particular one.”

Lady Gwendolen’s hands dropped from her face. Was Jimmy going to fail
her?

“On this particular evening you had danced. You went into the
conservatory to wait for supper. Did you hear any conversation, or know
that any one was there?”

“I heard a couple of people talking. I didn’t listen.”

“How near were they?”

“I couldn’t tell you. It was not very light.”

“Did you, on your oath, recognize the voices?”

“I couldn’t swear to them. One man’s voice is very like another’s when
he whispers.”

“Did you know the woman’s voice?”

“I thought at the time it was Lady Levallion, but I supposed she had a
right to be in her own conservatory.”

“In fact, you recognized her voice?”

“I may have imagined it.”

“Did you hear what the man said to her?”

“I heard the usual conservatory love-making,” calmly. “I couldn’t
repeat any of it.”

“Yet the lady with you heard distinctly!”

“Women have quicker ears,” hastily.

“Did you hear anything said about what might be done if Lord Levallion
died?”

“Yes,” said Scarsdale slowly. “But a man in love is no more accountable
than one in drink.”

“Did you hear Lady Levallion’s answer?”

“No! She whispered something, if it were she.”

“Was there any one else in the conservatory, to your knowledge?”

“There was some one behind us. I don’t know who it was.”

“Was it Lord Levallion?”

“I couldn’t say,” sensibly, “I certainly did not either see him or hear
him speak. I knew there was some one, but it might have been two people
for all I know. Levallion was in the picture-gallery with the others
when I got back. They were just going down to supper.”

“Was Lady Levallion there?”

“No! She was standing just inside the dining-room door when we went
down to supper. She was alone.”

“Is that all you can recall of the evening?”

“I think so. There was nothing to stamp it on my mind. Sir Thomas
Annesley’s dog ate some soup and was sick,” insolently. “I saw that at
supper.”

“Who gave him the soup?”

“Levallion. No one else took any,” slowly, struck for the first time
with the thought that there might have been a reason for Mr. Jacobs’
indisposition.

“Did you, from that evening, see any cause to take an interest in the
movements of Lady Levallion and Captain Gordon?”

“I suppose we all laughed a little at Levallion letting them flirt
under his nose. But they scarcely spoke to each other in public
afterward.”

“In that case, then, it was common talk that he overheard them in the
greenhouse?”

“People talk of anything in the country.”

But his half-truths had done more harm than good, except to get him
out of any further connection with the distasteful business. A juror
whispered something to the coroner; and Sir Thomas Annesley was called.

The boy’s brown face was thin and haggard. He had no thought of
where suspicion might go, but he had an honest misery in him because
Levallion lay dead upstairs. There was a moment’s diversion as Mr.
Jacobs, who came in with him, growled and bristled so fiercely that he
had to be removed.

“It’s Carrousel! The dog hates him,” said Sir Thomas angrily, as some
one said something about a “vicious brute.” “The dog is as kind as
milk.”

“Why does he hate unoffending people, then?” inquired the coroner, who
detested dogs.

“Oh! Carrousel was always hanging round where Levallion and my sister
could see him, and I suppose Jacobs knew they didn’t like it. I don’t
know any other reason.”

Monsieur Carrousel looked unjustly injured.

“Pardon, messieurs!” he cried, “but it never occurred to me until
milord said so, that it was forbidden for me to take the air on his
estate.”

“You kept on taking it, all the same,” said Tommy angrily. “I believe
it was you poisoned my dog, too!”

The coroner hushed him sharply.

“What do you mean about your dog being poisoned?”

“I mean Levallion did not eat his soup one night at supper and gave it
to Jacobs,” grimly. “The dog was sick, and I worked over him all night.
The vet. said it was prussic acid, and I thought he might have eaten
meat poisoned for poachers’ dogs, but I don’t think so now. I think it
was the soup that Levallion didn’t taste.”

Carrousel turned livid with fury.

“It was not poisoned in my kitchen, then!” he shouted. “Ask who was in
the dining-room before the other guests, first!”

“Another word and you leave the room,” said Aston quietly. “Sir Thomas,
are you convinced that poisoned soup was meant for Lord Levallion?”

“Since he was poisoned last night, I am,” grimly. “It was a
twenty-to-one chance against his giving it to my dog. Levallion had
soup every night.”

“Who do you think poisoned it?” bluntly.

“I don’t know. But I do know that there was a strange woman hanging
round outside the house that night, for Levallion and I both saw her.
He was angry because she was spying in the greenhouse, and he went
there to try and pounce on her. I think he knew who she was.”

“Do you mean she could have got in and put poison in Lord Levallion’s
soup? It sounds impossible.”

“Not when you know that they were having a sort of masquerade in the
house!” valiantly. “All the women were wearing black masks and had
their heads tied up in black rags. Any one might have walked in, for
the doors were all open, and all the plates of soup were standing ready
on the dining-table because we kept supper waiting. Any one who’d
looked in the window enough to know where Levallion sat could have
easily doctored his soup.”

“But the servants would hardly have let them?” incredulously.

The butler asked permission to speak, a ray of hope in his face.

“If you please, your honor, Sir Thomas is right,” he said. “After
placing the soup on the table I went to announce supper, and sent
the other men off to attend to various things, so that, when I got
back five minutes after, the room was empty. I didn’t wonder his
lordship did not eat his soup, for it was cold and uninviting-looking.
Her ladyship waited quite another five minutes for the party at the
dining-room door.”

“Her ladyship--Lady Levallion--was in the dining-room when you got
back?” evenly.

“No, sir! but outside the door,” respectfully.

But for one long instant Sir Thomas Annesley stood speechless with rage
and surprised horror. Would they dare to think it was Ravenel who had
done it?




CHAPTER XXVIII.

“I SAW--NO ONE!”


“No one dares to insinuate,” he broke out the second he got his breath,
“that----”

“No,” said the coroner quietly. “Be good enough, Sir Thomas, to tell
just what you saw of this woman outside. Did you observe her on that
occasion only?”

“I saw her the next night. I followed her from the garden into the
park. She was sitting on a rock in the moonlight, drinking champagne
with a man. I couldn’t see her face, nor his; but she was wearing an
evening cloak and I thought she was a lady. My dog went for the man,
but he missed him----” He stopped something on the end of his tongue,
as if he remembered there was no need to tell more than he was asked.

“Your dog appears to be ubiquitous!” dryly. “Did you know the man?”

The room was breathless with interest. Every soul in it, except
Carrousel, leaned forward; but the question had apparently small
interest for the cook.

“The man,” said Sir Thomas unwillingly, “was, to the best of my belief,
Captain Gordon, though I thought him in bed at the castle. Levallion
said he’d gone to bed, as he was leaving early in the morning.”

And if he had known the deadly gist of his evidence taken with Lady
Gwendolen’s, he would have perjured himself ten times over.

“The woman was no one of the house-party? You are sure?” searchingly.

“She was a stranger, as far as I could tell. All the other women were
in the drawing-room but my sister, and she and Levallion went in there
while I was hanging out of the hall window watching the woman in the
garden.”

“You are sure it was Captain Gordon in the wood?”

“I would be, but for one thing. My dog was furious when he saw him, and
he was fond of Gordon. I thought afterward perhaps it was some one
stouter than Gordon, but dressed like him.”

“How was he dressed?”

“In a Norfolk jacket and loose knickerbockers. I saw them against the
moonlight.”

“You say Lord Levallion seemed to know who the woman was?”

Tommy nodded.

“I’m sure he did! He said afterward that it must have been a
kitchen-maid; but maids don’t wear trains and long evening cloaks.
I meant to tell him I’d seen her again, but when I went to his
dressing-room last night before dinner he wouldn’t talk. And I drank
some of that liqueur that he died of four hours afterward. It was all
right then!”

The coroner nodded, knowing it already.

“I won’t trouble you any more,” he said. “Except to ask you if you
would know that mysterious woman if you saw her again?”

Even Carrousel waited for the answer.

“I don’t know,” reluctantly. “I’d know her if she wore those clothes,
but I never saw her face. Only I’m sure that she had something to do
with the thing.”

“You were not in the house at the death of your brother-in-law, I
think?”

“I ran out the back way after Jacobs. I thought he was after the cook,
and I tore up-stairs and then down and outside till I found Jacobs,
trying to get back into the house again. Then I sent for you, as soon
as I found out what had happened.”

Tommy moved to Houghton’s side as one after one the house-party came
in, and had, except Lord Chayter, to acknowledge that they had all
heard and talked of Lady Levallion’s flirtation with her husband’s
cousin. Houghton laid a quick hand on his shoulder, for the boy was
livid with fury and outraged pride. Each guest in Levallion’s house had
given his or her version of his wife’s flirtation with Adrian Gordon,
come by either from sight or hearsay; of Levallion’s knowledge of it;
of his quarrel with his wife half an hour before he died.

“My God!” whispered Tommy, half-choked. “Do they mean----”

“Hush! Wait!” said Houghton, in his ear. “There is only Chayter left.”

And Lord Chayter, to Tommy’s surprise, had other things to say. To
his knowledge, and Lady Levallion’s, some one had been in the habit
of spying round the house after dark. He had twice seen a face at the
dining-room window, and had once pointed it out to Lady Levallion.
Had also told Lord Levallion, who said it was nonsense. But Lord
Chayter was of the opinion that Levallion had not meant what he said.
“There were plenty of people, men and--well, more especially women, if
you like! who had a grudge against Levallion.” (With which the jury
agreed.) “In my opinion that loiterer was probably one of them,” ended
Lord Chayter abruptly. “That’s what it seems to me.”

And Sir Thomas could have hugged the ugly little man. Aston called the
last witness.

The room was packed by this time. Every one in the house but the
boot-boy being in it, and no one had remembered him. Alone, through the
silent, deserted house, Lady Levallion came to the shut door of the
library, and, as if she saw none of the familiar faces, walked into the
hot, close room.

She wore the coarse, blue serge Houghton had seen her in at dawn.
Levallion had hated black. She had not a black gown to wear, and did
not care. White as wax she took the oath, and, stony-eyed, faced the
coroner. But she had to try three times before she could answer the
first question.

“Yes,” she said huskily, “it was I who went to my husband’s room for
that bottle of liqueur.”

“Before that,” said the coroner unexpectedly, “what had you been doing?”

“I was down in the hall talking up to him. I wanted to go out and
he would not let me. He was annoyed with me because of something he
imagined, till I told him why I wanted to go out.”

“Why was it?”

“A woman whom I had known was dying. She sent for me. I showed
Levallion her letter, and he said we would both go after the others had
gone to bed.”

“He was not annoyed, then?”

“Oh, no!” lifelessly.

“Why had he thought you wished to go out?”

“I dropped a card with some writing on it. Levallion thought it
referred to last night, whereas it was one I never got, and four months
old.”

“How did it reach you, then?”

“My stepmother’s maid had it. It was she who was dying and wanted to
explain something to me that I knew already.”

“What--exactly?”

“I don’t think I need say. It concerned,” she twisted her hands hard
together, “no one but me and Levallion,” she finished unexpectedly.

“Was it the card, a four-months’-old card, that was taking you out?”

“No. The woman who sent it to me was dying, and wrote me two letters
begging me to come to her that night and let her tell me something
before it was too late. She had behaved badly to me. She was sorry.”

“And Lord Levallion would not allow it?”

“On the contrary, he was going to take me, but----” she could not
finish. With a sharp breath, an uncontrollable passion, she cried
out: “Oh! Doctor Aston, I think, now that I’ve had time to think,
that perhaps the woman knew something, knew some one meant to poison
Levallion. That it was that which made her send for me. And I didn’t
go. I can’t forgive myself that I didn’t go!”

“Where are her letters?”

“I can’t”--Carrousel looked really affected--“I can’t find them. I
thought Levallion had them. Weren’t they in his pocket?”

“No. They have never been heard of till now. But I can easily send for
the woman.”

“She died last night,” said Lady Levallion slowly. “Some one must have
her letters. Some one might have picked them up when--he fell.” The
last two words seemed to choke her.

But not a soul in Levallion Castle had seen those letters.

“Lord Levallion was annoyed about a card?” the coroner barked back
obstinately.

“A card I never got, about something that was over long ago,” bravely.
“That card referred to last May. Some one had told Levallion it was
last night. I told him the truth--and he believed me. Whatever that
card had to do with me once, it was not now.”

“Then you were on good terms with Lord Levallion when he sent you for
that liqueur?”

“On better terms than ever in my life,” hardly able to answer.

“Describe what you did when you left the drawing-room.”

“I went straight to Levallion’s dressing-room. I took the bottle off a
shelf and I thought it felt warm in my hands, like a ring some one has
been wearing. And then my brother’s dog, who was with me, barked and
startled me. I nearly dropped the bottle. I wish I had!”

“What did he bark at?”

Lady Levallion swayed where she stood.

“I don’t know,” she muttered. “I--he flew at the door and banged it as
he jumped against it. I--I--thought”--Carrousel put a hand to his mouth
as if to hide his pity for his mistress--“I thought it must be a cat
in the hall. I caught Jacobs by the collar and he got away from me and
tore back through my rooms and out into the hall.”

Some one who had no business there, since he had not been called as a
witness, had come softly in behind her, but where he stood could see
her face plainly in a mirror. The face he knew every line and curve of,
just as he knew every tone of Ravenel Levallion’s voice. Something in
both of them caught at his heart.

“Did you see the cat?”

“I saw no one, nothing,” said Lady Levallion deliberately. She looked
round the crowded room as though she were hunted, looked at the Bible
she had kissed but now. Her voice came suddenly to the waiting-room,
clear, unfaltering as a bugle. “I saw absolutely no one. No one!”

And Adrian Gordon, whom no one had noticed come in, knew she lied.

“What did you do then?”

“I ran back to the drawing-room. I was frightened to be there alone.
The dog had startled me. I never looked at the bottle, but when
Levallion said it smelled of almonds”--and Heaven knew where she got
her self-control to speak of it quietly--“I tried to stop his drinking
it. I remembered it was almond soup that had poisoned my brother’s dog.”

Carrousel started furiously and then sat still. Lady Levallion might
say what she liked.

“Where were you the night the dog was poisoned?”

“At supper. But I never thought of its being the soup till it flashed
over me when Levallion spoke of the liqueur smelling of almonds. I
suppose it made me think of prussic acid.”

If she had sobbed, fainted, been interestingly weak, the jury might
not have sat so stolid. Each word she said was somehow setting them
to think it was a desperate woman who stood so quiet and yet so bold
before them.

“Before supper?” said the coroner slowly.

“I had been in the conservatory with Captain Gordon. He left me at
the dining-room door; he was not well and went to bed. I went into
the dining-room”--Houghton could have screamed at her to hold her
tongue--“and it was empty. I stood at the door and waited for the
others.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“You were alone in there, and alone in the dressing-room?” said the
coroner, after what seemed a year.

“Yes,” listlessly. And then the faces of the jury seemed suddenly to
leap into her eyes; live men, not automatons. She started, as if to
back away from the dreadful thing that was written in those faces. But
she stood dumb before them.

And every man of them thought it was the dumbness, the confession of
guilt.

The coroner held out a rag of tweed toward her.

“Did you ever see a suit of clothes of this stuff?” he said. “Had Lord
Levallion one?”

There was that desperate terror in her eyes now that Houghton knew. She
looked from the jury to the coroner and back again.

“I don’t think he had,” she gasped. “I would not know.”

“Did you ever see a suit like them?”

“I--never--saw--one,” said Ravenel Levallion, white-lipped.

Sir Thomas Annesley caught Houghton’s hand and pointed to Adrian
Gordon, dressed in that very tweed, thread for thread; and standing as
if he were turned to stone.




CHAPTER XXIX.

“WILFUL MURDER.”


Sickened, helpless, Adrian Gordon had stood, indeed, for the last five
minutes, as a man who comes on some awful bit of cruelty he cannot
stop. Ravenel’s hunted face, her desperate eyes, her answers about
seeing no one--that instinct told him was a lie--paralyzed him with
sick astonishment.

They were baiting her like a helpless beast, justly enough if they were
right. But every drop of his blood knew they were wrong. And she was
not defending herself, was not telling all she knew; for he knew what
that veiled look in her eyes meant. He had seen it before, when her
thoughts were one thing and her words another.

“Think, Lady Levallion,” said the coroner earnestly, “for even if you
saw no one in Lord Levallion’s dressing-room, some one might have been
there! This rag of tweed was caught in the door, in the box of the
door-latch.”

“I don’t know it,” was all she said. “I didn’t see any one.”

Something like a flash of lightning went through Adrian Gordon’s brain.
She knew it well enough, since it was a suit he had worn that May that
was dead and gone--not that very suit he was wearing. She had seen some
one, and was lying because she knew the clothes they wore. He strode
into the middle of the room, tall, strong, blackly angry.

“Be good enough to put me on the stand,” he cried roughly, for she
should lie no more for so inconceivable a suspicion; to defend a man
who had been miles away. “And look at my clothes, if you want to know
where that rag came from!”

Lady Levallion caught her breath, stared at him with narrowed eyes,
and, without a word, slipped like water to the floor. But he never even
seemed to see, never stirred, as Houghton came quickly forward and
took her to a sofa.

Gordon took the tweed scrap and held it against his coat.

“You see!” he said contemptuously. “Now, perhaps you will think I
poisoned my cousin! Fortunately, I was miles away that night, and with
half a dozen other men, who can tell you so.”

“Then I hardly see----” began the coroner.

“I will help you,” and every soul in the room saw the sudden likeness
to the dead Levallion as he spoke. “I was in London, but my clothes
weren’t. I had two suits exactly alike. I wore one of them down here
the day I was taken ill. They cut the coat off me, and when I got
better I sent up to town for the other coat, and my man sent me the
whole suit. I put it on and forgot about the other, with the cut coat.
And I’ve never seen it from that day to this. But”--and he tapped the
rag of tweed--“that came out of it. And that I can swear, for I spilt
something on it, and you can see the edge of the stain on this. It was
some one, dressed in my clothes, who caught their knickerbockers in
Levallion’s door, whether Lady Levallion saw them or not.” He laughed
coldly, as he saw that in spite of what he said the jury’s eyes were
glued to the knickerbockers he had on. “Some one stole those clothes,
perhaps you can tell me who!” he cried. “Till you find out that, it
might be as well to accuse no one.”

Houghton, bending over Lady Levallion in a distant corner, drew his
breath. He understood something now of that terror that had been on her.

“I wish to God she’d told me, instead of lying!” he thought, as he saw
her coming to. “They won’t believe one word he says now; for he can’t
prove it.”

Nor could he. Not a servant in the house had known anything about his
clothes. He had taken the second suit out of his box himself, and
shoved the spoiled suit in there; from whence, on going back to town,
he found it had vanished. The story was lame.

The coroner asked him a hundred questions that might have made any
woman flinch to hear, since her name came in each one. But Ravenel,
leaning sick and faint on Tommy’s shoulder, never winced. All that
bygone story of the card Adrian Gordon told. His face was set like
flint as he spoke.

“I don’t ask other men’s wives to meet me after dark,” he ended
contemptuously. “If the letters from that woman that prove it are lost,
there has been culpable negligence somewhere.”

When told Sir Thomas Annesley had seen him at night with a strange
woman in black, he looked round the room quietly, as if to see which
of the servants was like him in figure. But none was as tall, except
Carrousel, who was stouter, and had a beard.

“Sir Thomas was mistaken,” he said slowly. “But I do not doubt he saw
some one in my clothes. I was in my room. I know no woman with whom I
would go out.”

“To whose knowledge were you in your room?”

“Levallion’s. He came and sat with me.”

“Lord Levallion’s!” said Aston slowly, and deadly disbelief in a man
who could only call a dead witness crept into each juror’s soul.

Gordon shrugged his shoulder.

“Have you all gone mad?” he said coldly. “If I can’t prove I was in my
room when Sir Thomas thought he saw me, I can prove I was in town last
night. Just call my servant in, will you?”

And his man routed the jury, horse and foot. Captain Gordon had been
in his own rooms, playing cards with some other gentlemen, with whom
he had dined at the club. The man gave half a dozen names of men whose
word would be taken on their oath, or not. Carrousel sat listening,
with a curious scorn. It was all so different from his ideas of
justice; so short-sighted, so biased. He even smiled a little at the
foolish tale of those two suits of clothes, till Captain Gordon said
quietly that his tailor’s book could settle that question.

His sternness, his contempt for stupidity and foregone conclusions had
made the jury almost forget he had not been able to prove he was not
the man who had drunk champagne in the wood. But, as he stepped down,
the coroner recalled Lady Levallion; and she came, a living, breathing
woman now, instead of one of stone. Relief was in her eyes, in her very
hands, as they hung at her sides. But Houghton was looking like a man
distraught at the coroner’s face.

“You swear that you had no part nor lot in the poisoning of your
husband; that you saw no one in the dressing-room who could have put
poison into that bottle of liqueur, or changed it?”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “I swear I had no hand in it. That I tried,
even at the last minute, to save him.”

“Then,” said Doctor Aston slowly, “how did you come by these? A
housemaid found them this morning behind your window-curtains, in your
bedroom.”

He held out to her a bottle of Eau de Vie Magique, half-full, with a
rough seam running down each side of the bottle; a tiny flask full of
clear, faintly green liquid, that, as he uncorked it, smelled of bitter
almonds in the hot room.

Lacy started forward.

“That’s my lord’s bottle!” he cried. “I thought the other was not.”

“Exactly,” said the coroner. “And this is distilled laurel-water and
deadly poison. I analyzed it and gave some to a cat, which died in
three minutes, with every symptom of prussic-acid poisoning. Gentlemen
of the jury, we have heard all the evidence.”

“You shall hear me!” Lady Levallion’s face was on fire. “What do I
know about those bottles?--nothing but that they were put in my room
by some one. Find out who did that”--for, with that deadly conviction
gone from her mind, she could speak out, since that disappearing shadow
in Levallion’s dressing-room--a shadow that had been substance enough
to bang the door in Mr. Jacobs’ face, and run--had not been Adrian
Gordon--“and you may find out who murdered Levallion. It was not I, for
I would have died for him.”

Every man of the jury turned to look at her, but not one of them spoke.
To their stolid, conventional minds it seemed clear enough that she
and Gordon had had reason to wish Levallion out of the way, that the
poisoning was her work, an unhappy, probably rejected, girl, who had
been deceived into a marriage with a callous, heartless rake; that the
story of the second suit of clothes was a trumped-up fiction of her old
lover’s.

To the childish tale of the woman who had been seen looking in the
windows they paid no attention. Plenty of people would have been glad
to gape at the quality. One by one they filed out into the next room,
some pitying even while they judged; others, a wife who could kill her
husband like a dog, needed nothing but justice!

Lord Chayter moved to Lady Levallion’s side.

“My dear child,” he said nervously, “no one believes you did it,” but
he knew he lied.

She could not answer. She looked at the women who had eaten her bread,
and not one of them met her eyes; looked at Tommy, at Houghton, at
every soul but Adrian Gordon, who stood apart in futile anger against
every one, himself included.

“If it had not been for my alibi they would have thought I did it,” he
thought. “And now, because some one is too clever for them, they’re
putting it on her. On Nel!” the horror of it made him quiver from head
to foot. “And I swore myself clear like a fool! No wonder she won’t
look at me. I’d have been hanged before I did it, if I’d known! I wish
to God I’d got here at first,” and he turned his back flatly on a man
who was bold enough to come forward and greet him as Lord Levallion.

“Tommy,” said Houghton sharply, “take your sister away!” He moved to
Doctor Aston and laid a hand on his sleeve.

“Permit me to congratulate you on your methods of conducting an
inquest,” he said, and his low voice was furious. “You are responsible
for a damnably iniquitous thing if they commit her to trial. Where was
your housemaid who gave that fool’s evidence, and when did she give it?
Not here, for I was your first witness.”

“The second,” said Aston uncomfortably, knowing perfectly well that
to begin an inquiry with evidence like that was simply making all
subsequent testimony worthless, in nine cases out of ten. “The girl was
in the room when you entered it. There she is now!”

Houghton followed his eyes, and saw a pale, fat-faced girl turning to
follow her fellow servants from the room.

“Find the man who that anemic, hysterical fool is in love with before
you go far on her evidence!” he observed contemptuously. “Supposing it
true, which I don’t, you’d no right to begin the inquest with a biasing
fact like that. An astute man like you should know that much.”

“I had a right to conduct my inquest as I pleased!” hotly. “If you must
know, the girl was too terrified to speak before the other servants.
She came to me in floods of tears. I believe it cost her honest pain to
come at all.”

“Honest!” returned Houghton, as cold as the other was hot. “Thanks
to you and her----” He turned away without finishing. Because he was
convinced, without any reason except a dogged belief in Levallion’s
wife, that she was innocent, gave him no hope of upsetting the opposite
conviction of a pigheaded man like Aston.

He stood in silent, dogged endurance till, after an interminable time
of waiting, the jury filed in again. But the end of the chairman’s
speech made his heart turn over.

“Two attempts having been made to poison Lord Levallion, both of which
were in the power of one person only, your jury are compelled to find a
verdict of wilful murder against Lady Levallion.”

Houghton was poor; the wives and children of each juryman were his
patients; but he would not have cared if they had been kings and queens.

“Permit me to congratulate you on a crassly incapable jury,” he said to
the coroner. “And you, gentlemen, on a piece of hasty iniquity that I
pray you may never forget till your dying day.”

But his face was gray with despair as he went out before they could
answer him.




CHAPTER XXX.

A CLOUD OF BLOOD.


“Who’s to tell her?” Sir Thomas Annesley, Mr. Jacobs at his heels, came
flying into Levallion’s own den, where something told him Houghton
would be. But there was another man beside Houghton, and the boy drew
back at the sight of him, just as the man started forward.

“Why are you here? Haven’t you done mischief enough?” The young face
was dreadful with its pinched nostrils and red eyes. “If you’d never
come here, she’d never have come to this!”

“It’s true enough,” said Adrian Gordon grimly, as Houghton would have
hushed the lad. “But, before God, Tommy, I believe my being here had
nothing to do with it! I think you’ve got to look deeper than that for
Levallion’s death, and outside! It seems to me that my only share in
the business is to have made your sister a convenient scapegoat. And
God knows that’s black enough.”

Tommy Annesley hid his face in his hands, and the tears oozed through
his fingers.

“Don’t, lad, don’t!” said Houghton pitifully. “A coroner’s inquest
means very little. Please God, we’ll find out who did it, long before
the trial.”

“That’s just it,” hoarsely. “The trial! She’s got to stand up there
innocent, and have the--every one”--desperately--“think her guilty.
Can’t you see, Houghton, that every soul in the house has cleared
themselves but her?”

“Every soul outside hasn’t, though,” Gordon said slowly. “And any jury
but a set of prejudiced fools would have seen it.” He gently pushed
away Jacobs, who was slobbering at his knee.

“Do you mean you know any one who was likely to have done it--who hated
Levallion?” said Houghton bluntly.

“There were plenty,” answered Gordon, as Lacy had before him. “Who
knows who that woman was who was hanging about? Or the man Tommy
thought was I? And what became of those letters Lady Levallion thought
were in Levallion’s pocket? They’re a small thing, perhaps, but suppose
I hadn’t come down? Who was going to know that card of mine asking her
to meet me wasn’t written that very morning? Whoever took those letters
meant it to seem so,” emphatically.

“No one could have. Levallion--the body”--stammering--“was never left
alone till the coroner came.”

“It was!” Tommy lifted his tear-stained face. “Didn’t you know? When
the coroner came there wasn’t a soul in the room. You’d gone to
Ravenel, the others had cleared off to the smoking-room. It was I took
Aston in there, and the room was empty. Any one in the house might have
gone in there. The hall was full of people, but there are three other
doors to the drawing-room.”

“And any one out of it,” Gordon added obstinately. “Look here, Tommy,
how could you think it was I Jacobs flew at that night in the wood? See
him!” for Jacobs had lain down with his head on the speaker’s boot.

“It was the Norfolk jacket and the knickerbockers and the height,”
wretchedly. “The other men were in the drawing-room--none of the
servants were so tall--except Carrousel--and he has a beard! This man
had only a mustache. I saw the line of his chin when he stood up and
yelled.”

“As I should have been likely to yell on account of Jacobs!”
scornfully. “Why on earth didn’t you tell some one what you saw, Tommy?”

“I’d have only said it was you! I did try to tell Levallion, but the
second I spoke about the woman he shut me up. Lacy was there; Levallion
never talked before servants. Oh!” he broke off wildly, “what’s the
good of talking? Some one must go and tell Ravenel. Will they take
her--to jail--till the assizes?” A hard sob broke his words.

“I don’t know,” Houghton muttered. “Perhaps bail”--but he knew quite
well there was no bail for murder. He got up, for the boy was right.
Some one must tell Lady Levallion.

“Damn that housemaid!” he broke out fiercely, standing with his hand on
the door.

“Look here,” said Gordon quickly, “wait a moment. Don’t say anything
like that outside; don’t say a word to frighten any of the servants.”

“Why?” Houghton looked at him without too much favor. He had certainly
had nothing to do with the crime, but his stay in the house had every
day added one to the letters that spelled “murderess” after Lady
Levallion’s name.

“Because they’ve all given their evidence; they’re quite comfortable
about none of them being implicated. They’ll talk among themselves and
compare notes, and they may find out something. I sha’n’t allow one of
them to leave.”

Houghton realized suddenly that it was the new Lord Levallion who stood
before him.

“I forgot,” he said involuntarily, “you are master here now.”

“And I’d rather be a one-armed sandwich-man!” returned Adrian
Gordon, with a bitter glance at the injured arm that had kept him in
Levallion’s house. And the memory of that day brought back something;
the unknown woman who had come to see if he were dead. There was only
one woman in the world who could hope, however falsely, to gain by his
dying.

“Hester Murray!” he thought sharply. “But of all women on earth she
would be the least likely to be here. Levallion wouldn’t have had it.”
And yet the thought clung obstinately.

“I’ll find out,” he said aloud, and Tommy looked up where he sat wan
and exhausted.

“What?” he demanded. “I don’t see how any one can find out anything. We
know all anybody knows.”

“We know all some one chooses us to know,” hardly. “We’re not beaten
yet. Try and remember what that woman looked like whom Levallion told
you was a kitchen-maid.”

“How do I know?” wretchedly. “I only saw her twice; both times it was
dark. She had a cloak on with a hood, and was holding up a train. She
may live right under our noses.”

“All the same, she’s our only chance.”

He shivered, and stirred the fire. For if he were wrong and that
cloaked woman not Hester Murray, the chance was small. Beat his brains
as he would, he could think of no one else who might profit by the
death of Lord Levallion.

The clock struck six, and, like a blow, the sound struck on his heart,
making him forget everything but the girl up-stairs. Houghton must be
with her now; must be telling her what the jury had said. Houghton, an
absolute stranger--while the man who should have been her husband dared
not go near her; the man who should have sheltered her from all the
world could do nothing but sit helpless while some one else spoke the
very bitterest shame on earth in her ears.

“Nel, my Nel!” And if Adrian Gordon was silent, his spirits groaned
within him.

Sylvia Annesley and her schemes had come between them once; then
Levallion; and now, to the eyes of the world, a bar of blood they could
not pass.

“Blood between us; love, my love!” the man said silently, behind his
shut teeth. “Not while I’m alive or there’s a God above us. Somehow,
somewhere, I mean to find the truth that’s going to set you clear--and
clean! If I dare not go to you I can work for you; and if I can’t
comfort you”--unconsciously he raised his right hand as some men do
when they take an oath--“I’ll save you, if I have to take you out of
Newgate!”

He raised his eyes and saw Houghton had come back.

“Well?” he said thickly.

“Very ill.” Houghton cast himself into a chair as if he could do no
more. “She knew! That fool of a housemaid ran up screaming and told
her, begging her to forgive her--if they hanged her! The French maid
took the crazy fool by the ears and put her out. But----”

He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

“What’s she doing--Ravenel?” Tommy was on his feet, pale as Levallion
up-stairs.

“Nothing! Just sitting there like death. Go to her and see if you can
make her cry. I couldn’t make her even seem to hear me.”

As the door closed behind the boy, Houghton turned to Adrian.

“It was to say good-by I sent him,” he said drearily. “The warrant has
come to arrest her.”

“She sha’n’t go!” cried Gordon blackly; but he knew he was talking
nonsense.

“There’s no choice! To-morrow you may--if you move heaven and earth and
the stars in their course”--bitterly--“be able to bail her out again.”

He turned to the window because there were tears in his eyes, and so
did not see that every trace of humanity had been wiped out of Adrian
Gordon’s countenance, as in a voice the like of which Doctor Houghton
had never heard, he called down the wrath of God on Levallion’s secret
murderer.




CHAPTER XXXI.

A BAD MOVE.


Two days afterward the great gates of Levallion Castle were opened wide
to let out the funeral of the man who had been poisoned in his own
house. Behind the hearse, before the long rows of country neighbors
who came because they must and the flocking poor who came because the
dead man had been good to them, walked the new Lord Levallion as chief
mourner--and people stared as they saw Sir Thomas Annesley walking at
his side. Sir Thomas, whose sister was a murderess, and lying in jail
awaiting her committal for trial at the assizes.

“I wonder the boy can hold up,” said Lord Chayter to his companion. “I
honestly believe she didn’t do it, though!” But when asked who did, he
was silent.

Long and speechlessly the new Lord Levallion stood by his cousin’s
grave. If there were men who would have spoken to him they dared not do
it, so hard and hostile was his face. He turned without seeming to see
his neighbors or the parson at his elbow; and to the surprise of every
one drove off in the opposite direction from Levallion Castle.

He was not needed there, Levallion’s lawyer was in charge, and would
remain so till it pleased Adrian Gordon to come back. There was no
will to read, nothing to keep the heir from taking up his immediate
residence. Except that his wife’s settlements and jointure were secured
to her. Lord Levallion had arranged nothing. That consolation legacy to
Adrian had never been made--or needed.

But all that was the last thing in Adrian’s head as he drove to the
station from that ghastliest thing on earth, the funeral of a murdered
man.

In the last two days he had ransacked the village, but of a Mrs. Murray
no one had ever heard. The landlord of the raw new bungalows had gone
away; the caretaker gave a description of Miss Brown, the defaulting
tenant, which did not tally in any respect with Hester Murray, except
that Miss Brown had yellow hair.

Bad as Hester might be, he had never known her to drink; and the
village girl who had waited on the tenant of the bungalow swore that
two days out of three her mistress would drink herself into a heavy
sleep. She said, also, that Miss Brown never left the house except to
go into the garden; that at night, from her cottage near-by--for she
had never slept in the house--she had always seen the drawing-room lit
up till all hours. And it was clear her story was true, for none of the
village people had ever laid eyes on the levanting tenant during all
the three months she had lived in the bungalow.

“That disposes of Hester,” Adrian said to himself. “She could never
have lived cooped up like that. She’d have scoured the country for
exercise.”

Levallion’s lawyer, too, poohpoohed the idea, as he furnished Mrs.
Murray’s present address in London.

“She could not have been here, or his lordship would have mentioned it
in his instructions to me. I was to pay quarterly to her account in the
Starr Street branch of Lloyd’s Bank, five hundred a year, so long as
she observed his lordship’s conditions of never going within a hundred
miles of any of his country houses, or approaching him or his wife in
any way, personally or by letters. I received those instructions one
morning, and the next had a letter from Mrs. Murray herself, from a
London address and posted in London. I think you may set aside all
thought of her having been down here. Lord Levallion would have made no
terms with her in that case, I am convinced. Three days afterward she
drew her money and I made it my business to ascertain her whereabouts.
She and her boy were at the address she had written from--Starr Street,
Paddington.”

And to Starr Street Adrian was going, in hopes that if Hester Murray
and the woman Tommy had seen were one and the same, he could terrify it
out of her. For he owed her a long score.

It was pouring rain and pitch-dark when he found her number in
the shabby street, a strange dwelling for a woman who had had the
best house in Eaton Place. If he had any thought that she would
not see him, he was mistaken; for he had barely entered the sordid
lodging-house sitting-room when she came in, small, pretty, dainty as
usual, but with something so unaccustomed in her dress that he started.

“Adrian!” she said prettily. “This is kind of you,” and she pretended
not to see that he made no motion to take her outstretched hand. She
sat down, not sure what had brought him, his own business or another’s.
In spite of herself, her heart thumped.

“I didn’t come to be kind,” he said coolly. “But what’s the matter with
you? Is Murray dead?” For she was dressed in new widow’s mourning,
incongruously expensive for 15 Starr Street.

“No,” she answered quietly. “Levallion! And I--loved him.”

Some emotion she could not control convulsed her face.

“Your truthfulness with him showed it!” brutally. “But I fail to see
why you wear widow’s weeds.”

“Because, in my own eyes, I am his widow,” she said. “You know that!
Have you come here to insult me when I am heart-broken--or why?”

And to his astounding eyes there were the ravages of fearful grief in
her face. But he was in no mood for pity.

“How dared you tell Lady Levallion, before her marriage,” he said--and
it was not what she had expected--“that ‘Mrs. Gordon’ was my wife?”

“Because Sylvia Annesley made me, threatened me. And I did it in
ignorance. If I had known what I was doing, do you think I would have
stirred a finger to help Levallion to marry--to marry!” bitterly.

“I suppose not. Well, it’s some small comfort to think you ruined
yourself! Were you trying to undo your work by passing yourself off as
Miss Brown, at Levallion?”

But the sudden question never jarred her; she had been ready for it,
since, for all she knew, Levallion might have told him. Her wide eyes
opened innocently as she stared at him, and all the while it was
sweeping over her acute brain that he was speaking by guesswork.

“I don’t know what you mean!” she cried, in her clear, high voice. “I
know nothing about any Miss Brown.”

“Will you come down there and tell the caretaker you don’t?” quietly.

“Yes,” said Hester Murray, just as quietly; “if you can make me
understand what you mean. Caretaker of what? and what has he to do with
me? I have not been at Levallion Castle for three years, and you know
it.”

“You’ve been living within a mile of it all summer!”

Pale as a sheet, she stood up in front of him.

“Are you mad?” she said. “Would I--I that he discarded, shamed, ruined,
go near him and his new--wife? Whoever your Miss Brown was, she was not
I! I’ve been ill, poor, starving, nearly dying, till Levallion heard of
it and sent me money.”

“Have you been here all summer, then?” unconvinced.

He terrified her till she could scarcely answer him, and if she did not
satisfy him she was ruined. She shook her head.

“I’ve been in France, Boulogne,” she said. “In a pension; you can write
and ask them.” And thanked Heaven she dared to play the desperate card,
though only yesterday she had loathed the means that put it into her
hand.

“Day before yesterday--the last few days?” doggedly.

“I’ve been here. Oh, Adrian! Why are you asking me such questions? If I
had been at Levallion, could I have stayed away from--him?”

Her low, broken voice, her puzzled misery, were perfect; and yet the
man disbelieved in her because he knew her to be a liar.

“Do you expect me to believe it was not you who lived at Levallion,
in that bungalow behind the village, all summer?” he said. “Because I
think it was.”

“It was not I. And if it had been, it is none of your affair.”

Her change of tone startled him. He did not realize he had made a
mistake when he said “think,” instead of “know.”

“Here,” she said, and she wrote an address on a bit of paper. “Write to
Boulogne and ask. And now tell me what your Miss Brown has been doing
that you should think I was she?”

Her face was haggard as she waited for the answer, yet something in it
warned Gordon that to answer her would be sheer madness.

“Hester,” he said quietly, “has it occurred to you that it is I now who
am Lord Levallion? What do you expect me to do about your allowance?”

Something cunning flashed into her eyes, and was gone.

“I have not asked you for money,” she returned. “And--I don’t think I
will.”

“If you want it, you had better stay here till you hear from me. Do you
understand?”

“Unless you hear from me--first,” she said slowly. And he could not
understand the mixture of triumph and fright that was in her face.

“What do you mean? You’re powerless,” he cried sharply.

“Yes.” And for his life he did not know whether it was an assent or a
question. He caught back the threat that was on his lips and went out.

In the street he called himself every sort of fool. As if it had been
written on the black, rainy sky, he saw that he had betrayed his
suspicion of her and she had cleared herself and then defied him. He
had accomplished absolutely nothing of what he meant to do.

“She means mischief,” he said to the depths of his umbrella. “She’s
going to do something.”

But just what Mrs. Murray had in her power never entered his brain.




CHAPTER XXXII.

A TRIVIAL INCIDENT.


Lady Levallion had been committed for trial at the assizes, and, as
Houghton had foreseen, was refused bail.

In the county jail at Valehampton she must stay alone, comfortless--a
girl of nineteen; must be a month away from liberty and free air before
her trial. Of after that Houghton dared not think. He worked wonders
for her comfort, though, and instead of a cell she had a room, plain
and bare, but still a room. Yet it seemed prisonlike enough to Sir
Thomas Annesley, when at last he had leave to go and see her.

Door after door was unlocked and locked behind him; corridor after
corridor sickened him with its cold smell of carbolic acid, till at
last he stood in the small room that was properly part of the jail
infirmary, and heard its iron door click behind his heels.

“Tommy!” she cried, incredulous, rapturous, though she had known he was
coming.

But the boy could not answer; could only cling to her, trying to choke
back his pitiful sobbing against her shoulder. For he had seen her
face, and knew a little, just a little, of what her days and nights
must have been.

“Don’t cry, darling!” she whispered, as though it had been he and not
she that was in peril of life. “Oh, Tommy, I thought I would die for
want of you!”

“They wouldn’t let me come.” He lifted his head. “Who’s that?” he cried
sharply. For a woman was sewing by the window.

“The matron,” softly. “Did you think they’d let you see me alone?”

The woman looked up.

“Don’t mind me, sir!” she cried, her hard face very gentle. “I’ll not
heed anything you say.”

For Houghton, by good luck, was the prison doctor, and she believed in
him as in the four Gospels.

“She’s been very good to me,” Ravenel said gratefully, and the matron
smiled, but her eyes were wet. For, if Lady Levallion were innocent ten
times over, she could not prove it. And the matron’s only daughter who
died would have been just the age now of this girl, who presently would
be tried for murder. She moved to the farthest limit of the room as the
brother and sister sat down on the bed.

“Are you well, Tommy?” Ravenel whispered. “You look so thin!”

“Never mind me; I’m all right.” He grabbed at her hand. “I can only
stay half an hour. Tell me, can’t you think of anything I don’t know?”

“Nothing,” deliberately. For once having perjured herself because
she had seen a flying glimpse of a man she thought was Adrian, there
was nothing to do but stick by it. If she had been certain he was in
London, she could have told the truth; but yet it would have helped her
very little in face of those two bottles.

“You’ve seen your lawyer?”

She nodded. There had been little enough in that clever man’s face to
reassure her.

“Don’t fret,” she said slowly. “There are three weeks before I--my
trial.”

“And so far we haven’t found out one thing,” he said, and hid his face
again.

“I’ve thought of something, though it can’t help me,” she began,
smoothing the boy’s rough hair. “The Umbrella, Tommy! She didn’t send
for me to tell me about that old story of Sylvia. She sent for me to
warn me about Levallion. I feel it, and he did, too; else why did he
say, before he died: ‘We should have gone’?”

“But the Umbrella’s dead. We’ll never know.”

“No! But if she knew something, some one else may. It’s sure to come
out.”

“But if it doesn’t?” he gasped.

A dreadful shudder took her. To die, with a rope around her neck, in a
prison-yard!

“Pray it will!” she cried. “Oh, Tommy, I know you’d help me if you
could! But if you can’t, pretend it’s all right. It’s the only thing
you can do for me. I--I’ve got to be brave!”

The boy sat up, but he did not look at her.

“Look here,” he said; “what do you think about Gordon?”

“He didn’t do it!” quickly; for all her pains, joyfully.

“No! I don’t mean that. But if he wants to help you, why doesn’t he
come back to Levallion Castle and watch those servants? He’s vanished,
clean gone. Went to London the day of the funeral, and nobody knows
where he is.”

“He couldn’t help me,” loyally. “Those servants know no more than they
said.” But her heart sank in her. Was it possible that he did not care?
And yet it had not been so much for Adrian’s sake as for Levallion’s
that she had lied at the inquest. No one should be able to say that one
of the dead man’s own blood had murdered him because he had loved his
wife.

“Perhaps not! But Gordon ought to be there,” gruffly.

“Are you there?” she asked.

“Where can I go?” miserably. “I’ve no money. If I had I couldn’t leave
you.”

“Adrian will look after you.” She hesitated, for she had a dim idea
that if they hanged her the crown would take her jointure.

“I wouldn’t take his money. It was all his!” bitterly.

“It was all Sylvia.” For the first time she had color in her face. “Oh,
don’t hark back to it, Tommy! Levallion was kind to us; and some one
killed him for it.”

The door swung back heavily.

“Time’s up, sir,” said the warden.

It did not seem five minutes, but it was nearer forty than thirty.

“I’ll come,” said Sir Thomas Annesley, and he looked ten years older.
“Ravenel, I nearly forgot. The duchess wrote to me. She’s coming here,
to Valehampton, to be near you. She’ll come here as often as they’ll
let her.”

“I’m glad,” simply. “But I think I only want you.” (And one other,
whose hand she would never touch again in life!)

She sat down, tearless. One breath, of all the world she could have
hidden her face against; one strong shoulder would have known her
tears. But between Adrian Gordon and her was a deep gulf set: a gulf of
blood that cried aloud.

But Tommy Annesley was blind with tears as he drove the long ten miles
between Valehampton and Levallion Castle. It was bitter work to stay
there eating Adrian’s bread; but he could not go away.

“Perhaps the duchess will take me with her,” he thought, “till----” But
even to himself he could not finish. When the trial was over it was not
likely that Tommy Annesley would have overmuch care for what happened.
He would get away, he and Jacobs, from every soul who had known
him--would work, somehow, for his living. A lump rose in his throat as
he walked into the broad hall of Levallion Castle, all soft firelight
and welcome, and thought of its mistress sitting on her pallet bed in
Valehampton Jail.

Tea was waiting, but he could not swallow it. He flew out into the
desolate, twilit garden, and rambled aimlessly, he hardly saw where.
Jacobs, for once, was not with him; all alone, his hands in his
pockets, his slow feet silent on the frozen grass, Sir Thomas walked
mechanically, racking his brain to no purpose over that mysterious man
and woman the detectives had been unable to trace.

He might have racked his brain still harder if he had known the reason
of the silence that reigned concerning them. In Adrian’s theory
about the absconding tenant of the bungalow, no one believed at all.
Arlington’s man had been almost openly unbelieving about dragging a
strange woman into the case, and the prosecution merely smiled at the
idea of there being any mystery whatever, thanks to that hasty evidence
of Sir Thomas Annesley’s. It was all very well for him to believe he
had made a mistake; no one else did. In the eyes of the world, those
two people who drank champagne in a wood had been Captain Gordon
and Lady Levallion, since the only man who could have sworn to her
whereabouts was dead!

“If I only could think of something!” the boy mused desperately, and
stopped short at a queer sound.

He had wandered into the dark kitchen-garden, behind a row of deserted
potting sheds; and from them came a sound exactly like the beating of
carpets. It was no concern of Tommy’s, though the hour was a queer one,
and he was moving on when a pitiful moaning like a dog being beaten to
death made him jump. His thoughts flew to the absent Jacobs, and the
cook who had a grudge against him.

Silent, with flying feet, Tommy ran to the back of the shed, full of
fury. But as he paused by the latticed, glassless window at the back of
it, he knew it was no dog which was concerned in the carpet-beating,
but a boy.

“Don’t! don’t!” he was crying. “I won’t go away. I’ll stay with you.
I’ll do whatever you say!”

The sound of blows ceased.

“That is a sensible, amiable boy!” said a voice, and it was the chef’s.
“And you will say to the world that you love me--that there was never
any one like me, eh?”

The boy groaned.

“Yes!”

Sir Thomas heard the whistle of a stick uplifted.

“Oh, yes! Don’t hit me.”

“It is for your good that I break the bones in your skin,” returned
Carrousel. “We shall hear no more of this running away?”

“No,” in exhausted sobs. “I’ll stay. I’ll do whatever you tell me.
I----”

Sir Thomas bounced round the corner of the shed.

“What the devil’s this?” he said fiercely, and a lighted match
flickered in his hand.

There was Carrousel, his face like a devil’s, grasping a heavy stick,
and on the mud floor the boot-boy, quivering with pain. The match went
out.

“How dare you beat the boy like that?” cried Tommy. “I’ll have you up
for assault.”

“He disobeyed me, refused to do his work.”

In the dark Carrousel’s boot grazed the boy’s ribs. “Did you not, eh?”

“Yes.” The answer was little better than a moan.

“I don’t see what a cook has to do with blacking boots!” angrily. “And
if he disobeyed you a dozen times, you’ve no right to beat him like
this.”

“He runs my errands,” said Carrousel sullenly. “He would not do his
work; he played, idled.”

“You get out of this and let him alone,” authoritatively. “And if I
catch you at this again I’ll have you arrested. Go now, sharp! My
dog’ll be here in a minute,” significantly.

“You threaten me--intimidate?” In the dark Carrousel’s face was not
pretty. But like lightning he changed his tone.

“I regret if you think the punishment too severe. The boy--earned it!”
He spoke like oil, and in the dark stooped and whispered two words in
the boot-boy’s ear.

“Clear out!” Tommy stamped his foot, unconscious of that whisper. “Get
back to your pots and pans, or I’ll have you driven there. Jacobs! Hi,
Jacobs!” he yelled.

But Monsieur Carrousel was gone.

Tommy stooped over the boot-boy.

“Why did you let him beat you like that?” he said. “Why didn’t you
yell?”

But he got no answer. Another match flickered in the shed. Towers, the
boot-boy, was lying on his face, shaking with sobs.

“See here,” said Tommy, “don’t! Here’s half a crown for you”--his last
coin--“if you couldn’t fight that beast why didn’t you complain if he
ill-treated you? Has he done it before?”

No answer.

“Well,” disgustedly, “if you won’t tell, I shall! I’ll have Carrousel
hauled up.”

Towers said something; caught at Tommy in the dark, as if to stop him.

“Don’t!” he gasped. “Don’t sir! He’d kill me.”

“Rot! He couldn’t. What’s the matter with him? Has he got anything
against you--why are you afraid of him?”

“I am not afraid. He is kind to me. I will go with him if he leaves
this place.”

Tommy drew a long breath. The short sentences had come out in the
singsong whine of the village school, exactly as if they had been
learned by rote.

“Then you must be a fool!” he observed candidly. “Do you mean you don’t
want me to complain of the beast?”

Towers said no, still in that unnatural voice.

“Go back to the house and wash your face!” the other boy, who was but
four years older, advised. “And if he beats you again, you come to me,
and I’ll settle him.”

Towers’ teeth chattered.

“I made him angry,” he said, shivering. “I won’t do it again. Don’t say
anything, sir; oh, please!”

“All right,” disgustedly. “If you like being pounded, it’s no concern
of mine!” and, being cold, he assisted the boot-boy to his feet and
departed.

“Carrousel did look a devil!” he thought. “But the boy seems
half-witted. Yet----”

He stopped short in the dark.

“Cooky looked as if he would kill him!” he gasped. “I wonder if--but it
couldn’t be. But if I could think it, I--I’d make him swing.”

He ran to the house as hard as he could go. For the first time he had
“thought of something.”

“Mr. Arlington,” he cried, bursting in on the lawyer where he sat
toiling over bundles of Levallion’s neglected and unopened letters in
the hope of finding some clue to some one who had a grudge against him.
“Do you know Captain Gordon’s address?” For reasons of his own he said
nothing about that trivial incident in the garden.

“No!” slowly. “Lord Levallion’s, you mean? I’ve never heard one word
from him.”

The boy’s flushed face paled.




CHAPTER XXXIII.

LEVALLION’S HEIR.


Adrian Gordon had ample reason for giving no address. He had wanted to
sink like a stone in London, and he had done it.

Moving slowly away in the rain and darkness from that worse than
useless visit to Hester Murray--which, now that his blood was cool,
he saw had only served to warn her of his thoughts, and had not
intimidated her in the least--a sudden thought came over him also. A
mad one, perhaps, but irresistible. If Hester had not been able to
profit by the live Levallion, it seemed out of question she should by
the dead one. Yet, perfect actress as she was, he felt that the woman
was triumphant, in spite of the marks of deadly grief on her face.

“I believe it was she, in spite of that pension at Boulogne!” he said
to himself. “As for the man Tommy saw with her, if it were Hester he
saw, I don’t think he counts. Goodness knows what her little amusements
may have been at night, if she were cooped up all day, as that girl
said Miss Brown was!”

He looked round the wet street. It was not two hundred yards from
Paddington station. He could get a train at any hour for Levallion
Castle if he needed to.

“I’ll try it, anyhow!” he thought, and, not being as shrewd as
Levallion, it never occurred to him that the very nearness of
Paddington station, where it was so easy to come and go from Levallion,
had brought Hester Murray to Starr Street.

In the dull, rainy gaslight the new Lord Levallion--who had winced
when some one called him by his title--retraced his steps, crossed the
street. There, in number fourteen, diagonally opposite fifteen, was a
transparent red-glass sign--“Lodgings.” And lodging-letting was Starr
Street’s means of existence, as a stroll down it showed him.

He rang at number fourteen, and, when he came away after a short
colloquy with a frowsy woman, he went no farther than the great
thoroughfare round the corner, where a ready-made clothing shop
swallowed him up. Ten minutes later a man with a new portmanteau,
containing the toilet things he had not thought necessary to bring for
a half-hour’s visit to London, and a cheap suit of dittoes, returned to
fourteen Starr Street. The neglected door opened, closed on him. The
red sign of lodgings still hung in the ground-floor window, because
there was still a spare room in the house, and Hester Murray saw it
as she went to bed, saw it without thinking of it, as she had seen it
every night since she came.

“Fool!” she thought. “But he always was.” Yet her lips were white, even
as she remembered she had had the best of her discomfited visitor. For
five minutes that she would never forget till her dying day, she had
thought he knew something, and was come to tell her so. But as she
looked at him she knew he was talking by guesswork. And she was able to
combat more than guesswork.

“Well, he’s gone, thank goodness!” she said, aloud--and if Hester
Murray thanked goodness there was no one to see the awful insolence of
it. “I don’t suppose he’s been reading the papers lately! And even if
he had he might not have thought anything.”

She shaded her candle with her hand, and went into the next room. A
boy lay there in bed, a handsome child of ten, with something in his
sleeping face that made her quiver and turn ghastly in the candle-light.

“God, how like he is!” she muttered. “I didn’t--I didn’t do it. If the
worst came to the worst I could swear that.” She swallowed something in
her throat. “I was treated like a dog,” she gasped. “I was driven. But
I can swear I never did it. Oh, I mustn’t think of it! I’d break down.
I’ve got to fight--for Adrian.”

For that sleeping child’s name was Adrian, too. But the very thought of
what she was going to fight seemed to paralyze her, the danger of it,
the---- She put down the candle, knelt with passion beside the child.

“I’ll do it for you!” she said deliberately. And put away from her the
thought that if she had been a driven, desperate woman a week ago, she
was more so now by a hundredfold, and with a harder taskmaster behind
her. When she got up her face was steady.

“It’s lucky I’d got back when he came!” she thought, harking back
to Adrian Gordon. “Otherwise there might have been questions to the
landlady. But all she knew was that for two or three nights I dined
out, and came home in a hansom at half-past twelve. Even that she might
not know, because of my latch-key. I’d better go to bed. I must look
decent to-morrow. I wish I hadn’t had to let him write to Boulogne--but
there--I’m safe through it.” And it was odd she did not remember that
five minutes before she had assured herself that she was guiltless, and
safe in any case.

The neighbor she knew nothing of had certainly not been reading the
papers, and if he had, might very well have overlooked the small print,
unimportant paragraph about a man named Murray having been run over in
the street, while the worse for drinking, and taken to Guy’s Hospital.
But from Guy’s Hospital Mrs. Murray had not long returned when he paid
his foolish visit to her. It was long after visiting-hours, but Hester
was a pretty woman still. The house surgeon had seen her, and told her
that there was small chance for the man she asked for.

“He may linger one day, perhaps two,” he said. “But in all probability
he’ll never be conscious, and he can’t recover. Was he,” marveling, “a
relation?”

“Oh, no!” said the woman in the faultless widow’s weeds prettily. “Only
a--a sort of protégé. He had come down in the world.”

The surgeon thought that was a mild way of describing the sodden, dying
wretch up-stairs.

The woman who had lived with poor Bob Murray for years drove away with
a lightened spirit. That which she had to do was robbed of half its
peril since he was dying, was practically dead. If he had been alive
and well, it would have had to be done just the same, if she cared to
live in this world at all; but the doing of it might have been all but
impossible. Now her safety lay almost in her hand. She slept that night.

Mr. Atkinson--it was the name of the ready-made clothing shop, and had
seemed less like an alias than Smith or Brown--the new lodger at number
fourteen, informed his landlady that he was an invalid. His drawn face
confirmed him, and his occupation of sitting all day by the window and
never going out was accounted for.

Morning and evening he read the papers. The rest of the day he never
took his eyes off Mrs. Murray’s house--and all he got for his pains
was to see her go out and in quietly, sometimes alone, sometimes with
that boy, whose face was so like another face. She never had a visitor,
man or woman, and certainly if Miss Brown had been described as being
given to drink, Mrs. Murray was not. Pale, dainty, mournful, she came
and went; and if he had had a purpose in watching her he thought it a
mad dream as the days flew by. A whole week and he saw nothing; a night
when he slipped out to his own rooms, in Charles Street, and came back
with a letter from Boulogne, that he had not dared sign Atkinson. And
the letter gave him no shred of hope that Hester had lied to him. It
was in a man’s hand, short and businesslike.

“Madam Murray, the friend after whom he asked, had certainly spent the
summer at the Pension Bocaze, which she had left, indeed, not ten days
ago. The writer was unable to supply her present address.”

It was signed Jean-Paul Berthier. And on inquiry it was no pleasure
to Adrian Gordon to find that Jean-Paul Berthier and the pension were
well, and reputably enough, known in Boulogne.

“Hester is out of it,” he said to himself. Yet he lingered another week
in his sordid lodgings, among smells of bad cooking. It was madness,
perhaps time wasted, when there was but a fortnight now to Valehampton
Assizes, where the woman he loved would be tried for her life. Yet
haggard-eyed, worn to a shadow, Adrian Gordon still sat peering through
his half-closed shutters; still searched the papers for he knew not
what. Perhaps a tramp dying in a workhouse, a swell mobman arrested
and turning queen’s evidence. It began to enter his head that he might
do that equally well at Levallion Castle; began to rend his soul from
his body to stay away from Ravenel. But he knew, perhaps, it would
be madness to go to see her, considering the part he must bear in the
circumstantial evidence that lied and yet was true; for he stayed on.

And one wet, ghastly evening he flung down the _Star_, and then caught
it up again. With blazing eyes he read a long article.

       *       *       *       *       *

“A curious thing has come to light in connection with the late Lord
Levallion, whose tragic and mysterious death lately horrified all
Valeshire. It seems that the heir, Captain Gordon, of the ---- Hussars,
who has so far taken no steps toward assuming the title, will have
difficulty in making good his claim to it.

“A claimant has arisen in London, a lady formerly well and honorably
known as Mrs. Murray, of Eaton Place, who curiously enough declares
that she is the only person having any right to the title of Countess
of Levallion, and that her son, formerly known as Adrian Gordon Murray,
is the only child of the dead peer.

“The story is a sad, and also an involved one. It seems that Mrs.
Murray, to give her the name by which the best society in London knew
her, was married at the age of seventeen to a man of bad reputation,
named John Davidge. He treated her cruelly, and then deserted her in
Nice after two years of wretchedness. She had no children, and, being
bitterly poor, became _dame du comptoir_ in a cheap restaurant, where
Mr. Murray, her supposed husband, saw and fell madly in love with her.
She had some reason to think Davidge dead, and decided that in any
case he had no claim on her. She married Murray, he being under the
impression she was a single woman, which her age and looks made likely.
For a year the two lived on the Continent, apparently in perfect amity,
till--and here comes the gist of the story--Mrs. Murray was obliged to
go suddenly to England to see about a small legacy that had been left
her.

“Between Paris and London she made the acquaintance of the late Lord
Levallion, and from her own story seems to have fallen passionately
in love with him, utterly forgetful of Mr. Murray, whom she had left
at Pau, suffering from a bad attack of influenza. At all events, she
never mentioned his existence to Lord Levallion, but gave him her true
name of Davidge. The legacy which was left to her in that name bore her
out, as none of her relatives had ever heard of her second marriage.
And Davidge, Lord Levallion had seen stabbed in a scandalous quarrel
in a house in Paris. _De Mortuis nil nisi bonum_, notwithstanding,
it may be said that the late peer was catholic in his haunts and his
acquaintances.

“At all events, in 1889, the marriage of Hester Davidge and Lord
Levallion took place at the registrar’s office in Islington, but the
bride, with excellent reasons, refused to have it made public, and went
abroad with him under the name of Mrs. Gordon, by which surname he also
called himself. Needless to say the bride was anxious to avoid France
and Mr. Murray, although assured he could have no claim on her. And
she also never allowed Lord Levallion to introduce or mention her to
any friends whom he encountered, giving as an excuse that she was in
delicate health and fanciful.

“In 1890 her son was born, at Vevay, where he was christened and
registered as Adrian Gordon, Lord Valehampton, Levallion’s second
title, and described as the only son of Adrian Gordon, Lord Levallion,
and his wife. And at Vevay the bubble burst. Murray, by some trick of
fate, came face to face with the pair; claimed and denounced his wife,
and, to her surprise, had discovered that she had been not only his
wife, but Davidge’s.

“Lord Levallion was furiously angry. There is no doubt that he would
have thrown her back on Murray’s hands if it had been possible. But at
first it was not. Davidge had been undoubtedly alive at the time of
Mrs. Gordon’s supposed marriage with Murray, and as undoubtedly dead
when she secretly became Lady Levallion. But Murray, and witnesses far
more reputable, swore that Davidge had not died, but recovered; was
alive in New York at that present moment.

“Lord Levallion seems to have been utterly mortified at his position,
for his shrewdness, pride, and acumen were well known. But, in spite
of his just anger, it seems that he was still infatuated with his
supposed wife, who was heart-broken at the wreck of her life and
the illegitimacy of her boy. Those, at least, are the only grounds
on which his subsequent and utterly unjustifiable conduct can be
explained. He calmly relinquished his pseudo bride to Murray, whose
right, if no better, was at least a prior one, and returned to England.
Mrs. Murray, to give her the name by which she has since been known,
persuaded Murray to forgive and take her back again. She also swore
that her son was his child, which was possible, and informed Murray
that Levallion had forced her to behave as she had. Also that her
legacy, instead of hundreds of pounds, had been thousands, as she was
residuary legatee of an aunt’s fortune.

“Murray, who seems to have been a weak and kindly man, and already
a slave to the alcohol he had taken to in his abject misery at her
desertion, took her back, with apparently no thought for the absent
Davidge. They went to London, took a house in Eaton Place, and
gradually entered society. Mrs. Murray’s legacy was apparently an
ample one, for she lived in luxury, Murray never suspecting that Lord
Levallion’s bank-account supplied the funds, or that Lord Levallion
himself was a constant and utterly clandestine visitor.

“No hint of his connection with Mrs. Murray ever leaked out; he never
was seen with her, or entering her house, the fact being that he never
came in daylight, and that Murray at night was usually dead drunk.
The servants knew nothing of his visits, as he used a small garden
door leading directly into Mrs. Murray’s boudoir. And so things went
for years till he had reason to be angry with Mrs. Murray on several
counts--one her extravagance and imprudence, another her friendship
with a man who openly boasted of her favors, and last the open
hostility of Murray, who, one day on meeting Lord Levallion in the
street, abused him with drunken eloquence.

“The late peer satisfied himself that Mrs. Murray was being no truer
in the present than she had been in the past, and quietly threw her
over. Her new lover had no money, and, being in great straits, she
went to Captain Gordon--the present heir to the earldom--whom she knew
slightly, and gave him an evidently erroneous idea of her position
in regard to his cousin, with such success that he believed her and
lent her money. Whether he found out about her from Levallion, it is
impossible to say. Certainly he refused her any further assistance
afterward, but it is equally certain that for some months he believed
her to be the rightful Countess of Levallion and her son the future
earl.

“By this time Mrs. Murray was determined to keep her footing in
society. She dismissed her new lover, and appealed to Levallion, who
was adamant. He held that she had no claim on him, but gave her a lump
sum of money yielding a yearly income sufficient to keep up her house
in Eaton Place.

“Three months after their final rupture came news like a thunderbolt.
Lord Levallion had become engaged to be married to the only daughter
of the late Sir Thomas Annesley, the same unfortunate lady who, justly
or unjustly, now awaits her trial for his murder. Mrs. Murray was
powerless, never having been his wife, as she thought. But no later
than a fortnight ago fate’s kaleidoscope shifted. It turned out by a
curious chain of events that the late Lord Levallion was right about
the death of Davidge. It was he and no other who was killed in a
scandalous brawl in Paris, but his death was hidden by a namesake, a
cousin, Maurice Davidge, who quietly changed identities with the dead
man, who was in receipt of an allowance from their family; buried
himself, so to speak, and as John Davidge went to America, when quite
casually the thing leaked out. Mrs. Murray, be she good or bad, is
probably Lady Levallion, for Murray’s wife she never was. He had left
her for months, having somehow discovered about Levallion, when the
quondam John Davidge spoke out.

“Our readers will find the opening proceedings of the case against the
present heirs of Lord Levallion on our first page.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The reader dropped the paper. This was what had been up Hester Murray’s
sleeve!

“She can have the whole show for all I care!” he said, after a moment
of wonder that any woman could be so shamelessly outspoken, even for
money.

“She must know no one will accept her after all that story,” he
thought, though--except that Davidge was dead--he had known most of it.

His face grew very hopeless. This case of Hester’s disposed of all wish
on her part for Levallion’s death. She would far rather have forced
herself on him, and shamed him; it seemed to Gordon that his death had
taken away the point of the woman’s revenge.

“No, she’s out of it,” he said. “It could not have been her whom Tommy
saw.”

From sheer habit he stared once more at her house--and started to his
feet in the dark, forlorn room.




CHAPTER XXXIV.

“FALSE AS A PACK OF CARDS.”


Mrs. Murray and her story were a thunderbolt in society. It chanced
that the only person who did not hear of it was Lady Annesley, whom
fate had afflicted with a sharp attack of neuralgia in the eyes--real
this time--and her doctor consigned to a rest-cure at Horrogate, where
newspapers and the outside world did not exist.

The duchess sent for Tommy at Valehampton, and aired her views on the
character of Mrs. Murray.

But the boy cared very little. The conversation turned soon enough to
the topmost thing in both minds--Ravenel in jail, and the precious days
that were flying by and bringing out nothing to help her.

“I’ll help her if I have to choke the home secretary,” the duchess
cried, tearful and regardless. “Oh, Tommy, it breaks my heart to see
her! She’s never cried, never broken down, they tell me. But I know
she’s past all hoping. I think she’s just waiting to die.”

Sir Thomas opened his mouth and shut it again.

After all, he had nothing to tell the duchess: his thought that night
in the garden had come to nothing. He had played secret police on the
boot-boy in vain; had questioned him uselessly. Wide-eyed, frightened,
almost idiotic, Towers had stared at him; what answers he did make were
not what Tommy Annesley wanted.

“Will she talk to you?” he said.

The duchess could only nod. All that pitiful, childish story of Adrian
Gordon’s letters and ring had Lady Levallion told her--and even the
duchess could see that it would make Levallion’s death look black
enough--to a jury.

“Captain Gordon has never been near her. I suppose he dare not,” she
said heavily, as she wiped her eyes. “Where is he?”

“Nobody knows,” and Tommy could have killed the man who, instead of
moving heaven and earth to set Ravenel free, had seen fit to vanish
and leave her to her fate. The whole world, except the duchess and her
lawyers, was doing that. Surely Gordon could not mean to do nothing at
all!

“I must get home,” he said, and got up to go. Not all the duchess could
say would keep him away from Levallion Castle. The clue was there, if
it were anywhere on God’s earth. Night after night, while the house was
asleep, the boy examined every inch of it, and looked and wondered and
hoped in vain. If there had been any one in tweed clothes on the other
side of Levallion’s door when Mr. Jacobs banged it--and was forced for
his pains to run back through a passage and Lady Levallion’s suite of
rooms before he could get out into the corridor again--that man would
not have dared to go into any of the guests’ rooms, where the dog might
keep him besieged. Nor would he have had time to gain the kitchen,
where Jacobs had rushed. The only place he could have got to would
be the housekeeper’s room, which was up two steps as you went to the
kitchen. And that was out of the question, because the housekeeper had
been in there, and Carrousel, too. No man bouncing into a quiet room to
get away from a dog could do it without disturbing its occupants. The
housekeeper had not heard a sound. And the theory of Carrousel having
a hand in the poisoning did not hold water. A cook, dressed in white,
could not tear tweed clothes on the latch of a door; nor if he had
would have had time to change them.

Mr. Allington looked up as they were at dinner, a lovely pair in a
desolate house. The new development anent Mrs. Murray had nearly driven
the good man frantic, for he had little doubt that her story was true.
Most of it was, to his own knowledge. And, as for Lady Levallion, he
had never for one moment imagined her guilty. Perhaps Tommy’s watch on
the servants was not the only one in that house that so far had been
fruitless.

“Can you eat nothing, either?” he said precisely. “It seems to me our
dinner is not so good as usual.”

“Carrousel is out, sir,” the butler put in respectfully. “The steward
gave him leave to go at luncheon-time. He will be back to-night.”

“Ah!” said Allington, too much annoyed to utter. If any servant left
the house he had been able, so far, to ascertain just where he or she
went. This was unbearable! “Has he friends in the neighborhood?”

“He went to take Towers, the boot-boy, to a new place in London, sir!
Towers was frightened to go alone.”

Sir Thomas nearly leaped off his chair. Not for one moment did he ever
imagine Carrousel would be back to-night or any other night.

“Tommy!” said Allington quietly, and his eyes flashed warning, “let me
advise you, at least, to drink your claret.” He knew nothing about the
boot-boy, but he knew that Sir Thomas’ mind was running in the same
channel as his own.

“I’ll have some beef,” said Tommy to the butler, waving away a
proffered dish. It was quite right to keep up appearances, but every
minute might be precious. And then it came over him with a flat, deadly
sinking that he was imagining nonsense; because a cook chose to beat a
boy and take a day’s outing.

Strung up, tense, he felt as if every trivial word might mean something
to-night. As he cut up his beef he grew suddenly rigid in his chair. A
footman was handing Allington a telegram, the pinky envelope seemed to
swim on the silver tray to the boy’s excited eyes.

Was this something--at last--from the detectives?

Allington, with an impassive countenance, crumpled the sheet and put it
in his pocket.

“The Duchess of Avonmore would like to see you the first thing in the
morning,” he said.

“What for----” Tommy stopped himself. “Why didn’t she wire me, I
wonder?”

“That I don’t know,” said Allington. “If you don’t want any more of an
inferior dinner, suppose we adjourn. It seems to me,” turning to the
butler, “that the same sort of meal was served two days ago. Kindly
give my compliments to the steward, and say I do not wish it to occur
again.”

“Yes, sir. But Carrousel went out without leave last time. He is rather
above himself, you know, sir,” the butler explained hastily.

Allington made no answer. But as soon as he and Tommy reached the
morning-room he shut the door, and his face was that of a different man.

“Read that,” he said. “Tell me what you think of it.”

Tommy smoothed out the crumpled telegram and saw the duchess’ message
was fiction.

 “Wire to Atkinson, 14 Starr Street, Paddington,” he read, “who, if
 any, of the servants has been in town during the week.

                                                       A. GORDON.”

“What does it mean?” He shook like a leaf.

“I hope it means a clue. Why did you jump so about the boot-boy and the
cook? I hear he takes a great interest in him.”

Sir Thomas agreed with hearsay, but his tale showed the interest
Carrousel took was peculiar.

“I believe Carrousel did the poisoning,” he said, below his breath. “I
think the boot-boy caught him at it! And we’ve lost them. I don’t think
we’ll see either of them again.”

“Carrousel had a good alibi. It isn’t possible,” Allington returned.
“Yet I don’t like this business of the boy. What sort of a place do you
suppose----” thoughtfully.

“No place,” Tommy cut in short. “He’s going to put that boy out of the
way. He knows something. Does this thing,” tapping the telegram, “mean
Gordon’s in Starr Street? What would he be there for? And what made him
think any of the servants were in London?”

“That I don’t know. But I might have guessed he was in Starr Street,”
absently. “I’m afraid he’s wasting time. There’s no hope there.”

“So are we,” sharply. “Aren’t you going to answer that wire?”

“Yes! But I don’t want the servants to know there is an answer. Will
you go out the back way, and send one?”

“What’ll I say?” breathless. For it seemed for the first time as if
some one were doing something.

“Say, ‘The artist. Day before yesterday and to-day. Answer.’ Sign your
name.”

He handed Sir Thomas some money and a stray cap from a table. He had
never seemed so human before. But as Tommy disappeared through the
French window the lawyer, closing the shutters behind him, gave a
hopeless sigh.

Captain Gordon was in Starr Street because of Mrs. Murray--as if a
woman with so much at stake would be so mad as to entangle herself in
the death of the man whose widow she wished to prove herself.

“I don’t know what he means about the servants,” he thought. “If he’s
trying to mix up one of them with Mrs. Murray, he’s in a mare’s nest.
But if Monsieur Carrousel does not return I’ll get a warrant out for
him, on the pretext of that boy.”

It was three miles to the telegraph-office; he allowed two hours for
Tommy to come and go; but when three had gone, and four, he began to
wonder if in this house of horror there was still more to come. The
night was dark as a wolf’s mouth outside. After one glance without
Mr. Allington opened the door into the deserted hall. The house was
absolutely silent, for it was after twelve, and the servants had gone
to bed.

The lawyer slipped off his boots, and vanished down the passage to the
kitchen. When he returned there was a strange look on his face, though
until to-night what he had discovered would have meant absolutely
nothing to him. As he stood once more in the morning-room a light
tap came on the window. With instinctive, reasonless caution, he
extinguished the light before he opened the wooden shutters and let Sir
Thomas in.

“What kept you?” he said.

“Hush!” said Tommy. “Carrousel’s going by outside.”

In the dark Allington, the imperturbable, started.

“He’s come back, then!” he whispered. “He’s cleverer than I thought--or
innocent.”

“Why shouldn’t he be innocent?” cried Tommy hysterically. “Light a
candle; it’s so beastly dark here. I waited for an answer, and I saw
Carrousel get out of the train.”

“Was the boy with him?”

“It doesn’t matter whether he was or wasn’t. Read that,” as the candle
burned blue and then yellow he flung a telegram to Allington, and hid
his weary face on his arms. “We’re all wrong.”

 “Not my man at all,” Allington read, and the badly written lines
 sickened him with disappointment. “I was mistaken. Am doing no good
 here. Will be down to-morrow to consult. Unless you know something, am
 worse than when I started.

                                                            A. G.”

Allington’s discovery of the evening dwindled away to nothing again. He
had no heart to speak of it since Carrousel was evidently not concerned
in it.

“Don’t despair till we find out what this means,” he said slowly. But
in his soul he knew that they had been led away by a will-o’-the-wisp,
made of suspicion, coincidence, and the ill treatment of a boot-boy.
Their supposed clue was false as a pack of cards!




CHAPTER XXXV.

GOOD-BY.


But it was not to Levallion Castle that Adrian Gordon came in the crisp
blue and gold of the autumn evening.

Ravenel, seated on her bed, with her sluggish blood barely moving in
her veins, leaped to her feet as her door opened.

“You!” she cried, and if for an instant her face was transfigured, the
next she put out her trembling hands as if to warn him to stay where he
was. “How did you get in?”

“As men do who storm a city wall,” he might have answered truly; but he
only said: “Quite easily,” and let his eyes look their fill on the face
of the only woman in the world.

The matron after one shrewd glance turned her back on them. But it was
trouble wasted; neither of them thought of her. Her eyes were on him as
his on her. And the dead, ugly pallor of her face, that had been like a
rose, the black circles round her dull eyes, the thin transparency of
her hands, made him catch his breath for agony of pity; but she never
saw how worn he was because she was looking in his eyes that she had
never hoped to see again.

“Seventeen days of it,” he thought, “and she looks like this! How
will she look after months--years?” For they would never dare to hang
her, to break that slender neck with a rope in a prison yard. Yet he
knew after one look at her that if she were found guilty, even of
manslaughter, it meant death for her! Death in a prison cell, alone.

The man’s heart-break choked him.

Six feet of bare floor lay between them, that was all; yet shame and
the grave could part them no more utterly.

“Nel,” he said, for the minutes were flying, “I had to come. You’re not
angry?”

“No,” she whispered. And if for a minute she had thought he brought her
good news, she knew now he had none. Gordon turned and saw the matron.
Before he could speak she deliberately put her fingers in her ears. Ten
juries might ask her what they said, and she could tell them nothing.
The look in the woman’s eyes sent Adrian to Ravenel’s side.

“Nel,” he whispered, “tell me, for God’s sake! who you saw in that
room, and why you lied at the inquest? Did you think it was I?”

“I know it wasn’t, now. I might always have known, but I couldn’t
think--afterward.”

“But you did see some one?”

“I said not,” quietly. “It wouldn’t do me any good now to let them know
I lied.”

“If I had done it twenty times I wouldn’t have had you hold your tongue
to save me.” He was hoarse with pain. “How could you think that I,
who’d gone to London, was in Levallion’s house?”

“I didn’t think.” She met his eyes with hers, dull from nights of
agony. “I took down the bottle; looked up, and thought I saw you going
out the door! I was frightened. I felt as if I had seen a ghost! When
Jacobs growled and bristled I ran. And then--the stuff killed him.”
Horror twisting her pale lips. “How could I tell? How was I to know you
had not come back, for some reason? I--I never for one second thought
you killed him.”

“My own heart,” said the man, with a breath like a sob, “don’t defend
yourself to me. I know you never thought that. But if you won’t tell
about the figure you saw, I will. Don’t you know some one must?”

“You’d do no good,” gently. “Only make me a liar. And even now, Adrian,
I couldn’t swear the figure was real and not my fancy. I’d been trying
all that day to put you out of my mind.”

“But you said the bottle was warm!”

“Quite warm,” she shuddered, “like blood. But that was what frightened
me--afterward. I remembered what you’d said about poisoning him--and
yet I wouldn’t, wouldn’t believe it!”

“Some one had been carrying it in a hot hand,” he cried. “The same
person who put those bottles in your room. Did you think I would have
done that?” bitterly.

“I knew you wouldn’t, but you must remember that I knew nothing about
those bottles till my evidence was finished,” simply.

“There’s a God, they say!” he said, between his teeth. “If there is, He
won’t let the guilty escape. Nel, promise me something. Trust me, even
if things come to the worst. There’ll be help somewhere!” very low.

“Not for me,” quietly. “You’ve been trying all this time and found out
nothing. I see it in your face.”

“I thought of Mrs. Murray,” he said painfully, “and I’m afraid I’m
wrong. She had nothing to gain and revenge to lose. The talk would have
been worse than death to him.”

A quick look of pain came to her face.

“I know,” she muttered. “The duchess told me.”

He answered with that utter honesty she had loved in him.

“Nel, you would not believe what Hester says about Levallion. He never
went to that house in Eaton Place, except once, when they thought the
boy was dying. He gave her money, but she lies when she says he kept on
going there. You knew him better than that.”

“I never believed it,” she answered quietly, loyal to the dead, as she
had been to the living.

“Now you know why I could not answer you about ‘Mrs. Gordon,’” he
whispered, thinking that assuredly no wickeder woman than Hester Murray
trod the earth. “It was she herself!”

“Never mind her,” with sudden passion she caught his arm. “Let her
be! Adrian, do you think I’ll ever see you again, face to face, like
this? For I sha’n’t! Talk of yourself, talk of something I may remember
when”--sharply--“till I die.”

“I’ll see you hundreds of times, please God. Day in and day out,” but
his eyes were not on hers.

“You won’t, you can’t!” The self-control that had held her since that
dreadful night gone now. “Adrian!” she cried, wild, terrified, broken,
“they’ll hang me. I can’t prove I did not do it. Help me, comfort me,
make me brave.”

If ten matrons had been looking on he would have caught her to him.

“Never,” he said, low, in her ear. “Not while I can speak and see.” But
what he meant never dawned on her.

“Put that thought from you. I swear you can.” For with that rag--and
his tweed suit could easily be torn--there was one way open still.

“If they let me go to-morrow, the world would think we did it,” she
gasped. “There’s blood between us. We’d be as far apart as if I died.”

“If I never see you on this side the grave,” the man cried
passionately, “do you think I’ll ever be really parted from you?
What are a few years--when some time we’ll wake and find it’s the
Resurrection Day? Love, don’t grieve!”

For as he spoke she remembered how once it was she who had meant to
creep to his side when the dead came out of their graves, and now God
had made that the only hope left.

“Listen,” he said, “I’ll have to go in a minute. I came to tell you
something. I let you think I’d found out nothing; I’ve found out one
way. There’ll be no death for you, my sweetheart, no prison. I can’t
tell you what I know, but it will set you free.”

“No, no, no!” Tears blinded her. She caught him to her madly. “Not
that, never that.”

“Not that.” He hushed her like a child; and if ever a lie was pardoned,
his was. “Be at peace; not that. Oh! what did we do that we should end
like this?” he broke out fiercely, more to himself than to her.

“My heart, we’ll wake some day in paradise,” she said, very low, for
his passion steadied her. “And perhaps it won’t be long.”

He stooped and kissed her as a man whose minutes are numbered; held her
close in agony that hurt her and him.

“Be brave,” he muttered, for he was broken utterly. “Remember you’re
safe. Eat what they give you,” and the homely, kindly detail was
dreadful in its tender care. “Think of Tommy and of me, who’ll be
happy--and God knows how happy--when you’re free.”

Somehow he put her away from him as the warden knocked at the door.

But outside in the free air he shut his teeth and prayed he had not
lied to her. For suppose what he had in his mind was not enough to set
her clear! It was not hope that had brought him to Valehampton Jail. If
there were none at Levallion Castle--and there could be none----

“I pray God my shoulders are broad enough,” he thought, turning away.




CHAPTER XXXVI.

A MOUSE-HOLE.


“Well,” said Allington grimly, “you ruined a fine theory for me last
night with your wire. I thought for a solid hour that I could put my
fingers on the man who killed Levallion.”

The two were strolling up and down the open lawn at Levallion Castle.
Perhaps Mr. Allington made a guess as to what had deferred Adrian
Gordon’s arrival till three in the afternoon, but he said nothing. The
face of the new Lord Levallion, who in a few more days would be plain
Adrian Gordon once more, did not encourage comment.

“You did mean you thought it could be the cook?” he cried, standing
still in the autumn sunshine.

“I did. But”--he flicked the ash from his cigar significantly--“it all
went like that.”

“What put it into your head at all?” drearily.

“A boot-boy. The only servant who was not called at the inquest.” And
he told Sir Thomas’ tale of the beating, and the subsequent tender care
of Monsieur Carrousel in finding his protégé a new place.

“That set me thinking,” he continued. “I went down to the housekeeper’s
room last night when the house was quiet, and I found it led into the
still-room.”

“I don’t see much in that,” interrupting him. “We all know that. It’s
to keep the still-room under her eye. That’s all. There’s no second
door from the still-room.”

“Isn’t there?” said Allington quietly. “Did it never strike any one
that a portion of those shelves in that room covers a door, that
opens, shelves and all, into the ‘boothole’ under the kitchen stairs.
I confess last night that with that discovery, and the carting off of
the boot-boy, I felt jubilant. But it was all rubbish. The housekeeper
had a letter from the boy I thought the cook had made away with, to
say he liked his new place which Monsieur Carrousel had found for him.
Something Square it was dated, and postmarked Paddington.”

“It’s all one what it was postmarked,” Gordon returned dully. “It
wasn’t Carrousel I saw last night; and I agree with you that the
boot-boy business was all bona fide enough. A clever Frenchman might
pound a stupid boy to a jelly from exasperation, and then turn round
and be kind to him.”

“Who did you see last night?” curiously. “I suppose you’ve been playing
detective on Mrs. Murray, eh?”

Adrian nodded.

“I don’t know why,” he said, “for she was in Boulogne all summer.
Couldn’t have been down here at all. But I took lodgings opposite and
lay doggo to watch her. Much I got! No one went into her house except
her lawyers in that case of hers,” as indifferently as if it concerned
him not at all and did not spell ruin, “till last night, when I saw a
man go up her steps. Something about him startled me, his back looked
familiar; I don’t know why, but I could have sworn I’d seen him down
here. Yet I knew he was none of the house-party. He went in, and I ran
out and wired to you. But before your answer came I knew I’d made an
ass of myself. I’d just got back to my door when I saw the fellow come
out, and it was no one I’d ever seen in my life. I saw his face quite
plainly as he lit a cigar. If I’d seen it like that in the first place
I’d never have wired at all. He was just a pal of Hester’s.”

Allington nodded. He was as disappointed as a dog that has discovered
an empty rat-hole.

“What do you think of doing now?” he said. “The detectives are quite
hopeless of finding Sir Thomas’ mysterious man and woman, I may tell
you. That woman who levanted from the bungalow was their first thought,
but she has apparently fallen off the earth. As for the man”--snapping
his fingers--“after pouncing on twenty innocent young farmers, they
have given him up. Unless----” He stopped awkwardly. Somehow he could
not say to Adrian Gordon that he had yet to prove he was not himself
that man. Not that Allington thought so, but there was no doubt the
police did.

“Unless he turns up, directly under their noses,” said Adrian coolly.
But Allington could make no guess at what he meant.

“What do you think of doing?” he repeated.

“Go back to town, and----” he hesitated. “Look here, Allington, you
don’t think this business of Hester Murray’s looks queer bang on top of
Levallion’s death, do you?”

“No,” unwillingly. “She’d be afraid to try it--in that case. In any
case, you say you know she was in Boulogne.”

“I suppose I do. She gave me an address of a pension there, and
I wrote. It was all straight enough. Hello! here’s Tommy!” with
annoyance. He had not wanted to see Tommy. The boy’s eyes were too
clear, even a lie untold might be written in Gordon’s face, he thought
vexedly.

“Hello! where’ve you been?” he said uncomfortably, and then stopped
short.

“My God, Tommy! what is it?” he cried, the dreadful look on the boy’s
face meaning only one thing to him. Ravenel was guilty, and her brother
had found it out!

“Don’t speak to me!” said the boy hoarsely; “let me think. I’ve
been--and I thought it might mean something, but--it can’t!”

Wherever he had been he had been running, and his face was white and
red in streaks. Allington pulled him down on a garden bench.

“Get your breath,” he said, but he was afraid, too.

At the two pale faces the boy suddenly laughed out hysterically.

“I’ve made a fool of myself,” he said. “I thought I’d found something.
Look here. I went over to the farm where--you know the Umbrella died?”
incoherently.

“She didn’t know anything!” cried Allington. “I turned the farmer’s
wife inside out. I suppose you mean by the Umbrella the woman who wrote
those letters to Lady Levallion that can’t be found?”

“I don’t know what she knew,” said Tommy sharply. “And we never will.
I went out toward the station to see if Gordon had come down by the
two-twenty, and he hadn’t. Coming home I met Mrs. Ward, the farmer’s
wife, and she asked me what she was to do with the Umbrella’s old
bonnet or something, but she really stopped me to know if any of us
would pay for the Umbrella’s board. It seems she stayed a week there,
and Ravenel hadn’t sent her enough money to pay for that and her
funeral. I don’t know! Anyhow, I strolled up with old Mother Ward to
see just what the Umbrella had left in the way of clothes, and to view
the undertaker’s bill for myself. For old Ward’s a beast. There were
some old rags of clothes with nothing in the pockets, and I said you’d
pay the undertaker,” turning to Allington. “I was staring round the
place and I saw a piece of paper, just an edge, sticking out between
the floor and the wall. I hooked it out, and there was a mouse-hole
behind it; the mice had dragged the thing in there.

“Old Mother Ward gave a yell. Said the Umbrella had held that thing in
her hand till she died, and she’d wondered what had become of it. I
thought--oh! I don’t know what I thought,” miserably; “but it isn’t any
good. Here’s the thing, and it doesn’t mean anything.”

“It’s a torn telegram,” said Allington, peering over Gordon’s shoulder
as he snatched the paper. “What’s that on the back of it?”

“Nothing,” said Tommy, “only 1 pound, or something.”

Adrian Gordon, like a man in a dream, stared at the dirty mouse-eaten
thing he held. It might be meaningless enough to Tommy and Allington,
but to him.

“By ----!” he said, below his breath, “Hester!”

“What do you mean?” cried Allington, startled.

“Look!” grimly, his eyes as hard as Levallion’s had ever been.

And Allington made out the tattered telegram.

“Wire descript-- Bocage. Imme----” the address was eaten away, there was
no signature.

“I don’t see what you mean!” he exclaimed.

Gordon pulled from his pocket that letter from Pension Bocage
concerning Mrs. Murray.

“Now do you understand?” he cried. “She was in Boulogne all
summer--according to that. Yet the man who wrote it wired to her to
describe herself. The meaning’s clear enough. ‘Wire description to
Bocage immediately,’ that’s how the telegram ran. It was Hester Murray
Tommy saw that night--and she dropped it.”

“But how could the woman who died come by it?” said Allington
doubtingly.

Tommy jumped up.

“You never knew her!” he cried. “She was always creeping and crawling
round. You bet she saw that man and woman the night I did, and that was
what she wanted to tell Ravenel. Oh, if she hadn’t died!” he caught his
breath. “She had sharp ears, the Umbrella. She may have heard every
word they said. And now we’ll never know.”

“Now, on the contrary, we’ve the only clue we’ve ever had,” Gordon
returned. “You’re a fool, Tommy!” staring at the reverse of the
telegram, “with your ‘1 pound!’ It’s ‘I found’ written on the back of
it, and something else I can’t make out. But even without it, we’ve
enough for--Hester Murray,” savagely.

Sir Thomas dived into his pockets.

“Whoever the woman was,” he cried, hunting vigorously, “I’ve got
something belonging to her. You didn’t know that when Jacobs went for
the man that night he tore the woman’s cloak, did you? And--oh! here it
is!” gladly. “I’ve had it ever since.”

He laid in Allington’s hand a scrap of black satin, with a torn bit of
chinchilla hanging to it.

Adrian stared at him.

“Why, in Heaven’s name!” he said blankly, “didn’t you show that at the
inquest?”

“Because I’m not a fool,” returned Sir Thomas.

“The room was full of men. How did I know any of ’em hadn’t been
drinking champagne in the moonlight with a lady, and would go off and
tell her she’d been seen looking in windows. Besides, then, mind you, I
thought it was you I saw on the rock, and I didn’t care who it was with
you, because I’d proved it wasn’t my sister.”

Adrian winced.

“I can’t say much for your eyesight!” he cried, with sarcasm. “Last
night Allington says you were quite ready to think the man was
Carrousel.”

The words cut.

“I never said it was Carrousel I saw on the rock that night,” said
Tommy, suddenly very white and quiet. “I never thought it. He’s got a
beard. But I’d tell you this much: If you’ll find the woman who owns
that cloak, and give me time--I’ll find the man!”

“Time’s just what we haven’t got. And I don’t believe you’d know the
man if you fell over him,” unbelievingly.

“I mightn’t,” said Tommy composedly. “But--Jacobs would.”

And neither man believed him.




CHAPTER XXXVII.

A GRAY-LINED CLOAK.


“I’m going to win!” said Hester Murray to herself breathlessly. “Oh,
I’m going to win!”

For her case had been taken up by the cleverest barrister in London,
and, as he showed it to her, faultlessly dovetailed together, there
was not a flaw in it. Maurice Davidge, even, who, for his own reasons,
had posed this ten years back as John Davidge, was in London, and in
self-defense had chosen to stand his chance for false impersonation and
misappropriation of money rather than take John Davidge’s sins on his
shoulders.

For John Davidge’s father had had excellent cause to pension off his
son. A long-gone-by agrarian riot and murder in Ireland had been John
Davidge’s work, and by a queer chain of circumstances had come home to
him now.

Maurice, to save his neck, which he had ignorantly ventured in London,
was glad enough to have Hester Murray corroborate his tale. And,
indeed, there was no doubt about his identity. Witness after witness
cropped up to establish that, and the death and burial of the true
John Davidge, who had lived long enough to make Hester’s marriage to
Murray null and void, and died just in time to legalize her union with
Levallion.

But it was queer that, as she looked at her lawyer’s triumphant,
confident letter, a shiver took her; the shiver old women call
footsteps on your grave. She got up and drank some brandy, nearly neat.
At the bungalow she had got into the way of keeping her heart up with
spirits, but she would break that off now. Yet she took another glass
before her shivering-fit would pass.

“It was that dream!” she said to herself. “It unstrung me. I wish I
knew what it meant. But dreams”--the brandy was warming her now--“are
rubbish! Only thoughts, after all.”

Yet that dream had made her wake up, crying out till Adrian--that
Adrian who had Levallion’s blood in him--came to her from the next room.

“What’s the matter?” he cried, a bonny figure in the half-light, with
his ruffled head and his tumbled nightgown.

“I dreamed I was on a swing!” She caught him to her.

“That wasn’t anything,” climbing into her bed.

“No, of course not.” But she did not tell the child her whole dream.
There was she, Hester Murray, sitting on a swing that hung high over
the heads of a great crowd of people. In front of her, so that as she
swung, she must touch it, was a flower-covered platform. On it she
saw herself--yes, her very self--in widow’s weeds, holding her boy by
the hand, among a group of people who were crying: “Long live Lord
Levallion!” cheering for the new heir.

The swing began to move forward, and something made her look over
her shoulder. Behind her, precisely as far away as the flower-decked
platform, so that as she swung back she must touch him, stood the dead
Levallion, in his grave-clothes. He smiled, that smile that had cut
her many a time, and pointed. At his right hand was the gallows, and a
hangman with a black mask.

The swing flew through the air, touched the platform. The dreamer tried
to jump to it, and found she was tied by a cord. Back, back went the
swing toward the dead man, whose outstretched hand would catch and
hold it fast. Back--with a shriek of torture Hester Murray woke, and
trembled at her child’s touch.

“I’m a fool!” she thought, now. “It was nightmare. I had nothing to do
with it. I never was in Levallion’s house.”

But apprehension had her by the throat. If she had dared she would
almost have thrown up her claim and her child’s. But to dare that was
out of her power this three weeks past.

“I must go out. The air may steady me. I’m nervous.” If it was not too
late she would go to the hospital, for Bob Murray, by some miracle, was
lingering still. Quite gratuitously his quondam wife wished he would
die. Not that it would really matter to her case; she would be rid of
him effectually when she was proved to be the Countess of Levallion,
but if he died quietly, he would not be able to air some small
details that shed no glory on her life in Eaton Place. He might deny
Levallion’s going there till he was black in the face, no one would
believe him. And still she wished feverishly that he was dead.

But she was too late at the hospital, or too something. The hall
porter informed her that the house surgeon was busy at an operation,
and--having vainly expected a tip at her previous visits--could get her
no information on the case she inquired about, except that the man was
alive.

Mrs. Murray walked slowly toward Regent Street, that the lights and
the crowd might cheer her. At Berry’s she went in and had dinner, with
reckless extravagance. There was nothing to go home for to-night, and
it would pass the time.

It had been five o’clock when she started; it was nearer ten than nine
when she got back to Starr Street, her causeless apprehension utterly
gone, and her small, dainty face quite gay.

“A gentleman is waiting to see you, madam!” The landlady was in the
entry as Mrs. Murray’s latch-key let her in. There was no secret about
her being the Mrs. Murray whose case had electrified London, and the
future Countess of Levallion had everything she chose to ask for in the
squalid lodgings.

“What gentleman?” The door half-closed, the latch-key half-way to her
pocket, Hester stood.

“I couldn’t say. I think he was here yesterday.”

“Oh, yes!” with a little relieved laugh. “My lawyer.” And she went
into the sitting-room with her oddly boyish step suitably adjusted to
smoothness. The door slipped from her hand and banged.

A tall man, clean-shaven, except for a heavy dark mustache, was pacing
irritably up and down the room. His plain blue serge was exquisitely
cut, but oddly narrow in the chest, as if it had been made for some
other man.

“How dare you come here?” she said, her clear voice low with fury.
“It’s enough to ruin me.”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“You talk nonsense. Have I no sense? If I run any risk it is because
you were out. Did I not say,” angrily, “stay in, stay in, stay in?” His
uplifted hand seemed to threaten her, for she cowered under it. “For
you, there is no risk at all.”

“You said last night you could not come again. That there was risk!” As
she looked at him her dream came back to her, though he had not been in
it, and her voice came harsh and sudden.

“What brings you, and where have you been?”

His hand fell on her slight shoulder.

“Last night was last night!” he said. “It’s none of your business where
I’ve been, but I don’t mind telling you. Down at Levallion.”

“Well?” she said, as if it were no news to her.

“If I hadn’t gone it would not have been well--for you,” he said.
“Though I don’t know. Did you do”--curiously--“what I told you to?”

“I couldn’t,” carelessly. “I’ve had no chance.”

“What!” savagely.

“I couldn’t do it in daylight!” she cried. “I don’t see how I can do it
at all. There’s always some one looking at me. If that’s what you mean,
you were a fool to come here! The thing is safer here than anywhere; it
doesn’t matter in any case.”

“Get it,” ordered the man, and his face had grown ten years older.
“Since you can’t make yourself safe, I must. Go!”

“I won’t do anything in the dark,” she said. “How do I know what you
want it for--other people may trust you, I don’t.”

His hands opened and shut, as if for one second it was hard work to
keep them off her, though he loved her in his way.

“You can trust me--better than yourself,” he said, close to her ear.
“Listen! I went down to Levallion. I told you I should not, but I did.
And there in broad daylight, with a field-glass, I see Captain Gordon
appear--that black little beast, Sir Thomas; the lawyer. I have no
field-glass for my ears, I cannot make them like my eyes. But----”

“They’d nothing of yours?” she gasped.

“No,” softly, but his nails were hurting her shoulder. “But they had of
yours. Had you no sense--did you not know that accursed dog tore your
cloak that night in the wood?”

“I never looked at it!” she said wildly.

“Look now, then; for they had a piece of it in their hands. May the
devil burn them for not showing it at the inquest! I’d have--and now
you’ve got it still! Even though I told you to take no chances, to get
rid of it if you had to burn this house down.”

“They can’t think of me,” hardily. “I was in Boulogne.”

“How do I know whom they think of?” with sudden fury. “They have gone
back for some reason to the woman they could not trace. I hear from
people that all this time Captain Gordon has been in London. What
brought him back to-day to look at that black-and-gray rag? If I had
not gone down, the police might have fitted it to your cloak.”

“How dared you come, with Gordon there?” she broke in furiously. “You
should have watched him. He----”

“He is there, and not here--that is why I came.” And as if her
slowness, her distrust, maddened him, he shook her viciously. “Get the
cloak!” he cried, “and I’ll save you yet. The police may be on you
to-morrow. You will only have me and my field-glass to thank if they do
not find it.”

“If they do, I didn’t do--it,” she said, and then ran, for his eyes
were full of murder.

“Take it!” she gasped, coming back again, throwing down a black satin
cloak, lined with chinchilla. “I wish I’d never seen you!”

“I dare say you do--Lady Levallion!” he said sardonically. “Hester
Murray told another story. Good night, and thank me you dare to sleep.”

But when he was gone she had no thought of sleep. For two days she had
loved the man who had just gone out; and now she hated him, because
she knew she would never get rid of him till she died. She ran to the
window to see where he had gone; stared out; dropped the half-raised
blind and staggered, more than started back to the middle of the room,
as if the quiet street had been the pit of hell.

“The dream!” she thought wildly. “But I’ve time!” Something took her
at the throat. The man held everything in his hands, her money, her
position, her---- But it was not being Countess of Levallion that was
in her thoughts as she ran from the room, but life--bare life--that
garbled lie could take away from her.




CHAPTER XXXVIII.

ARRESTED.


“Hold on,” said a quick voice, in the dark, and Adrian Gordon stopped
short; “I’m coming, too.”

For after a comfortable dinner in Monsieur Carrousel’s best manner he
had strolled out, ostensibly to take a walk, really to go as hard as he
could to the station and catch the first train for Starr Street.

“There’s no sense in your coming,” he said sharply, and Sir Thomas
returned no answer. “And you can’t bring Jacobs. He’ll be a nuisance.”

“I’m coming, all the same,” obstinately; “and I can’t leave Jacobs
behind. Carrousel might pour boiling water on him or something. Don’t
hurry so! You want to catch the express, not the slow train that
goes first. Oh, Gordon!” wretchedly, “don’t you see I must be doing
something? You can’t leave me behind to hatch out rot about a cook and
a boot-boy.”

“Come on, then,” weakening; and in silence the two trudged through the
country lanes on their way to London, detectives, Hester Murray.

“I don’t know why you’re creeping away like this,” said Tommy suddenly,
as they neared the country station; “but that’s another reason I came.
I’ve a mileage ticket. We can get in without any one seeing us.” And
they did, with Jacobs smuggled under the seat.

“There’s the slow train now!” he said, after they had been some ten
minutes out of the station. “It stops here to pick up some carriages
and gets in five minutes after we do.” They flashed past the rows of
lighted windows as he spoke.

“Glad we did not strike it,” said Adrian, for the sake of saying
something, for five minutes more or less would make a difference in the
night’s work. But they lost it, all the same, for at Paddington a short
man in shooting-clothes hailed Gordon loudly from a waiting-room.

“My dear chap!” he cried effusively, “where have you been?”

“How are you?” said Adrian hurriedly. “I’ve been--you heard about
Levallion?”

“I forgot,” the man returned awkwardly. “But I wanted to see you. Come
here a second,” and he drew the reluctant Adrian into the cloak-room.

“Hang him!” said Tommy, dragging Jacobs after them by his chain. “Now
we’ll be all night.”

For he knew well enough who the man was. A certain distinguished
general who could not be shaken off till he had said his say.

Sir Thomas stared and fretted at the cloak-room window. Not that he had
any business in Starr Street, but it was a comfort to be even following
a shadow. All at once he ducked down, rushed across the room to Adrian.
“Come on,” he said, in a savage whisper, for he had seen what he never
hoped to see on earth. Out of an incoming train had stepped that
very man whom he had seen on that rock in the moonlight, whom Jacobs
had frightened into unseemly skips and yells. Tall, dark-mustached,
leisurely, with a curiously square line of shaven cheek and chin, the
man had paused against a lamp-post, as Tommy had seen him against the
moon.

“Come on!” he cried, oblivious of the stout general. “I’ve seen him.”

“Who?” blankly.

“How do I know?” white to the lips. “The man we want. Come on.”

But he had no need to urge it. Adrian was out of the cloak-room as fast
as he could go. The general, being a sensible man in the main, said
nothing. Merely stepped to the door and beheld the vanishing figures of
Captain Gordon, a boy, and a dog, running down the empty platform. For,
whoever the man had been, he was gone.

At the street corner the two stared every way in the dull gaslight.
There were plenty of foot-passengers, and among them the man was
lost. Mr. Jacobs stood waving his long white tail, his benevolent
white-and-brindle face beaming. Suddenly he put his nose down to the
ground and sniffed; then he tugged at his chain.

“Let him go,” said Adrian, for as the dog sniffed the ground his whole
look had changed. His ears flattened to his head, his back bristling,
he was nearly dragging Tommy off his feet.

“It’s some one the dog has known before,” said Adrian, as they hurried
through the streets. “Where did you get him?”

“Found him on the road with a broken rib.”

In and out through the traffic, down by-streets, Jacobs ran. And by a
way Adrian had not known existed brought up in Starr Street. He had
thought it ten minutes’ walk to the station; by Jacobs’ way it was not
five. As the dog would have rushed to Hester Murray’s door and barked
the street down, Adrian caught him back.

“Wait,” he muttered. “Come over opposite.”

Tommy picked up the struggling dog and the three, unnoticed, mounted
“Mr. Atkinson’s” stairs. There on the blind opposite they saw a shadow,
dwarfed, ridiculous, but still the shadow of a man.

“Is that Mrs. Murray’s room?” said Tommy, and Gordon nodded.

“Wait,” he said; “she isn’t there.”

For the man had come to the window, and as he fumbled with the blind
it snapped out of his hand and flew up. The next second he dragged it
down again, but Tommy had seen him.

“It’s the man I saw on the rock!” he cried, trembling.

“And it’s my man of last night,” grimly. “Some town friend of Hester’s
who’d been in the country on an errand she dared not do. So much for
you and your cook, Tommy!”

“Aren’t you going to do anything?” impatiently.

Adrian gave a short laugh. Hester Murray, in her trailing black, was
going up her own steps.

“Now I am!” he said. “I was waiting for her. You stay here, and if she
comes out see where she goes. I’m going to take a cab and drive like
blazes for Allington’s detective--who pooh-poohed the idea of her--and
a search-warrant. If that cloak’s in her house, I think we have your
man and woman.”

For it had suddenly come over him that at the time of Levallion’s death
Mrs. Murray had not known about Maurice Davidge, or that she could have
any claim on Levallion. Living here, so near the station, it would have
been simple enough for her to go down by the seven-o’clock train and
back by the midnight. Her alibi would be secure; her landlady would
only think she had dined out. She need not get out at Levallion’s
station, even; two miles farther on there was a siding where every
train stopped for water. Through the fields from there it would not be
half a mile to the castle. She knew the house well enough to pass out
and in unseen.

Tommy, craning out of the window, saw him vanish down the street. And
then his heart leaped. The man was coming out of the house opposite
with a bundle under his arm. As the door opened the boy’s head
disappeared just in time. He made for the door and got tangled up with
Jacobs; picked himself up and ran into the street, forgetting all about
Mrs. Murray. The man was just disappearing round the corner in the
very opposite direction from the one Adrian had taken. But there was
no time to wait for reenforcements. He was certain that bundle was the
cloak that Adrian wanted. Helter-skelter, boy and dog tore along. Lost
the man, saw him again as he crossed the Paddington Road with a bundle
under his arm, ran into a man with an umbrella who wasted profanity on
them, and pulled up. The man had vanished. Tommy pressed Jacobs’ nose
to the pavement.

“Hi, fetch him, good dog!” he muttered, knowing quite well he was
asking almost an impossibility of the dog in a place where so many
people walked. But Jacobs whined, ran back a little, sniffed, and was
off, Tommy running beside him.

Across the Paddington Road, into dark by-streets, to the vile slums by
St. Mary’s Hospital, the dog led him. Into an open door and up-stairs
in a filthy, greasy tenement-house; up and up to the very garret. The
place was pitch-dark, sickening; the stairs riddled with rat-holes.
Jacobs stopped pulling at his chain and gave a low growl. In the quiet
it sounded loud enough to wake the dead.

Tommy clutched his jaws frantically.

“Quiet!” he said, through his teeth. On his hands and knees he crawled
till he could crawl no farther. A reeking, moldy wall enclosed the
landing, and the very silence of death was round him.

He knew perfectly that it was in houses like this that men were
murdered, but he never moved to grope his way to the stairs again.
The dog panted in his arms, stiffening fiercely. Suddenly there came
a footstep, in his very ear where he crouched against the wall. A man
was moving softly on the other side of the partition, and before he
could think a door opened back on him, almost crushing him, and if it
had been forward it would have taken more than Jacobs to save Tommy
Annesley. A man came out, without any bundle, stood while he closed and
locked the door. A candle was burning inside, and the light of it shone
on him as he deliberately pushed the door to. The next instant, in the
pitch-dark, Jacobs sprang, silent as death, and well-nigh as strong.

Down the rickety stairs the two flew, like some horrible dream. Twice
Jacobs lost his hold, and got it again. In any other house the people
would have swarmed out of every room, but in Bethnal Court lived
human wolves, in by day and out by night. With a wild spring the man
reached the open door into the court, slipped with a crash on the slimy
stones outside; Tommy, tearing down, flew head over heels over him;
Jacobs--but the boy knew no more.

And Adrian Gordon stood at that minute in Starr Street, knowing not
which way to turn. Tommy and Jacobs were gone, Heaven knew where--and
Hester Murray’s rooms held no one. She was gone, and he knew she would
never come back again. Gone in the clothes she wore, taking her child
with her, thinking only of bare life. Warned, somehow, for if she had
ever owned that cloak she had taken it with her.

“Better give it up, sir,” said the detective--whom he had lost
everything by waiting to get; “they’ve given you the slip.”

Gordon stared at him as if he did not see him.

“We’ve got to find the boy,” he said. “There was a man in there; he
must have followed him.”

But though all night long the two walked the streets, haunted
police-stations, asked questions, they found not a single trace of
Tommy and Mr. Jacobs.

At sunrise Gordon stood alone on a street corner, for the much-tried
detective had struck. He had lost Tommy, had lost Hester and probably
that cloak whose useless shred he held in his hands; had probably
let slip in his stupidity the only chance he had ever had of saving
Ravenel. He shivered in the morning air. For there was a girl in
Valehampton Jail who had borne enough. How was she to bear this?

A policeman in plain clothes tapped his shoulder; another, as by a
miracle, sprang up in front of him.

He was arrested as accessory before the fact to the murder of Lord
Levallion.




CHAPTER XXXIX.

MR. JACOBS.


A sound of running feet, a shrill whistle, was what Sir Thomas
Annesley dreamed of where he lay on the greasy cobblestones after his
somersault; and then a strong hand on his collar that was real, and
jerked him into consciousness. A policeman was bending over him, and
had Jacobs by his chain.

“Hi, sir!” he cried, “do you know your dog’s nearly killed a man?”

Tommy stared at him, and saw no one but the policeman, the quivering
Jacobs. After everything had the man got away?

“You’ve let him go!” he exclaimed, and between his fall and anger
turned sick. “Why didn’t you come before? I never saw one policeman all
the way here.”

It is said that every man has his price; it is certain he has his
weakness. The policeman’s happened to be bull-terriers. A flying
glimpse of this one and his master tearing along streets where a
well-dressed boy seldom came and a well-bred dog only too often, had
sent him after them, though he had not seen they were following any
one. In Bethnal Court he came on them. The dog standing over a man who
lay on his face, the boy a crumpled heap on the stones.

Policeman Garrety, being a dog-fancier first and an officer afterward,
took the chain that trailed behind Jacobs.

The dog never even growled, but came quietly to him as he was ordered.

“That’s queer,” the man said to himself. “There ain’t no ‘vicious-dog’
business here. That young sprig must have set him on!” He roused Sir
Thomas with a less gentle hand than he had laid on Mr. Jacobs. And the
boy’s first words were angrily, unconsciously authoritative.

“Why on earth couldn’t you keep him? Here’s everything wasted,” he
cried. “Go and look for him, quick.”

The man laughed.

“I haven’t far to go,” he said. “You’re a bit knocked out still.
There’s the man,” with a backward jerk of his head. “But what brought
you and your dog down here? It wasn’t accident, for I saw you coming
here. Don’t you know you haven’t no right to come to such places? If
you hadn’t had that dog, and I hadn’t noticed you, you’d not likely
have come out alive. Did French Pete set on you, or what?”

“Did what?” said Tommy. He had turned long ago and seen a dark figure
lying on the stones just as it had fallen. He staggered over to it,
dizzy and sick.

“He isn’t dead, is he?” he said sharply, not taking in a word of what
the policeman was saying. “I don’t want him to die; I want him alive.”

The policeman looked at the man on the stones. Six feet in his
stockings, girthed like a pony, and this slim-legged kid was coolly
remarking that he “wanted him alive.”

“He’s that, right enough,” he observed. “It’s French Pete, and he’s
only knocked out. You’d better tell me what it all means, sir! I’ve
whistled for another man, and the ambulance to take him away,”
significantly. For if he owned a valuable bull-terrier he would not run
the risk of having him destroyed as dangerous on account of carrion
like the man on the ground.

“It’s who?” said Tommy.

“French Pete!” sharply. If the boy was fool enough to stay, it was his
own fault if he lost the dog. Mr. Garrety, for all his uniform, pined
to lay hands on him himself.

“Let me see his face,” cried Tommy thickly, and as the man turned the
unconscious head in the light of a pocket lantern, Sir Thomas gurgled
unintelligibly in his throat.

It was the man he had seen in the wood, the man he had followed from
Mrs. Murray’s--and ever since the policeman had called him by a strange
name he had been mad with fear that Jacobs had pinned some other man.
But this was he. Looked at closely, he was dark-haired, square-chinned,
and blue with constant shaving; oddly like a gentleman in the pallor of
his faint.

The policeman, on his knees, went through French Pete’s pockets with
accustomed fingers.

“Look!” he said, and held up something. “That’s the sort of man he is!
Now, what in the world had you to do with him?”

The boy stared, snatched at the dusky object that lay in an immaculate
handkerchief, held it to the face on Policeman Garrety’s arm.

“It’s him!” he screamed.

For the mystery lay before him of who had worn Adrian Gordon’s clothes.

He turned wildly on the astounded policeman.

“Go up-stairs,” he cried; “up to the very top. He left a parcel up
there; that’s why I followed him. It’s a----” but he stopped. It was
only guesswork about that parcel. But something else came to him--the
intuition of why this man had come here at all.

“I think you’ll find more up there than a parcel,” he said quite
quietly, and he poured out the whole story that had been irrelevant
scraps an hour ago, and now dovetailed into a neat whole. All except
what was in the parcel, for in his hurry he forgot it. But he said
enough to send Garrety up-stairs on the run.

“You stay here,” the man said as he went. “Here’s my whistle. You blow
it if he stirs. But he won’t; he landed on his head,” and he was gone
as Tommy caught the whistle.

The house was empty now, but in another hour the inmates would be
strolling back, and one policeman in Bethnal Court would be extremely
likely to get his head broken.

Tommy sat in a cold sweat on the greasy stones. His head was swimming,
and it seemed to him as if the prostrate man before him was moving. He
got up, staggered, tried to blow the whistle, and fell in a dead faint.
His triumph was slipping through his fingers.

A woman sauntered into the yard and nearly walked over him. Jacobs
growled, and then yelled. With wild barks and whines he danced round
her, slobbered over her dirty hands, and she screamed. The next instant
she had the dog round the neck, dragged him to the gaslight at the
entrance of the court, and after one look fell to hugging him.

“Jack! it’s Jack!” she cried. “My Jack, that I’ve never seen since
that devil half-killed him and left him on the road. Oh, my dog, my
dog!” and the tears that had long since dried up in her miserable eyes
streamed down now.

Long ago, when Moll Price had been “Pretty Molly” in her village, she
had been given a bull-terrier puppy. When she ran away with a man who
said he was a gentleman, and turned out to be a devil, she had taken
the dog. And the man she loved had beaten her and her dog; had dragged
them over half of England, living by their wits, poor, driven to tramp
the roads, till one day he had struck her once too often, and the
half-grown terrier bit him. Many and many a time in her dreams had Moll
Price seen the brutal kick that broke the dog’s ribs, the blow on the
head that stunned him; many a time felt the strong hand that hurried
her away, powerless, leaving her only friend dead on a country road.

She had been half-drunk when she entered the yard; she was sober as she
remembered she had stumbled over a man; a fierce hope rose in her as he
ran back to the place.

After three years of freedom her master had found her out, had come to
her with a heavy hand and a story she knew was a lie. Could that be he
that lay upon the stones, and had Jack had his revenge at last? For she
knew the blood the dog had shed, blood that never forgot or forgave.

She fumbled in her pocket, found a match, lit it.

“It’s him!” she cried, with fierce rejoicing, “and I hope he’s dead.”

She looked at the senseless boy beside him in his gentleman’s clothes,
at the dog that ran from her to him and licked his face.

“There’s been queer work here!” she thought soberly, for French Pete’s
torn clothes told their tale. “But they sha’n’t find out and kill Jack.
They’re cruel hard on dogs in London, and he wasn’t muzzled. They’d
take him for that alone.”

She was a strong woman; she lifted the boy easily enough, called the
dog in a whisper, and went into the house. But not far. A footstep, too
well-shod to belong to any of the inmates, caught her ears. She laid
the boy flat under the stairs, crawled in beside him with the dog in
her arms. After what seemed an hour, the heavy footsteps clumped down
over her head and went out. Even then she dared not move. It would take
all she knew to get this boy up to her room without having to be quick.

Outside in the court Policeman Garrety stood dumfounded. Boy and dog
had vanished, but that he had half-expected, and whatever he had found
up-stairs it was not what he had been told was there. But French Pete,
who had lain like a log, was gone, too.

He stumped away beside the useless ambulance, and was only sure he had
not dreamed the whole thing because of a parcel he held under his arm.




CHAPTER XL.

AT THE HINGES OF DEATH.


“Adrian and I! I and Adrian!”

Lady Levallion had reason to look like a dead woman as she stood in
court, and looked once--but once--round the sea of hostile and curious
faces. Not till her own lawyers had begged for an adjournment on
account of the absence of one of their principal witnesses--and been
refused--did she know that Tommy was missing, and the grip of despair
caught her as she heard it. Not on her own account, for Tommy had
little enough to say that would help her, but for sheer terror that the
boy was hurt or killed somewhere in London.

When they had told her that she was not to stand alone in the dock,
but Adrian as well, she had never said a word, had never glanced at
him all the time in court, but now, when the prosecution had finished,
she looked at his face and saw there what she knew. Unless there was a
miracle from the skies they two would be found guilty.

“Adrian and I,” she kept repeating to herself, and her cold hands grew
wet.

For the prosecution had swept away any and every chance for them.

The housekeeper, against her will, had been forced to confess what was
quite true, that Lady Levallion had often come to the still-room and
learned to make distilled waters. The coroner swore that such a water
made from laurel-leaves had killed Lord Levallion, and every servant in
the house at the time of the murder had proved they had nothing to do
with it.

And slowly, with silky questions, the prosecution showed their reasons
for arresting Captain Gordon as her accomplice. His supposed alibi in
London on the night of the murder did not hold water. He had dined with
a man at a restaurant, it was true, but between that and the card-party
at his own rooms there had been three hours unaccounted for. And those
three hours could easily have taken him to Levallion Castle and back.
And the very absence of Sir Thomas Annesley was made into the certainty
that the boy was staying away on purpose, lest he should have to repeat
his evidence of seeing Captain Gordon in a wood in those very tweed
clothes of which a piece had been found in Levallion’s room. No one
could prove Captain Gordon had not been in the wood, and the theory of
a stranger in his clothes was shown to be absurd. His tailor, beyond
the fact that Captain Gordon owed him fifty pounds, could say nothing
as to what he had made for him. The only entry in his books were
uniforms and “tweeds, fifteen guineas.” Nothing else. Adrian remembered
that he had never had a bill for the clothes, and on saying that
fifteen guineas could not possibly represent one suit alone, was shown
that it easily could.

As for any tale of a strange woman being seen hanging about Levallion
Castle, it was openly laughed at. Lord Chayter, who swore to the face
at the window, had to confess that Levallion had assured him he was
mistaken. And in the absence of Sir Thomas Annesley there was no one to
prove that woman in the wood had not been Lady Levallion herself. She
had certainly left the drawing-room.

The terms on which the prisoners were left no room for doubt; indeed,
they had openly discussed the death of Lord Levallion--one of them
had made no bones about speaking of poison. And the winding up of the
matter was this: In the wood at night the two had arranged matters.
Captain Gordon had come down from London unknown to any one but Lady
Levallion, had poisoned with laurel water given him by her a bottle
of Eau de Vie Magique which he had brought with him--for such another
bottle had been found in his London rooms--and had been frightened by
Sir Thomas’ dog into going away without these two incriminating bottles
found in Lady Levallion’s bedroom. The prosecution did not mean to say
that the guilty pair had foreseen that night would give them their
opportunity--merely that on being put into their hands they had made
use of it. Probably Captain Gordon had come merely to see his cousin’s
wife clandestinely, but that the two had been overcome by temptation
could not be doubted.

No one but Lady Levallion could have placed those bottles in her
bedroom, as no servant had been away from the others during the
evening, and no one of the guests but Lady Gwendolen Brook--who had
cleared herself by being able to relate the exact words of a quarrel
between Lord and Lady Levallion in the lower hall, a quarrel of which
Lacy also was cognizant.

Surely no intelligent juror could doubt which way the evidence tended.
As for bringing in an innocent woman like Mrs. Murray, the prosecution
had nothing but contempt for so far-fetched a story. If Sir Thomas
Annesley had a piece of the cloak which Captain Gordon, on no evidence
whatever, supposed to be Mrs. Murray’s, why was he not in court to
produce it? It seemed that he had excellent reason to stay away.

And to all this Ravenel’s lawyer had nothing to reply, except that
letter from the Pension Bocage and that mouse-eaten telegram. He spun
them out as long as he could, and to no earthly purpose. Ravenel, in
the dock, never looked up, but only prayed he would be done--make an
end, and let her get back to prison out of the range of those countless
eyes that lost not one line in her anguished face.

But Adrian Gordon--and the court wondered at his shameless
bearing--stood staring at his own lawyer, who would not look at him.

There was a stir in the court, but Gordon’s face was turned from the
door. Only Monsieur Carrousel, standing, an idle and pitiful spectator,
who might be cross-questioned by the defense on a subject of which he
knew nothing, suddenly changed color and moved loungingly to the door.
But the packed room would not make way for him.

“My lord,” said Ravenel’s lawyer suddenly, as if something for which
he had been waiting had happened, “we can now produce our missing
witnesses!” And Adrian thought the man had gone suddenly crazy, for he
called Pierre Carrousel.

And Carrousel, after one glance behind him, came with a light laugh.
Yet the first question astonished him, for it was about Towers, the
boot-boy.

“I took him to his place,” he said jauntily; “there I left him. The
housekeeper heard from him the next morning. I know no more.”

“In that case,” returned Ravenel’s counsel, “you can step down. I will
call Mary Price.”

Carrousel turned livid, tried to leave the room, and found his way
unaccountably blocked by a strange policeman.

And all the while Adrian Gordon stared, as if the world had suddenly
gone mad.

“Do you know any one in this court-room?” The question made the new
witness, a woman in soiled finery, look at him contemptuously.

“I know him!” she cried, and she pointed, not at Adrian Gordon, as the
crowd expected, but at Lord Levallion’s innocent cook. “That’s what I
come for. My name is Mary Price, and I lived with him for three years,
till he deserted me. My father kept a public house in Southsea, and I
was barmaid. I ran away with this man, who said his name was Archer. He
ill-treated me, took me to a London slum, and lived on what I earned.”

Carrousel interrupted coolly. He had had time to glance round the
court, and saw no newcomer but Mary Price. The missing links in the
defense were missing still.

“I never saw this woman in my life!” he cried. “She is a liar! My name
never was Archer--never! She cannot know me.”

The woman gave him a deadly glance.

“I never said your name was Archer,” she said coolly; “only that you
told me it was. And if I don’t know you, why--there’s some one else who
will! Am I to go on, sir?” to the lawyer, who nodded.

“What his real name is, I don’t know,” she said, “but the people where
we lived in London called him French Pete. He’d got tired of me, and I
hated him, for he’d killed my dog that I’d brought from home, made me
leave him for dead on a country road--we were tramping to London then.
After he left me I saw nothing of him for a year; then I met him in the
street dressed like a gentleman. He gave me money, and found out where
I lived. I was pretty low, and I was afraid of him besides.

“Just a week ago he came to my room and brought a boy. Said he’d been
cruelly treated in his place, and would I look after him. He’d pay me.
And I did. But the boy seemed so queer that I was afraid to leave him
alone--stupidlike and terrified. When I went out I’d put him in a loft
there was over my room. The ceiling was all cracked and stained, and no
one would see the trap. I put him there because from what he talked of
in his sleep I knew Archer meant him no good. The boy knew something.
And, for fear Archer would get in while I was out and do away with him
and say it was me, I used to keep him hid away most of the time. He was
up there when Garrety broke in my room that night and got the paper
parcel.”

Not a soul knew what she meant. The prosecution had never heard of
Policeman Garrety, any more than had Adrian Gordon, and the former was
ill-advised enough to say so.

“That’s him there!” said Miss Price, “and perhaps it’d be better for
him to speak before I go on.” Which was allowed, after some dispute,
and at the policeman’s evidence Carrousel stood like a creature
demented.

“Certainly I know that man,” he said simply, “I’ve known him for years
as French Pete, the best cook in London when he chose to work. But I
know him better without his beard,” and before Carrousel could move
he had leaned backward to a brother policeman, who coolly tweaked the
chestnut beard from the cook’s face.

A confused murmur ran round the court, and Adrian Gordon stood more
confounded than Carrousel. Tommy had been right--it was that man, and
no other, he had seen going into Hester Murray’s house.

“It was like that I see him lying stunned like in Bethnal Court near a
week ago,” pursued the policeman calmly, and it was Allington’s turn to
start, for he had never dreamed that Carrousel had ever left Levallion
Castle since the night he knew of, “and there was a dog standing over
him and a boy beside him. And when I emptied his pockets and held his
false beard to his face the boy calls out Carrousel, and says if I went
up-stairs I’d find another boy that he had detected, and a parcel he’d
just left there. There was no boy, and I come down, and there wasn’t a
soul in the court--French Pete, nor the boy, nor the dog! But I’d got
the parcel right enough, and here it is.” He produced before the whole
court a black satin cloak lined with chinchilla.

And cross-examination failed to get anything more out of him except
that not until yesterday had he known that the cloak he had left at
Scotland Yard was wanted in this trial.

“I ain’t no detective,” he said quietly, “I never leave my beat. And
yesterday it took me to Bethnal Court, and there I found out. The girl
will tell you that it was I kicked her door down for her no later than
yesterday afternoon. I don’t know nothing of what went between.”

“I do,” said Molly Price, and she swallowed in her throat as at a
memory that hurt her. “That night Garrety tells of I come into Bethnal
Court on my way home. I live there. And as I was going into the house
I fell over something. I saw ’twas Archer, or French Pete, or whatever
he chose to call himself, and I thought he was dead. And then a dog--my
dog that I thought he killed long ago,” tears blinding her--“jumped
at me! He knew me after all those years, just as he’d known Archer. I
know there’d been bad work by the look of Archer’s clothes, and I was
afraid for my Jack if they found him. I looked at the boy that was
lying on the ground in a faint, and I felt kindly toward him because
Jack seemed to love him--and I said to myself he shouldn’t get into no
trouble either. So I took them up to my room--after waiting awhile,
because I heard some one up there, and if I’d known all I do now I’d
have come out that second--and there they’ve been ever since. First
Towers was like to die, but Sir Thomas worked over him night and day.”

“Towers!” Adrian Gordon’s face grew like that of a man who sees a hope
dawning, very faint and far, but still hope. Ravenel never looked up.
She knew nothing about the boot-boy.

“And then?” came a question.

“Well, it wasn’t till yesterday that we got Towers to talk, and then
we’d never nearly got here at all,” grimly. “Sir Thomas had no money,
but I’d sixpence, and when he was going out to wire to you that he’d
found out Towers, why, we couldn’t get out! Archer’d put some dodge
on my door so he could open it from outside, and it had got out of
order. We couldn’t get the door open, and kicking was no good, for it
opened inside. Nobody heard us yelling, for there was a row in the
house down-stairs. And that really let us out, for Garrety was there
professionally”--calmly--“and he heard me shouting ‘Help!’ and come
and knocked the door in. So here we comes this morning. It wouldn’t
have been any use to let strangers and police know we was there before,
for Towers was frightened, and wouldn’t talk. But he isn’t now.” And
Towers, white and weak from what had nearly wrecked his brain, stood up
before the court.

Carrousel glared at him. But the eyes he had once obeyed dumbly had
lost their power. The boot-boy quivered, but he spoke:

“I was the boot-boy,” he began timidly. “I did the cook’s errands. He
told me----”

“He lies!” yelled Carrousel, shaking his fist. “I beat and beat him
because he was a liar, and lazy.”

“You have not heard the lie yet,” said the judge coldly. “Another word,
and you leave.”

“He can’t hurt me, can he?” cried Towers pitifully. “Sir Thomas said he
couldn’t.”

“He can’t touch you. Go on,” said the lawyer kindly.

“He told me to pick some laurel-leaves, bunches of them. He said they
were to decorate the table. But I heard some one in the still-room
while I was cleaning boots, and I looked in. He was chopping them up
and making something. He didn’t know there was a door in the boot-hole
till I creaked it and he saw me. Then Sir Thomas’ dog was poisoned, and
I said to the cook that perhaps he’d got at what he was making. For
everybody knows laurel-water is poison.”

A thrill ran through the court as he described the preparation of
that devilish decoction of prussic acid that every one thought Lady
Levallion had made. But Towers did not see.

“He beat me,” he said simply, “and said if I said one word he’d say
it was me. And two of the kitchen-maids had seen me with the laurel
leaves, only they didn’t know they was poison. And I thought I might
be wrong, for the dog got well. I’d forgotten it, when one night late
the footman brought the dirty boots, and I sat down in the boot-hole
to clean them. I saw the cook’s white jacket and apron in there behind
the door, and I picked them up because I thought he’d beat me if I
got blacking on them. I had them in my hand when the boot-hole door
opened and in he come. He closed the door behind him quick and soft,
and I heard a dog go by, and he stood there fetching his breath. He
had on a tweed suit with a bit tore out of the trousers. He never said
a word--just grabbed his jacket and apron that I was holding, and put
them on. Then he puts his fingers on my eyes and forehead just as he’d
done once before, the day he beat me about the laurel-water.

“‘You don’t know nothing,’ he says, and he slips just as quiet as
nothing through that door into the still-room. I began to feel as if
I hadn’t seen him, and yet I knew I had. But whenever anybody asked
me anything I couldn’t seem to answer them. I just had to say, ‘I
don’t know nothing.’ But after that I wouldn’t let him touch my face.
I’d lie down and hide it, and let him beat me nearly to death. Once
Sir Thomas caught him at it. He’d nearly got me that time. It sounds
crazy,” apologetically, “but it seemed to me it was his hands on my
face that made me say what he told me. I knew all the time it was him
changed the bottles and put one in her ladyship’s room, for I see him
put the laurel-water into a little blue bottle the day he made it, and
’twas that they found in her ladyship’s room. But I couldn’t tell--and
then he took me to London because he said they was saying I killed his
lordship, and he wanted to save me. He’d stopped beating me and got
kind. But when he left me at a lady’s house he told me not to stay
there, as it was there they’d look for me. I ran out the kitchen door,
and that’s all I know”--wearily--“till I sort of woke up and saw Sir
Thomas and a woman. I didn’t hardly know I was myself till I saw those
trousers the cook give me.”

“What trousers?” said the prosecuting attorney, and the next second was
sorry he had spoken.

“The torn ones he was dressed up in, that he’d stolen from Captain
Gordon,” said the witness stolidly. “He told me Captain Gordon had give
them to him, but I knew he took them, because I saw him coming out of
his room with them, and I knowed he’d no call to be there. When there
was that fuss about them he made me put them on in the posting-shed
and wear them up to London. I’ve got ’em on now”--simply--“and I found
these two letters down the leg,” producing the Umbrella’s useless,
well-meant warnings.

“Why did you write from London that you were happy?” said the
prosecution sharply.

“Me?” said Towers. “Lord, sir, I can’t write.”

In a dead silence the Umbrella’s letters were read out, the letters
that proved it had been past and not present meetings for Lady
Levallion and Adrian Gordon. And then, with damning proof against
Carrousel and against the missing Hester Murray, it was shown that
Towers’ supposed epistle and the letter from the pension in Boulogne
were both in the same writing. And the telegram found in the mouse-hole
fitted in with both--for if Adrian’s detectives had not found Hester
Murray they had found that she had never been in Boulogne at all,
and that the Pension Bocage was kept by Carrousel’s sister. Adrian’s
letter of inquiry had been forwarded to him, and his answer posted in
Boulogne. Sir Thomas Annesley swore positively that the clean-shaven
Carrousel was the man he had seen in the wood and taken for Gordon. He
had known him in Paddington Station before he followed him to Bethnal
Court.

The counsel for the Crown observed somewhat hastily that, even
supposing Lord Levallion’s chef had been guilty of his death, there was
no possible reason for supposing Mrs. Murray to have been the woman
seen with him in the wood by Sir Thomas Annesley. No one had identified
her, or the cloak as her property. To bring in her name was not only
guesswork, but malicious slander--and Tommy interrupted by saying he
had seen Carrousel take the cloak from her house.

In the wrangle that ensued Houghton caught the duchess’ arm.

“Who’s that woman?” he whispered. “Isn’t it she?”

The duchess followed his eyes.

There stood Lady Annesley, emerged from her Harrogate retirement,
perfectly dressed, and calm as a lake.

Ravenel looked up with a sick shudder and met the pale eyes of the
woman without whom she would have been Adrian’s wife. What brought
Sylvia here? Sylvia!

“My lord,” said Lady Annesley, addressing the judge, and scorning the
jury, “I have just heard it said that Hester Murray is an innocent
woman. I have brought something in her own handwriting which may throw
a light on that, and first, if you will allow me, I will tell you how I
came by it. I was not well; I saw no papers until last week, and then
I read of the apprehension of my stepdaughter for the murder of her
husband, and that other case in which Mrs. Murray claimed the title of
Lady Levallion.

“I was not on good terms with my stepdaughter”--and the court, knowing
why, believed her--“neither she nor any one else had written to me of
the dreadful death of Lord Levallion. But, good terms or not”--and
Sylvia’s cleverness had not left her--“I was certain it was impossible
for her to have committed such a crime. It occurred to me that there
was one woman who, with Levallion in his grave, could do what she
would not have dared while he lived. I went from Harrogate to London;
to the address given as Mrs. Murray’s in the papers, and she was not
there. That made me certain she had reason to disappear, and I had
reason”--slowly--“to guess where she had gone. She had a son, whom she
chooses to call the present Lord Levallion, and I knew that the boy had
spent most of his childhood with an old nurse in a wild part of Wales.
I went there, on the chance. I waited till night; I looked in the
window, and there in the old woman’s kitchen sat two women and a boy. I
may tell you that I had a hold on Hester Murray. I went in and--did not
use it! This gentleman will tell you what happened.”

She waved her hand to a man, and the court stared as they saw the
ablest detective in England come forward.

“You see, my story does not stand alone.”

Mr. David’s story was short enough, perhaps, only Lady Annesley did not
see that it was pitiful.

“I went to Wales,” he said quietly, “Lady Annesley’s story to me having
confirmed something already told me by Captain Gordon. We found Mrs.
Murray in a farmhouse. She had not been well for some time, her hurried
flight, her trouble, and a chill had brought on pneumonia. When we
reached her she was sitting by the fire, a dying woman, who should have
been in her bed. Lady Annesley has told you she had a hold on her. I
may tell you there was no need for it. Mrs. Murray knew she was dying,
had written a letter already to clear herself from any share in the
death of Lord Levallion that might accrue to her. In fact, she turned
queen’s evidence before she died.”

There was not a sound as he read that strange, self-excusing letter,
which told how she and no other had been living in the bungalow all
summer. How Lord Levallion had shaken her off, and how she had formed
the acquaintance in her evening hauntings of Levallion Castle, of a
tall, dark man named Carrousel.

“He fell in love with me,” Hester Murray’s hand had written, in the
terror of that death which neither judge nor jury had brought on her;
“he used to come and see me, and bring me things--Levallion’s flowers,
fruit--anything he could lay hands on. And I found out easily enough
that he hated Levallion. One wet night I came home. I had been looking
in the windows at Levallion Castle. I was watching Lady Levallion and
Captain Gordon, and Levallion caught me. He was so angry I thought
he would kill me. I was beside myself, distraught, and in my house
Carrousel was waiting for me. I told him all my story--that I knew
then. For it was not till Levallion was dead that I heard about John
Davidge.

“And Carrousel said it was a very simple business to pay Levallion out
in his own coin. All I need do, he said, was to go away to London and
let Levallion know it. I could take a lodging near the station, and
come up and down every night unobserved if I got off at the siding. It
did not matter, he said, how circumspect Lady Levallion and Captain
Gordon chose to be, if he and I could play their parts, and two nights
after I met him in the wood dressed in Adrian Gordon’s clothes. When
first he came up behind me I screamed, for I thought it was Gordon
himself. He showed me a telegram from his sister in Boulogne; he was
to describe me, and she would say I had been there all summer. He had
champagne; we drank to the health of the new Lord Levallion, my son; to
Captain Gordon and Lady Levallion, who would put the Levallion I hated
out of the world; and I thought he meant it. Before God, I did not know
what was in Carrousel’s head till it was done, and he came to me and
told me that my cloak might bring me into it,” and perhaps when she
wrote it she believed it.

In the first hush that followed Carrousel leaned forward.

“She says I killed him,” he said quietly. “Perhaps I did. But the
woman who wrote that letter put it in my mind. She knew nothing, she
says”--and the venom in his face was unspeakable--“she knew she told
me that she was the true Lady Levallion, who had been wronged and
betrayed; that if I avenged her she would marry me! She laughed when I
said in the wood that night how I could avenge her. Laughed then--and
afterward, when I told her it was done, and how--put her fingers in her
ears, and said she had no hand in it. A man has just said she is dead,
and it is well for her. For if she were alive I could tell you what
would hang her as well as it will execute me.”

For a long moment no one spoke. Then a sharp question was asked Lady
Annesley by the prosecution regarding the hold she had said she had
over Mrs. Murray.

“A very simple one,” she answered, “but I can prove it. She claimed she
was Countess of Levallion, because, as was perfectly true, she had been
married to Lord Levallion after the death of John Davidge. What she did
not know was that she was never Davidge’s wife at all. He married me,
two years before he ever saw Mrs. Murray, and after his death I became
the wife of Sir Thomas Annesley. Mrs. Murray’s only legal marriage was
with Murray himself, who is now recovering from an operation in Guy’s
Hospital. And here is my marriage-certificate, which proves what I say.”

A thunderbolt could not have made more sensation. Every one knew her
name had been Davidge, but no one had connected her in any way with
Hester Murray.

She stepped down as coolly as she had come up.

The judge, after a stupefied pause, addressed the jury, but they did
not even leave their box.

Lady Levallion and Captain Gordon stood acquitted, without a stain, and
Carrousel, Archer, or whatever his true name might be, was committed
for trial on the counts of conspiracy and murder.

Through two long and awful days Ravenel had never winced, had stood,
like a stone image that breathed and spoke, before a hundred hostile,
curious faces. But now that she was free she covered her eyes with that
ringless left hand that the whole court had marveled at.

It is no light thing to move away from the hinges of death and see
another take your place there. But in all the room not another soul had
pity for Carrousel.




CHAPTER XLI.

“I LOVED YOU BEST.”


Lady Annesley, having worked much evil, had wiped it out. Yet her
stepdaughter never saw her after that day in court. A few lies, a scrap
of india-rubber, had cost two men’s lives, and a woman’s good name.

Levallion “had been kind,” had died indirectly because he chose to
marry her. Ravenel turned from the dock and went away with Tommy and
the duchess, knowing that in a way the dead man had been dear to her,
neither as lover nor husband, but as a friend whose love had passed
knowledge.

And Adrian Gordon let her go; let time pass till Tommy was in the
service and Mr. Jacobs fighting with all the dogs in Aldershot. And one
day in May could wait no more.

By the lake at Avonmore she was sitting when, at the sound of his step
on the gravel, she looked up and saw him.

“Adrian!” she said, forgetting that for this many a day he had been
Lord Levallion. But she got no further, for the look in his eyes that
were on her face.

“May I come and speak to you?” he asked quite simply, as a child does,
but his mouth had the same look as his eyes. “You’ve traveled a long
way without me, Nel. Won’t you--come home?”

And she knew what he meant. There was only one home in the world for
her, in Adrian Gordon’s arms. Perhaps she had no pride, for without a
word she went there.

In the May sun he looked at her, as in one May two years past.
There was no change--but there was! He had never dreamed she was so
beautiful. But as he would have kissed her she pushed him away.

“It isn’t fair to you!” she cried. “People will say things if you marry
me.”

“We won’t hear them,” he returned, and in so much the manner of the
dead and gone Levallion that she cried out.

“You never half-knew him, Adrian! He was good to me.”

“My sweetheart,” he said, with a queer understanding of her loyalty to
the dead.

“He was a better man than you,” she cried, and her eyes filled with
tears. “But, oh, Adrian, I loved you best.”


THE END.

No. 1175 of the NEW EAGLE SERIES is “They Met by Chance,” by Ida Reade
Allen. This story contains so much charm and beauty that it will surely
intrigue you.




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Transcriber’s Notes:


Originally serialized in _Street & Smith’s New York Weekly_ from Apr.
21, 1900 to Aug. 11, 1900 under the title _The Girl of His Heart; or,
Levallion’s Heir_.

Some chapter titles have been changed in this edition from the original
serial; for example, chapter VI was originally called “THE TENDER
MERCIES OF THE WICKED.” In the original, chapter XXIV had no title and
began with the poetic quotation: “My blood is chill; his blood is cold;
His death is full, and mine begun.”

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

This sentence was garbled in the book edition and has been restored
here from the original serial appearance: “After three years of freedom
her master had found her out, had come to her with a heavy hand and a
story she knew was a lie.”

Table of contents has been added and placed into the public domain by
the transcriber.

Inconsistent hyphenation (e.g. upstairs vs. up-stairs) is preserved
from the original text.



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