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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Haunted Chamber, by "The Duchess"
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Haunted Chamber
+       A Novel
+
+Author: "The Duchess"
+
+Release Date: June 13, 2005 [EBook #16053]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAUNTED CHAMBER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bill Tozier, Barbara Tozier, Mary Meehan and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           The Haunted Chamber
+
+                            BY "THE DUCHESS"
+
+                                  1888
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+The sun has "dropped down," and the "day is dead." The silence and calm
+of coming night are over everything. The shadowy twilight lies softly on
+sleeping flowers and swaying boughs, on quiet fountains--the marble
+basins of which gleam snow-white in the uncertain light--on the glimpse
+of the distant ocean seen through the giant elms. A floating mist hangs
+in the still warm air, making heaven and earth mingle in one sweet
+confusion.
+
+The ivy creeping up the ancient walls of the castle is rustling and
+whispering as the evening breeze sweeps over it. High up the tendrils
+climb, past mullioned windows and quaint devices, until they reach even
+to the old tower, and twine lovingly round it, and push through the long
+apertures in the masonry of the walls of the haunted chamber.
+
+It is here that the shadows cast their heaviest gloom. All this corner
+of the old tower is wrapped in darkness, as though to obscure the scene
+of terrible crimes of past centuries.
+
+Ghosts of dead-and-gone lords and ladies seem to peer out mysteriously
+from the openings in this quaint chamber, wherein no servant, male or
+female, of the castle has ever yet been known to set foot. It is full of
+dire horrors to them, and replete with legends of by-gone days and
+grewsome sights ghastly enough to make the stoutest heart quail.
+
+In the days of the Stuarts an old earl had hanged himself in that room,
+rather than face the world with dishonor attached to his name; and
+earlier still a beauteous dame, fair but frail, had been incarcerated
+there, and slowly starved to death by her relentless lord. There was
+even in the last century a baronet--the earldom had been lost to the
+Dynecourts during the Commonwealth--who, having quarreled with his
+friend over a reigning belle, had smitten him across the cheek with his
+glove, and then challenged him to mortal combat. The duel had been
+fought in the luckless chamber, and had only ended with the death of
+both combatants; the blood stains upon the flooring were large and deep,
+and to this day the boards bear silent witness to the sanguinary
+character of that secret fight.
+
+Just now, standing outside the castle in the warmth and softness of the
+dying daylight, one can hardly think of by-gone horrors, or aught that
+is sad and sinful.
+
+There is an air of bustle and expectancy within-doors that betokens
+coming guests; the servants are moving to and fro noiselessly but
+busily, and now and then the stately housekeeper passes from room to
+room uttering commands and injunctions to the maids as she goes. No less
+occupied and anxious is the butler, as he surveys the work of the
+footmen. It is so long since the old place has had a resident master,
+and so much longer still since guests have been invited to it, that the
+household are more than ordinarily excited at the change now about to
+take place.
+
+Sir Adrian Dynecourt, after a prolonged tour on the Continent and
+lingering visits to the East, has at last come home with the avowed
+intention of becoming a staid country gentleman, and of settling down
+to the cultivation of turnips, the breeding of prize oxen, and the
+determination to be the M.F.H. when old Lord Dartree shall have
+fulfilled his declared intention of retiring in his favor. He is a tall
+young man, lithe and active. His skin, though naturally fair, is bronzed
+by foreign travel. His hair is a light brown, cut very close to his
+head. His eyes are large, clear, and honest, and of a peculiarly dark
+violet; they are beautiful eyes, winning and sweet, and steady in their
+glance. His mouth, shaded by a drooping fair mustache, is large and
+firm, yet very prone to laughter.
+
+It is quite the end of the London season, and Sir Adrian has hurried
+down from town to give directions for the reception of some people whom
+he has invited to stay with him during the slaughter of the partridges.
+
+Now all is complete, and the last train from London being due half an
+hour ago Sir Adrian is standing on the steps of his hall-door anxiously
+awaiting some of his guests.
+
+There is even a touch of genuine impatience in his manner, which could
+hardly be attributed to the ordinary longing of a young man to see a few
+of his friends. Sir Adrian's anxiety is open and undisguised, and there
+is a little frown upon his brow. Presently his face brightens as be
+hears the roll of carriage-wheels. When the carriage turns the corner
+of the drive, and the horses are pulled up at the hall door, Sir Adrian
+sees a fair face at the window that puts to flight all the fears he has
+been harboring for the last half hour.
+
+"You have come?" he says delightedly, running down the steps and opening
+the carriage door himself. "I am so glad! I began to think the train had
+run away with you, or that the horses had bolted."
+
+"Such a journey as it has been!" exclaims a voice not belonging to the
+face that had looked from the carriage at Sir Adrian. "It has been
+tiresome to the last degree. I really don't know when I felt so
+fatigued!"
+
+A little woman, small and fair, steps languidly to the ground as she
+says this, and glances pathetically at her host. She is beautifully "got
+up," both in dress and complexion, and at a first glance appears almost
+girlish. Laying her hand in Sir Adrian's, she lets it rest there, as
+though glad to be at her journey's end, conveying at the same time by
+a gentle pressure of her taper fingers the fact that she is even more
+glad that the end of her journey has brought her to him. She looks up
+at him with her red lips drooping as if tired, and with a bewildered
+expression in her pretty blue eyes that adds to the charm of her face.
+
+"It's an awful distance from town!" says Sir Adrian, as if apologizing
+for the spot on which his grand old castle has been built. "And it was
+more than good of you to come to me. I can only try to make up to you
+for the discomfort you have experienced to-day by throwing all possible
+chances of amusement in your way whilst you stay here."
+
+By this time she has withdrawn her hand, and so he is free to go up to
+his other guest and bid her welcome. He says nothing to her, strange to
+say, but it is his hand that seeks to retain hers this time, and it is
+his eyes that look longingly into the face before him.
+
+"You are tired, too?" he says at length. "Come into the house and
+rest awhile before dinner. You will like to go to your rooms at once,
+perhaps?" he adds, turning to his two visitors.
+
+"Thank you--yes. If you will have our tea sent upstairs," replies Mrs.
+Talbot plaintively, "it will be such a comfort!" she always speaks in a
+somewhat pouting tone, and with heavy emphasis.
+
+"Tea--nonsense!" responds Sir Adrian. "There's nothing like champagne as
+a pick-me-up. I'll send you tea also; but, take my advice, and try the
+champagne."
+
+"Oh, thank you, I shall so much prefer my tea!" Mrs. Talbot declares,
+with a graceful little shrug of her shoulders, at which her friend Miss
+Delmaine laughs aloud.
+
+"I accept your advice, Sir Adrian," she says, casting a mischievous
+glance at him from under her long lashes. "And--yes, Dora will take
+champagne too--when it comes."
+
+"Naughty girl!" exclaims Mrs. Talbot, with a little flickering smile.
+Dora Talbot seldom smiles, having learned by experience that her
+delicate face looks prettier in repose. "Come, then, Sir Adrian," she
+adds, "let us enter your enchanted castle."
+
+The servants by this time have taken in all their luggage--that is, as
+much as they have been able to bring in the carriage; and now the two
+ladies walk up the steps and enter the hall, their host beside them.
+
+Mrs. Talbot, who has recovered her spirits a little, is chattering
+gayly, and monopolizing Sir Adrian to the best of her ability, whilst
+Miss Delmaine is strangely silent, and seems lost in a kind of pleased
+wonder as she gazes upon all her charming surroundings.
+
+The last rays of light are streaming in through the stained-glass
+windows, rendering the old hall full of mysterious beauty. The grim
+warriors in their coats of mail seem, to the entranced gaze of Florence
+Delmaine, to be making ready to spring from the niches which hold them.
+
+Waking from her dream as she reaches the foot of the stone staircase,
+she says abruptly, but with a lovely smile playing round her mouth--
+
+"Surely, Sir Adrian, you have a ghost in this beautiful old place, or
+a secret staircase, or at least a bogy of some sort? Do not spoil the
+romantic look of it by telling me you have no tale of terror to impart,
+no history of a ghostly visitant who walks these halls at the dead of
+night."
+
+"We have no ghost here, I am sorry to say," answers Sir Adrian,
+laughing. "For the first time I feel distressed and ashamed that it
+should be so. We can only boast a haunted chamber; but there are certain
+legends about it, I am proud to say, the bare narration of which would
+make even the stoutest quail."
+
+"Good gracious--how distinctly unpleasant!" exclaims Mrs. Talbot, with
+a nervous and very effective shudder.
+
+"How distinctly delicious, you mean!" puts in Miss Delmaine. "Sir
+Adrian, is this chamber anywhere near where I shall sleep?"
+
+"Oh, no; you need not be afraid of that!" answers Dynecourt hastily.
+
+"I am not afraid," declares the girl saucily. "I have all my life been
+seeking an adventure of some sort. I am tired of my prosaic existence.
+I want to know what dwellers in the shadowy realms of ghost-land are
+like."
+
+"Dear Sir Adrian, do urge her not to talk like that; it is positively
+wicked," pleads Dora Talbot, glancing at him beseechingly.
+
+"Miss Delmaine, you will drive Mrs. Talbot from my house if you persist
+in your evil courses," says Sir Adrian, laughing again. "Desist, I pray
+you!"
+
+"Are you afraid, Dora?" asks Florence merrily. "Then keep close to me.
+I can defy all evil spirits, I have spells and charms."
+
+"You have indeed!" puts in Sir Adrian, in a tone so low that only she
+can hear it. "And, knowing this, you should be merciful."
+
+Though she can not hear what he says, yet Mrs. Talbot can see he is
+addressing Florence, and marks with some uneasiness the glance that
+passes from his eyes to hers. Breaking quickly into the conversation,
+she says timidly, laying her hand on her host's arm--
+
+"This shocking room you speak of will not be near mine?"
+
+"In another wing altogether," Sir Adrian replies reassuringly. "Indeed
+it is so far from this part of the castle that one might be safely
+incarcerated there and slowly starved to death without any one of the
+household being a bit the wiser. It is in the north wing in the old
+tower, a portion of the building that has not been in use for over fifty
+years."
+
+"I breathe again," says Dora Talbot affectedly.
+
+"I shall traverse every inch of that old tower--haunted room and
+all--before I am a week older," declares Florence defiantly. After which
+she smiles at Adrian again, and follows the maid up the broad staircase
+to her room.
+
+By the end of the week many other visitors have been made welcome at the
+castle; but none perhaps give so much pleasure to the young baronet as
+Mrs. Talbot and her cousin.
+
+Miss Delmaine, the only daughter and heiress of an Indian nabob, had
+taken London by storm this past season; and not only the modern Babylon,
+but the heart of Adrian Dynecourt as well. She had come home to England
+on the death of her father about two years ago; and, having no nearer
+relatives alive, had been kindly received by her cousin, the Hon. Mrs.
+Talbot, who was then living with her husband in a pretty house in
+Mayfair.
+
+Six months after Florence Delmaine's arrival, George Talbot had
+succumbed to a virulent fever; and his widow, upon whom a handsome
+jointure had been settled, when the funeral and the necessary law
+worries had come to an end, had intimated to her young cousin that she
+intended to travel for a year upon the Continent, and that she would be
+glad, that is--with an elaborate sigh--she would be a degree less
+miserable, if she, Florence, would accompany her. This delighted
+Florence. She was wearied with attendance on the sick, having done most
+of the nursing of the Hon. George, while his wife lamented and slept;
+and, besides, she was still sore at heart for the loss of her father.
+The year abroad had passed swiftly; the end of it brought them to Paris
+once more, where, feeling that her time of mourning might be decently
+terminated, Mrs. Talbot had discarded her somber robes, and had put
+herself into the hands of the most fashionable dress-maker she could
+find.
+
+Florence too discarded mourning for the first time, although her father
+had been almost two years in his quiet grave amongst the Hills; and,
+with her cousin, who was now indeed her only friend, if slightly
+uncongenial, decided to return to London forthwith.
+
+It was early in May, and, with a sensation of extreme and most natural
+pleasure, the girl looked forward to a few months passed amongst the
+best of those whom she had learned under her cousin's auspices to regard
+as "society."
+
+Dora Talbot herself was not by any means dead to the thought that it
+would be to her advantage to introduce into society a girl, well-born
+and possessed of an almost fabulous fortune. Stray crumbs must surely
+fall to her share in a connection of this kind, and such crumbs she was
+prepared to gather with a thankful heart.
+
+But unhappily she set her affection upon Sir Adrian Dynecourt, with his
+grand old castle and his princely rent-roll--a "crumb" the magnitude and
+worth of which she was not slow to appreciate. At first she had not
+deemed it possible that Florence would seriously regard a mere baronet
+as a suitor, when her unbounded wealth would almost entitle her to a
+duke. But "love," as she discovered later, to her discomfiture, will
+always "find the way." And one day, quite unexpectedly, it dawned upon
+her that there might--if circumstances favored them--grow up a feeling
+between Florence and Sir Adrian that might lead to mutual devotion.
+
+Yet, strong in the belief of her own charms, Mrs. Talbot accepted the
+invitation given by Sir Adrian, and at the close of the season she and
+Florence Delmaine find themselves the first of a batch of guests come to
+spend a month or two at the old castle at Dynecourt.
+
+Mrs. Talbot is still young, and, in her style, very pretty; her eyes are
+languishing and blue as gentian, her hair a soft nut-brown; her lips
+perhaps are not altogether faultless, being too fine and too closely
+drawn, but then her mouth is small. She looks considerably younger than
+she really is, and does not forget to make the most of this comfortable
+fact. Indeed, to a casual observer, her cousin looks scarcely her
+junior.
+
+Miss Delmaine is tall, slender, _posee_ more or less, while Mrs. Talbot
+is prettily rounded, _petite_ in every point, and nervously ambitious of
+winning the regard of the male sex.
+
+During the past week private theatricals have been suggested. Every one
+is tired of dancing and music. The season has given them more than a
+surfeit of both, and so they have fallen back upon theatricals.
+
+The play on which they have decided is Goldsmith's famous production,
+"She Stoops to Conquer."
+
+Miss Villiers, a pretty girl with yellow hair and charming eyes, is to
+be Constantia Neville; Miss Delmaine, Kate Hardcastle; Lady Gertrude
+Vining, though rather young for the part, has consented to play Mrs.
+Hardcastle, under the impression that she looks well in a cap and
+powdered hair. An impossible Tony Lumpkin has been discovered in a
+nervous young man with a hesitation in his speech and a difficulty about
+the letter "S"--a young man who wofully misunderstands Tony, and brings
+him out in a hitherto unknown character; a suitable Hastings has been
+found in the person of Captain Ringwood, a gallant young officer, and
+one of the "curled darlings" of society.
+
+But who is to play Marlow? Who is to be the happy man, so blessed--even
+though in these fictitious circumstances--as to be allowed to make love
+to the reigning beauty of the past season? Nearly every man in the house
+has thrown out a hint as to his fitness for the part, but as yet no
+arrangement has been arrived at.
+
+Sir Adrian of course is the one toward whom all eyes--and some very
+jealous ones--are directed. But his duties as host compel him, sorely
+against his will, to draw back a little from the proffered honor, and
+to consult the wishes of his guests rather than his own. Miss Delmaine
+herself has laughingly declined to make any choice of a stage lover, so
+that, up to the present moment, matters are still in such a state of
+confusion and uncertainty that they have been unable to name any date
+for the production of their play.
+
+It is four o'clock, and they are all standing or sitting in the
+library, intent as usual in discussing the difficulty. They are all
+talking together, and, in the excitement that prevails, no one hears the
+door open, or the footman's calm, introduction of a gentleman, who now
+comes leisurely up to where Sir Adrian is standing, leaning over
+Florence Delmaine's chair.
+
+He is a tall man of about thirty-five, with a dark face and dark eyes,
+and, withal, a slight resemblance to Sir Adrian.
+
+"Ah, Arthur, is it you!" says Sir Adrian, in a surprised tone that has
+certainly no cordiality in it, but, just as certainly, the tone is not
+repellent.
+
+"Yes," replies the stranger, with a languid smile, and without
+confusion. "Yesterday I suddenly recollected the general invitation you
+gave me a month ago to come to you at any time that suited me best. This
+time suits me, and so I have come."
+
+He still smiles as he says this, and looks expectantly at Sir Adrian,
+who, as in duty bound, instantly tells him he is very glad to see him,
+and that he is a good fellow to have come without waiting for a more
+formal repetition of his invitation. Then he takes him over to old Lady
+FitzAlmont, the mother of Lady Gertrude Vining, and introduces him to
+her as "my cousin Mr. Dynecourt."
+
+The same ceremony is gone through with some of the others, but, when
+he brings him to Mrs. Talbot, that pretty widow interrupts his mode of
+introduction.
+
+"Mr. Dynecourt and I are old friends," she says, giving her hand to the
+new-comer. Then, turning to her cousin, she adds, "Florence, is it not
+a fatality our meeting him so often?"
+
+"Have we met so often?" asks Florence quietly, but with a touch of
+_hauteur_ and dislike in her tone. Then she too gives a cold little hand
+to Mr. Dynecourt, who lingers over it until she disdainfully draws it
+away, after which he turns from her abruptly and devotes himself to
+Dora Talbot.
+
+The widow is glad of his attentions. He is handsome and well-bred, and
+for the last half hour she has been feeling slightly bored; so eager has
+been the discussion about the Marlow matter, that she has been little
+sought after by the opposite sex. And now, once again, the subject is
+being examined in all its bearings, and the discussion waxes fast and
+furious.
+
+"What is it all about?" asks Arthur Dynecourt presently, glancing at the
+animated group in the middle of the room. And Sir Adrian, hearing his
+question, explains it to him.
+
+"Ah, indeed!" he says. And then, after a scarcely perceptible
+pause--"Who is to be Kate Hardcastle?"
+
+"Miss Delmaine," answers Sir Adrian, who is still leaning over that
+young lady's chair.
+
+"In what does the difficulty consist?" inquires Arthur Dynecourt, with
+apparent indifference.
+
+"Well," replies Sir Adrian, laughing; "I believe mere fear holds us
+back. Miss Delmaine, as we all know, is a finished actress, and we
+dread spoiling her performance by faults on our side. None of us have
+attempted the character before; this is why we hesitate."
+
+"A very sensible hesitation, I think," says his cousin coolly. "You
+should thank me then for coming to your relief this afternoon; I have
+played the part several times, and shall be delighted to undertake it
+again, and help you out of your difficulty."
+
+At this Miss Delmaine flushes angrily, and opens her lips as if she
+would say something, but, after a second's reflection, restrains
+herself. She sinks back into her chair with a proud languor, and closes
+her mouth resolutely.
+
+Sir Adrian is confounded. All along he had secretly hoped that, in the
+end, this part would fall to his lot; but now--what is to be done? How
+can he refuse to let his cousin take his place, especially as he has
+declared himself familiar with the part.
+
+Arthur, observing his cousin's hesitation, laughs aloud. His is not a
+pleasant laugh, but has rather a sneering ring in it, and at the present
+moment it jars upon the ears of the listeners.
+
+"If I have been indiscreet," he says, with a slight glance at Florence's
+proud face, "pray pardon me. I only meant to render you a little
+assistance. I thought I understood from you that you were rather in a
+dilemma. Do not dwell upon my offer another moment. I am afraid I have
+made myself somewhat officious--unintentionally, believe me."
+
+"My dear fellow, not at all," declares Sir Adrian hastily, shocked at
+his own apparent want of courtesy. "I assure you, you mistake. It is all
+so much to the contrary, that I gratefully accept your offer, and beg
+you will be Marlow."
+
+"But really--" begins Arthur Dynecourt.
+
+"Not a word!" interrupts Sir Adrian; and indeed by this time Arthur
+Dynecourt has brought his cousin to believe he is about to confer upon
+him a great favor. "Look here, you fellows," Sir Adrian goes on, walking
+toward the other men, who are still arguing and disputing over the vexed
+question, "I've settled it all for you. Here is my cousin; he will take
+the difficulty off your hands, and be a first-class Marlow at the same
+time."
+
+A suppressed consternation follows this announcement. Many and dark
+are the glances cast upon the new-comer, who receives them all with
+his usual imperturbable smile. Rising, Arthur approaches one of the
+astonished group who is known to him, and says something upon the
+subject with a slight shrug of his shoulders. As he is Sir Adrian's
+cousin, every one feels that it will be impossible to offer any
+objection to his taking the much-coveted part.
+
+"Well, I have sacrificed myself for you; I have renounced a very dear
+desire all to please you," says Sir Adrian softly, bending down to
+Florence. "Have I succeeded?"
+
+"You have succeeded in displeasing me more than I can say," she returns
+coldly. Then, seeing his amazed expression, she goes on hastily,
+"Forgive me, but I had hoped for another Marlow."
+
+She blushes prettily as she says this, and an expression arises in her
+dark eyes that moves him deeply. Stooping over her hand, he imprints a
+kiss upon it. Dora Talbot, whose head is turned aside, sees nothing of
+this, but Arthur Dynecourt has observed the silent caress, and a dark
+frown gathers on his brow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Every day and all day long there is nothing but rehearsing. In every
+corner two or more may be seen studying together the parts they have to
+play. Florence Delmaine alone refuses to rehearse her part except in
+full company, though Mr. Dynecourt has made many attempts to induce her
+to favor him with a private reading of those scenes in which he and she
+must act together. He has even appealed to Dora Talbot to help him in
+this matter, which she is only too willing to do, as she is secretly
+desirous of flinging the girl as much in his way as possible. Indeed
+anything that would keep Florence out of Sir Adrian's sight would be
+welcome to her; so that she listens kindly to Arthur Dynecourt when he
+solicits her assistance.
+
+"She evidently shuns me," he says in an aggrieved tone to her one
+evening, sinking into the seat beside hers. "Except a devotion to her
+that is singularly sincere, I know of nothing about me that can be
+regarded by her as an offense. Yet it appears to me that she dislikes
+me."
+
+"There I am sure you are wrong," declares the widow, tapping his arm
+lightly with her fan. "She is but a girl--she hardly knows her own mind."
+
+"She seems to know it pretty well when Adrian addresses her," he says,
+with a sullen glance.
+
+At this Mrs. Talbot can not repress a start; she grows a little pale,
+and then tries to hide her confusion by a smile. But the smile is
+forced, and Arthur Dynecourt, watching her, reads her heart as easily
+as if it were an open book.
+
+"I don't suppose Adrian cares for her," he goes on quietly. "At
+least"--here he drops his eyes--"I believe, with a little judicious
+management, his thoughts might be easily diverted into another channel."
+
+"You think so?" asks Mrs. Talbot faintly, trifling with her fan. "I can
+not say I have noticed that his attentions to her have been in any way
+particular."
+
+"Not as yet," agrees Dynecourt, studying her attentively; "and if I
+might be open with you," he adds, breaking off abruptly and assuming an
+air of anxiety--"we might perhaps mutually help each other."
+
+"Help each other?"
+
+"Dear Mrs. Talbot," says Dynecourt softly, "has it never occurred to you
+how safe a thing it would be for my cousin Sir Adrian to marry a
+sensible woman--a woman who understands the world and its ways--a woman
+young and beautiful certainly, but yet conversant with the _convenances_
+of society? Such a woman would rescue Adrian from the shoals and
+quicksands that surround him in the form of mercenary friends and
+scheming mothers. Such a woman might surely be found. Nay, I think
+I myself could put my hand upon her, if I dared, at this moment."
+
+Mrs. Talbot trembles slightly, and blushes a good deal, but says nothing.
+
+"He is my nearest of kin," goes on Dynecourt, in the same low impassive
+voice. "Naturally I am interested in him, and my interest on this point
+is surely without motive; as, were he never to marry, were he to leave
+no heir, were he to die some sudden death"--here a remarkable change
+overspreads his features--"I should inherit all the land you see around
+you, and the title besides."
+
+Mrs. Talbot is still silent. She merely bows her head in assent.
+
+"Then, you see, I mean kindly toward him when I suggest that he should
+marry some one calculated to sustain his rank in the world," continues
+Dynecourt. "As I have said before, I know one who would fill the
+position charmingly, if she would deign to do so."
+
+"And who?" falters Dora Talbot nervously.
+
+"May I say to whom I allude?" he murmurs. "Mrs. Talbot, pardon me if I
+have been impertinent in thinking of you as that woman."
+
+A little flickering smile adorns Dora's lips for a moment, then,
+suddenly remembering that smiles do not become her, she relapses into
+her former calm.
+
+"You flatter me," she says sweetly.
+
+"I never flatter," he responds, with telling emphasis. "But, I can see
+you are not angry, and so I am emboldened to say plainly, I would gladly
+see you my cousin's wife. Is the idea not altogether abhorrent to you?"
+
+"No. Oh, no!"
+
+"It is perhaps--pardon me if I go too far--even agreeable to you?"
+
+"Mr. Dynecourt," says Mrs. Talbot, suddenly glancing at him and laying
+her jeweled fingers lightly on his arm, "I will confess to you that I am
+tired of being alone--dependent on myself, as it were--thrown on my own
+judgment for the answering of every question that arises. I would gladly
+acknowledge a superior head. I would have some one to help me now and
+then with a word of advice; in short, I would have a husband. And,"--here
+she lays her fan against her lips and glances archly at him--"I confess
+too that I like Sir Adrian as--well--as well as any man I know."
+
+"He is a very fortunate man"--gravely. "I would he knew his happiness."
+
+"Not for worlds," says Mrs. Talbot, with well-feigned alarm. "You would
+not even hint to him such a thing as--as--" She stops, confused.
+
+"I shall hint nothing--do nothing, except what you wish. Ah, Mrs.
+Talbot"--with a heavy sigh--"you are supremely happy! I envy you! With
+your fascinations and"--insinuatingly--"a word in season from me, I see
+no reason why you should not claim as your own the man whom you--well,
+let us say, like; while I--"
+
+"If I can befriend you in any way," interrupts Dora quickly, "command
+me."
+
+She is indeed quite dazzled by the picture he has painted before her
+eyes. Can it be--is it--possible, that Sir Adrian may some day be hers?
+Apart from his wealth, she regards him with very tender feelings, and of
+late she has been rendered at times absolutely miserable by the thought
+that he has fallen a victim to the charms of Florence.
+
+Now if, by means of this man, her rival can be kept out of Adrian's way,
+all may yet be well, and her host may be brought to her feet before her
+visit comes to an end.
+
+Of Arthur Dynecourt's infatuation for Florence she is fully aware, and
+is right in deeming that part of his admiration for the beautiful girl
+has grown out of his knowledge of her money-bags. Still, she argues to
+herself, his love is true and faithful, despite his knowledge of her
+_dot_, and he will in all probability make her as good a husband as she
+is likely to find.
+
+"May I command you?" asks Arthur, in his softest tones. "You know my
+secret, I believe. Ever since that last meeting at Brighton, when my
+heart overcame me and made me show my sentiments openly and in your
+presence, you have been aware of the hopeless passion that is consuming
+me. I may be mad, but I still think that, with opportunities and time, I
+might make myself at least tolerated by Miss Delmaine. Will you help me
+in this matter? Will you give me the chance of pleading my cause with
+her alone? By so doing"--with a meaning smile--"you will also give my
+cousin the happy chance of seeing you alone."
+
+Dora only too well understands his insinuation. Latterly Sir Adrian
+and Florence have been almost inseparable. To now meet with one whose
+interest it is to keep them asunder is very pleasant to her.
+
+"I will help you," she says in a low tone.
+
+"Then try to induce Miss Delmaine to give me a private rehearsal
+to-morrow in the north gallery," he whispers hurriedly, seeing Captain
+Ringwood and Miss Villiers approaching. "Hush! Not another word! I rely
+upon you. Above all things, remember that what has occurred is only
+between you and me. It is our little plot," he says, with a curious
+smile that somehow strikes a chill to Mrs. Talbot's heart.
+
+She is faithful to her word nevertheless, and late that night, when all
+have gone to their rooms, she puts on her dressing-gown, dismisses her
+maid, and crossing the corridor, taps lightly at the door of Florence's
+apartment.
+
+Hearing some one cry "Come in," she opens the door, and, having fastened
+it again, goes over to where Florence is sitting while her maid is
+brushing her long soft hair that reaches almost to the ground as she
+sits.
+
+"Let me brush your hair to-night, Flo," she says gayly. "Let me be your
+maid for once. Remember how I used to do it for you sometimes when we
+were in Switzerland last year."
+
+"Very well--you may," acquiesces Florence, laughing. "Good-night,
+Parkins. Mrs. Talbot has won you your release."
+
+Parkins having gladly withdrawn, Dora takes up the ivory-handled brush
+and gently begins to brush her cousin's hair.
+
+After some preliminary conversation leading up to the subject she has
+in hand, she says carelessly--
+
+"By the bye, Flo, you are rather uncivil to Arthur Dynecourt, don't you
+think?"
+
+"Uncivil?"
+
+"Well--yes. That is the word for your behavior toward him, I think. Do
+you know, I am afraid Sir Adrian has noticed it, and aren't you afraid
+he will think it rather odd of you--rude, I mean--considering he is his
+cousin?"
+
+"Not a very favorite cousin, I fancy."
+
+"For all that, people don't like seeing their relations slighted. I once
+knew a man who used to abuse his brother all day long, but, if any one
+else happened to say one disparaging word of him in his presence, it put
+him in a pretty rage. And, after all, poor Arthur has done nothing to
+deserve actual ill-treatment at your hands."
+
+"I detest him. And, besides, it is a distinct impertinence to follow any
+one about from place to place as he has followed me. I will not submit
+to it calmly. It is a positive persecution."
+
+"My dear, you must not blame him if he has lost his head about you. That
+is rather a compliment, if anything."
+
+"I shall always resent such compliments."
+
+"He is certainly very gentlemanly in all other ways, and I must say
+devoted to you. He is handsome too, is he not; and has quite the air of
+one accustomed to command in society?"
+
+"Has he paid you to sing his praises?" asks Florence, with a little
+laugh; but her words so nearly hit the mark that Dora blushes painfully.
+
+"I mean," she explains at last, in a rather hurried way, "that I do not
+think it is good form to single out any one in a household where one is
+a guest to show him pointed rudeness. You give all the others acting in
+this play ample opportunities of rehearsing alone with you. It has been
+remarked to me by two or three that you purposely slight and avoid Mr.
+Dynecourt."
+
+"So I do," Florence admits calmly; adding, "Your two or three have great
+perspicacity."
+
+"They even hinted to me," Dora goes on deliberately, "that your dislike
+to him arose from the fact that you were piqued at his being your stage
+lover, instead of--Sir Adrian!"
+
+It costs her an effort to utter these words, but the effect produced by
+them is worth the effort.
+
+Florence, growing deadly pale, releases her hair from her cousin's
+grasp, and rises quickly to her feet.
+
+"I don't know who your gossips may be," she says slowly; "but they are
+wrong--quite wrong--do you hear? My dislike to Mr. Dynecourt arises from
+very different feelings. He is distasteful to me in many ways; but, as I
+am undesirous that my manner should give occasion for surmises such as
+you have just mentioned to me, I will give him an opportunity of
+reciting his part to me, alone, as soon as ever he wishes."
+
+"I think you are right, dearest," responds Mrs. Talbot sweetly. She is
+a little afraid of her cousin, but still maintains her position bravely.
+"It is always a mark of folly to defy public opinion. Do not wait for
+him to ask you again to go through your play with him alone, but tell
+him yourself to-morrow that you will meet him for that purpose in the
+north gallery some time during the day."
+
+"Very well," says Florence; but her face still betrays dislike and
+disinclination to the course recommended. "And, Dora, I don't think I
+want my hair brushed any more, thanks; my head is aching so dreadfully."
+
+This is a hint that she will be glad of Mrs. Talbot's speedy departure;
+and, that lady taking the hint, Florence is soon left to her own
+thoughts.
+
+The next morning, directly after breakfast, she finds an opportunity to
+tell Mr. Dynecourt that she will give him half an hour in the north
+gallery to try over his part with her, as she considers it will be
+better, and more conducive to the smoothness of the piece, to learn
+any little mannerisms that may belong to either of them.
+
+To this speech Dynecourt makes a suitable reply, and names a particular
+hour for them to meet. Miss Delmaine, having given a grave assent to
+this arrangement, moves away, as though glad to be rid of her companion.
+
+A few minutes afterward Dynecourt, meeting Mrs. Talbot in the hall,
+gives her an expressive glance, and tells her in a low voice that he
+considers himself deeply in her debt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+"You are late," says Arthur Dynecourt in a low tone. There is no anger
+in it; there is indeed only a desire to show how tedious have been the
+moments spent apart from her.
+
+"Have you brought your book, or do you mean to go through your part
+without it?" Florence asks, disdaining to notice his words, or to betray
+interest in anything except the business that has brought them together.
+
+"I know my part by heart," he responds, in a strange voice.
+
+"Then begin," she commands somewhat imperiously; the very insolence of
+her air only gives an additional touch to her extreme beauty and fires
+his ardor.
+
+"You desire me to begin?" he asks unsteadily.
+
+"If you wish it."
+
+"Do you wish it?"
+
+"I desire nothing more intensely than to get this rehearsal over," she
+replies impatiently.
+
+"You take no pains indeed to hide your scorn of me," says Dynecourt
+bitterly.
+
+"I regret it, if I have at any time treated you with incivility,"
+returns Florence, with averted eyes and with increasing coldness. "Yet
+I must always think that, for whatever has happened, you have only
+yourself to blame."
+
+"Is it a crime to love you?" he demands boldly.
+
+"Sir," she exclaims indignantly, and raising her beautiful eyes to his
+for a moment, "I must request you will never speak to me of love. There
+is neither sympathy nor common friendliness between us. You are well
+aware with what sentiments I regard you."
+
+"But, why am I alone to be treated with contempt?" he asks, with sudden
+passion. "All other men of your acquaintance are graciously received by
+you, are met with smiles and kindly words. Upon me alone your eyes rest,
+when they deign to glance in my direction, with marked disfavor. All the
+world can see it. I am signaled out from the others as one to be
+slighted and spurned."
+
+"Your forget yourself," says Florence contemptuously. "I have met you
+here to-day to rehearse our parts for next Tuesday evening, not to
+listen to any insolent words you may wish to address to me. Let us
+begin"--opening her book. "If you know your part, go on."
+
+"I know my part only too well; it is to worship you madly, hopelessly.
+Your very cruelty only serves to heighten my passion. Florence, hear
+me!"
+
+"I will not," she says, her eyes flashing. She waves him back from her
+as he endeavors to take her hand. "Is it not enough that I have been
+persecuted by your attentions--attentions most hateful to me--for the
+past year, but you must now obtrude them upon me here? You compel me
+to tell you in plain words what my manner must have shown you only too
+clearly--that you are distasteful to me in every way, that your very
+presence troubles me, that your touch is abhorrent to me!"
+
+"Ah," he says, stepping back as she hurls these words at him, and
+regarding her with a face distorted by passion, "if I were the master
+here, instead of the poor cousin--if I were Sir Adrian--your treatment
+of me would be very different!"
+
+At the mention of Sir Adrian's name the color dies out of her face and
+she grows deadly pale. Her lips quiver, but her eyes do not droop.
+
+"I do not understand you," she says proudly.
+
+"Then you shall," responds Dynecourt. "Do you think I am blind, that I
+can not see how you have given your proud heart to my cousin, that he
+has conquered where other men have failed; that, even before he has
+declared any love for you, you have, in spite of your pride, given all
+your affection to him?"
+
+"You insult me," cries Florence, with quivering lips. She looks faint,
+and is trembling visibly. If this man has read her heart aright, may
+not all the guests have read it too? May not even Adrian himself have
+discovered her secret passion, and perhaps despised her for it, as being
+unwomanly?
+
+"And more," goes on Dynecourt, exulting in the torture he can see he is
+inflicting; "though you thrust from you an honorable love for one that
+lives only in your imagination, I will tell you that Sir Adrian has
+other views, other intentions. I have reason to know that, when he
+marries, the name of his bride will not be Florence Delmaine."
+
+"Leave me, sir," cries Florence, rousing herself from her momentary
+weakness, and speaking with all her old fire, "and never presume to
+address me again. Go!"
+
+She points with extended hand to the door at the lower end of the
+gallery. So standing, with her eyes strangely bright, and her perfect
+figure drawn up to its fullest height, she looks superb in her
+disdainful beauty.
+
+Dynecourt, losing his self-possession as he gazes upon her, suddenly
+flings himself at her feet and catches her dress in his hands to detain
+her.
+
+"Have pity on me," he cries imploringly; "it is my unhappy love for
+you that has driven me to speak thus! Why is Adrian to have all, and I
+nothing? He has title, lands, position--above and beyond everything, the
+priceless treasure of your love, whilst I am bankrupt in all. Show me
+some mercy--some kindness!"
+
+They are both so agitated that they fail to hear the sound of
+approaching footsteps.
+
+"Release me, sir," cries Florence imperiously.
+
+"Nay; first answer me one question," entreats Dynecourt. "Do you love my
+cousin?"
+
+"I care nothing for Sir Adrian!" replies Florence distinctly, and in a
+somewhat raised tone, her self-pride being touched to the quick.
+
+Two figures who have entered the gallery by the second door at the upper
+end of it, hearing these words uttered in an emphatic tone, start and
+glance at the _tableau_ presented to their view lower down. They
+hesitate, and, even as they do so, they can see Arthur Dynecourt seize
+Florence Delmaine's hand, and, apparently unrebuked, kiss it
+passionately.
+
+"Then I shall hope still," he says in a low but impressive voice, at
+which the two who have just entered turn and beat a precipitate retreat,
+fearing that they may be seen. One is Sir Adrian, the other Mrs. Talbot.
+
+"Dear me," stammers Dora, in pretty confusion, "who would have thought
+it? I was never so amazed in my life."
+
+Sir Adrian, who has turned very pale, and is looking greatly distressed,
+makes no reply. He is repeating over and over again to himself the words
+he has just heard, as though unable or unwilling to comprehend them. "I
+care nothing for Sir Adrian!" They strike like a knell upon his ears--a
+death-knell to all his dearest hopes. And that fellow on his knees
+before her, kissing her hand, and telling her he will still hope! Hope
+for what? Alas, he tells himself, he knows only too well--her love!
+
+"I am so glad they have made it up," Dora goes on, looking up
+sympathetically at Sir Adrian.
+
+"Made it up? I had no idea they were more than ordinary and very new
+acquaintances."
+
+"It is quite a year since we first met Arthur in Switzerland," responds
+Dora demurely, calling Dynecourt by his Christian name, a thing she has
+never done before, because she knows it will give Sir Adrian the
+impression that they are on very intimate terms with his cousin. "He has
+been our shadow ever since. I wonder you did not notice his devotion in
+town."
+
+"I noticed nothing," says Sir Adrian, miserably; "or, if I did, it was
+only to form wrong impressions. I firmly believed, seeing Miss Delmaine
+and Arthur together here, that she betrayed nothing but a rooted dislike
+to him."
+
+"They had not been good friends of late," explains Dora hastily; "that
+we all could see. And Florence is very peculiar, you know; she is quite
+the dearest girl in the world, and I adore her; but I will confess to
+you"--with another upward and bewitching glance from the charming blue
+eyes--"that she has her little tempers. Not very naughty ones, you
+know"--shaking her head archly--"but just enough to make one a bit
+afraid of her at times; so I never ventured to ask her why she treated
+poor Arthur, who really is her slave, so cruelly."
+
+"And you think now that--" Sir Adrian breaks off without finishing the
+sentence.
+
+"That she has forgiven him whatever offense he committed? Yes, after
+what we have just seen--quite a sentimental little episode, was it
+not?--I can not help cherishing the hope that all is again right between
+them. It could not have been a very grave quarrel, as Arthur is
+incapable of a rudeness; but then dearest Florence is so capricious!"
+
+"Ill-tempered and capricious!" Can the girl he loves so ardently be
+guilty of these faults? It seems incredible to Sir Adrian, as he
+remembers her sunny smile and gentle manner. But then, is it not her
+dearest friend who is speaking of her--tender-hearted little Dora
+Talbot, who seems to think well of every one, and who murmurs such
+pretty speeches even about Arthur, who, if the truth be told, is not
+exactly "dear" in the sight of Sir Adrian.
+
+"You think there is, or was, an engagement between Arthur and Miss
+Delmaine?" he begins, with his eyes fixed upon the ground.
+
+"I think nothing, you silly man," says the widow playfully, "until I am
+told it. But I am glad Florence is once more friendly with poor Arthur;
+he is positively wrapped up in her. Now, has that interesting _tableau_
+we so nearly interrupted given you a distaste for all other pictures?
+Shall we try the smaller gallery?"
+
+"Just as you will."
+
+"Of course"--with a girlish laugh--"it would be imprudent to venture
+again into the one we have just quitted. By this time, doubtless, they
+are quite reconciled--and--"
+
+"Yes--yes," interrupts Sir Adrian hastily, trying in vain to blot out
+the picture she has raised before his eyes of Florence in her lover's
+arms. "What you have just told me has quite taken me by surprise," he
+goes on nervously. "I should never have guessed it from Miss Delmaine's
+manner; it quite misled me."
+
+"Well, between you and me," says Dora, raising herself on tiptoe, as
+though to whisper in his ear, and so coming very close to him, "I am
+afraid my dearest Florence is a little sly! Yes, really; you wouldn't
+think it, would you? The dear girl has such a sweet ingenuous
+face--quite the loveliest face on earth, I think, though some pronounce
+it too cold. But she is very self-contained; and to-day, you see, she
+has given you an insight into this slight fault in her character. Now,
+has she not appeared to you to avoid Arthur almost pointedly?"
+
+"She has indeed," agrees Sir Adrian, with a smothered groan.
+
+"Well"--triumphantly--"and yet, here we find her granting him a private
+audience, when she believed we were all safely out of the way; and in
+the north gallery too, which, as a rule, is deserted."
+
+"She didn't know we were thinking of driving to the hills," says Sir
+Adrian, making a feeble effort to find a flaw in his companion's
+statement.
+
+"Oh, yes, she did!" declares the widow lightly. "I told her myself,
+about two hours ago, that I intended asking you to make a party to go
+there, as I dote on lovely scenery; and I dare say"--coquettishly--"she
+knew--I mean thought--you would not refuse so small a request of mine.
+But for poor Lady FitzAlmont's headache we should be there now."
+
+"It is true," admits Sir Adrian, feeling that the last straw has
+descended.
+
+"And now that I think of it," the widow goes on, even more vivaciously,
+"the reason she assigned for not coming with us must have been a feigned
+one. Ah, slyboots that she is!" laughs Mrs. Talbot merrily. "Of course,
+she wanted the course clear to have an explanation with Arthur. Well,
+after all, that was only natural. But she might have trusted me, whom
+she knows to be her true friend."
+
+Ill-tempered--capricious--sly! And all these faults are attributed to
+Florence by "her true friend!" A quotation assigned to Marechal Villars
+when taking leave of Louis XIV. occurs to him--"Defend me from my
+friends." The words return to him persistently; but then he looks down
+on Dora Talbot, and stares straight into her liquid blue eyes, so
+apparently guileless and pure, and tells himself that he wrongs her.
+Yes, it is a pity Florence had not put greater faith in this kind little
+woman, a pity for all of them, as then many heart-breaks might have been
+prevented.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+It is the evening of the theatricals; and in one of the larger
+drawing-rooms at the castle, where the stage has been erected, and also
+in another room behind connected with it by folding-doors, everybody of
+note in the county is already assembled. Fans are fluttering--so are
+many hearts behind the scenes--and a low buzz of conversation is being
+carried on among the company.
+
+Then the curtain rises; the fans stop rustling, the conversation ceases,
+and all faces turn curiously to the small but perfect stage that the
+London workmen have erected.
+
+Every one is very anxious to see what his or her neighbor is going to do
+when brought before a critical audience. Nobody, of course, hopes openly
+for a break-down, but secretly there are a few who would be glad to see
+such-and-such a one's pride lowered.
+
+No mischance, however, occurs. The insipid Tony speaks his lines
+perfectly, if he fails to grasp the idea that a little acting thrown in
+would be an improvement; a very charming Cousin Con is made out of Miss
+Villiers; a rather stilted but strictly correct old lady out of Lady
+Gertrude Vining. But Florence Delmaine, as Kate Hardcastle, leaves
+nothing to be desired, and many are the complimentary speeches uttered
+from time to time by the audience. Arthur Dynecourt too had not
+overpraised his own powers. It is palpable to every one that he has
+often trod the boards, and the pathos he throws into his performance
+astonishes the audience. Is it only acting in the final scene when he
+makes love to Miss Hardcastle, or is there some real sentiment in it?
+
+This question arises in many breasts. They note how his color changes as
+he takes her hand, how his voice trembles; they notice too how she grows
+cold, in spite of her desire to carry out her part to the end, as he
+grows warmer, and how instinctively she shrinks from his touch. Then it
+is all over, and the curtain falls amidst loud applause. Florence comes
+before the curtain in response to frequent calls, gracefully, half
+reluctantly, with a soft warm blush upon her cheeks and a light in her
+eyes that renders her remarkable loveliness only more apparent. Sir
+Adrian, watching her with a heart faint and cold with grief and
+disappointment, acknowledges sadly to himself that never has he seen her
+look so beautiful. She advances and bows to the audience, and only loses
+her self-possession a very little when a bouquet directed at her feet by
+an enthusiastic young man alights upon her shoulder instead.
+
+Arthur Dynecourt, who has accompanied her to the footlights, and who
+joins in her triumph, picks up the bouquet and presents it to her.
+
+As he does so the audience again become aware that she receives it from
+him in a spirit that suggests detestation of the one that hands it, and
+that her smile withers as she does so, and her great eyes lose their
+happy light of a moment before.
+
+Sir Adrian sees all this too, but persuades himself that she is now
+acting another part--the part shown him by Mrs. Talbot. His eyes are
+blinded by jealousy; he can not see the purity and truth reflected in
+hers; he misconstrues the pained expression that of late has saddened
+her face.
+
+For the last few days, ever since her momentous interview with Arthur
+Dynecourt in the gallery, she has been timid and reserved with Sir
+Adrian, and has endeavored to avoid his society. She is oppressed with
+the thought that he has read her secret love for him, and seeks, by an
+assumed coldness of demeanor and a studied avoidance of him, to induce
+him to believe himself mistaken.
+
+But Sir Adrian is only rendered more miserable by this avoidance, in the
+thought that probably Mrs. Talbot has told Florence of his discovery of
+her attachment to Arthur, and that she dreads his taxing her with her
+duplicity, and so makes strenuous efforts to keep herself apart from
+him. They have already drifted so far apart that to-night, when the play
+has come to an end, and Florence has retired from the dressing-room, Sir
+Adrian does not dream of approaching her to offer the congratulations on
+her success that he would have showered upon her in a happier hour.
+
+Florence, feeling lonely and depressed, having listlessly submitted
+to her maid's guidance and changed her stage gown for a pale blue
+ball-dress of satin and pearls--as dancing is to succeed the earlier
+amusement of the evening--goes silently down-stairs, but, instead of
+pursuing her way to the ball-room, where dancing has already commenced,
+she turns aside, and, entering a small, dimly lighted antechamber, sinks
+wearily upon a satin-covered lounge.
+
+From a distance the sweet strains of a German waltz come softly to her
+ears. There is deep sadness and melancholy in the music that attunes
+itself to her own sorrowful reflections. Presently the tears steal down
+her cheeks. She feels lonely and neglected, and, burying her head in the
+cushions of the lounge, sobs aloud.
+
+She does not hear the hasty approach of footsteps until they stop close
+beside her, and a voice that makes her pulses throb madly says, in deep
+agitation--
+
+"Florence--Miss Delmaine--what has happened? What has occurred to
+distress you?"
+
+Sir Adrian is bending over her, evidently in deep distress himself. As
+she starts, he places his arm round her and raises her to a sitting
+posture; this he does so gently that, as she remembers all she has
+heard, and his cousin's assurance that he has almost pledged himself
+to another, her tears flow afresh. By a supreme effort, however, she
+controls herself, and says, in a faint voice--
+
+"I am very foolish; it was the heat, I suppose, or the nervousness of
+acting before so many strangers, that has upset me. It is over now. I
+beg you will not remember it, Sir Adrian, or speak of it to any one."
+
+All this time she has not allowed herself to glance even in his
+direction, so fearful is she of further betraying the mental agony
+she is enduring.
+
+"Is it likely I should speak of it!" returns Sir Adrian reproachfully.
+"No; anything connected with you shall be sacred to me. But--pardon
+me--I still think you are in grief, and, believe me, in spite of
+everything, I would deem it a privilege to be allowed to befriend you
+in any way."
+
+"It is impossible," murmurs Florence, in a stifled tone.
+
+"You mean you will not accept my help"--sadly. "So be it then. I have no
+right, I know, to establish myself as your champion. There are others,
+no doubt, whose happiness lies in the fact that they may render you a
+service when it is in their power. I do not complain, however. Nay, I
+would even ask you to look upon me at least as a friend."
+
+"I shall always regard you as a friend," Florence responds in a low
+voice. "It would be impossible to me to look upon you in any other
+light."
+
+"Thank you for that," says Adrian quickly. "Though our lives must of
+necessity be much apart, it will still be a comfort to me to know that
+at least, wherever you may be, you will think of me as a friend."
+
+"Ah," thinks Florence, with a bitter pang, "he is now trying to let me
+know how absurd was my former idea that he might perhaps learn to love
+me!" This thought is almost insupportable. Her pride rising in arms, she
+subdues all remaining traces of her late emotion, and, turning suddenly,
+confronts him. Her face is quite colorless, but she can not altogether
+hide from him the sadness that still desolates her eyes.
+
+"You are right," she agrees. "In the future our lives will indeed
+be far distant from each other, so far apart that the very tie of
+friendship will readily be forgotten by us both."
+
+"Florence, do not say that!" he entreats, believing in his turn that she
+alludes to her coming marriage with his cousin. "And--and--do not be
+angry with me; but I would ask you to consider long and earnestly before
+taking the step you have in view. Remember it is a bond that once sealed
+can never be canceled."
+
+"A bond! I do not follow you," exclaims Florence, bewildered.
+
+"Ah, you will not trust me; you will not confide in me!"
+
+"I have nothing to confide," persists Florence, still deeply puzzled.
+
+"Well, let it rest so," returns Adrian, now greatly wounded at her
+determined reserve, as he deems it. He calls to mind all Mrs. Talbot had
+said about her slyness, and feels disheartened. At least he has not
+deserved distrust at her hands. "Promise me," he entreats at last,
+"that, if ever you are in danger, you will accept my help."
+
+"I promise," she replies faintly. Then, trying to rally her drooping
+spirits, she continues, with an attempt at a smile, "Tell me that you
+too will accept mine should you be in any danger. Remember, the mouse
+once rescued the lion!"--and she smiles again, and glances at him with
+a touch of her old archness.
+
+"It is a bargain. And now, will you rest here awhile until you feel
+quite restored to calmness?"
+
+"But you must not remain with me," Florence urges hurriedly. "Your
+guests are awaiting you. Probably"--with a faint smile--"your partner
+for this waltz is impatiently wondering what has become of you."
+
+"I think not," says Adrian, returning her smile. "Fortunately I have
+no one's name on my card for this waltz. I say fortunately, because I
+think"--glancing at her tenderly--"I have been able to bring back the
+smiles to your face sooner than would have been the case had you been
+left here alone to brood over your trouble, whatever it may be."
+
+"There is no trouble," declares Florence, in a somewhat distressed
+fashion, turning her head restlessly to one side. "I wish you would
+dispossess yourself of that idea. And, do not stay here, they--every
+one, will accuse you of discourtesy if you absent yourself from the
+ball-room any longer."
+
+"Then, come with me," says Adrian. "See, this waltz is only just
+beginning: give it to me."
+
+Carried away by his manner, she lays her hand upon his arm, and goes
+with him to the ball-room. There he passes his arm round her waist, and
+presently they are lost among the throng of whirling dancers, and both
+give themselves up for the time being to the mere delight of knowing
+that they are together.
+
+Two people, seeing them enter thus together, on apparently friendly
+terms, regard them with hostile glances. Dora Talbot, who is coquetting
+sweetly with a gaunt man of middle age, who is evidently overpowered by
+her attentions, letting her eyes rest upon Florence as she waltzes past
+her with Sir Adrian, colors warmly, and, biting her lip, forgets the
+honeyed speech she was about to bestow upon her companion, who is the
+owner of a considerable property, and lapses into silence, for which the
+gaunt man is devoutly grateful, as it gives him a moment in which to
+reflect on the safest means of getting rid of her without delay.
+
+Dora's fair brow grows darker and darker as she watches Florence, and
+notes the smile that lights her beautiful face as she makes some answer
+to one of Sir Adrian's sallies. Where is Dynecourt, that he has not been
+on the spot to prevent this dance, she wonders. She grows angry, and
+would have stamped her little foot with impatient wrath at this moment,
+but for the fear of displaying her vexation.
+
+As she is inwardly anathematizing Arthur, he emerges from the throng,
+and, the dance being at an end, reminds Miss Delmaine that the next is
+his.
+
+Florence unwillingly removes her hand from Sir Adrian's arm, and lays it
+upon Arthur's. Most disdainfully she moves away with him, and suffers
+him to lead her to another part of the room. And when she dances with
+him it is with evident reluctance, as he knows by the fact that she
+visibly shrinks from him when he encircles her waist with his arm.
+
+Sir Adrian, who has noticed none of these symptoms, going up to Dora,
+solicits her hand for this dance.
+
+"You are not engaged, I hope?" he says anxiously. It is a kind of
+wretched comfort to him to be near Florence's true friend. If not the
+rose, she has at least some connection with it.
+
+"I am afraid I am," Dora responds, raising her limpid eyes to his.
+"Naughty man, why did you not come sooner? I thought you had forgotten
+me altogether, and so got tired of keeping barren spots upon my card for
+you."
+
+"I couldn't help it--I was engaged. A man in his own house has always
+a bad time of it looking after the impossible people," says Adrian
+evasively.
+
+"Poor Florence! Is she so very impossible?" asks Dora, laughing, but
+pretending to reproach him.
+
+"I was not speaking of Miss Delmaine," says Adrian, flushing hotly. "She
+is the least impossible person I ever met. It is a privilege to pass
+one's time with her."
+
+"Yet it is with her you have passed the last hour that you hint has
+been devoted to bores," returns Dora quietly. This is a mere feeler,
+but she throws it out with such an air of certainty that Sir Adrian is
+completely deceived, and believes her acquainted with his _tete-a-tete_
+with Florence in the dimly lit anteroom.
+
+"Well," he admits, coloring again, "your cousin was rather upset by the
+acting, I think, and I just stayed with her until she felt equal to
+joining us all again."
+
+"Ah!" exclaims Dora, who now knows all she had wanted to know.
+
+"But you must not tell me you have no dances left for me," says Adrian
+gayly. "Come, let me see your card." He looks at it, and finds it indeed
+full. "I am an unfortunate," he adds.
+
+"I think," says Dora, with the prettiest hesitation, "if you are
+sure it would not be an unkind thing to do, I could scratch out this
+name"--pointing to her partner's for the coming dance.
+
+"I am not sure at all," responds Sir Adrian, laughing. "I am positive it
+will be awfully unkind of you to deprive any fellow of your society; but
+be unkind, and scratch him out for my sake."
+
+He speaks lightly, but her heart beats high with hope.
+
+"For your sake," she repeats softly drawing her pencil across the name
+written on her programme and substituting his.
+
+"But you will give me more than this one dance?" queries Adrian. "Is
+there nobody else you can condemn to misery out of all that list?"
+
+"You are insatiable," she returns, blushing, and growing confused. "But
+you shall have it all your own way. Here"--giving him her card--"take
+what waltzes you will." She waltzes to perfection, and she knows it.
+
+"Then this, and this, and this," says Adrian, striking out three names
+on her card, after which they move away together and mingle with the
+other dancers.
+
+In the meantime, Florence growing fatigued, or disinclined to dance
+longer with Dynecourt, stops abruptly near the door of a conservatory,
+and, leaning against the framework, gazes with listless interest at the
+busy scene around.
+
+"You are tired. Will you rest for awhile?" asks Arthur politely; and,
+as she bends her head in cold consent, he leads her to a cushioned seat
+that is placed almost opposite to the door-way, and from which the
+ball-room and what is passing within it are distinctly visible.
+
+Sinking down amongst the blue-satin cushions of the seat he has pointed
+out to her, Florence sighs softly, and lets her thoughts run, half
+sadly, half gladly, upon her late interview with Sir Adrian. At least,
+if he has guessed her secret, she knows now that he does not despise
+her. There was no trace of contempt in the gentleness, the tenderness of
+his manner. And how kindly he had told her of the intended change in his
+life! "Their paths would lie far asunder for the future," he had said,
+or something tantamount to that. He spoke no doubt of his coming
+marriage.
+
+Then she begins to speculate dreamily upon the sort of woman who would
+be happy enough to be his wife. She is still idly ruminating on this
+point when her companion's voice brings her back to the present. She had
+so far forgotten his existence in her day-dreaming that his words come
+to her like a whisper from some other world, and occasion her an actual
+shock.
+
+"Your thoughtfulness renders me sad," he is saying impressively. "It
+carries you to regions where I can not follow you."
+
+To this she makes no reply, regarding him only with a calm questioning
+glance that might well have daunted a better man. It only nerves him
+however to even bolder words.
+
+"The journey your thoughts have taken--has it been a pleasant one?" he
+asks, smiling.
+
+"I have come here for rest, not for conversation." There is undisguised
+dislike in her tones. Still he is untouched by her scorn. He even grows
+more defiant, as though determined to let her see that even her avowed
+hatred can not subdue him.
+
+"If you only knew," he goes on, with slow meaning, regarding her as he
+speaks with critical admiration, "how surpassingly beautiful you look
+to-night, you would perhaps understand in a degree the power you possess
+over your fellow-creatures. In that altitude, with that slight touch of
+scorn upon your lips, you seem a meet partner for a monarch."
+
+She laughs a low contemptuous laugh, that even makes his blood run hotly
+in his veins.
+
+"And yet you have the boldness to offer yourself as an aspirant to my
+favor?" she says. "In truth, sir, you value yourself highly!"
+
+"Love will find the way!" he quotes quickly, though plainly disconcerted
+by her merriment. "And in time I trust I shall have my reward."
+
+"In time, I trust you will," she returns, in a tone impossible to
+misconstrue.
+
+At this point he deems it wise to change the subject; and, as he halts
+rather lamely in his conversation, at a loss to find some topic that may
+interest her or advance his cause, Sir Adrian and Dora pass by the door
+of the conservatory.
+
+Sir Adrian is smiling gayly at some little speech of Dora's, and Dora is
+looking up at him with a bright expression in her blue eyes that tells
+of the happiness she feels.
+
+"Ah, I can not help thinking Adrian is doing very wisely," observes
+Arthur Dynecourt, some evil genius at his elbow urging him to lie.
+
+"Doing--what?" asks his companion, roused suddenly into full life and
+interest.
+
+"You pretend ignorance, no doubt"--smiling. "But one can see. Adrian's
+marriage with Mrs. Talbot has been talked about for some time amongst
+his intimates."
+
+A clasp like ice seems to seize upon Miss Delmaine's heart as these
+words drop from his lips. She restrains her emotion bravely, but his
+lynx-eye reads her through and through.
+
+"They seem to be more together to-night than is even usual with them,"
+goes on Arthur blandly. "Before you honored the room with your presence,
+he had danced twice with her, and now again. It is very marked, his
+attention to-night."
+
+As a matter of fact Adrian had not danced with Mrs. Talbot all the
+evening until now, but Florence, not having been present at the opening
+of the ball, is not in a position to refute this, as he well knows.
+
+"If there were anything in her friendship with Sir Adrian, I feel sure
+Dora would tell me of it," she says slowly, and with difficulty.
+
+"And she hasn't?" asks Arthur, with so much surprise and incredulity in
+his manner as goes far to convince her that there is some truth in his
+statement. "Well, well," he adds, "one can not blame her. She would
+doubtless be sure of his affection before speaking even to her dearest
+friend."
+
+Florence winces, and sinks back upon the seat as though unable to
+sustain an upright position any longer. Every word of his is as gall
+and wormwood to her, each sentence a reminder--a reproach. Only the
+other day this man now beside her had accused her of making sure of Sir
+Adrian's affection before she had any right so to do. Her proud spirit
+shrinks beneath the cruel taunt he hurls at her.
+
+"You look unusually 'done up,'" he goes on, in a tone of assumed
+commiseration. "This evening has been too much for you. Acting a part
+at any time is extremely trying and laborious."
+
+She shrinks still further from him. Acting a part! Is not all her life
+becoming one dreary drama, in which she acts a part from morning until
+night? Is there to be no rest for her? Oh, to escape from this man at
+any price! She rises to her feet.
+
+"Our dance is almost at an end," she says; "and the heat is terrible.
+I can remain here no longer."
+
+"You are ill," he exclaims eagerly, going to her side. He would have
+supported her, but by a gesture she repels him.
+
+"If I am, it is you who have made me so," she retorts, with quick
+passion, for which she despises herself an instant later.
+
+"Nay, not I," he rejoins, "but what my words have unconsciously conveyed
+to you. Do not blame me. I thought you, as well as every one else here,
+knew of Adrian's sentiments with regard to Mrs. Talbot."
+
+This is too much for her. Drawing herself up to her full height,
+Florence casts a glance of anger and defiance in his direction, and,
+sweeping past him in her most imperious fashion, appears no more that
+night.
+
+It is an early party, all things considered, and Dora Talbot, going to
+her room about two o'clock, stops before Florence's door and knocks
+softly thereon.
+
+"Come in," calls Florence gently.
+
+"I have just stopped for a moment to express the hope that you are not
+ill, dearest," says smooth-tongued Dora, advancing toward her. "How
+early you left us! I shouldn't have known how early only that Mr.
+Dynecourt told me. Are you sure you are not ill?"
+
+"Not in the least, only a little fatigued," replied Florence calmly.
+
+"Ah, no wonder, with your exertions before the dancing commenced, and
+your unqualified success! You reigned over everybody, darling. Nobody
+could hope even to divide the honors of the evening with you. Your
+acting was simply superb."
+
+"Thank you," says Florence, who is not in bed, but is sitting in a chair
+drawn near the window, through which the moonbeams are flinging their
+pale rays. She is clad in a clinging white dressing-gown that makes her
+beauty saint-like, and has all her long hair falling loosely round her
+shoulders.
+
+"What a charming evening it has been!" exclaims Dora ecstatically,
+clasping her hands, and leaning her arms on the back of a chair. "I
+hardly know when I have felt so thoroughly happy." Florence shudders
+visibly. "You enjoyed yourself, of course?" continues Dora. "Everyone
+raved about you. You made at least a dozen conquests; one or half a
+one--" with a careful hesitation in her manner intended to impress her
+listener--"is as much as poor little insignificant me can expect."
+
+Florence looks at her questioningly.
+
+"I think one really honest lover is worth a dozen others," she says,
+her voice trembling. "Do you mean me to understand, Dora, that you have
+gained one to-night?"
+
+Florence's whole soul seems to hang on her cousin's answer. Dora
+simpers, and tries to blush, but in reality grows a shade paler. She
+is playing for a high stake, and fears to risk a throw lest it may be
+ventured too soon.
+
+"Oh, you must not ask too much!" she replies, shaking her blonde head.
+"A lover--no! How can you be so absurd! And yet I think--I hope--"
+
+"I see!" interrupts Florence sadly. "Well, I will be as discreet as you
+wish; but at least, if what I imagine be true, I can congratulate you
+with all my heart, because I know--I know you will be happy."
+
+Going over to Mrs. Talbot, she lays her arms round her neck and kisses
+her softly. As she does so, a tear falls from her eyes upon Dora's
+cheek. There is so much sweetness and abandonment of self in this action
+that Dora for the moment is touched by it. She puts up her hand, and,
+wiping away the tear from her cheek as though it burns her, says
+lightly--
+
+"But indeed, my dearest Flo, you must not imagine anything. All is
+vague. I myself hardly know what it is to which I am alluding. 'Trifles
+light as air' float through my brain, and gladden me in spite of my
+common sense, which whispers that they may mean nothing. Do not build
+castles for me that may have their existence only _en Espagne_."
+
+"They seem very bright castles," observes Florence wistfully.
+
+"A bad omen. 'All that's bright must fade,' sings the poet. And now to
+speak of yourself. You enjoyed yourself?"
+
+"Of course--" mechanically.
+
+"Ah, yes; I was glad to see you had made it up with poor Arthur
+Dynecourt!"
+
+"How?" demands Florence, turning upon her quickly.
+
+"I saw you dancing with him, dearest; I was with Sir Adrian at the time,
+and from something he said, I think he would be rather pleased if you
+could bring yourself to reward poor Arthur's long devotion."
+
+"Sir Arthur said that? He discussed me with you?"
+
+"Just in passing, you understand. He told me too that you were somewhat
+unhappy in the earlier part of the evening, and that he had to stay a
+considerable time with you to restore you to calmness. He is always so
+kind, dear Adrian!"
+
+"He spoke of that?" demands Florence, in a tone of anguish. If he had
+made her emotion a subject of common talk with Mrs. Talbot, all indeed
+is at an end between them, even that sweet visionary offer of friendship
+he had made to her. No; she could not submit to be talked about by him,
+and the woman he loves! Oh, the bitter pang it costs her to say these
+words to herself! That he now loves Dora seems to her mind beyond
+dispute. Is she not his confidante, the one in whom he chooses to repose
+all his secret thoughts and surmises?
+
+Dora regards her cousin keenly. Florence's evident agitation makes her
+fear that there was more in that _tete-a-tete_ with Sir Adrian than she
+had at first imagined.
+
+"Yes; why should he not speak of it?" Dora goes on coldly. "I think by
+his manner your want of self-control shocked him. You should have a
+greater command over yourself. It is not good form to betray one's
+feelings to every chance passer-by. Yes; I think Sir Adrian was both
+surprised and astonished."
+
+"There was nothing to cause him either surprise or astonishment," says
+Florence haughtily; "and I could well have wished him out of the way!"
+
+"Perhaps I misunderstood him," rejoins Dora artfully. "But certainly
+he spoke to me of being unpleasantly delayed by--by impossible
+people--those were his very words; and really altogether--I may be
+wrong--I believed he alluded to you. Of course, I would not follow the
+matter up, because, much as I like Sir Adrian, I could not listen to him
+speaking lightly of you!"
+
+"Of me--you forget yourself, Dora!" cries Florence, with pale lips, but
+head erect. "Speaking lightly of me!" she repeats.
+
+"Young men are often careless in their language," explains Dora
+hurriedly, feeling that she has gone too far. "He meant nothing unkind,
+you may be sure!"
+
+"I am quite sure"--firmly.
+
+"Then no harm is done"--smiling brightly. "And now, good-night, dearest;
+go to bed instead of sitting there looking like a ghost in those
+mystical moonbeams."
+
+"Good-night," says Florence icily.
+
+There is something about her that causes Mrs. Talbot to feel almost
+afraid to approach and kiss her as usual.
+
+"Want of rest will spoil your lovely eyes," adds the widow airily; "and
+your complexion, faultless as it always is, will not be up to the mark
+to-morrow. So sleep, foolish child, and gather roses from your
+slumbers."
+
+So saying, she kisses her hand gayly to the unresponsive Florence, and
+trips lightly from the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Florence, after Dora has left her, sits motionless at her window. She
+has thrown open the casement, and now--the sleeves of her dressing-gown
+falling back from her bare rounded arms--leans out so that the
+descending night-dews fall like a benison upon her burning brow.
+
+She is wrapped in melancholy; her whole soul is burdened with thoughts
+and regrets almost too heavy for her to support. She is harassed and
+perplexed on all sides, and her heart is sore for the loss of the love
+she once had deemed her own.
+
+The moonbeams cling like a halo round her lovely head, her hair falls
+in a luxuriant shower about her shoulders; her plaintive face is raised
+from earth, her eyes look heavenward, as though seeking hope and comfort
+there.
+
+The night is still, almost to oppressiveness. The birds have long since
+ceased their song; the wind hardly stirs the foliage of the stately
+trees. The perfume wafted upward from the sleeping garden floats past
+her and mingles with her scented tresses. No sound comes to mar the
+serenity of the night, all is calm and silent as the grave.
+
+Yet, hark, what is this? A footstep on the gravel path below arouses her
+attention. For the first time since Dora's departure she moves, and,
+turning her head, glances in the direction of the sound.
+
+Bareheaded, and walking with his hands clasped behind him as though
+absorbed in deep thought, Sir Adrian comes slowly over the sward until
+he stands beneath her window. Here he pauses, as though almost
+unconsciously his spirit has led him thither, and brought him to a
+standstill where he would most desire to be.
+
+The moon, spreading its brilliance on all around, permits Florence to
+see that his face is grave and thoughtful, and--yes, as she gazes even
+closer, she can see that it is full of pain and vain longing.
+
+What is rendering him unhappy on this night of all others, when the
+woman she believes he loves has been his willing companion for so many
+hours, when doubtless she has given him proofs of her preference for him
+above all men?
+
+Suddenly lifting his head, Sir Adrian becomes conscious of the face in
+the window above, and a thrill rushes through him as he recognizes the
+form of the woman he loves.
+
+The scene is so calm, so hallowed, so full of romance, that both their
+hearts beat madly for awhile. They are alone; any one still awake within
+the house is far distant.
+
+Never has she appeared so spiritual, so true and tender; so full of
+sweetness that is almost unearthly. All pride seems gone from her, and
+in its place only a gentle melancholy reigns; she looks so far removed
+from him, sitting there in the purity of her white robes, that, at
+first, he hesitates to address her. To his excited imagination, she
+is like an angel resting on its way to the realms above.
+
+At last, however, his heart compelling him, he speaks aloud.
+
+"Florence, you still awake, when all the world is sleeping?"
+
+Her name falling from his lips touches a chord in her breast, and wakes
+her to passionate life.
+
+"You too," she says in a whisper that reaches his strained ears. There
+seems to her a subtle joy in the thought that they two of all the
+household are awake, are here talking together alone in the pale light
+of the moon.
+
+Yet she is wrong in imagining that no others are up in the house, as his
+next words tell her.
+
+"It is not a matter of wonder in my case," he responds; "a few fellows
+are still in the smoking-room. It is early, you know--not yet three. But
+you--why are you keeping a lonely vigil like this?"
+
+"The moon tempted me to the window," answers Florence. "See how calm
+she looks riding majestically up there. See"--stretching out her bare
+white arm until the beams fall full upon it, and seem to change it to
+purest marble--"does it not make one feel as if all the world were being
+bathed in its subdued glow?"
+
+A pale tremulous smile widens her lips. Sir Adrian, plucking a tall pale
+lily growing near him, flings it upward with such an eager aim that it
+alights upon her window-sill. She sees it. Her fingers close upon it.
+
+"Fit emblem of its possessor," says Adrian softly, and rather
+unsteadily. "Do you know of what you remind me, sitting there in your
+white robes? A medieval saint cut in stone--a pure angel, too good, too
+far above all earthly passion to enter into it, or understand it, and
+the grief that must ever attend upon it."
+
+He speaks bitterly. It seems to him that she is indeed cold not to
+have guessed before this the intensity of his love for her. However
+much she may have given her affection to another, it still seems to him
+inexpressibly hard that she can have no pity for his suffering. He gazes
+at her intently. Do the mystic moonbeams deceive him, or are there tears
+in her great dark eyes? His heart beats quickly. Once again he remembers
+her emotion of the past evening. He hears again her passionate sobs. Is
+she unhappy? Are there thorns in her path that are difficult to remove?
+
+"Florence, once again I entreat you to confide in me," he says, after a
+pause.
+
+"I can not," she returns, sadly but firmly. "But there is one thing I
+must say to you--think of me as you may for saying it--I am not cold as
+you seemed to imply a moment since; I am not made of stone; and, alas,
+the grief you think me incapable of understanding is mine already! You
+have wronged me in your thoughts. I have here," she exclaims with some
+vehemence, laying the hand in which she still holds the drooping lily
+upon her breast, "what I would gladly be without--a heart."
+
+"Nay," says Adrian hastily; "you forget. It is no longer yours, you have
+given it away."
+
+For an instant she glances at him keenly, while her breath comes and
+goes with painful quickness.
+
+"You have no right to say so," she murmurs at last.
+
+"No, of course not; I beg your pardon," he says apologetically. "It is
+your own secret."
+
+"There is no secret," she declares nervously. "None."
+
+"I have offended you. I should not have said that. You will forgive me?"
+he entreats, with agitation.
+
+"You are quite forgiven;" and, as a token of the truth of her words, she
+leans a little further out of the window, and looks down at him with a
+face pale indeed, but full of an unutterable sweetness.
+
+Her beauty conquers all his resolutions.
+
+"Oh, Florence," he whispers in an impassioned tone, "if I only dare to
+tell you what--"
+
+She starts and lays a finger on her lips, as though to enforce silence.
+
+"Hush!" she says, in trembling accents. "You forget! The hour, the
+surroundings, have momentarily led you astray. I ought not to have spoken
+with you. Go! There is nothing you dare to tell me--there is nothing I
+would wish to hear. Remember your duty to another--and--good-night."
+
+"Stay, I implore you, for one moment," he cries; but she is firm, and
+presently the curtains are drawn close and he is alone.
+
+Slowly he walks back toward the smoking-room, her last words ringing in
+his ears--"Remember your duty to another." What other? He is puzzled,
+but, reaching the window of the room, he dismisses these thoughts from
+his mind, and determines to get rid of his guests without delay, so as
+to be able to enjoy a little quiet and calm for reflection.
+
+They are all noisily discussing a suicide that had recently taken place
+in a neighboring county, and which had, from its peculiar circumstances,
+caused more than usual interest.
+
+One of the guests to-night is an army-surgeon, and he is giving them an
+explanation as to how the fatal wound had been inflicted. It appeared at
+the inquest that the unfortunate man had shot himself in such a peculiar
+manner as to cause considerable doubt as to whether he had been murdered
+or had died by his own hand. Evidence, however, of a most convincing
+nature had confirmed the latter theory.
+
+Captain Ringwood, with a revolver in his hand, is endeavoring to show
+that the man could not have shot himself, just as Adrian re-enters.
+
+"Be careful with that revolver," he exclaims hastily; "it is loaded!"
+
+"All right, old fellow, I know it," returns Ringwood. "Look here,
+doctor, if he held it so, how could he make a wound here?"
+
+"Why not? Sir Adrian, take the revolver for a moment, will you?" says
+the surgeon, anxious to demonstrate his theory beyond the possibility of
+doubt. "I want to convince Ringwood. Now stand so, and hold the weapon
+so"--placing it with the muzzle presented in a rather awkward position
+almost over his heart.
+
+"I thought fellows always put the muzzles of their revolvers in their
+mouths and blew their brains out when they committed suicide," Ringwood
+remarks lightly.
+
+"This fellow evidently did not," says the surgeon calmly. "Now, Sir
+Adrian, you see, by holding it thus, you could quite easily blow
+yourself to--"
+
+Before he can finish the sentence, there is a sudden confusion of
+bodies, a jostling as it were, for Arthur Dynecourt, who had been
+looking on attentively with one foot on a footstool close to Sir
+Adrian's elbow, had slipped from the stool at this inopportune moment,
+and had fallen heavily against his cousin.
+
+There is a shout from somebody, and then a silence. The revolver in the
+scuffle had gone off! Through the house the sharp crack of a bullet
+rings loudly, rousing many from their slumbers.
+
+Lights can be seen in the passages; terrified faces peep out from
+half-opened doors. Dora Talbot, coming into the corridor in a pale pink
+cashmere dressing-gown trimmed with swan's-down, in which she looks the
+very personification of innocence and youth, screams loudly, and demands
+hysterically to be informed as to the cause of the unusual noise.
+
+The servants have rushed from their quarters in alarm. Ethel Villiers,
+with a pale scared face, runs to Florence Delmaine's room, and throws
+her arms round that young lady as she comes out, pale but composed, to
+ask in a clear tone what has happened.
+
+As nobody knows, and as Florence in her heart is more frightened than
+she cares to confess, being aware through Adrian that some of the men
+are still up in the smoking-room, and fearing that a quarrel had arisen
+among them, she proposes that they should go to the smoking-room in a
+body and make inquiries.
+
+Old Lady FitzAlmont, with Lady Gertrude sobbing on her arm, seconds
+this proposal, and, being a veteran of much distinction, takes the lead.
+Those following close behind, are glad of this, and hopeful because
+of it, her appearance being calculated to rout any enemy. The awful
+character of her dressing-gown and the severity of the nightcap that
+crowns her martial head would strike terror to the hearts of any
+midnight marauders. They all move off in a body, and, guided
+unconsciously by Florence, approach the smoking-room.
+
+Voices loud in conversation can be heard as they draw near; the door is
+slightly ajar. Florence drawing back as they come quite up to it, the
+old lady waves her aside, and advances boldly to the front. Flinging
+wide open the door, she bursts upon the astonished company within.
+
+"Where is he?" she asks, with a dignity that only heightens the
+attractions of the cap and gown. "Have you secured him? Sir Adrian,
+where is the constable? Have you sent for him?"
+
+Sir Adrian, whose gaze is fixed upon the fair vision in the trailing
+white gown standing timidly in the door-way, forgets to answer his
+interrogator, and the others, taken by surprise, maintain a solemn
+silence.
+
+"Why this mystery?" demands Lady FitzAlmont sternly. "Where is the
+miscreant? Where is the man that fired that murderous shot?"
+
+"Here, madame," replies the surgeon dryly, indicating Arthur Dynecourt
+by a motion of the hand.
+
+"He--who? Mr. Dynecourt?" ejaculates her ladyship in a disappointed
+tone. "It was all a mistake, then? I must say, Mr. Dynecourt," continues
+the old lady in an indignant tone, "that I think you might find a more
+suitable time in which to play off your jokes, or to practice
+target-shooting, than in the middle of the night, when every respectable
+household ought to be wrapped in slumber."
+
+"I assure you," begins Arthur Dynecourt, who is strangely pale and
+discomposed, "it was all an accident--an--"
+
+"Accident! Nonsense, sir; I don't believe there was any accident
+whatsoever!"
+
+As these words pass the lips of the irascible old lady, several men in
+the room exchange significant glances. Is it that old Lady FitzAlmont
+has just put their own thoughts into words?
+
+"Let me explain to your ladyship," says Sir Adrian courteously. "We were
+just talking about that unfortunate affair of the Stewarts, and Maitland
+was showing us how it might have occurred. I had the revolver in my
+hand so"--pointing the weapon toward himself.
+
+"Put down that abominable weapon at once, sir!" commands Lady FitzAlmont,
+in a menacing tone, largely mingled with abject fear. As she speaks she
+retreats precipitately behind Florence, thus pushing that young lady to
+the fore.
+
+"When my cousin unhappily stumbled against me, and the revolver went
+off," goes on Sir Adrian. "I'm deeply grieved, Lady FitzAlmont, that
+this should have occurred to disturb the household; but, really, it was
+a pure accident."
+
+"A pure accident," repeats Arthur, from between his colorless lips.
+
+He looks far more distressed by this occurrence than Sir Adrian, who
+had narrowly escaped being wounded. This only showed his tenderness and
+proper feeling, as almost all the women present mutually agreed. Almost
+all, but not quite. Dora Talbot, for example, grows deadly pale as she
+listens to the explanation and watches Arthur's ghastly face. What is it
+like? The face of a murderer?
+
+"Oh, no, no," she gasps inwardly; "surely not that!"
+
+"It was the purest accident, I assure you," protests Arthur again, as
+though anxious to impress this conviction upon his own mind.
+
+"It might have been a very serious one," says the surgeon gravely,
+regarding him with a keen glance. "It might have meant death to Sir
+Adrian!"
+
+Florence changes color and glances at her host with parted lips. Dora
+Talbot, pressing her way through the group in the door-way, goes
+straight up to him as if impulsively, and takes his hand in both hers.
+
+"Dear Sir Adrian, how can we be thankful enough for your escape?" she
+says sweetly, tears standing in her bright blue eyes. She presses his
+hand warmly, and even raises it to her lips in a transport of emotion.
+Standing there in the pretty pink dressing-gown that shows off her
+complexion to perfection, Dora Talbot looks lovely.
+
+"You are very good--very kind," returns Sir Adrian, really touched
+by her concern, but still with eyes only for the white vision in the
+door-way; "but you make too much of nothing. I am only sorry I have been
+the unhappy cause of rousing you from your rosy dreams; you will not
+thank me to-morrow when there will be only lilies in your cheeks."
+
+The word lily brings back to him his last interview with Florence. He
+glances hurriedly at her right hand; yes, the same lily is clasped in
+her fingers. Has she sat ever since with his gift before her, in her
+silent chamber? Alone--in grief perhaps. But why has she kept his
+flower? What can it all mean?
+
+"We shall mind nothing, now you are safe," Dora assures him tremulously.
+
+"I think I might be shown some consideration," puts in Arthur, trying by
+a violent effort to assert himself, and to speak lightly. "Had anything
+happened, surely I should have been the one to be pitied. It would have
+been my fault, and, Mrs. Talbot, I think you might show some pity for
+me." He holds out his hand, and mechanically Dora lays her own in it.
+
+But it is only for an instant, and she shudders violently as his touch
+meets hers. Her eyes are on the ground, and she can not bring herself
+to look at him. Drawing her fingers hurriedly from his, she goes to the
+door and disappears from view.
+
+In the meantime, Sir Adrian, having made his way to Florence, points to
+the lily.
+
+"You have held it ever since?" he asks, in a low tone. "I hardly hoped
+for so much. But you have not congratulated me, you alone have said
+nothing."
+
+"Why need I speak? I have seen you with my own eyes. You are safe.
+Believe me, Sir Adrian, I congratulate you most sincerely upon your
+escape."
+
+Her words are cold, her eyes downcast. She is deeply annoyed with
+herself for having carried the lily into his presence here. The very
+fact of his having noticed it and spoken to her about it has shown her
+how much importance he has attached to her doing so. What will he think
+of her. He will doubtless picture her to himself sitting weeping and
+brooding over a flower given to her by a man who loves her not, and to
+whom she has given her love unsolicited.
+
+Her marked coldness so oppresses him that he steps back, and does not
+venture to address her again. It occurs to him that she is reserved
+because of Arthur's presence.
+
+Presently, Lady FitzAlmont, marshaling her forces anew, carries them all
+away to their rooms, soundly rating the sobbing Lady Gertrude for her
+want of self-control.
+
+The men too, shortly afterward disperse, and one by one drift away to
+their rooms. Captain Ringwood and Maitland the surgeon being the last to
+go.
+
+"Who is the next heir to the castle?" asks the latter musingly, drumming
+his fingers idly on a table near him.
+
+"Dynecourt, the fellow who nearly did for Sir Adrian this evening!"
+replies Ringwood quietly.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"It would have meant a very good thing for Arthur if the shot had taken
+effect," says Ringwood, eying his companion curiously.
+
+"It would have meant murder, sir!" rejoins the surgeon shortly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+"Dear Sir Adrian," says Dora Talbot, laying down her bat upon a
+garden-chair, and forsaking the game of tennis then proceeding to go
+forward and greet her host, "where have you been? We have missed you so
+much. Florence"--turning to her cousin--"will you take my bat, dearest?
+I am quite tired of trying to defeat Lord Lisle."
+
+Lord Lisle, a middle-aged gentleman of sunburned appearance, looks
+unmistakably delighted at the prospect of a change in the game. He is
+married; has a large family of promising young Lisles, and a fervent
+passion for tennis. Mrs. Talbot having proved a very contemptible
+adversary, he is charmed at this chance of getting rid of her.
+
+So Florence, _vice_ Dora retired, joins the game, and the play continues
+with unabated vigor. When however Lord Lisle has scored a grand victory,
+and all the players declare themselves thoroughly exhausted and in need
+of refreshment, Sir Adrian comes forward, and walks straight up to Miss
+Delmaine, to Dora's intense chagrin and the secret rage of Arthur
+Dynecourt.
+
+"You have often asked to see the 'haunted chamber,'" he says; "why not
+come and visit it now? It isn't much to see, you know; but still, in a
+ghostly sense, it is, I suppose, interesting."
+
+"Let us make a party and go together," suggests Dora, enthusiastically
+clasping her hands--her favorite method of showing false emotion of
+any kind. She is determined to have her part in the programme, and is
+equally determined that Florence shall go nowhere alone with Sir Adrian.
+
+"What a capital idea!" puts in Arthur Dynecourt, coming up to Miss
+Delmaine, and specially addressing her with all the air of a rightful
+owner.
+
+"Charming," murmurs a young lady standing by; and so the question is
+settled.
+
+"It will be rather a fatiguing journey, you know," says Captain
+Ringwood, confidentially, to Ethel Villiers. "It's an awful lot of
+stairs; I've been there, so I know all about it--it's worse than the
+treadmill."
+
+"Have you been there too?" demands Miss Ethel saucily, glancing at him
+from under her long lashes.
+
+"Not yet," answers the captain, with a little grin. "But, I say, don't
+go--will you?"
+
+"I must; I'm dying to see it," replies Ethel. "You needn't come, you
+know; I dare say I shall be able to get on without you for half an hour
+or so."
+
+"I dare say you could get on uncommonly well without me forever,"
+retorts the captain rather gloomily. To himself he confesses moodily
+that this girl with the auburn hair and the blue eyes has the power of
+taking the "curl out of him" whensoever she wishes.
+
+"I believe you are afraid of the bogies hidden in this secret chamber,
+and so don't care to come," says Miss Villiers tauntingly.
+
+"I know something else I'm a great deal more afraid of," responds the
+gallant captain meaningly.
+
+"Me?" she asks innocently, but certainly coquettishly. "Oh, Captain
+Ringwood"--in a tone of mock injury--"what an unkind speech! Now I know
+you look upon me in the light of an ogress, or a witch, or something
+equally dreadful. Well, as I have the name of it, I may as well have
+the gain of it, and so--I command you to attend me to the 'haunted
+chamber.'"
+
+"You order--I obey," says the captain. "'Call and I follow--I follow,
+though I die!'" After which quotation he accompanies her toward the
+house in the wake of Dora and Sir Adrian, who has been pressed by the
+clever widow into her service.
+
+Florence and Arthur Dynecourt follow them, Arthur talking gayly, as
+though determined to ignore the fact that he is thoroughly unwelcome to
+his companion; Florence, with head erect and haughty footsteps and eyes
+carefully averted.
+
+Past the hall, through the corridor, up the staircase, through the
+galleries, along more corridors they go, laughing and talking eagerly,
+until they come at last to an old and apparently much disused part of
+the house.
+
+Traversing more corridors, upon which dust lies thickly, they come at
+last to a small iron-bound door that blocks the end of one passage.
+
+"Now we really begin to get near to it," says Sir Adrian encouragingly,
+turning, as he always does, when opportunity offers, to address himself
+solely to Florence.
+
+"Don't you feel creepy-creepy?" asks Ethel Villiers, with a smothered
+laugh, looking up at Captain Ringwood.
+
+Then Sir Adrian pushes open the door, revealing a steep flight of stone
+steps that leads upward to another door above. This door, like the lower
+one, is bound with iron.
+
+"This is the tower," explains Sir Adrian, still acting as cicerone
+to the small party, who look with interest around them. Mrs. Talbot,
+affecting nervousness, clings closely to Sir Adrian's arm. Indeed she is
+debating in her own mind whether it would be effective or otherwise to
+subside into a graceful swoon within his arms. "Yonder is the door of
+the chamber," continues Sir Adrian. "Come, let us go up to it."
+
+They all ascend the last flight of stone stairs; and presently their
+host opens the door, and reveals to them whatever mysteries may lie
+beyond. He enters first, and they all follow him, but, as if suddenly
+recollecting some important point, he turns, and calls loudly to Captain
+Ringwood not to let the door shut behind him.
+
+"There is a peculiar spring in the lock," he explains a moment later;
+"and, if the door slammed to, we should find it impossible to open it
+from the inside, and might remain here prisoners forever unless the
+household came to the rescue."
+
+"Oh, Captain Ringwood, pray be careful!" cries Dora falteringly. "Our
+very lives depend upon your attention!"
+
+"Miss Villiers, do come here and help me to remember my duty," says
+Captain Ringwood, planting his back against the open door lest by any
+means it should shut.
+
+The chamber is round, and has, instead of windows, three narrow
+apertures in the walls, through which can be obtained a glimpse of the
+sky, but of nothing else. These apertures are just large enough to admit
+a man's hand. The room is without furniture of any description, and on
+the boards the dark stains of blood are distinctly visible.
+
+"Dynecourt, tell them a story or two," calls out Ringwood to Sir Adrian.
+"They won't believe it is veritably haunted unless you call up a ghost
+to frighten them."
+
+But they all protest in a body that they do not wish to hear any ghost
+stories, so Sir Adrian laughingly refuses to comply with Ringwood's
+request.
+
+"Are we far from the other parts of the house?" asks Florence at length,
+who has been examining some writing on the walls.
+
+"So far that, if you were immured here, no cry, however loud, could
+penetrate the distance," replies Sir Adrian. "You are as thoroughly
+removed from the habitable parts of the castle as if you were in the
+next county."
+
+"How interesting!" observes Dora, with a little simper.
+
+"The servants are so afraid of this room that they would not venture
+here even by daylight," Sir Adrian goes on. "You can see how the dust of
+years is on it. One might be slowly starved to death here without one's
+friends being a bit the wiser."
+
+He laughs as he says this, but, long afterward, his words come back to
+his listeners' memories, filling their breasts with terror and despair.
+
+"I wonder you don't have this dangerous lock removed," says Captain
+Ringwood. "It is a regular trap. Some day you'll be sorry for it."
+
+Prophetic words!
+
+"Yes; I wish it were removed," responds Florence, with a strange quick
+shiver.
+
+Sir Adrian laughs.
+
+"Why, that is one of the old tower's greatest charms," he says. "It
+belongs to the dark ages, and suggests all sorts of horrible
+possibilities. This room would be nothing without its mysterious lock."
+
+At this moment Dora's eyes turn slowly toward Arthur Dynecourt. She
+herself hardly knows why, at this particular time, she should look at
+him, yet she feels that some unaccountable fascination is compelling her
+gaze to encounter his. Their eyes meet. As they do so, Dora shudders and
+turns deadly pale. There is that in Arthur Dynecourt's dark and sullen
+eyes that strikes her cold with terror and vague forebodings of evil. It
+is a wicked look that overspreads the man's face--a cruel, implacable
+look that seems to freeze her as she gazes at him spell-bound. Slowly,
+even while she watches him, she sees him turn his glance from her to Sir
+Adrian in a meaning manner, as though to let her know that the vile
+thought that is working in his brain and is betraying itself on his face
+is intended for him, not her. And yet, with this too, he gives her
+silently to understand that, if she shows any treachery toward him, he
+will not leave it unrewarded.
+
+Cowed, frightened, trembling at what she knows not, Dora staggers
+backward, and, laying a hand upon the wall beside her, tries to regain
+her self-possession. The others are all talking together, she is
+therefore unobserved. She stands, still panting and pallid, trying
+to collect her thoughts.
+
+Only one thing comes clearly to her, filling her with loathing of
+herself and an unnamed dread--it is that, by her own double-dealing and
+falseness toward Florence, she has seemed to enter into a compact with
+this man to be a companion in whatever crime he may decide upon. His
+very look seems to implicate her, to drag her down with him to his
+level. She feels herself chained to him--his partner in a vile
+conspiracy. And what further adds to the horror of the situation is the
+knowledge that she knows herself to be blindly ignorant of whatever
+plans he may be forming.
+
+After a few seconds she rouses herself, and wins back some degree of
+composure. It is of course a mere weakness to believe herself in the
+power of Arthur Dynecourt, she tries to convince herself. He is no more
+than any other ordinary acquaintance. If indeed she has helped him a
+little in his efforts to secure the love of Florence, there was no great
+harm in that, though of course it served her own purpose also.
+
+"How pale you are, Mrs. Talbot?" remarks Sir Adrian suddenly, wheeling
+round to look at her more closely. "Has this damp old place really
+affected your nerves? Come, let us go down again, and forget in the
+sunshine that bloody deeds were ever committed here or elsewhere."
+
+"I am nervous, I confess," responds Dora, in a low tone. "Yes, yes--let
+us leave this terrible room forever."
+
+"So be it," says Sir Adrian gayly. "For my part, I feel no desire to
+ever re-enter it."
+
+"It is very high art, I suppose," observes Ethel Villiers, glancing
+round the walls. "Uncomfortable places always are. It would be quite
+a treasure to Lady Betty Trefeld, who raves over the early Britons. It
+seems rather thrown away upon us. Captain Ringwood, you look as if you
+had been suddenly turned into stone. Let me pass, please."
+
+"It was uncommonly friendly of Ringwood not to have let the door slam,
+and so imprisoned us for life," says Sir Adrian, with a laugh. "I am
+sure we owe him a debt of gratitude."
+
+"I hope you'll all pay it," laughs Ringwood. "It will be a nice new
+experience for you to give a creditor something for once. I never pay my
+own debts; but that doesn't count. I feel sure you are all going to give
+me something for my services as door-keeper."
+
+"What shall I give you?" asks Ethel coquettishly.
+
+"I'll tell you by and by," he replies, with such an expressive look that
+for once the saucy girl has no answer ready, but, blushing crimson,
+hurries past him down the stone stairs, where she waits at the bottom
+for the others.
+
+As Florence reaches the door she pauses and stoops to examine the lock.
+
+"I wish," she says to Sir Adrian, a strange subdued excitement in her
+tone, "you would remove this lock. Do."
+
+"But why?" he asks, impressed in spite of himself, by her manner.
+
+"I hardly know myself; it is a fancy--an unaccountable one, perhaps--but
+still a powerful one. Do be guided by me, and have it removed."
+
+"What--the fancy?" he asks, laughing.
+
+"No--the lock. Humor me in this," she pleads earnestly, far more
+earnestly than the occasion seems to warrant. "Call it a silly
+presentiment, if you like, but I honestly think that lock will work you
+evil some day. Therefore it is that I ask you to do away with it."
+
+"You ask me?" he queries.
+
+"Yes, if only to please me--for my sake."
+
+She has evidently forgotten her late distrust of him, for she speaks now
+in the old sweet tone, and with tears in her eyes. Sir Adrian flushes
+warmly.
+
+"For your sake," he whispers. "What is there I would not do, if thus
+requested?"
+
+A bitter sneer contracts Arthur Dynecourt's lips as he listens to the
+first part of this conversation and guesses at the latter half. He notes
+correctly the kindling of their eyes, the quick breath that comes and
+goes like happy sighs from the breast of Florence. He hears the whisper,
+sees the warm blush, and glances expressively at Dora. Meeting her eyes
+he says his finger on his lips to caution her to silence, and then, when
+passing by her, whispers:
+
+"Meet me in half an hour in the lower gallery."
+
+Bowing her acquiescence in this arrangement, fearing indeed to refuse,
+Dora follows the others from the haunted chamber.
+
+At the foot of the small stone staircase--before they go through the
+first iron-bound door that leads to the corridor without--they find
+Ethel Villiers awaiting them. She had been looking round her in the
+dimly lighted stone passage, and has discovered another door fixed
+mysteriously in a corner, that had excited her curiosity.
+
+"Where does this lead to, Sir Adrian?" she asks now, pointing to it.
+
+"Oh, that is an old door connected with another passage that leads by
+a dark and wearying staircase to the servants' corridor beneath! I am
+afraid you won't be able to open it, as it is rusty with age and disuse.
+The servants would as soon think of coming up here as they would of
+making an appointment with the Evil One; so it has not been opened for
+years."
+
+"Perhaps I can manage it," says Arthur Dynecourt, trying with all his
+might to force the ancient lock to yield to him. At length his efforts
+are crowned with success; the door flies creakingly open, and a cloud of
+dust uprising covers them like a mist.
+
+"Ah!" exclaims Ethel, recoiling; but Arthur, stooping forward, carefully
+examines the dark staircase that lies before him wrapped in impenetrable
+gloom. Spider-nets have been drawn from wall to wall and hang in dusky
+clouds from the low ceiling; a faint, stale, stifling smell greets his
+nostrils, yet he lingers there and looks carefully around him.
+
+"You'll fall into it, if you don't mind," remarks Captain Ringwood. "One
+would think uncanny spots had an unwholesome attraction for you."
+
+Ringwood, ever since the memorable night in the smoking-room, when Sir
+Adrian was so near being killed, has looked askance at Arthur Dynecourt,
+and, when taking the trouble to address him at all, has been either
+sharp or pointed in his remarks. Arthur, contenting himself with a
+scowl at him, closes the little door again, and turns away from it.
+
+"At night," says Sir Adrian, in an amused tone, "the servants, passing
+by the door below that leads up to this one, run by it as though they
+fear some ghostly ancestors of mine, descending from the haunted
+chamber, will pounce out upon them with their heads under their arms,
+or in some equally unpleasant position. You know the door, don't you,
+Arthur--the second from the turning?"
+
+"No," replies Arthur, with his false smile, "I do not; nor, indeed,
+do I care to know it. I firmly believe I should run past it too after
+nightfall, unless well protected."
+
+"That looks as if you had an evil conscience," says Ringwood carelessly,
+but none the less purposely.
+
+"It looks more as if I were a coward, I think," retorts Arthur,
+laughing, but shooting an angry glance at the gallant captain as he
+speaks.
+
+"Well, what does the immortal William say?" returns Ringwood coolly.
+"'Conscience doth make cowards of us all!'"
+
+"You have a sharp wit, sir," says Arthur, with apparent lightness, but
+pale with passion.
+
+"I say, look here," breaks in Sir Adrian hastily, pulling out his watch;
+"it must be nearly time for tea. By Jove, quite half past four, and we
+know what Lady FitzAlmont will say to us if we keep her deprived of her
+favorite beverage for even five minutes. Come, let us run, or
+destruction will light upon our heads."
+
+So saying, he leads the way, and soon they leave the haunted chamber and
+all its gloomy associations far behind them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Reluctantly, yet with a certain amount of curiosity to know what it is
+he may wish to say to her, Dora wends her way to the gallery to keep her
+appointment with Arthur. Pacing to and fro beneath the searching eyes
+of the gaunt cavaliers and haughty dames that gleam down upon him from
+their canvases upon the walls, Dynecourt impatiently awaits her coming.
+
+"Ah, you are late!" he exclaims as she approaches. There is a tone of
+authority about him that dismays her.
+
+"Not very, I think," she responds pleasantly, deeming conciliatory
+measures the best. "Why did you not come to the library? We all missed
+you so much at tea!"
+
+"No doubt," he replies sarcastically. "I can well fancy the
+disappointment my absence caused; the blank looks and regretful speeches
+that marked my defection. Pshaw--let you and me at least be honest to
+each other! Did Florence, think you, shed tears because of my
+non-coming?"
+
+This mood of his is so strange to her that, in spite of the natural
+false smoothness that belongs to her, it renders her dumb.
+
+"Look here," he goes on savagely, "I have seen enough to-day up in that
+accursed room above--that haunted chamber--to show me our game is not
+yet won."
+
+"Our game--what game?" asks Dora, with a foolish attempt at
+misconception.
+
+He laughs aloud--a wild, unpleasant, scornful laugh, that makes her
+cheek turn pale. Its mirth, she tells herself, is demoniacal.
+
+"You would get out of it now, would you?" he says. "It is too late, I
+tell you. You have gone some way with me, you must go the rest. I want
+your help, and you want mine. Will you draw back now, when the prize is
+half won, when a little more labor will place it within your grasp?"
+
+"But there must be no violence," she gasps; "no attempt at--"
+
+"What is it you would say?" he interrupts stonily. "Collect yourself;
+you surely do not know what you are hinting at. Violence! what do you
+mean by that?"
+
+"I hardly know," she returns, trembling. "It was your look, your tone,
+I think, that frightened me."
+
+"Put your nerves in your pocket for the future," he exclaims coarsely;
+"they are not wanted where I am. Now to business. You want to marry Sir
+Adrian, as I understand, whether his desire lies in the same direction
+or not?"
+
+At this plain speaking the dainty little lady winces openly.
+
+"My own opinion is that his desire does not run in your direction,"
+continues Arthur remorselessly. "We both know where his heart would
+gladly find its home, where he would seek a bride to place here in this
+grand old castle, but I will frustrate that hope if I die for it."
+
+He grinds his teeth as he says this, and looks with fierce defiant eyes
+at the long rows of his ancestors that line the walls.
+
+"She would gladly see her proud fair face looking down upon me from
+amidst this goodly company," he goes on, apostrophizing the absent
+Florence. "But that shall never be. I have sworn it; unless--I am her
+husband--unless--I am her husband!"
+
+More slowly, more thoughtfully he repeats this last phrase, until Dora,
+affrighted by the sudden change that has disfigured his face, speaks to
+him to distract his attention.
+
+"You have brought me here to--" she ventures timidly.
+
+"Ay, to tell you what is on my mind. I have said you want to marry
+Adrian; I mean to marry Florence Delmaine. To-day I disliked certain
+symptoms I saw, that led me to believe that my own machinations have not
+been as successful as I could have wished. Before going in for stronger
+measures, there is one more card that I will play. I have written you a
+note. Here it is, take it"--handing her a letter folded in the
+cocked-hat fashion.
+
+"What am I to do with this?" asks Dora nervously.
+
+"Read it. It is addressed to yourself. You will see I have copied
+Adrian's handwriting as closely as possible, and have put his initials
+A.D. at the end. And yet"--with a diabolical smile--"it is no forgery
+either, as A.D. are my initials also."
+
+Opening the note with trembling fingers, Dora reads aloud as follows:
+
+"Can you--will you meet me to-morrow at four o'clock in the lime-walk?
+I have been cold to you perhaps, but have I not had cause? You think my
+slight attentions to another betoken a decrease in my love for you, but
+in this, dearest, you are mistaken. I am yours heart and soul. For the
+present I dare not declare myself, for the reasons you already know, and
+for the same reasons am bound to keep up a seeming friendliness with
+some I would gladly break with altogether. But I am happy only with you,
+and happy too in the thought that our hearts beat as one. Yours
+forever, A.D."
+
+Dora, having finished reading the letter, glances at him uneasily.
+
+"And--what is the meaning of this letter? What is it written for? What
+am I to do with it?" she stammers, beating the precious missive against
+the palm of her hand, as though in loathing of it.
+
+"You will show it to her. You will speak of it as a love-letter written
+to you by Adrian. You will consult her as to whether it be wise or
+prudent to accede to his proposal to meet you alone in the lime-walk.
+You will, in fact, put out all your powers of deception, which"--with a
+sneering smile--"are great, and so compel her to believe the letter is
+from him to you."
+
+"But--" falters Dora.
+
+"There shall be no 'but' in the matter. You have entered into this
+affair with me, and you shall pursue it to the end. If you fail me, I
+shall betray your share in it--more than your share--and paint you in
+such colors as will shut the doors of society to you. You understand
+now, do you?"
+
+"Go on," says Dora, with colorless lips.
+
+"Ah, I have touched the right chord at last, have I? Society, your idol,
+you dare not brave! Well, to continue, you will also tell her, in your
+own sweet innocent way"--with another sneer that makes her quiver with
+fear and rage--"to account for Adrian's decided and almost lover-like
+attentions to her in the room we visited, that you had had a lovers'
+quarrel with him some time before, earlier in the day; that, in his fit
+of pique, he had sought to be revenged upon you, and soothe his slighted
+feelings by feigning a sudden interest in her. You follow me?"
+
+"Yes," replies the submissive Dora. Alas, how sincerely she now wishes
+she had never entered into this hateful intrigue!
+
+"Then, when you have carefully sown these lies in her heart, and seen
+her proud face darken and quiver with pain beneath your words"--oh, how
+his own evil face glows with unholy satisfaction as he sees the picture
+he has just drawn stand out clear before his eyes!--"you will affect to
+be driven by compunction into granting Sir Adrian a supposed request,
+you will don your hat and cloak, and go down to the lime-walk to
+encounter--me. If I am any judge of character, that girl, so haughty to
+all the world, will lower her pride for her crushed love's sake, and
+will follow you, to madden herself with your meeting with the man she
+loves. To her, I shall on this occasion represent Sir Adrian. Are you
+listening?"
+
+She is indeed--listening with all her might to the master mind that has
+her in thrall.
+
+"You will remember not to start when you meet me," he continues, issuing
+his commands with insolent assumption of authority over the dainty Dora,
+who, up to this, has been accustomed to rule it over others in her
+particular sphere, and who now chafes and writhes beneath the sense of
+slavery that is oppressing her. "You will meet me calmly, oblivious of
+the fact that I shall be clad in my cousin's light overcoat, the one of
+which Miss Delmaine was graciously pleased to say she approved yesterday
+morning."
+
+His eyes light again with a revengeful fire as he calls to mind the
+slight praise Florence had bestowed in a very casual fashion on this
+coat. Every smile, every kindly word addressed by this girl to his
+cousin, is treasured up by him and dwelt upon in secret, to the terrible
+strengthening of the purpose he has in view.
+
+"But if you should be seen--be marked," hesitates Dora faintly.
+
+"Pshaw--am I one to lay my plans so clumsily as to court discovery on
+even the minutest point?" he interrupts impatiently. "When you meet me
+you will--but enough of this; I shall be there to meet you in the
+lime-walk, and after that you will take your cue from me."
+
+"That is all you have to say?" asks Dora, anxious to quit his hated
+presence.
+
+"For the present--yes. Follow my instructions to the letter, or dread
+the consequences. Any blunder in the performance of this arrangement I
+shall lay to your charge."
+
+"You threaten, sir!" she exclaims angrily, though she trembles.
+
+"Let it be your care to see that I do not carry out my threats," he
+retorts, with an insolent shrug.
+
+The next day, directly after luncheon, as Florence is sitting in her
+own room, touching up an unfinished water-color sketch of part of the
+grounds round the castle--which have, alas, grown only too dear to
+her!--Dora enters her room. It is an embarrassed and significantly
+smiling Dora that trips up to her, and says with pretty hesitation in
+her tone--
+
+"Dearest Florence, I want your advice about something."
+
+"Mine?" exclaims Florence, laying down her brush, and looking, as she
+feels, astonished. As a rule, the gentle Dora does not seek for wisdom
+from her friends.
+
+"Yes, dear, if you can spare me the time. Just five minutes will do, and
+then you can return to your charming sketch. Oh"--glancing at it--"how
+exactly like it is--so perfect; what a sunset, and what firs! One could
+imagine one's self in the Fairies' Glen by just looking at it."
+
+"It is not the Fairies' Glen at all; it is that bit down by Gough's
+farm," says Florence coldly. Of late she has not been so blind to Dora's
+artificialness as she used to be.
+
+"Ah, so it is!" agrees Dora airily, not in the least discomposed at her
+mistake. "And so like it too. You are a genius, dearest, you are really,
+and might make your fortune, only that you have one made already for
+you, fortunate girl!"
+
+"You want my advice," suggests Florence quietly.
+
+"Ah, true; and about something important too!" She throws into her whole
+air so much coquetry mingled with assumed bashfulness that Florence
+knows by instinct that the "something" has Sir Adrian for its theme, and
+she grows pale and miserable accordingly.
+
+"Let me hear it then," she urges, leaning back with a weary sigh.
+
+"I have just received this letter," says Mrs. Talbot, taking from her
+pocket the letter Arthur had given her, and holding it out to Florence,
+"and I want to know how I shall answer it. Would you--would you honestly
+advise me, Flo, to go and meet him as he desires?"
+
+"As who desires?"
+
+"Ah, true; you do not know, of course! I am so selfishly full of myself
+and my own concerns, that I seem to think every one else must be full
+of them too. Forgive me, dearest, and read his sweet little letter, will
+you?"
+
+"Of whom are you speaking--to whose letter do you refer?" asks Florence,
+a little sharply, in the agony of her heart.
+
+"Florence! Whose letter would I call 'sweet' except Sir Adrian's?"
+answers her cousin, with gentle reproach.
+
+"But it is meant for you, not for me," says Miss Delmaine, holding the
+letter in her hand, and glancing at it with great distaste. "He probably
+intended no other eyes but yours to look upon it."
+
+"But I must obtain advice from some one, and who so natural to expect it
+from as you, my nearest relative? If, however"--putting her handkerchief
+to her eyes--"you object to help me, Florence, or if it distresses you
+to read--"
+
+"Distresses me?" interrupts Florence haughtily. "Why should it distress
+me? If you have no objection to my reading your--lover's--letter, why
+should I hesitate about doing so? Pray sit down while I run through it."
+
+Dora having seated herself, Florence hastily reads the false note from
+beginning to end. Her heart beats furiously as she does so, and her
+color comes and goes; but her voice is quite steady when she speaks
+again.
+
+"Well," she says, putting the paper from her as though heartily glad
+to be rid of it, "it seems that Sir Adrian wishes to speak to you on
+some subject interesting to you and him alone, and that he has chosen
+the privacy of the lime-walk as the spot in which to hold your
+_tete-a-tete_. It is quite a simple affair, is it not? Though really,
+why he could not arrange to talk privately to you in some room in the
+castle, which is surely large enough for the purpose, I can not
+understand."
+
+"Dear Sir Adrian is so romantic," says Dora coyly.
+
+"Is he?" responds her cousin dryly. "He has always seemed to me the
+sanest of men. Well, on what matter do you wish to consult me?"
+
+"Dear Florence, how terribly prosaic and unsympathetic you are to-day,"
+says Dora reproachfully; "and I came to you so sure of offers of love
+and friendship! I want you to tell me if you think I ought to meet him
+or not."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I don't know"--with a little simper. "Is it perhaps humoring him too
+much? I have always dreaded letting a man imagine I cared for him,
+unless fully, utterly, assured of his affection for me."
+
+Florence colors again, and then grows deadly pale, as this poisoned barb
+pierces her bosom.
+
+"I should think," she says slowly, "after reading the letter you have
+just shown me, you ought to feel assured."
+
+"You believe I ought, really?"--with a fine show of eagerness. "Now, you
+are not saying this to please me--to gratify me?"
+
+"I should not please or gratify any one at the expense of truth."
+
+"No, of course not. You are such a high-principled girl, so different
+from many others. Then you think I might go and meet him this evening
+without sacrificing my dignity in any way?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad," exclaimed little Mrs. Talbot rapturously, nodding her
+"honorable" head with a beaming smile, "because I do so want to meet
+him, dear fellow! And I value your opinion, Flo, more highly than that
+of any other friend I possess. You are so solid, so thoughtful--such a
+dear thing altogether."
+
+Florence takes no heed of this rodomontade, but sits quite still, with
+downcast eyes, tapping the small table near her with the tips of her
+slender fingers in a meditative fashion.
+
+"The fact is," continues Dora, who is watching her closely, "I may
+as well let you into a little secret. Yesterday Sir Adrian and I had
+a tiny, oh, such a tiny little dispute, all about nothing, I assure
+you"--with a gay laugh--"but to us it seemed quite important. He said he
+was jealous of me. Now just fancy that, Flo; jealous of poor little me!"
+
+"It is quite possible; you are pretty--most men admire you," Florence
+remarks coldly, still without raising her eyes.
+
+"Ah, you flatter me, naughty girl! Well, silly as it sounds, he actually
+was jealous, and really gave me quite a scolding. It brought tears to my
+eyes, it upset me so. So, to tell the truth, we parted rather bad
+friends; and, to be revenged on me, I suppose, he rather neglected me
+for the remainder of the day."
+
+Again Florence is silent, though her tormentor plainly waits for a lead
+from her before going on.
+
+"You must have remarked," she continues presently, "how cold and
+reserved he was toward me when we were all together in that dreadful
+haunted chamber." Here she really shudders, in spite of herself. The
+cruel eyes of Arthur Dynecourt seem to be on her again, as they were in
+that ghostly room.
+
+"I remarked nothing," responds Florence icily.
+
+"No--really? Well, he was. Why, my dear Florence, you must have seen how
+he singled you out to be attentive to you, just to show me how offended
+he was."
+
+"He did not seem offended with any one, and I thought him in
+particularly good spirits," replies Florence calmly.
+
+Dora turns a delicate pink.
+
+"Dear Adrian is such an excellent actor," she says sweetly, "and so
+proud; he will disguise his feelings, however keen they may be, from
+the knowledge of any one, no matter what the effort may cost him. Well,
+dearest, and so you positively advise me to keep this appointment with
+him?"
+
+"I advise nothing. I merely say that I see nothing objectionable in
+your walking up and down the lime-walk with your host."
+
+"How clearly you put it! Well, adieu, darling, for the present, and
+thank you a thousand times for all the time you have wasted on me. I
+assure you I am not worth it"--kissing her hand brightly.
+
+For once she speaks the truth; she is not indeed worth one moment of the
+time Florence has been compelled to expend upon her; yet, when she has
+tripped out of the room, seemingly as free from guile as a light-hearted
+child, Miss Delmaine's thoughts still follow her, even against her
+inclination.
+
+She has gone to meet him; no doubt to interchange tender words and vows
+with him; to forgive, to be forgiven, about some sweet bit of lover's
+folly, the dearer for its very foolishness. She listens for her
+footsteps as she returns along the corridor, dressed no doubt in her
+prettiest gown, decked out to make herself fair in his eyes.
+
+An overwhelming desire to see how she has robed herself on this
+particular occasion induces Florence to go to the door and look after
+her as she descends the stairs. She just catches a glimpse of Dora as
+she turns the corner, and sees, to her surprise, that she is by no means
+daintily attired, but has thrown a plain dark water-proof over her
+dress, as though to hide it. Slightly surprised at this, Florence
+ponders it, and finally comes to the bitter conclusion that Dora is so
+sure of his devotion that she knows it is not necessary for her to
+bedeck herself in finery to please him. In his eyes of course she is
+lovely in any toilet.
+
+Soon, soon she will be with him. How will they greet each other? Will he
+look into Dora's eyes as he used to look into hers not so very long ago?
+Arthur Dynecourt read her aright when he foresaw that she would be
+unable to repress the desire to follow Dora, and see for herself the
+meeting between her and Sir Adrian.
+
+Hastily putting on a large Rubens hat, and twisting a soft piece of
+black lace round her neck, she runs down-stairs and, taking a different
+direction from that she knows Dora most likely pursued, she arrives by
+a side path at the lime-walk almost as soon as her cousin.
+
+Afraid to venture too near, she obtains a view of the walk from a high
+position framed in by rhododendrons. Yes, now she can see Dora, and now
+she can see too, the man who comes eagerly to meet her. His face is
+slightly turned away from her, but the tall figure clad in the loose
+light overcoat is not to be mistaken. He advances quickly, and meets
+Dora with both hands outstretched. She appears to draw back a little,
+and then he seizes her hands, and, stooping, covers them with kisses.
+
+A film seems to creep over Florence's eyes. With a stifled groan, she
+turns and flies homeward. Again in the privacy of her own room, and
+having turned the key securely in the lock to keep out all intruders,
+she flings herself upon her bed and cries as if her heart would break.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Not until her return to her room does Dora remember that she did not get
+back the false letter from her cousin. In the heat of the conversation
+she had forgotten it, but now, a fear possessing her lest Florence
+should show it to any one, she runs upstairs and knocks at Miss
+Delmaine's door.
+
+"Come in," calls Florence slowly.
+
+It is three hours since she went for her unhappy walk to the lime-grove,
+and now she is composed again, and is waiting for the gong to sound
+before descending to the drawing-room, where she almost dreads the
+thought that she will be face to face with Sir Adrian. She is dressed
+for dinner, has indeed taken most particular pains with her toilet, if
+only to hide the ravages that these past three hours of bitter weeping
+have traced upon her beautiful face. She looks sad still, but calm and
+dignified.
+
+Dora is dressed too, but is looking flurried and flushed.
+
+"I beg your pardon," she says; "but my letter--the letter I showed you
+to-day--have you it?"
+
+"No," replies Florence simply; "I thought I gave it back to you; but,
+if not, it must be here on this table"--lifting a book or two from the
+small gypsy-table near which she had been sitting when Dora came to her
+room early in the day.
+
+Dora looks for it everywhere, in a somewhat nervous, frightened manner,
+Florence helping her the while; but nothing comes of their search, and
+they are fain to go down-stairs without it, as the gong sounding loudly
+tells them they are already late.
+
+"Never mind," says Dora, afraid of having betrayed too much concern.
+"It is really of no consequence. I only wanted it, because--well,
+because"--with the simper that drives Florence nearly mad--"he wrote it."
+
+"I shall tell my maid to look for it, and, if she finds it, you shall
+have it this evening," responds Florence, with a slight contraction of
+her brows that passes unnoticed.
+
+To Florence's mortification, Arthur Dynecourt takes her in to dinner. On
+their way across the hall from the drawing-room to the dining-room, he
+presses the hand that rests so reluctantly upon his arm, and says, with
+an affectation of the sincerest concern--
+
+"You are not well; you are looking pale and troubled, and--pardon me if
+I am wrong, but I think you have been crying."
+
+"I must beg, sir," she retorts, with excessive _hauteur_, removing her
+hand from his arm, as though his pressure had burned her--"I must beg,
+you will not trouble yourself to study my countenance. Your doing so is
+most offensive to me."
+
+"To see you in trouble, and not long to help or comfort you is
+impossible to me," goes on Dynecourt, unmoved by her scorn. "Are you
+still dwelling on the past--on what is irrevocable? Have you had fresh
+cause to remember it to-day?"
+
+There is a gleam of malice in his eyes, but Florence, whose gaze is
+turned disdainfully away from him, fails to see it. She changes color
+indeed beneath his words, but makes him no reply, and, when they reach
+the dining-room, in a very marked manner she takes a seat far removed
+from his.
+
+There is a sinister expression in his eyes and round his mouth as he
+notes this studied avoidance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+It is now "golden September," and a few days later. For the last
+fortnight Florence has been making strenuous efforts to leave the
+castle, but Dora would not hear of their departure, and Florence,
+feeling it will be selfish of her to cut short Dora's happy hours with
+her supposed lover, sighs, and gives in, and sacrifices her own wishes
+on the altar of friendship.
+
+It is five o'clock, and all the men, gun in hand, have been out since
+early dawn. Now they are coming straggling home, in ones or twos.
+Amongst the first to return are Sir Adrian and his cousin Arthur
+Dynecourt, who, having met accidentally about a mile from home, have
+trudged the remainder of the way together.
+
+On the previous night at dinner, Miss Delmaine had spoken of a small
+gold bangle, a favorite of hers, she was greatly in the habit of
+wearing. She said she had lost it--when or where she could not tell;
+and she expressed herself as being very grieved for its loss, and had
+laughingly declared she would give any reward claimed by any one who
+should restore it to her. Two or three men had, on the instant, pledged
+themselves to devote their lives to the search; but Adrian had said
+nothing. Nevertheless, the bangle and the reward remained in his mind
+all that night and all to-day. Now he can not refrain from speaking
+about it to the man he considers his rival.
+
+"Odd thing about Miss Delmaine's bangle," he remarks carelessly.
+
+"Very odd. I dare say her maid has put it somewhere and forgotten it."
+
+"Hardly. One would not put a bracelet anywhere but in a jewel-case, or
+in a special drawer. She must have dropped it somewhere."
+
+"I dare say; those Indian bangles are very liable to be rubbed off the
+wrist."
+
+"But where? I have had the place searched high and low, and still no
+tidings of it can be found."
+
+"There may have been since we left home this morning."
+
+Just at this moment they come within full view of the old tower, and
+its strange rounded ivy-grown walls, and the little narrow holes in the
+sides they show at its highest point that indicate the position of the
+haunted chamber.
+
+What is there at this moment in a mere glimpse of this old tower to make
+Arthur Dynecourt grow pale and to start so strangely? His eyes grow
+brighter, his lips tighten and grow hard.
+
+"Do you remember," he says, turning to his cousin with all the air of
+one to whom a sudden inspiration has come, "that day on which we visited
+the haunted chamber? Miss Delmaine accompanied us, did she not?"
+
+"Yes"--looking at him expectantly.
+
+"Could she have dropped it there?" asks Arthur lightly. "By Jove, it
+would be odd if she had--eh? Uncanny sort of place to drop one's
+trinkets."
+
+"It is strange I didn't think of it before," responds Adrian, evidently
+struck by the suggestion. "Why, it must have been just about that time
+when she lost it. The more I think of it the more convinced I feel that
+it must be there."
+
+"Nonsense, my dear fellow; don't jump at conclusions so hastily! It is
+highly improbable. I should say that she dropped it anywhere else in the
+world."
+
+"Well, I'll go and see, at all events," declares Adrian, unconvinced.
+
+Is it some lingering remnant of grace, some vague human shrinking from
+the crime that has begun to form itself within his busy brain, that now
+induces Dynecourt to try to dissuade Sir Adrian from his declared
+intention to search the haunted chamber for the lost bangle? With all
+his eloquence he seeks to convince him that there the bangle could not
+have been left, but to no effect. His suggestion has taken firm root in
+Sir Adrian's mind, and at least, as he frankly says, though it may be
+useless to hunt for it in that uncanny chamber, it is worth a try. It
+may be there. This dim possibility drives him on to his fate.
+
+"Well, if you go alone and unprotected, your blood be on your own head,"
+says Dynecourt lightly, at last surrendering his position. "Remember,
+whatever happens, I advised you not to go!"
+
+As Arthur finishes his speech a sinister smile overspreads his pale
+features, and a quick light, as evil as it is piercing, comes into his
+eyes. But Sir Adrian sees nothing of this. He is looking at his home, as
+it stands grand and majestic in the red light of the dying sun. He is
+looking, too, at the old tower, and at the upper portion of it, where
+the haunted chamber stands, and where he can see the long narrow holes
+that serve for windows. How little could a man imprisoned there see of
+the great busy world without!
+
+"Yes, I'll remember," he says jestingly. "When the ghosts of my
+ancestors claim me as their victim, and incarcerate me in some fiendish
+dungeon, I shall remember your words and your advice."
+
+"You don't mean to go there, of course?" asks Arthur carelessly, whilst
+watching the other with eager scrutiny. "It is quite a journey to that
+dismal hole, and it will be useless."
+
+"Well, if it distresses you, consider I haven't gone," says Sir Adrian
+lightly.
+
+"That is right," rejoins Arthur, still with his keen eyes fixed upon his
+cousin. "I knew you would abandon that foolish intention. I certainly
+shall consider you haven't gone."
+
+They are at the hall door as these words pass Arthur's lips, and there
+they separate, Sir Adrian leaving him with a smile, and going away up
+the large hall whistling gayly.
+
+When he has turned one corner, Arthur goes quickly after him, not with
+the intention of overtaking him, but of keeping him in view. Stealthily
+he follows, as though fearful of being seen.
+
+There is no servant within sight. No friend comes across Sir Adrian's
+path. All is silent. The old house seems wrapped in slumber. Above, the
+pretty guests in their dainty tea-gowns are sipping Bohea and prattling
+scandal; below, the domestics are occupied in their household affairs.
+
+Arthur, watching carefully, sees Sir Adrian go quickly up the broad
+front staircase, after which he turns aside, and, as though filled with
+guilty fear, rushes through one passage and another, until he arrives in
+the corridor that belongs to the servants' quarters.
+
+Coming to a certain door, he opens it, not without some difficulty, and,
+moving into the dark landing that lies beyond it, looks around. To any
+casual observer it might seem strange that some of the cobwebs in this
+apparently long-forgotten place have lately been brushed away, as by a
+figure ascending or descending the gloomy staircase. To Arthur these
+signs bring no surprise, which proves that he, perhaps, has the best
+right to know whose figure brushed them aside.
+
+Hurrying up the stairs, after closing the door carefully and
+noiselessly behind him, he reaches, after considerable mountings of
+what seem to be interminable steps, the upper door he had opened on
+the day they had visited the haunted chamber, when Ringwood and he
+had had a passage-at-arms about his curiosity.
+
+Now he stands breathing heavily outside this door, wrapped in the dismal
+darkness of the staircase, listening intently, as it were, for the
+coming of a footstep.
+
+In the meantime, Sir Adrian, not dissuaded from his determination to
+search the tower for the missing bangle, runs gayly up the grand
+staircase, traverses the corridors and galleries, and finally comes
+to the first of the iron-bound doors. Opening it, he stands upon the
+landing that leads to the other door by means of the small stone
+staircase. Here he pauses.
+
+Is it some vague shadowy sense of danger that makes him stand now as
+though hesitating? A quick shiver rune through his veins.
+
+"How cold it is," he says to himself, "even on this hot day, up in this
+melancholy place!" Yet, he is quite unconscious of the ears that are
+listening for his lightest movement, of the wicked eyes that are
+watching him through a chink in the opposite door!
+
+Now he steps forward again, and, mounting the last flight of stairs,
+opens the fatal door and looks into the room. Even now it occurs to him
+how unpleasant might be the consequences should the door close and the
+secret lock fasten him in against his will. He pushes the door well
+open, and holds it so, and then tries whether it can fall to again of
+its own accord, and so make a prisoner of him.
+
+No; it stands quite open, immovable apparently, and so, convinced that
+he is safe enough, he commences his search. Then, swift as lightning, a
+form darts from its concealed position, rushes up the stone staircase,
+and, stealthily creeping still nearer, glances into the room.
+
+Sir Adrian's back is turned; he is stooping, looking in every corner
+for the missing prize. He sees nothing, hears nothing, though a
+treacherous form crouching on the threshold is making ready to seal
+his doom.
+
+Arthur Dynecourt, putting forth his hand, which neither trembles nor
+falters on its deadly mission, silently lays hold of the door, and,
+drawing it toward him, the secret lock clicks sharply, and separates his
+victim from the world!
+
+Stealthily even now--his evil deed accomplished--Arthur Dynecourt
+retreats down the stairs, and never indeed relaxes his speed until at
+length he stands panting, but relentless, in the servants' corridor
+again.
+
+Remorse he knows not. But a certain sense of fear holds him irresolute,
+making his limbs tremble and bringing out cold dews upon his brow. His
+rival is safely secured, out of all harm's way as far as he is
+concerned. No human being saw him go to the ill-fated tower; no human
+voice heard him declare his intention of searching it for the missing
+trinket. He--Arthur--had been careful before parting from him to express
+his settled belief that Sir Adrian would not go to the haunted chamber,
+and therefore he feels prepared to defend his case successfully, even
+should the baronet be lucky enough to find a deliverer.
+
+Yet he is not quite easy in his mind. Fear of discovery, fear of Sir
+Adrian's displeasure, fear of the world, fear of the rope that already
+seems to dangle in red lines before his eyes render him the veriest
+coward that walks the earth. Shall he return and release his prisoner,
+and treat the whole thing as a joke, and so leave Adrian free to
+dispense his bounty at the castle, to entertain in his lavish fashion,
+to secure the woman upon whom he--Arthur--has set his heart for his
+bride?
+
+No; a thousand times no! A few short days, and all will belong to Arthur
+Dynecourt. He will be "Sir Arthur" then, and the bride he covets will be
+unable to resist the temptations of a title, and the chance of being
+mistress of the stately old pile that will call him master. Let Sir
+Adrian die then in his distant garret alone, despairing, undiscoverable!
+For who will think of going to the haunted room in search of him? Who
+will even guess that any mission, however important, would lead him to
+it, without having first mentioned it to some one? It is a grewsome
+spot, seldom visited and gladly forgotten; and, indeed, what possibly
+could there be in its bare walls and its blood-stained floor to attract
+any one? No; surely it is the last place to suspect any one would go to
+without a definite purpose; and what purpose could Sir Adrian have for
+going there?
+
+So far Arthur feels himself safe. He turns away, and joins the women and
+the returned sportsmen in the upper drawing-room.
+
+"Where is Dynecourt?" asks somebody a little later. Arthur, though he
+hears the question, does not even change color, but calmly, with a
+steady hand, gives Florence her tea.
+
+"Yes; where is Sir Adrian?" asks Mrs. Talbot, glancing up at the
+speaker.
+
+"He left us about an hour ago," Captain Ringwood answers. "He said he'd
+prefer walking home, and he shoveled his birds into our cart, and left
+us without another word. He'll turn up presently, no doubt."
+
+"Dear me, I hope nothing has happened to him!" says Ethel Villiers, who
+is sitting in a window through which the rays of the evening sun are
+stealing, turning her auburn locks to threads of rich red gold.
+
+"I hope not, I'm sure," interposes Arthur, quite feelingly. "It does
+seem odd he hasn't come in before this." Then, true to his determination
+to so arrange matters that, if discovery ensues upon his scheme, he may
+still find for himself a path out of his difficulties, he says quietly,
+"I met him about a mile from home, and walked here with him. We parted
+at the hall-door; I dare say he is in the library or the stables."
+
+"Good gracious, why didn't you say so before?" exclaims old Lady
+FitzAlmont in a querulous tone. "I quite began to believe the poor boy
+had blown out his brains through disappointed love, or something equally
+objectionable."
+
+Both Dora and Florence color warmly at this. The old lady herself is
+free to speak as she thinks of Sir Adrian, having no designs upon him
+for Lady Gertrude, that young lady being engaged to a very distinguished
+and titled botanist, now hunting for ferns in the West Indies.
+
+"Markham," says Mrs. Talbot to a footman who enters at this moment, "go
+to the library and tell Sir Adrian his tea is waiting for him."
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+But presently Markham returns and says Sir Adrian is not in the library.
+
+"Then try the stables, try everywhere," says Dora somewhat impatiently.
+
+Markham, having tried everywhere, brings back the same answer; Sir
+Adrian apparently is not to be found!
+
+"Most extraordinary," remarks Lady FitzAlmont, fanning herself. "As a
+rule I have noticed that Adrian is most punctual. I do hope my first
+impression was not the right one, and that we sha'n't find him presently
+with his throat cut and wallowing in his blood on account of some silly
+young woman!"
+
+"Dear mamma," interposes Lady Gertrude, laughing, "what a terribly
+old-fashioned surmise! No man nowadays kills himself for a false love;
+he only goes and gets another."
+
+But, when the dinner-hour arrives, and no host presents himself to lead
+Lady FitzAlmont into dinner, a great fear falls upon all the guests save
+one, and confusion and dismay, and anxious conjecture reign supreme.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+The night passes; the next day dawns, deepens, grows into noon, and
+still nothing happens to relieve the terrible anxiety that is felt by
+all within the castle as to the fate of its missing master. They weary
+themselves out wondering, idly but incessantly, what can have become of
+him.
+
+The second day comes and goes, so does the third and the fourth, the
+fifth and the sixth, and then the seventh dawns.
+
+Florence Delmaine, who has been half-distracted with conflicting fears
+and emotions, and who has been sitting in her room apart from the
+others, with her head bent down and resting on her hands, suddenly
+raising her eyes, sees Dora standing before her.
+
+The widow is looking haggard and hollow-eyed. All her dainty freshness
+has gone, and she now looks in years what in reality she is, close on
+thirty-five. Her lips are pale and drooping, her cheeks colorless; her
+whole air is suggestive of deep depression, the result of sleepless
+nights and days filled with grief and suspense of the most poignant
+nature.
+
+"Alas, how well she loves him too!" thinks Florence, contemplating her
+in silence. Dora, advancing, lays her hand upon the table near Florence,
+and says, in a hurried impassioned tone--
+
+"Oh, Florence, what has become of him? What has been done to him? I have
+tried to hide my terrible anxiety for the past two miserable days, but
+now I feel I must speak to some one or go mad!"
+
+She smites her hands together, and, sinking into a chair, looks as if
+she is going to faint. Florence, greatly alarmed, rises from her chair,
+and, running to her, places her arm around her as though to support her.
+But Dora repulses her almost roughly and motions her away.
+
+"Do not touch me!" she cries hoarsely. "Do not come near me; you, of
+all people, should be the last to come to my assistance! Besides, I am
+not here to talk about myself, but of him. Florence, have you any
+suspicion?"
+
+Dora leans forward and looks scrutinizingly at her cousin, as though
+fearing, yet hoping to get an answer in the affirmative. But Florence
+shakes her head.
+
+"I have no suspicion--none," she answers sadly. "If I had should I not
+act upon it, whatever it might cost me?"
+
+"Would you," asks Dora eagerly, as though impressed by her companion's
+words--"whatever it might cost you?"
+
+Her manner is so strange that Florence pauses before replying.
+
+"Yes," she says at last. "No earthly consideration should keep me from
+using any knowledge I might by accident or otherwise become possessed of
+to lay bare this mystery. Dora," she cries suddenly, "if you know
+anything, I implore, I entreat you to say so."
+
+"What should I know?" responds the widow, recoiling.
+
+"You loved him too," says Florence piteously, now more than ever
+convinced that Dora is keeping something hidden from her. "For the sake
+of that love, disclose anything you may know about this awful matter."
+
+"I dare not speak openly," replies the widow, growing even a shade
+paler, "because my suspicion is of the barest character, and may be
+altogether wrong. Yet there are moments when some hidden instinct within
+my breast whispers to me that I am on the right track."
+
+"If so," murmurs Florence, falling upon her knees before her, "do not
+hesitate; follow up this instinctive feeling, and who knows but
+something may come of it! Dora, do not delay. Soon, soon--if not
+already--it may be too late. Alas," she cries, bursting into bitter
+tears, "what do I say? Is it not too late even now? What hope can there
+be after six long days, and no tidings?"
+
+"I will do what I can, I am resolved," declares Dora, rising abruptly to
+her feet. "If too late to do any good, it may not be too late to wring
+the truth from him, and bring the murderer to justice."
+
+"From him? From whom--what murderer?" exclaims Florence, in a voice of
+horror. "Dora, what are you saying?"
+
+"Never mind. Let me go now; and to-night--this evening let me come to
+you here again, and tell you the result of what I am now about to do."
+
+She quits the room as silently as she entered it, and Florence, sinking
+back in her chair, gives herself up to the excitement and amazement that
+are overpowering her. There is something else, too, in her thoughts that
+is puzzling and perplexing her; in all Dora's manner there was nothing
+that would lead her to think she loved Sir Adrian: there was fear, and a
+desire for revenge in it, but none of the despair of a loving woman who
+has lost the man to whom she has given her heart.
+
+Florence is still pondering these things, while Dora, going swiftly
+down-stairs, turns into the side hall, glancing into library and rooms
+as she goes along, plainly in search of something or some one.
+
+At last her search is successful; in a small room she finds Arthur
+Dynecourt apparently reading, as he sits in a large arm-chair, with his
+eyes fixed intently upon the book in his hand. Seeing her, he closes the
+volume, and, throwing it from him, says carelessly:
+
+"Pshaw--what contemptible trash they write nowadays!"
+
+"How can you sit here calmly reading," exclaims Dora vehemently, "when
+we are all so distressed in mind! But I forgot"--with a meaning
+glance--"you gain by his death; we do not."
+
+"No, you lose," he retorts coolly. "Though, after all, even had things
+been different, I can't say I think you had much chance at any time."
+
+He smiles insolently at her as he says this. But she pays no heed either
+to his words or his smile. Her whole soul seems wrapped in one thought,
+and at last she gives expression to it.
+
+"What have you done with him?" she breaks forth, advancing toward him,
+as though to compel him to give her an answer to the question that has
+been torturing her for days past.
+
+"With whom?" he asks coldly. Yet there is a forbidding gleam in his eyes
+that should have warned her to forbear.
+
+"With Sir Adrian--with your rival, with the man you hate," she cries,
+her breath coming in little irrepressible gasps. "Dynecourt, I adjure
+you to speak the truth, and say what has become of him."
+
+"You rave," he says calmly, lifting his eyebrows just a shade, as though
+in pity for her foolish excitement. "I confess the man was no favorite
+of mine, and that I can not help being glad of this chance that has
+presented itself in his extraordinary disappearance of my inheriting his
+place and title; but really, my dear creature, I know as little of what
+has become of him, as--I presume--you do yourself."
+
+"You lie!" cries Dora, losing all control over herself. "You have
+murdered him, to get him out of your path. His death lies at your door."
+
+She points her finger at him as though in condemnation as she utters
+these words, but still he does not flinch.
+
+"They will take you for a Bedlamite," he says, with a sneering laugh,
+"if you conduct yourself like this. Where are your proofs that I am the
+cold-blooded ruffian you think me?"
+
+"I have none"--in a despairing tone. "But I shall make it the business
+of my life to find them."
+
+"You had better devote your time to some other purpose," he exclaims
+savagely, laying his hand upon her wrist with an amount of force that
+leaves a red mark upon the delicate flesh. "Do you hear me? You must be
+mad to go on like this to me. I know nothing of Adrian, but I know a
+good deal of your designing conduct, and your wild jealousy of Florence
+Delmaine. All the world saw how devoted he was to her, and--mark what I
+say--there have been instances of a jealous woman killing the man she
+loved, rather than see him in the arms of another."
+
+"Demon!" shrieks Dora, recoiling from him. "You would fix the crime on
+me?"
+
+"Why not? I think the whole case tells terribly against you. Hitherto I
+have spared you, I have refrained from hinting even at the fact that
+your jealousy had been aroused of late; but your conduct of to-day, and
+the wily manner in which you have sought to accuse me of being
+implicated in this unfortunate mystery connected with my unhappy cousin,
+have made me regret my forbearance. Be warned in time, cease to
+persecute me about this matter, or--wretched woman that you are--I shall
+certainly make it my business to investigate the entire matter, and
+bring you to justice!"
+
+He speaks with such an air of truth, of thorough belief in her guilt,
+that Dora is dazed, bewildered, and, falling back from him, covers her
+face with her hands. The fear of publicity, of having her late intrigue
+brought into the glare of day, fills her with consternation. And then,
+what will she gain by it? Nothing; she has no evidence on which to
+convict this man; all is mere supposition. She bitterly feels the
+weakness of her position, and her inability to follow up her accusation.
+
+"Ah, how like a guilty creature you stand there!" exclaims Dynecourt,
+regarding her bowed and trembling figure. "I see plainly that this must
+be looked into. Miserable woman! If you know aught of my cousin, you had
+better declare it now."
+
+"Traitor!" cries Dora, raising her pale face and looking at him with
+horror and defiance. "You triumph now, because, as yet, I have no
+evidence to support my belief, but"--she hesitates.
+
+"Ah, brazen it out to the last!" says Dynecourt insolently. "Defy me
+while you can. To-day I shall set the blood-hounds of the law upon your
+track, so beware--beware!"
+
+"You refuse to tell me anything?" exclaims Dora, ignoring his words, and
+treating them as though they are unheard. "So much the worse for you."
+
+She turns from him, and leaves the room as she finishes speaking; but,
+though her words have been defiant there is no kindred feeling in her
+heart to bear her up.
+
+When the door closes between them, the flush dies out of her face, and
+she looks even more wan and hopeless than she did before seeking his
+presence. She can not deny to herself that her mission has been a
+failure. He has openly scoffed at her threats, and she is aware that she
+has not a shred of actual evidence wherewith to support her suspicion;
+the bravado with which he has sought to turn the tables upon herself
+both frightens and disheartens her, and now she confesses to herself
+that she knows not where to turn for counsel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+In the meantime the daylight dwindles, and twilight descends. Even that
+too departs, and now darkness falls upon the distressed household, and
+still there is no news of Sir Adrian.
+
+Arthur Dynecourt, who is already beginning to be treated with due
+respect as the next heir to the baronetcy, has quietly hinted to old
+Lady FitzAlmont that perhaps it will be as well, in the extraordinary
+circumstances, if they all take their departure. This the old lady,
+though strongly disinclined to quit the castle, is debating in her own
+mind, and, being swayed by Lady Gertrude, who is secretly rather bored
+by the dullness that has ensued on the strange absence of their host,
+decides to leave on the morrow, to the great distress of both Dora and
+Florence Delmaine, who shrink from deserting the castle while its
+master's fate is undecided. But they are also sensible that, to remain
+the only female guests, would be to outrage the conventionalities.
+
+Henry Villiers, Ethel's father, is also of opinion that they should all
+quit the castle without delay. He is a hunting man, an M.F.H. in his own
+county, and is naturally anxious to get back to his own quarters some
+time before the hunting-season commences. Some others have already gone,
+and altogether it seems to Florence that there is no other course open
+to her but to pack up and desert him, whom she loves, in the hour of his
+direst need. For there are moments even now when she tells herself that
+he is still living, and only waiting for a saving hand to drag him into
+smooth waters once again!
+
+A silence has fallen upon the house more melancholy than the loudest
+expression of grief. The servants are conversing over their supper in
+frightened whispers, and conjecturing moodily as to the fate of their
+late master. To them Sir Adrian is indeed dead, if not buried.
+
+In the servants' corridor a strange dull light is being flung upon the
+polished boards by a hanging-lamp that is burning dimly, as though
+oppressed by the dire evil that has fallen upon the old castle. No sound
+is to be heard here in this spot, remote from the rest of the house,
+where the servants seldom come except to go to bed, and never indeed
+without an inward shudder as they pass the door that leads to the
+haunted chamber.
+
+Just now, being at their supper, there is no fear that any of them will
+be about, and so the dimly lighted corridor is wrapped in an unbroken
+silence. Not quite unbroken, however. What is this that strikes upon the
+ear? What sound comes to break the unearthly stillness? A creeping
+footstep, a cautious tread, a slinking, halting, uncertain motion,
+belonging surely to some one who sees an enemy, a spy in every flitting
+shadow. Nearer and nearer it comes now into the fuller glare of the
+lamp-light, and stops short at the door so dreaded by the castle
+servants.
+
+Looking uneasily around him, Arthur Dynecourt--for it is he--unfastens
+this door, and, entering hastily, closes it firmly behind him, and
+ascends the staircase within. There is no halting in his footsteps now,
+no uncertainty, no caution, only a haste that betokens a desire to get
+his errand over as quickly as possible.
+
+Having gained the first landing, he walks slowly and on tiptoe again,
+and, creeping up the stone stairs, crouches down so as to bring his ear
+on a level with the lower chink of the door.
+
+Alas, all is still; no faintest groan can be heard! The silence of Death
+is on all around. In spite of his hardihood, the cold sweat of fear
+breaks out upon Dynecourt's brow; and yet he tells himself that now he
+is satisfied, all is well, his victim is secure, is beyond the power of
+words or kindly search to recall him to life. He may be discovered now
+as soon as they like. Who can fix the fact of his death upon him? There
+is no blow, no mark of violence to criminate any one. He is safe, and
+all the wealth he had so coveted is at last his own!
+
+There is something fiendish in the look of exultation that lights Arthur
+Dynecourt's face. He has a small dull lantern with him, and now it
+reveals the vile glance of triumph that fires his eyes. He would fain
+have entered to gaze upon his victim, to assure himself of his victory,
+but he refrains. A deadly fear that he may not yet be quite dead keeps
+him back, and, with a frown, he prepares to descend once more.
+
+Again he listens, but the sullen roar of the rising night wind is all
+that can be heard. His hand shakes, his face assumes a livid hue, yet he
+tells himself that surely this deadly silence is better than what he
+listened to last night. Then a ghostly moaning, almost incessant and
+unearthly in its sound, had pierced his brain. It was more like the cry
+of a dying brute than that of a man. Sir Adrian slowly starved to death!
+In his own mind Arthur can see him now, worn, emaciated, lost to all
+likeness of anything fair or comely. Have the rats attacked him yet? As
+this grewsome thought presents itself, Dynecourt rises quickly from his
+crouching position, and, flying down the steps, does not stop running
+until he arrives in the corridor below again.
+
+He dashes into this like one possessed; but, finding himself in the
+light of the hanging lamp, collects himself by a violent effort, and
+looks around.
+
+Yes, all is still. No living form but his is near. The corridor, as he
+glances affrightedly up and down, is empty. He can see nothing but his
+own shadow, at sight of which he starts and turns pale and shudders.
+
+The next moment he recovers himself, and, muttering an anathema upon his
+cowardice, he moves noiselessly toward his room and the brandy-bottle
+that has been his constant companion of late.
+
+Yet, here in his own room, he can not rest. The hours go by with laggard
+steps. Midnight has struck, and still he paces his floor from wall to
+wall, half-maddened by his thoughts. Not that he relents. No feelings of
+repentance stir him, there is only a nervous dread of the hour when it
+will be necessary to produce the dead body, if only to prove his claim
+to the title so dearly and so infamously purchased.
+
+Is he indeed dead--gone past recall? Is this house, this place, the old
+title, the chance of winning the woman he would have, all his own? Is
+his hated rival--hateful to him only because of his fair face and genial
+manners and lovable disposition, and the esteem with which he filled the
+hearts of all who knew him--actually swept out of his path?
+
+Again the lurking morbid longing to view the body with his own eyes,
+the longing that had been his some hours ago when listening at the fatal
+door, seizes hold of him, and grows in intensity with every passing
+moment.
+
+At last it conquers him. Lighting a candle, he opens his door and peers
+out. No one is astir. In all probability every one is abed, and now
+sleeping the sleep of the just--all except him. Will there ever be any
+rest or dreamless sleep for him again?
+
+He goes softly down-stairs, and makes his way to the lower door. Meeting
+no one, he ascends the stairs like one only half conscious, until he
+finds himself again before the door of the haunted chamber.
+
+Then he wakes into sudden life. An awful terror takes possession of him.
+He struggles with himself, and presently so far succeeds in regaining
+some degree of composure that he can lean against the wall and wipe his
+forehead, and vow to himself that he will never descend until he has
+accomplished the object of his visit. But the result of this terrible
+fight with fear and conscience shows itself in the increasing pallor of
+his brow and the cold perspiration that stands thick upon his forehead.
+
+Nerving himself for a final effort, he lays his hand upon the door and
+pushes it open. This he does with bowed head and eyes averted, afraid to
+look upon his terrible work. A silence, more horrible to his guilty
+conscience than the most appalling noises, follows this act; and, again
+the nameless terror seizing him, he shudders and draws back, until,
+finding the wall behind him, he leans against it gladly, as if for
+support.
+
+And now at last he raises his eyes. Slowly at first and cringingly, as
+if dreading what they might see. Upon the board at his feet they rest
+for a moment, and then glide to the next board, and so on, until his
+coward eyes have covered a considerable portion of the floor.
+
+And now, grown bolder, he lifts his gaze to the wall opposite and
+searches it carefully. Then his eyes turn again to the floor. His face
+ghastly, and with his eyes almost darting from their sockets, he compels
+himself to bring his awful investigation to an end. Avoiding the corners
+at first, as though there he expects his vile deed will cry aloud to him
+demanding vengeance, he gazes in a dazed way at the center of the
+apartment, and dwells upon it stupidly, until he knows he must look
+further still; and then his dull eyes turn to the corners where the
+dusky shadows lie, brought thither by the glare of his small lantern.
+Reluctantly, but carefully, he scans the apartment, no remotest spot
+escapes his roused attention. But no object, dead or living, attracts
+his notice! The room is empty!
+
+He staggers. His hold upon the door relaxes. His lamp falls to the
+ground; the door closes with a soft but deadly thud behind him,
+and--he is a prisoner in the haunted chamber! As the darkness closes
+in upon him, and he finds himself alone with what he hardly dares to
+contemplate, his senses grow confused, his brain reels; a fearful scream
+issues from his lips, and he falls to the floor insensible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+Dora, after her interview with Arthur Dynecourt, feels indeed that all
+is lost. Hope is abandoned--nothing remains but despair; and in this
+instance despair gains in poignancy by the knowledge that she believes
+she knows the man who could help them to a solution of their troubles if
+he would or dared. No; clearly he dare not! Therefore, no assistance can
+be looked for from him.
+
+Dinner at the castle has been a promiscuous sort of entertainment for
+the past three or four days, so Dora feels no compunction in declining
+to go to it. In her own room she sits brooding miserably over her
+inability to be of any use in the present crisis, when she suddenly
+remembers that she had promised in the afternoon when with Florence to
+give her, later on, an account of her effort to obtain the truth about
+this mystery which is harrowing them.
+
+It is now eleven o'clock, and Dora decides that she must see Florence
+at once. Rising, wearily, she is about to cross the corridor to her
+cousin's room, when, the door opening, she sees Florence, with a face
+pale and agitated, coming toward her.
+
+"You, Florence!" she exclaims. "I was just going to you, to tell you
+that my hopes of this afternoon are all--"
+
+"Let me speak," interrupts Florence breathlessly. "I must, or--" She
+sinks into a chair, her eyes close, and involuntarily she lays her hand
+upon her heart as if to allay its tumultuous beating.
+
+Dora, really alarmed, rushing to her dressing-case, seizes upon a flask
+of eau-de-Cologne, and flings some of its contents freely over the
+fainting girl. Florence, with a sigh, rouses herself, and sits upright.
+
+"There is no time to lose," she says confusedly. "Oh, Dora!" Here she
+breaks down and bursts into tears.
+
+"Try to compose yourself," entreats Dora, seeing the girl has some
+important news to impart, but is so nervous and unstrung as to be almost
+incapable of speaking with any coherence. But presently Florence grows
+calmer, and then, her voice becoming clear and full, she is able to
+unburden her heart.
+
+"All this day I have been oppressed by a curious restlessness," she says
+to Dora; "and, when you left me this afternoon, your vague promises of
+being able to elucidate the terrible secret that is weighing us down
+made me even more unsettled. I did not go down to dinner--"
+
+"Neither did I," puts in Mrs. Talbot sympathetically.
+
+"I wandered up and down my room for at least two hours, thinking always,
+and waiting for the moment when you would return, according to promise,
+and tell me the success of your hidden enterprise. You did not come, and
+at half past nine, unable to stay any longer in my own room with only
+my own thoughts for company, I opened my door, and, listening intently,
+found by the deep silence that reigned throughout the house that almost
+every one was gone, if not to bed, at least to their own rooms."
+
+"Lady FitzAlmont and Gertrude passed to their rooms about an hour
+ago," says Dora. "But some of the men, I think, are still in the
+smoking-room."
+
+"I did not think of them. I stole from my room, and roamed idly
+through the halls. Suddenly a great--I can not help thinking now a
+supernaturally strong--desire to go into the servants' corridor took
+possession of me. Without allowing myself an instant's hesitation, I
+turned in its direction, and walked on until I reached it."
+
+She pauses here, and draws her breath rapidly.
+
+"Go on," entreats Dora impatiently.
+
+"The lamp was burning very dimly. The servants were all down-stairs--at
+their supper, I suppose--because there was no trace of them anywhere.
+Not a sound could be heard. The whole place looked melancholy and
+deserted, and filled me with a sense of awe I could not overcome. Still
+it attracted me. I lingered there, walking up and down until its very
+monotony wearied me; even then I was loath to leave it, and, turning
+into a small sitting-room, I stood staring idly around me. At last,
+somewhere in the distance I heard a clock strike ten, and, turning,
+I decided on going back once more to my room."
+
+Again, emotion overcoming her, Florence pauses, and leans back in her
+chair.
+
+"Well, but what is there in all this to terrify you so much?" demands
+her cousin, somewhat bewildered.
+
+"Ah, give me time! Now I am coming to it," replies Florence quickly.
+"You know the large screen that stands in the corridor just outside
+the sitting-room I have mentioned--put there, I imagined to break the
+draught? Well, I had come out of the room and was standing half-hidden
+by this screen, when I saw something that paralyzed me with fear."
+
+She rises to her feet and grows deadly pale as she says this, as though
+the sensation of fear she has been describing has come to her again.
+
+"You saw--?" prompts Dora, rising too, and trembling violently, as
+though in expectation of some fatal tidings.
+
+"I saw the door of the room that leads to the haunted chamber slowly
+move. It opened; the door that has been locked for nearly fifty years,
+and that has filled the breasts of all the servants here with terror and
+dismay, was cautiously thrown open! A scream rose to my lips, but I was
+either too terrified to give utterance to it, or else some strong
+determination to know what would follow restrained me, and I stood
+silent, like one turned into stone. I had instinctively moved back a
+step or two, and was now completely hidden from sight, though I could
+see all that was passing in the corridor through a hole in the
+framework of the screen. At last a figure came with hesitating
+footsteps from behind the door into the full glare of the flickering
+lamp. I could see him distinctly. It was--"
+
+"Arthur Dynecourt!" cries the widow, covering her ghastly face with her
+hands.
+
+Florence regards her with surprise.
+
+"It was," she says at last. "But how did you guess it?"
+
+"I knew it," cries Dora frantically. "He has murdered him, he has hidden
+his body away in that forgotten chamber. He was gloating over his
+victim, no doubt, just before you saw him, stealing down from a secret
+visit to the scene of his crime."
+
+"Dora," exclaims Florence, grasping her arm, "if he should not have
+murdered him after all, if he should only have secured him there,
+holding him prisoner until he should see his way more clearly to getting
+rid of him! If this idea be the correct one, we may yet be in time to
+save, to rescue him!"
+
+The agitation of the past hours proving now too much for her, Florence
+bursts into tears and sobs wildly.
+
+"Alas, I dare not believe in any such hope!" says Dora. "I know that man
+too well to think him capable of showing any mercy."
+
+"And yet 'that man,' as you call him, you would once have earnestly
+recommended to me as a husband!" returns Florence, sternly.
+
+"Do not reproach me now," exclaims Dora; "later on you shall say to me
+all that you wish, but now moments are precious."
+
+"You are right. Something must be done. Shall I--shall I speak to Mr.
+Villiers?"
+
+"I hardly know what to advise"--distractedly. "If we give our suspicions
+publicity, Arthur Dynecourt may even yet find time and opportunity to
+baffle and disappoint us. Besides which, we may be wrong. He may have
+had nothing to do with it, and--"
+
+"At that rate, if secrecy is to be our first thought, let you and me go
+alone in search of Sir Adrian."
+
+"Alone, and at this hour, to that awful room!" exclaims Dora, recoiling
+from her.
+
+"Yes, at once"--firmly--"without another moment's delay."
+
+"Oh, I can not!" declares Dora, shuddering violently.
+
+"Then I shall go alone!"
+
+As Florence says this, she takes up her candlestick and moves quickly
+toward the door.
+
+"Stay, I will go," cries Dora, trembling. But a slight interruption
+occurring at this instant, they are compelled to wait for awhile.
+
+Ethel Villiers, coming into the room to make her parting adieus to
+Mrs. Talbot, as she and her father intend leaving next morning, gazes
+anxiously from Florence to Dora, seeing plainly that there is something
+amiss.
+
+"What is it?" she asks kindly, going up to Florence.
+
+Miss Delmaine, after a little hesitation, encouraged by a glance at
+Dora's terrified countenance, determines on taking the new-comer into
+their confidence.
+
+In a few words she explains all that has taken place, and their
+suspicions. Ethel, though paling beneath the horror and surprise
+occasioned by the recital, does not lose her self-possession.
+
+"I will go with you," she volunteers. "But, let me say," she adds, "that
+I think you are wrong in making this search without a man. If--if indeed
+we are still in time to be of any use to poor Sir Adrian--always
+supposing he really is secreted in that terrible room--I do not think
+any of us would be strong enough to help him down the stairs, and, if he
+has been slowly starving all this time, think how weak he will be!"
+
+"Oh, what a wretched picture you conjure up!" exclaims Florence,
+nervously clasping her hands. "But you are right, and now tell me who
+you think can best be depended upon in this crisis."
+
+"I am sure," says Ethel, blushing slightly, but speaking with intense
+earnestness, "that, if you would not mind trusting Captain Ringwood, he
+would be both safe and useful."
+
+As this suggestion meets with approval, they manage to convey a message
+to the captain, and in a very few minutes he is with them, and is made
+acquainted with their hopes and fears.
+
+Silently, cautiously, without any light, but carrying two small lamps
+ready for ignition, they go down to the corridor where is the door that
+leads to the secret staircase.
+
+Turning the handle of this door, Captain Ringwood discovers that it is
+locked, but, nothing daunted, he pulls it so violently backward and
+forward that the lock, rusty with age, gives way, and leaves the passage
+beyond open to them.
+
+Going into the small landing at the foot of the staircase, they close
+the door carefully behind them, and then, Captain Ringwood producing
+some matches, they light the two lamps and go swiftly, with anxiously
+beating hearts, up the stairs.
+
+The second door is reached, and now nothing remains but to mount the
+last flight of steps and open the fatal door.
+
+Their hearts at this trying moment almost fail them. They look into one
+another's blanched faces, and look there in vain for hope. At last
+Ringwood, touching Ethel's arm, says, in a whisper--
+
+"Come, have courage--all may yet be well!"
+
+He moves toward the stone steps, and they follow him. Quickly mounting
+them, he lays his hand upon the door, and, afraid to give them any more
+time for reflection or dread of what may yet be in store for them,
+throws it open.
+
+At first the feeble light from their lamps fails to penetrate the
+darkness of the gloomy apartment. At the cursory glance, such as they
+at first cast round the room, it appears to be empty. Their hearts sink
+within them. Have they indeed hoped in vain!
+
+Dora is crying bitterly; Ethel, with her eyes fixed upon Ringwood, is
+reading her own disappointment in his face, when suddenly a piercing cry
+from Florence wakes the echoes round them.
+
+She has darted forward, and is kneeling over something that even now is
+only barely discernible to the others as they come nearer to it. It
+looks like a bundle of clothes, but, as they stoop over it, they, too,
+can see that it is in reality a human body, and apparently rigid in
+death.
+
+But the shriek that has sprung from the very soul of Florence has
+reached some still living fibers in the brain of this forlorn creature.
+Slowly and with difficulty he raises his head, and opens a pair of
+fast-glazing eyes. Mechanically his glance falls upon Florence. His lips
+move; a melancholy smile struggles to show itself upon his parched and
+blackened lips.
+
+"Florence," he rather sighs than says, and falls back, to all
+appearance, dead.
+
+"He is not dead!" cries Florence passionately. "He can not be! Oh, save
+him, save him! Adrian, look up--speak to me! Oh, Adrian, make some sign
+that you can hear me!"
+
+But he makes no sign. His very breath seems to have left him. Gathering
+him tenderly in her arms, Florence presses his worn and wasted face
+against her bosom, and pushes back the hair from his forehead. He is so
+completely altered, so thorough a wreck has he become, that it is indeed
+only the eyes of love that could recognize him. His cheeks have fallen
+in, and deep hollows show themselves. His beard has grown, and is now
+rough and stubbly; his hair is uncombed, the lines of want, despair, and
+cruel starvation have blotted out all the old fairness of his features.
+His clothes are hanging loosely about him; his hands, limp and
+nerveless, are lying by his side. Who shall tell what agony he suffered
+during these past lonely days with death--an awful, creeping, gnawing
+death staring him in the face?
+
+A deadly silence has fallen upon the little group now gazing solemnly
+down upon his quiet form. Florence, holding him closely to her heart, is
+gently rocking him to and fro, as though she will not be dissuaded that
+he still lives.
+
+At length Captain Ringwood, stooping pitifully over her, loosens her
+hold so far as to enable him to lay his hand upon Adrian's heart. After
+a moment, during which they all watch him closely, he starts, and,
+looking still closer into the face that a second ago he believed dead,
+he says, with subdued but deep excitement--
+
+"There may yet be time! He breathes--his heart beats! Who will help me
+to carry him out of this dungeon?"
+
+He shudders as he glances round him.
+
+"I will," replies Florence calmly.
+
+These words of hope have steadied her and braced her nerves. Ethel
+and Mrs. Talbot, carrying the lamps, go on before, while Ringwood and
+Florence, having lifted the senseless body of Adrian, now indeed
+sufficiently light to be an easy burden, follow them.
+
+Reaching the corridor, they cross it hurriedly, and carrying Adrian up
+a back staircase that leads to Captain Ringwood's room by a circuitous
+route, they gain it without encountering a single soul, and lay him
+gently down on Ringwood's bed, almost at the very moment that midnight
+chimes from the old tower, and only a few minutes before Arthur
+Dynecourt steals from his chamber to make that last visit to his
+supposed victim.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+Slowly and with difficulty they coax Sir Adrian back to life. Ringwood
+had insisted upon telling the old housekeeper at the castle, who had
+been in the family for years, the whole story of her master's rescue,
+and she, with tears dropping down her withered cheeks, had helped
+Ringwood to remove his clothes and make him comfortable. She had also
+sat beside him while the captain, stealing out of the house like a
+thief, had galloped down to the village for the doctor, whom he had
+smuggled into the house without awaking any of the servants.
+
+This caution and secrecy had been decided upon for one powerful reason.
+If Arthur Dynecourt should prove guilty of being the author of his
+cousin's incarceration, they were quite determined he should not escape
+whatever punishment the law allowed. But the mystery could not be quite
+cleared up until Sir Adrian's return to consciousness, when they hoped
+to have some light thrown upon the matter from his own lips.
+
+In the meantime, should Arthur hear of his cousin's rescue, and know
+himself to be guilty of this dastardly attempt to murder, would he not
+take steps to escape before the law should lay its iron grasp upon him?
+All four conspirators are too ignorant of the power of the law to know
+whether it would be justifiable in the present circumstances to place
+him under arrest, or decide on waiting until Sir Adrian himself shall
+be able to pronounce either his doom or his exculpation.
+
+The doctor stays all night, and administers to the exhausted man, as
+often as he dares, the nourishment and good things provided by the old
+housekeeper.
+
+When the morning is far advanced, Adrian, waking from a short but
+refreshing slumber, looks anxiously around him. Florence, seeing this,
+steps aside, as though to make way for Dora to go closer to him. But
+Mrs. Talbot, covering her face with her hands, turns aside and sinks
+into a chair.
+
+Florence, much bewildered by this strange conduct, stands irresolute
+beside the bed, hardly knowing what to do. Again she glances at the
+prostrate man, and sees his eyes resting upon her with an expression in
+them that makes her heart beat rapidly with sweet but sad recollections.
+
+Then a faint voice falls upon her ear. It is so weak that she is obliged
+to stoop over him to catch what he is trying to say.
+
+"Darling, I owe you my life!"
+
+With great feebleness he utters these words, accompanying them with a
+glance of utter devotion. How can she mistake this glance, so full of
+love and rapture? Perplexed in the extreme, she turns from him, as
+though to leave him, but by a gesture he detains her.
+
+"Do not leave me! Stay with me!" he entreats.
+
+Once again, deeply distressed, she looks at Dora. Mrs. Talbot, rising,
+says distinctly, but with a shamefaced expression--
+
+"Do as he asks you. Believe me, by his side is your proper place, not
+mine."
+
+Saying this, she glides quickly from the room, and does not appear again
+for several hours.
+
+By luncheon-time it occurs to the guests that Arthur Dynecourt has not
+been seen since last evening.
+
+Ringwood, carrying this news to the sick-room, the little rescuing party
+and their auxiliaries, the nurse and doctor, lay their heads together,
+and decide that, doubtless, having discovered the escape of his
+prisoner, and, dreading arrest, Arthur has quietly taken himself off,
+and so avoided the trial and punishment which would otherwise have
+fallen upon him.
+
+Ringwood is now of opinion that they have acted unwisely in concealing
+the discovery of Sir Adrian in the haunted chamber. By not speaking to
+the others, they have given Dynecourt the opportunity of getting away
+safely, and without causing suspicion.
+
+"Is it not an almost conclusive proof of his guilt, his running away in
+this cowardly fashion?" says Ethel Villiers. "I think papa and Lady
+FitzAlmont and everybody should now be told."
+
+So Ringwood, undertaking the office of tale-bearer, goes down-stairs,
+and, bringing together all the people still remaining in the house,
+astounds them by his revelation of the discovery and release of Sir
+Adrian.
+
+The nearest magistrate is sent for, and the case being laid before him,
+together with the still further evidence given by Sir Adrian himself,
+who has told them in a weak whisper of Arthur's being privy to his
+intention of searching the haunted chamber for Florence's bangle on that
+memorable day of his disappearance, the magistrate issues a warrant for
+the arrest of Arthur Dynecourt.
+
+But it is all in vain; even though two of the cleverest detectives from
+Scotland Yard are pressed into the service, no tidings of Arthur
+Dynecourt come to light. A man answering to his description, but wearing
+spectacles, had been traced as having gone on board a vessel bound for
+New York the very day after Sir Adrian was restored to the world, and,
+when search in other quarters fails, every one falls into the ready
+belief that this spectacled man was in reality the would-be murderer.
+
+So the days pass on, and it is now quite a month since Ringwood and
+Florence carried Sir Adrian's senseless form from the haunted chamber,
+and still Florence holds herself aloof from the man she loves, and,
+though quite as assiduous as the others in her attentions to him, seems
+always eager to get away from him, and glad to escape any chance of a
+_tete-a-tete_ with him. This she does in defiance of the fact that Mrs.
+Talbot never approaches him except when absolutely compelled.
+
+Sir Adrian is still a great invalid. The shock to his nervous system,
+the dragging out of those interminable hours in the lonely chamber, and
+the strain upon his physical powers by the absence of nutriment for
+seven long days and nights, had all combined to shatter a constitution
+once robust. He is now greatly improved in health, and has been
+recommended by his doctors to try a winter in the south of France or
+Algiers.
+
+He shows himself, however, strangely reluctant to quit his home, and,
+whenever the subject is mentioned, he first turns his eyes questioningly
+upon Florence, if she is present, and then, receiving no returning
+glance from her downcast eyes, sighs, and puts the matter from him.
+
+He has so earnestly entreated both Dora and Miss Delmaine not to desert
+him, that they have not had the heart to refuse, and as Ringwood is also
+staying at the castle, and Ethel Villiers has gained her father's
+consent to remain, Mrs. Talbot acting as chaperon, they are by no means
+a dull party.
+
+To-day, the first time for over a month, Florence, going to her easel,
+draws its cover away from the sketch thereon, and gazes at her work. How
+long ago it seems since she sat thus, happy in her thoughts, glad in the
+belief that the one she loved loved her! yet all that time his heart had
+been given to her cousin. And though now, at odd moments, she has felt
+herself compelled to imagine that his every glance and word speaks of
+tenderness for her, and not for Dora--still this very knowledge only
+hardens her heart toward him, and renders her cold and unsympathetic in
+his presence.
+
+No, she will have no fickle lover. And yet, how kind he is--how earnest,
+how honest is his glance! Oh, that she could believe all the past to be
+an evil dream, and think of him again as her very own, as in the dear
+old days gone by!
+
+Even while thinking this she idly opens a book lying on the table near
+her, where some brushes and paints are scattered. A piece of paper drops
+from between its leaves and flutters to the ground. Lifting it, she sees
+it is the letter written by him to Dora, which the latter had brought to
+her, here to this very room, when asking her advice as to whether she
+should or should not meet him by appointment in the lime-walk.
+
+She drops the letter hurriedly, as though its very touch stings her,
+and, rousing herself with bitter self-contempt from her sentimental
+regrets, works vigorously at her painting for about an hour, then,
+growing wearied, she flings her brushes aside, and goes to the
+morning-room, where she knows she will find all the others assembled.
+
+There is nobody here just now however, except Sir Adrian, who is looking
+rather tired and bored, and Ethel Villiers. The latter, seeing Florence
+enter, gladly gathers up her work and runs away to have a turn in the
+garden with Captain Ringwood.
+
+Florence, though sorry for this _tete-a-tete_ that has been forced upon
+her, sits down calmly enough, and, taking up a book, prepares to read
+aloud to Sir Adrian.
+
+But he stops her. Putting out his hand, he quietly but firmly closes the
+book, and then says:
+
+"Not to-day, Florence; I want to speak to you instead."
+
+"Anything you wish," responds Florence steadily, though her heart is
+beating somewhat hastily.
+
+"Are you sorry that--that my unhappy cousin proved so unworthy?" he asks
+at last, touching upon this subject with a good deal of nervousness. He
+can not forget that once she had loved this miserable man.
+
+"One must naturally feel sorry that anything human could be guilty of
+such an awful intention," she returns gently, but with the utmost
+unconcern.
+
+Sir Adrian stares. Was he mistaken then? Did she never really care for
+the fellow, or is this some of what Mrs. Talbot had designated as
+Florence's "slyness"? No, once for all he would not believe that the
+pure, sweet, true face looking so steadily into his could be guilty of
+anything underhand or base.
+
+"It was false that you loved him then?" he questions, following out the
+train of his own thoughts rather than the meaning of her last words.
+
+"That I loved Mr. Dynecourt!" she repeats in amazement, her color
+rising. "What an extraordinary idea to come into your head! No; if
+anything, I confess I felt for your cousin nothing but contempt and
+dislike."
+
+"Then, Florence, what has come between us?" he exclaims, seizing her
+hand. "You must have known that I loved you many weeks ago. Nay, long
+before last season came to a close; and then I believe--forgive my
+presumption--that you too loved me."
+
+"Your belief was a true one," she returns calmly, tears standing in her
+beautiful eyes. "But you, by your own act, severed us."
+
+"I did?"
+
+"Yes. Nay, Sir Adrian, be as honest in your dealings with me as I am
+with you, and confess the truth."
+
+"I don't know what you mean," declares Adrian, in utter bewilderment;
+"you would tell me that you think it was some act of mine that--that
+ruined my chance with you?"
+
+"You know it was"--reproachfully.
+
+"I know nothing of the kind"--hotly. "I only know that I have always
+loved you and only you, and that I shall never love another."
+
+"You forget--Dora Talbot!" says Florence, in a very low tone. "I think,
+Sir Adrian, your late coldness to her has been neither kind nor just."
+
+"I have never been either colder or warmer to Dora Talbot than I have
+been to any other ordinary acquaintance of mine," returns Sir Adrian,
+with considerable excitement. "There is surely a terrible mistake
+somewhere."
+
+"Do you mean to tell me," says Florence, rising in her agitation, "that
+you never spoke of love to Dora?"
+
+"Certainly I spoke of love--of my love for you," he declares vehemently.
+"That you should suppose I ever felt anything for Mrs. Talbot but the
+most ordinary friendship seems incredible to me. To you, and you alone,
+my heart has been given for many a day. Not the vaguest tenderness for
+any other woman has come between my thoughts and your image since first
+we met."
+
+"Yet there was your love-letter to her--I read it with my own eyes!"
+declares Florence faintly.
+
+"I never wrote Mrs. Talbot a line in my life," says Sir Adrian, more and
+more puzzled.
+
+"You will tell me next I did not see you kissing her hand in the
+lime-walk last September?" pursues Florence, flushing hotly with shame
+and indignation.
+
+"You did not," he declares vehemently. "I swear it. Of what else are
+you going to accuse me? I never wrote to her, and I never kissed her
+hand."
+
+"It is better for us to discuss this matter no longer," says Miss
+Delmaine, rising from her seat. "And for the future I can not--will
+not--read to you here in the morning. Let us make an end of this false
+friendship now at once and forever."
+
+She moves toward the door as she speaks, but he, closely following,
+overtakes her, and, putting his back against the door, so bars her
+egress.
+
+He has been forbidden exertion of any kind, and now this unusual
+excitement has brought a color to his wan cheeks and a brilliancy to his
+eyes. Both these changes in his appearance however only serve to betray
+the actual weakness to which, ever since his cruel imprisonment, he has
+been a victim.
+
+Miss Delmaine's heart smites her. She would have reasoned with him, and
+entreated him to go back again to his lounge, but he interrupts her.
+
+"Florence, do not leave me like this," he pleads in an impassioned tone.
+"You are laboring under a delusion. Awake from this dream, I implore
+you, and see things as they really are."
+
+"I am awake, and I do see things as they are," she replies sadly.
+
+"My darling, who can have poisoned your mind against me?" he asks, in
+deep agitation.
+
+At this moment, as if in answer to his question, the door leading into
+the conservatory at the other side of the room is pushed open, and Dora
+Talbot enters.
+
+"Ah, here is Mrs. Talbot," exclaims Sir Adrian eagerly; "she will
+exonerate me!"
+
+He speaks with such full assurance of being able to bring Dora forward
+as a witness in his defense that Florence, for the first time, feels a
+strong doubt thrown upon the belief she has formed of his being a
+monster of fickleness.
+
+"What is it I can do for you?" asks Dora, in some confusion. Of late she
+has grown very shy of being alone with either him or Florence.
+
+"You will tell Miss Delmaine," replies Adrian quickly, "that I never
+wrote you a letter, and that I certainly did not--you will forgive my
+even mentioning this extraordinary supposition, I hope, Mrs.
+Talbot--kiss your hand one day in September in the lime-walk."
+
+Dora turns first hot and then cold, first crimson and then deadly pale.
+So it is all out now, and she is on her trial. She feels like the
+veriest criminal brought to the bar of justice. Shall she promptly deny
+everything, or--No. She has had enough of deceit and intrigue. Whatever
+it costs her, she will now be brave and true, and confess all.
+
+"I do tell her so," she says, in a low tone, but yet firmly. "I never
+received a letter from you, and you never kissed my hand."
+
+"Dora!" cries Florence. "What are you saying! Have you forgotten all
+that is past?"
+
+"Spare me!" entreats Dora hoarsely. "In an hour, if you will come to my
+room, I will explain all, and you can then spurn me, and put me outside
+the pale of your friendship if you will, and as I well deserve. But, for
+the present, accept my assurance that no love passages ever occurred
+between me and Sir Adrian, and that I am fully persuaded his heart has
+been given to you alone ever since your first meeting."
+
+"Florence, you believe her?" questions Sir Adrian beseechingly. "It is
+all true what she has said. I love you devotedly. If you will not marry
+me, no other woman shall ever be my wife. My beloved, take pity on me!"
+
+"Trust in him, give yourself freely to him without fear," urges Dora,
+with a sob. "He is altogether worthy of you." So saying, she escapes
+from the room, and goes up the stairs to her own apartment weeping
+bitterly.
+
+"Is there any hope for me?" asks Sir Adrian of Florence when they are
+again alone. "Darling, answer me, do, you--can you love me?"
+
+"I have loved you always--always," replies Florence in a broken voice.
+"But I thought--I feared--oh, how much I have suffered!"
+
+"Never mind that now," rejoins Sir Adrian very tenderly. He has placed
+his arm round her, and her head is resting in happy contentment upon his
+breast. "For the future, my dearest, you shall know neither fear nor
+suffering if I can prevent it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They are still murmuring tender words of love to each other, though a
+good half hour has gone by, when a noise as of coming footsteps in the
+conservatory attracts their attention, and presently Captain Ringwood,
+with his arm round Ethel Villiers's waist, comes slowly into view.
+
+Totally unaware that any one is in the room besides themselves, they
+advance, until, happening to lift their eyes, they suddenly become aware
+that their host and Miss Delmaine are regarding them with mingled
+glances of surprise and amusement. Instantly they start asunder.
+
+"It is--that is--you see--Ethel, _you_ explain," stammers Captain
+Ringwood confusedly.
+
+At this both Sir Adrian and Florence burst out laughing so merrily and
+so heartily that all constraint comes to an end, and finally Ethel and
+Ringwood, joining in the merriment that has been raised at their
+expense, volunteer a full explanation.
+
+"I think," says Ethel, after awhile, looking keenly at Florence and her
+host, "you two look just as guilty as we do. Don't they, George?"
+
+"They seem very nearly as happy, at all events," agrees Ringwood, who,
+now that he has confessed to his having just been accepted by Ethel
+Villiers "for better for worse," is again in his usual gay spirits.
+
+"Nearly? you might say quite," says Sir Adrian, laughing. "Florence, as
+we have discovered their secret, I think it will be only honest of us to
+tell them ours."
+
+Florence blushes and glances rather shyly at Ethel.
+
+"I know it," cries that young lady, clapping her hands. "You are going
+to marry Sir Adrian, Florence, and he is going to marry you!"
+
+At this they all laugh.
+
+"Well, one of those surmises could hardly come off without the other,"
+observes Ringwood, with a smile. "So your second guess was a pretty safe
+one. If she is right, old man"--turning to Sir Adrian--"I congratulate
+you both with all my heart."
+
+"Yes, she is quite right," responds Sir Adrian, directing a glance full
+of ardent love upon Florence. "What should I do with the life she
+restored to me unless I devoted it to her service?"
+
+"You see, he is marrying me only out of gratitude," says Florence,
+smiling archly, but large tears of joy and gladness sparkle in her
+lovely eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+When Florence finds her way, at the expiration of the hour, to Dora's
+room, she discovers that fair little widow dissolved in tears, and
+indeed sorely perplexed and shamed. The sight of Florence only seems to
+render her grief more poignant, and when her cousin, putting her arm
+round her, tries to console her, she only responds to the caress by
+flinging herself upon her knees, and praying her to forgive her.
+
+And then the whole truth comes out. All the petty, mean, underhand
+actions, all the cruel lies, all the carefully spoken innuendoes, all
+the false reports are brought into the light and laid bare to the
+horrified eyes of Florence.
+
+Dora's confession is thorough and complete in every sense. Not in any
+way does she seek to shield herself, or palliate her own share in the
+deception practiced upon the unconscious girl now regarding her with
+looks of amazement and deep sorrow, but in bitter silence.
+
+When the wretched story is at an end, and Dora, rising to her feet,
+declares her intention of leaving England forever, Miss Delmaine stands
+like one turned into stone, and says no word either of censure or
+regret.
+
+Dora, weeping violently, goes to the door, but, as her hand is raised
+to open it, the pressure upon the gentle heart of Florence is suddenly
+removed, and in a little gasping voice she bids her stay.
+
+Dora remains quite still, her eyes bent upon the floor, waiting to hear
+her cousin's words of just condemnation; expecting only to hear the
+scathing words of scorn with which her cousin will bid her begone from
+her sight for evermore. But suddenly she feels two soft arms close
+around her, and Florence, bursting into tears, lays her head upon her
+shoulder.
+
+"Oh, Dora, how could you do it!" she falters, and that is all. Never,
+either then or afterward, does another sentence of reproach pass her
+lips; and Dora, forgiven and taken back to her cousin's friendship,
+endeavors earnestly for the future to avoid such untruthful paths as had
+so nearly led her to her ruin.
+
+Sir Adrian, from the hour in which his dearest hopes were realized,
+recovers rapidly both his health and spirits; and soon a double wedding
+takes place, that makes pretty Ethel Villiers Ethel Ringwood and
+beautiful Florence Lady Dynecourt.
+
+A winter spent abroad with his charming bride completely restores Sir
+Adrian to his former vigorous state, and, when spring is crowning all
+the land with her fair flowers, he returns to the castle with the
+intention of remaining there until the coming season demands their
+presence in town.
+
+And now once again there is almost the same party brought together at
+Dynecourt. Old Lady FitzAlmont and Lady Gertrude are here again, and so
+are Captain and Mrs. Ringwood, both the gayest of the gay. Dora Talbot
+is here too, somewhat chastened and subdued both in manner and
+expression, a change so much for the better that she finds her list
+of lovers to be longer now than in the days of yore.
+
+It is an exquisite, balmy day in early April. The sun is shining hotly
+without, drinking up greedily the gentle shower that fell half an hour
+ago. The guests, who with their host and hostess have been wandering
+idly through the grounds, decide to go in-doors.
+
+"It was on a day like this, though in the autumn, that we first missed
+Sir Adrian," remarks some one in a half tone confidentially to some one
+else, but not so low that the baronet can not hear it.
+
+"Yes," he says quickly, "and it was just over there"--pointing to a
+clump of shrubs near the hall door--"that I parted with that unfortunate
+cousin of mine."
+
+Lady Dynecourt shudders, and draws closer to her husband.
+
+"It was such a marvelous story," observes a pretty woman who was not at
+the castle last autumn, when what so nearly proved to be a tragedy was
+being enacted; "quite like a legend or a medieval romance. Dear Lady
+Dynecourt's finding him was such a happy finish to it. I must say I have
+always had the greatest veneration for those haunted chambers, so seldom
+to be found now in any house. Perhaps my regard for them is the stronger
+because I never saw one."
+
+"No?" questioningly. "Will you come and see ours now?" says Sir Adrian
+readily.
+
+His wife clasps his arm, and a pang contracts her brow.
+
+"You are not frightened now, surely?" says Adrian, smiling at her very
+tenderly.
+
+"Yes, I am," she responds promptly. "The very name of that awful room
+unnerves me. There is something evil in it, I believe. Do not go there."
+
+"I'll block it up forever if you wish it," declares Sir Adrian; "but,
+for the last time, let me go and show its ghostly beauties to Lady
+Laughton. I confess, even after all that has happened, it possesses no
+terrors for me; it only reminds me of my unpleasant kinsman."
+
+"I wonder what became of him," remarks Ringwood. "He's at the other side
+of the world, I should imagine."
+
+"Out of our world, at all events," says Ethel, indifferently.
+
+"Well, let us go," agrees Florence resignedly.
+
+So together they all start once more for the old tower. As they reach
+the stone steps Sir Adrian says laughingly to Lady Laughton:
+
+"Now, what do you expect to see? A ghost--a phantom? And in what shape,
+what guise?"
+
+"A skeleton," answers Lady Laughton, returning his laugh; and with the
+words the door is pushed open, and they enter the room _en masse_.
+
+The sunlight is stealing in through the narrow window holes and faintly
+lighting up the dismal room.
+
+What is that in yonder corner, the very corner where Sir Adrian's
+almost lifeless body had been found? Is this a trick, a delusion of the
+brain? What is this thing huddled together, lying in a heap--a ghastly,
+ragged, filthy heap, before their terrified eyes? And why does this
+charnel-house smell infect their nostrils? They stagger. Even the strong
+men grow pale and faint, for there, before them, gaunt, awful,
+unmistakable, lies a skeleton!
+
+Lady Laughton's jesting words have come true--a fleshless corpse indeed
+meets their stricken gaze!
+
+Sir Adrian, having hurriedly asked one of the men of the party to
+remove Lady Dynecourt and her friends, he and Captain Ringwood proceed
+to examine the grewsome body that lies upon the floor; yet, though they
+profess to each other total ignorance of what it can be, there is in
+their hearts a miserable certainty that appalls them. Is this to be the
+end of the mystery? Truly had spoken Ethel Ringwood when she had alluded
+to Arthur Dynecourt as being "out of their world," for it is his remains
+they are bending over, as a few letters lying scattered about testify
+only too plainly.
+
+Caught in the living grave he had destined for his cousin was Arthur
+Dynecourt on the night of Sir Adrian's release. The lamp had dropped
+from his hand in the first horror of his discovery that his victim had
+escaped him. Then followed the closing of the fatal lock and his
+insensibility.
+
+On recovering from his swoon, he had no doubt endured a hundred-fold
+more tortures than had the innocent Sir Adrian, as his conscience must
+have been unceasingly racking and tearing him.
+
+And not too soon either could the miserable end have come. Every pang he
+had designed for his victim was his. Not one was spared! Cold and hunger
+and the raging fever of thirst were his, and withal a hopelessness more
+intolerable than aught else--a hopelessness that must have grown in
+strength as the interminable days went by.
+
+And then came death--an awful lingering death, whilst the loathsome rats
+had finished the work which starvation and death had begun, and now all
+that remained of Arthur Dynecourt was a heap of bones!
+
+They hush the matter up well as they can, but it is many days before
+Florence or her husband, or any of their guests, forget the dreadful
+hour in which they discovered the unsightly remains of him who had been
+overtaken by a just and stern retribution.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Haunted Chamber, by "The Duchess"
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