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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 57815 ***
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+A SECRET OF THE SEA.
+
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+
+Transcriber's Notes (Volume 3):
+            1. Page scan source: Web Archive
+                https://archive.org/details/secretofseanovel03spei
+               (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
+
+
+
+
+
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+A SECRET OF THE SEA.
+
+
+A Novel.
+
+
+By T. W. SPEIGHT,
+AUTHOR OF
+"IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT," "UNDER LOCK AND KEY," ETC., ETC.
+
+
+IN THREE VOLUMES.
+VOL. III.
+
+
+
+
+LONDON:
+RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON.
+1876.
+
+(_All Rights Reserved_.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS OF VOL. III.
+CHAPTER
+
+       I.  ELEANOR'S RESOLVE.
+      II.  POD'S STRATAGEM.
+     III.  VAN DUREN'S DREAM.
+      IV.  PRINGLE'S DISCOVERY.
+       V.  A FOUND LETTER.
+      VI.  VAN DUREN IN WALES.
+     VII.  THE MESSAGE TO STAMMARS.
+    VIII.  WINGED WORDS.
+      IX.  VAN DUREN'S FLIGHT.
+       X.  TOLD AT LAST.
+      XI.  "AND YOU SHALL STILL BE LADY CLARE."
+     XII.  THE STRONG-ROOM.
+    XIII.  CONCLUSION.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A SECRET OF THE SEA.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+ELEANOR'S RESOLVE.
+
+
+"I'm in no particular hurry, doctor, to get back to London," Sir
+Thomas Dudgeon had quietly hinted to his medical man. "I daresay the
+House can get on without me quite as well as with me, so you needn't
+hurry yourself to say I'm fit for harness again till you feel quite
+sure in your own mind that I am so."
+
+Dr. Welstead was not slow to take the hint, and he kept on calling at
+Stammars two or three times a week, and sending one innocuous draught
+after another, which draughts Sir Thomas conscientiously poured into
+the ash-pan when his wife was not looking, till the baronet's holiday
+had extended itself to the beginning of May. But by this time Sir
+Thomas looked so well and rosy, and was in possession of such a hearty
+appetite, that a vague suspicion that she was being duped began to
+haunt her ladyship's mind. She said nothing to her husband, but made
+her preparations in silence. Then, one morning at the breakfast-table,
+the shell exploded.
+
+"To-day is Wednesday, dear," she said, "and I have made all
+arrangements for our going up to town on Saturday morning. Dr.
+Welstead seems quite at a loss how to treat you: indeed, country
+practitioners, as a rule, are not competent to deal with anything
+beyond a simple case of measles; so on Saturday afternoon I will
+myself drive you to see Sir Knox Timpany, and wait for you while you
+consult that eminent authority, who, I doubt not, will make you as
+well as ever you were, in the course of a very few days."
+
+Sir Thomas fumed and fretted, but her ladyship was inexorable. Go he
+must; and when he saw there was no help for it, he made a merit of
+necessity; but at the same time he registered a silent vow that not
+all the wives in England should drag him to the door of Sir Knox
+Timpany.
+
+At the last moment, however, the baronet and Gerald started for London
+alone. Late on Friday, Lady Dudgeon received a telegram. Her only
+sister was very ill, and it was needful that she should hurry off
+without an hour's delay. "Considering all that I have done for
+Caroline, it is really very ungrateful of her to be ill at a time like
+this," she grumbled to her husband. "She knew how anxious I was to get
+back to town, and she might have doctored herself up for another month
+or two. I hope to goodness she won't die till the season is over. I
+can't bear myself in mourning."
+
+"Your only sister, my dear," remarked Sir Thomas, soothingly. "I
+wouldn't leave her, if I were you, while there's the least danger.
+Your conscience might prick you afterwards, you know."
+
+"Stuff!" was her ladyship's rejoinder. "Of course, I shall do what is
+proper; but if I were to die to-morrow, Caroline's first thought would
+be how soon after that event she might begin to wear flounces again."
+
+Without wishing his sister-in-law any harm, Sir Thomas would not have
+been sorry if her illness had kept his wife at her bedside for half a
+year. The thought of having a few weeks, or even a few days, in
+London, without being supervised by her ladyship, was to bring back
+the feelings of his youth when school broke up for the summer
+holidays. In fact, during the three weeks that elapsed before her
+ladyship joined him in town, he was more like a schoolboy let loose
+than the fancy sketch of him with which the _Pembridge Gazette_ one week
+favoured its readers, wherein he was described as a senator, grave and
+staid, whose trained and powerful intellect was perpetually engaged in
+grappling with the most tremendous social and political problems of
+the age.
+
+After a little dinner, quiet and early, at which Gerald generally sat
+down with him, Sir Thomas would post off to the House. But an hour or
+an hour and a half there was quite enough for him. Whist and a prime
+cigar at his club were far preferable to prosy speeches by people whom
+he did not know, and on subjects about which he did not care twopence.
+
+Since the day of his confession in the library, Gerald had seen very
+little of Eleanor. If they met casually in passing from one room to
+another, a bow and a faint smile was all the greeting that passed
+between them. When they met at the dinner-table, no ordinary observer
+would have noticed any difference in their demeanour towards each
+other. Gerald talked as much as ever he had done: he knew that Sir
+Thomas and his wife liked him to make talk for them: but fewer of his
+observations were now addressed directly to Miss Lloyd than used to be
+the case at one time. Sometimes he even turned over the music for
+Eleanor when she played after dinner; but had Lady Dudgeon been the
+most Argus-eyed of dowagers, instead of the most unsuspicious, she
+could not possibly have found fault with his demeanour on such
+occasions. He was Sir Thomas Dudgeon's secretary--and nothing more.
+
+Eleanor had received his confession in a spirit somewhat different
+from what he had expected. He had thought that her pride would be more
+deeply wounded by the deception he had practised on her than it
+appeared to be. That it was wounded, he knew full well; but when he
+parted from her at the close of the interview, he did not fail to
+notice the quiver of her lip, and the longing, wistful look in her
+eyes. In his previous thoughts of her, it was evident he had not
+calculated sufficiently on the effect which his frank confession and
+prayer for forgiveness would have on a generous and loving disposition
+like that of Eleanor. It seemed by no means unlikely, as Gerald said
+to himself afterwards, when thinking over the interview, that she had
+indeed so far forgiven him as to make his reinstatement in her regards
+the question merely of a little time and perseverance; and under other
+circumstances he would not have allowed a day to pass without
+attempting a renewal of his suit. But fixed as he was just then, he
+could not bring his mind to the adoption of such a course. That he had
+fallen somewhat in Eleanor's esteem, that he had sunk to a lower level
+in her thoughts, he could not doubt; and however much she might feel
+inclined to forgive him, it was questionable whether--had the
+circumstances of the case really been such as she believed them to
+be--she could ever have looked upon him with quite the same eyes as
+before. Such a change as this Gerald did not care to face. He
+preferred that, for a little while, she should think all was over
+between them; that he had given up all thoughts of winning her for his
+wife. He knew that before very long she would have to be told
+everything, and till that time should come he would speak no word of
+love to her again. The more hardly she thought of him now, the greater
+would be the re-bound towards him when, from other lips than his, she
+should hear the whole strange story that must soon be told her.
+
+About a fortnight after sending his first letter to Kelvin, Gerald
+followed it up with another. But again came the same answer as before,
+that Mr. Kelvin was still too ill to attend to business. Gerald was
+debating in his own mind as to the advisability of going over to
+Pembridge and seeking an interview with Kelvin, when the receipt of
+certain news from Ambrose Murray decided him to wait a short time
+longer. Murray told him the result of the inquiries in Wales, and how
+he and Peter Byrne were going to start for Marhyddoc in the course of
+a few days; and Gerald was entreated to follow them as quickly as
+possible. Under these circumstances there seemed to Gerald no
+necessity for troubling Kelvin any further at present. Should Ambrose
+Murray find that which he was going to Wales to search for, then would
+all necessity for concealment on his part be at an end. One of his
+first acts would be to ask for the daughter who knew him not. Then
+would come the time for Gerald to say who and what he was. His first
+act after Eleanor knew that he was no longer John Pomeroy, the poor
+secretary, but Gerald Warburton, the heir to Mr. Lloyd's wealth, would
+be to tell her how truly he still loved her, and to ask her to become
+his wife. Let her, for a week or two longer, think that he had yielded
+her up without a struggle: in a very little while she should discover
+that no power on earth could make him yield her up--nothing, save her
+own deliberate dismissal of him, could do that.
+
+Thus it was that Gerald left Stammars without saying a word of
+farewell to Eleanor; and she, sitting half heart-broken by the window
+of her own room, saw him drive off to the station, and cried after
+him, "Oh, my darling, why have you left me? Perhaps I shall never see
+you again."
+
+Gerald had only done Eleanor simple justice when he said to himself
+that she was ready to forgive and forget the past. "He has confessed
+everything to me, and confession is atonement," she said to herself
+"He need not have said a word to me, had he been so minded; but the
+very fact of his telling me is proof sufficient that he is no longer
+seeking to win me for my money, but for myself only."
+
+Day by day she had been expecting to receive some word, some look
+even, from him which would tell her that his feelings were still
+unchanged; but day passed after day, and neither word nor look was
+vouchsafed her. She was chilled and hurt by Gerald's persistent
+silence and evident avoidance of her. Could it be, she asked herself,
+that he thought he had sinned past forgiveness? To prove that such was
+not the case, she would be more gracious and complaisant towards him
+than she had ever been before. She would endeavour to let him see, as
+far as a modest maiden might do so, that he had nothing to fear; that
+the past was forgiven, and that the future rested with himself alone.
+But Gerald might have been made of marble, so cold and impassive did
+he seem to the tender-hearted girl, who had only discovered of late
+how fondly she loved him.
+
+Then her pride came to her aid, and she tried her best to emulate
+Gerald's indifference. She laughed and talked, and seemed altogether
+merrier than of old; but no one knew what she suffered in the solitude
+of her own room.
+
+Now it was that she determined to put into execution a project that
+had been more or less in her thoughts for a longtime. She was tired of
+the empty, frivolous life that she had been leading for some time
+past. It had seemed very pleasant to her while the freshness lasted,
+but that had now worn off, and she had made up her mind that she would
+have no more of it--or only a taste of it now and then as a relief
+from more serious duties. What she wanted was some plain, earnest work
+to do--some work that would benefit others as well as herself For a
+long time she had seemed like one groping in the dark; but at last she
+thought she saw a clear line of duty marked out for her footsteps, the
+following of which might not be altogether without avail.
+
+And now her purpose grew firm within her. All was at an end between
+her and Pomeroy. She had only herself to consult. In hard work she
+might, perchance, find an anodyne for her wound. In any case, she
+would try to do so.
+
+"I suppose, my dear, that you won't object to give me a month this
+autumn?" said Lady Dudgeon to her husband, as they sat together one
+morning, about a couple of days before their projected return to
+London.
+
+"Oh, ho! it's come to that, has it?" answered the baronet. "Well, I
+suppose you must have your own way in the matter, although you know
+that I hate both the place and the class of people one meets there. I
+suppose we can take Eleanor with us? It will be a treat to her, and
+company for you."
+
+"Eleanor's a little fool!"
+
+"Possibly so; you know best, I dare say."
+
+"She tells me that she is going to leave us."
+
+"Eleanor going to leave us!"
+
+Sir Thomas looked quite dumbfounded. At this moment Eleanor entered
+the room.
+
+"What is this I hear, little one?" he cried. "You are not going to
+leave us, surely?"
+
+"For a little while, dear Sir Thomas. Perhaps not for long," answered
+Eleanor.
+
+"I'm sorry for that--very sorry indeed. I had grown to like you almost
+as much as if you were a daughter of my own."
+
+Tears came into Eleanor's eyes. She crossed the room, and taking Sir
+Thomas's hand in both hers, pressed it to her lips.
+
+"My gratitude--my love, if you care for it--will always be yours! I
+can never repay even a tithe of the kindness shown me by Lady Dudgeon
+and yourself."
+
+"Eleanor, I have no patience with you!" cried Lady Dudgeon, dipping
+her pen viciously in the inkstand.
+
+"But where is the girl going, and what is she going to do?" asked the
+baronet.
+
+"Let her answer for herself."
+
+"You will think it very strange of me, I dare say," said Eleanor; "but
+Miss Mulhouse, whose name is no doubt familiar to you, has offered to
+find me a position in one of the Homes for Destitute Girls, which she
+is trying to establish in different parts of London."
+
+"Heaven bless us!" exclaimed Sir Thomas. "You don't mean to say that
+you are going to leave a place like Stammars on purpose to spend your
+days in a back slum in the east end of London?"
+
+"I am going to try to find something to do," said Eleanor. "I am going
+to try to make myself of some little use in the world."
+
+"A madcap scheme, my dear--I can call it nothing else," said the old
+gentleman, with a melancholy shake of the head "If you feel charitably
+disposed, a twenty-pound note at Christmas, judiciously laid out, will
+go a long way--a very long way, indeed."
+
+"To give money alone does not seem to me enough. I want to work for
+those poor helpless ones; to labour for them with head and hands; to
+learn their histories and their wants; to win their sympathies, and to
+make their lives a little less hard, if I can possibly do so."
+
+"My dear," said Sir Thomas, turning to his wife, "what a pity it is
+that you have not found a husband for Miss Lloyd!"
+
+"Miss Lloyd has had three most eligible offers since she placed
+herself under my care."
+
+"And she refused them?"
+
+"Every one."
+
+"Then her case must be a hopeless one indeed."
+
+"I have argued and reasoned with her, but all to no purpose," said her
+ladyship. "She is determined to have her own headstrong way. But I
+prophesy that before six months are over we shall have Miss Lloyd back
+at Stammars, tired and disgusted with a task which may look very nice
+in theory, but which must be excessively unpleasant when reduced to
+practice."
+
+"She will always be welcome at Stammars whenever she likes to come
+back to us."
+
+"You won't think me ungrateful for leaving you, will you, Sir Thomas?"
+pleaded Eleanor.
+
+"That I won't, my dear. I'll never think anything but what's good of
+you."
+
+Thus it was that Eleanor Lloyd, sitting in the window of her room,
+watching Gerald Warburton drive away, cried to herself, "Perhaps I
+shall never see him again!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+PODS STRATAGEM.
+
+
+Days and weeks passed away, but still Matthew Kelvin did not get
+better. His condition fluctuated strangely. Sometimes for days
+together there would be a slow but sure improvement. Appetite and
+strength would alike increase, and his mother would grow glad at
+heart, thinking that she should soon see him out and about again, and
+as well as ever. But some morning, without the least warning, there
+would come a terrible relapse, which, in the course of two or three
+hours, would undo the improvement that it had taken days to effect,
+flinging him helplessly back, as some strong wave flings back a
+desperate swimmer the moment his foot touches the shore, leaving him,
+buffeted and bruised, and with decreased strength, to struggle again
+from the same point that he started from before. So it was with
+Matthew Kelvin. There were times and seasons, after one of these
+strange relapses, when to those about him he seemed on the very verge
+of the grave--times and seasons when the patient himself prayed that
+if there were to be no release from his sufferings but death, then
+that death might come, and come quickly. Then would Dr. Druce be
+summoned in hot haste by Mrs. Kelvin. Presently the old gentleman
+would totter slowly into the room, smile blandly round at the anxious
+faces about him, and, both by his manner and words, quietly pooh-pooh
+their exaggerated alarm.
+
+"I told you from the first," he would cheerfully remark, "that the
+case was an obstinate one, and you must not allow these apparent
+relapses to alarm you. The dying struggles of disease are often the
+most severe. The garrison will sometimes make its most desperate
+sortie after it knows that in the course of a few days it will be
+compelled to capitulate unconditionally. For the present the pain is
+over. I will send a composing draught, which the patient must take at
+once; and to-morrow I doubt not but we shall find ourselves much
+stronger and better."
+
+Better next day Mr. Kelvin would undoubtedly be, but not stronger.
+Each one of these mysterious relapses seemed to leave him a little
+weaker than before, a little less able to cope with the enemy that
+seemed bent on sapping away his life by slow degrees. But of this he
+hinted nothing to his mother. Her anxiety on his account was deep
+enough already; there was no need to add to her distress; so he kept
+his own counsel, and put a cheerful face on the matter, and would
+declare, on waking after one of the composing draughts, that he felt
+stronger and better than he had felt for weeks.
+
+If any of Mrs. Kelvin's friends ever hinted to her that Dr. Druce was
+very old and very infirm, and that it might perhaps be advisable to
+seek some further advice, the old lady was up in arms in a moment,
+"Because people are old and not quite so active as they may once have
+been, I hope they are not necessarily fools!" she would tartly remark.
+"If that is the case, I must be a great fool, indeed. Dr. Druce has
+practised in Pembridge for fifty years, and if his experience is not
+worth more than that of a man thirty years his junior, I should like
+to know what is the good of experience at all. No, no; the older a
+doctor grows the cleverer he must become, if he has any brains at
+all." After such an outburst as this, there was nothing more to be
+said, especially as the patient himself seemed to have every
+confidence in Dr. Druce's skill and ability to cope with the strange
+malady from which he was suffering.
+
+Nothing more was now said about Olive Deane's return to her duties at
+Stammar. It was an understood thing that she could not possibly be
+spared while her cousin's health remained as it was at present. Lady
+Dudgeon had very kindly consented to keep the situation open for her
+for a few weeks longer, in the hope that by that time Mr. Kelvin's
+health might be so far restored as to allow of Olive's resumption of
+her duties; but Olive, though she said nothing, had far different
+objects in view. She laughed to herself when she read Lady Dudgeon's
+note, and then tossed it contemptuously into the fire.
+
+She had, indeed, long before this time, contrived to render herself
+indispensable both to her aunt and her cousin. She could not always be
+in the sickroom. Many were the hours that she and her aunt sat
+together alone. Such hours she did her best to brighten by means of
+pleasant, genial talk and long readings from her aunt's favourite
+books, and the old lady was proportionately grateful.
+
+"I often feel as if you had always lived with us," she would sometimes
+say to Olive. "You seem altogether like one of ourselves, and however
+we shall be able to let you go again, I can't tell. If Matthew were a
+marrying man, he might do worse, my dear, than make you his wife. But
+that is out of the question, for I don't suppose he will ever marry
+now."
+
+Olive was not quite so sure on that point as her aunt seemed to be.
+Her affectionate devotion to her cousin seemed as if it were about to
+bear fruit at last. He could not bear to let any one but Olive wait
+upon him or minister to his needs.
+
+Even to his mother he once or twice spoke with a slight tinge of
+impatience; coming after Olive, her waiting upon him seemed slow and
+bungling indeed. "If you would only sit down in that easy chair,
+mother, and let Olive attend to me!" he would say. "I want you to tell
+me all the gossip, and not to be bothering yourself and me about the
+quality of my beef-tea."
+
+As for having any common paid nurse to wait upon him, that was
+altogether out of the question now.
+
+As he sat in his easy-chair one day, propped up with pillows and
+sipping at a cup of barley-water, while Olive sat on a low hassock
+close by, waiting till he should be ready to give her the cup, he said
+to her suddenly, after a long silence: "I believe, Olive, that if I
+ever do get better--which I sometimes doubt--I shall owe my life far
+more to your care and attention than to old Druce's filthy mixtures. I
+shall never know how to repay you. I never knew that you had half the
+splendid qualities in you that you have shown of late. But we men can
+hardly ever see farther than our noses where a woman is concerned. I
+am afraid I shall have to remain your debtor to the end of the
+chapter."
+
+"You talk very great nonsense, Matthew," she said, in a voice that was
+hardly louder than a whisper. "You my debtor, indeed!"
+
+One of her cousin's hands rested on the arm of his chair; by accident,
+it may be, one of Olive's hands found its way to the same place. Their
+fingers touched. Matthew put down his empty cup, and taking Olive's
+hand in both his, drew her towards him. Then he put one arm round her
+neck, and drawing her face close to his, he kissed her on the
+forehead. They both looked round with a start. Mrs. Kelvin had quietly
+opened the door, and was standing there with a smile on her face.
+
+"Two's company--three's none," said the old lady, pleasantly. "I'll go
+back to my room for a little while, and next time I come I will be
+discreet enough to cough before opening the door."
+
+"You dear old goose!" said Kelvin. "If cousins may not kiss, who may?"
+
+"Oh, don't think that I object to your kissing each other!" cried the
+old lady. "That sort of medicine might do you more good than any
+other."
+
+"By Jove, now, I never thought of that!" cried Kelvin, with a laugh.
+"Only, in the present case, it was altogether a one-sided affair. It
+was not Olive who was kissing me, but I who was kissing Olive."
+
+These were the last words that Olive heard, as, with face aflame, she
+hurried from the room; but what had just happened was enough to fill
+her with strange, rapturous thoughts, and to strengthen hopes that
+were beginning to droop and grow faint for want of sustenance. Ce
+n'est que le premier pas qui coûte. The ice was broken; the first step
+was taken; everything else would follow in due course.
+
+No after allusion was made either by Matthew or his mother to the
+scene just described, but Olive flattered herself by imagining that
+there was a warmth, a significance, in her cousin's manner now, such
+as she had never noticed before. If he would but speak; if he would
+but breathe one word to which she could pin her faith--that she
+could treasure up even as a half promise that he would make her his
+wife--from that very day his illness should begin to leave him! But
+atpresent she dare not falter in the course she had laid down for
+herself. Were he to recover suddenly now, all thoughts of her and her
+services would be quickly swept from his mind by the inrush of hopes,
+cares, pleasures, and anxieties of everyday life, which the floodgates
+of sickness had for a time partially shut out. Every additional day
+that kept him helpless in her hands was so much gain to her hopes.
+The more deeply he continued to feel the need of her and her services,
+the more likely was his gratitude to lead him by imperceptible degrees
+into the easy pathway of love. If he had not loved her a little he
+would hardly have kissed her as he did. Let him but seal those kisses
+with a word, and from that moment the breath of returning life should
+fill his nostrils; while no man should ever have a wife more tender
+and devoted than she would be to him. How bitterly it made her heart
+ache to see him lying there in pain, which she alone could relieve but
+dare not--to see him wasting day by day into a haggard, gaunt-eyed
+skeleton of his former self--no one but herself could ever more than
+faintly imagine. "If he were to die, I should poison myself an hour
+after. But he won't do that. Suddenly, some day, the scales will fall
+from his eyes, and he will know that he loves me and that I love him;
+and that love shall bring him back to life and health from the verge
+of the grave itself!"
+
+Pod Piper was a frequent visitor in his master's sickroom. Whenever
+Mr. Kelvin felt himself a little better, he would send for Pod and
+dictate sundry instructions, chiefly replies to some of his many
+correspondents, which that young gentleman would take down in
+shorthand, to be copied out afterwards in the office downstairs. Of
+course, there were times when it was requisite that Mr. Bray, the
+head-clerk, should see his employer in person; but as he happened to
+be slightly afflicted with deafness, the labour of talking to him was
+sometimes too much for Mr. Kelvin, so he dispensed as much as possible
+with the necessity of seeing him. To Olive Deane it seemed far better
+that if any one must see her cousin frequently on matters of business,
+that person should be a simple country lad, the chief occupation of
+whose mind probably was to wonder what he should have for dinner,
+rather than that quietly observant Mr. Bray, who seemed to see so much
+and to say so little. So to Pod she was always coldly gracious, and
+when he had finished with Mr. Kelvin upstairs, he generally found a
+piece of bread and jam, or a slice of cake, or an orange, on the hall
+table, put there for him by Olive herself Whatever the article might
+be, it made no difference to Pod: he treated them all with the strict
+impartiality of a hungry lad: but his private opinion with regard to
+Miss Deane was not modified one iota thereby. He could not forget the
+scene between her and Mr. Pomeroy; he could not forget the base plot
+of which he had overheard the details, and of which his favourite,
+Miss Lloyd, was to be the victim.
+
+"She's a snake in the grass, if ever there was one," Pod would often
+remark confidentially to himself, even while in the very act of
+munching the bread and jam which Miss Deane had prepared for him.
+
+"Doesn't the governor seem to have got fond of her all of a sudden!"
+remarked Pod, parenthetically to himself, one day, as he was marching
+slowly downstairs from the sick man's room. "Nobody else must wait
+upon him, or even be near him. It's disgusting!"
+
+There was a splendid orange waiting for him on the hall table this
+morning. He took it with him to his den to enjoy in secret; but all
+the time he was sucking the orange, his thoughts were with his master
+and Miss Deane. "How close she sticks to him! Seems as if she couldn't
+bear even the old lady to go near him. What a funny thing it is he
+don't get better! I don't believe Dr. Druce, who's no better than an
+old woman, knows a bit what's the matter with him. I've seen him two
+or three times when he's had one of his bad attacks on him, and I'm
+blessed if I don't have a jaw with Dr. Whitaker about it. _He's_
+something like a doctor."
+
+The Dr. Whitaker alluded to by Pod was a young practitioner who had
+been settled in Pembridge some five or six years. Some professional
+difference of opinion had arisen between him and Dr. Druce over a case
+to which they had both been called in, and the older man no longer
+recognized the younger when they passed each other in the street, or
+even spoke of him otherwise than in a tone of polite contempt: all of
+which in no wise troubled Dr. Whitaker, who plodded his way through
+life with a kind word and a pleasant smile for everybody--even
+including old Dr. Druce.
+
+Kelvin and he had met several times at the houses of mutual friends,
+and had learned to know and like each other: and when the former was
+taken ill, Dr. Whitaker was the man he would have liked to attend him;
+but he knew that to have breathed such a wish to his mother would
+almost have broken her heart, so firmly did she pin her faith to Dr.
+Druce.
+
+If there was one thing that easy-going Dr. Whitaker detested more than
+another, it was having to make out his own bills. In order to obviate
+this disagreeable necessity, he had taken of late to employing Pod
+Piper as his secretary. Pod wrote a capital hand for a youngster, and
+was only too well pleased to be able to earn a few shillings now and
+again by working after office-hours. Everybody in Pembridge knew of
+Mr. Kelvin's illness by this time, and Dr. Whitaker seldom saw Pod
+without inquiring after him. Thus it was that Pod saw his way to bring
+under the notice of Dr. Whitaker easily, and as if in the course of
+ordinary conversation, that which he was growing anxious to tell him.
+
+Accordingly, the next time Dr. Whitaker put his usual query, "How has
+the governor been to day?" Pod was prepared to go more into detail
+than he had ever done before.
+
+"Much the same as usual, sir, thank you," he answered. "But if I may
+make so bold as to say so, my opinion is that Dr. Druce is no better
+than an old woman. It's the liver, he says---nothing but the liver. If
+that's all that's the matter, why don't he cure it? Now, if master
+would only send for you, sir, I'm sure you would soon put him all
+right again."
+
+"Piper," said Dr. Whitaker, as he leisurely proceeded to light a
+cigar, "Dr. Druce is one of the antiquities of Pembridge, and
+antiquities should always be respected. Oblige me by getting on with
+your work."
+
+Dr. Whitaker went out, and was gone for upwards of an hour. When he
+got back, Pod was putting away his papers for the night. "He was
+dreadfully sick this morning when I was in the room," remarked Pod,
+quietly, as if there had been no hiatus in the conversation. "In fact,
+there's hardly a day passes that he isn't dreadfully sick. But of
+course it's all the liver."
+
+"Ah, ah! he's often sick, is he?" And then Dr. Whitaker whistled a few
+bars below his breath. "Is his sickness accompanied or followed by any
+particular pain, or any peculiar sensation, do you know?" he said, in
+a minute or two.
+
+It is not needful that Pod's answer should be set down here. It is
+sufficient to say that whatever it was it put a sudden end to the
+young doctor's careless mood. He lighted another cigar, and made Pod
+sit down opposite to him, and questioned him closely and minutely for
+upwards of half an hour; and when at last he let him go, it was with a
+caution not to say a word to anyone about their interview. "Watch
+closely, and tell me everything," he said. "To-day is Tuesday; you
+will come to me at seven on Thursday evening. Contrive to be as much
+with your master during the interval as you can be without exciting
+suspicion, and note particularly those points which I have specified."
+
+Fortune favoured Pod next morning more than he would have dared to
+expect. He was called up, as usual, to take down Mr. Kelvin's notes in
+shorthand. Kelvin, this morning, seemed feebler than usual, and was
+obliged to pause several times while dictating his instructions. He
+had got about half-way through the morning's letters, when Miss Deane
+came in with a cup of tea in her hand. "Take a little of this,
+Matthew," she said. "It will help to revive you."
+
+He was sitting up in bed, propped up with pillows. He took the tea and
+sipped at it. "It's a little too hot," he said. "I will drink it
+presently."
+
+Olive was in the act of putting the cup and saucer on the little table
+which stood close to her cousin's hand, when there came a hurried
+knocking at the room door, and next moment the head of one of the
+servants was intruded into the room. "Oh! if you please, miss," said
+the girl, "Mrs. Kelvin has met with a little accident. She slipped
+just now as she was coming downstairs. I don't think she's much hurt,
+but she wants you to go at once."
+
+Leaving the cup and saucer on the little table, Olive hurried from the
+room.
+
+"Send me up word, Olive, as soon as you can, whether anything serious
+is the matter," her cousin said to her as she was going.
+
+He was evidently anxious. "We will leave the papers for a little
+while, Piper," he said, presently. "We shall have some news from
+downstairs before long." Then he took the tea and drank a little of
+it. "I don't know how it is," he said, more as if speaking to himself
+than addressing Pod, "but of late everything seems to have such a
+queer taste."
+
+The cup was still in his fingers when Olive opened the door.
+
+"There's nothing to alarm you, Matthew," she said; "nothing serious
+the matter. Aunt missed the bottom stair as she was coming down. She
+is a little shaken--nothing worse. If you don't want me just now I
+will go and sit with her for a little while."
+
+"Go, by all means. Piper and I have not quite finished," said Kelvin.
+"I am very glad indeed that nothing more serious is the matter."
+
+Olive left the room, and Kelvin put the cup and saucer back on the
+table. Then he took up a long letter which he had partly read before,
+and Pod expected he was going to finish it; but, after reading a few
+lines, he paused, as though considering some point in his mind. He was
+still holding the letter, still evidently thinking about it, when,
+by-and-by, he shut his eyes. Pod thought that he had shut them in order
+to think out more clearly the case before him: perhaps he had. But in
+the course of two or three minutes the hand that held the letter
+relaxed its grasp, and Mr. Kelvin's low, regular breathing indicated
+that he was asleep.
+
+Pod Piper had been sitting very quietly all this time, thinking
+chiefly of what Dr. Whitaker had talked to him about last evening. Now
+that his master was asleep, there was nothing to hinder him from
+taking a long look at him, and tears came into the lad's eyes as he
+gazed at the hollow-eyed, sunken-cheeked wreck before him. "If this is
+her doing--If her hand has done this--she must be a daughter of the
+devil him self!" muttered Pod.
+
+He never could tell afterwards what prompted the thought to enter his
+mind, but all at once, while gazing at the sleeping man, his face
+flushed, his eyes brightened, and he rose nervously from his chair.
+Yes: the breakfast-cup was on the little table, and still three-parts
+filled with tea. On another table near the door were a couple of empty
+physic-bottles, put there for the servant to take away. Pod's mind was
+made up in a moment. Another glance at the sleeper convinced him that
+there was no present fear from that quarter. Stepping lightly and on
+tiptoe, he went round the foot of the bed to the other side. Then he
+took the cup of tea and crossed the room with it to the table on which
+the empty bottles were standing. One of these bottles he uncorked, and
+into it, with the loss of a few drops only, he dexterously contrived
+to pour the tea. Then he recorked the bottle, hid it carefully away in
+his pocket, and put back the cup on to the little table. That done, he
+quietly resumed his seat by the sleeping man.
+
+Five minutes later, Miss Deane came into the room. Pod warned her by a
+gesture that Mr. Kelvin was asleep. She stood gazing at him for a
+moment, and then she glanced across at the tea-cup. "Did he drink his
+tea before going to sleep?" she whispered to Pod.
+
+"Yes--every drop of it," answered Pod, without a moment's hesitation.
+
+She took up the cup and saucer and one or two other things, and moved
+towards the door. Then she took up the empty bottle, and then she
+looked round as if searching for the other one. Pod was furtively
+watching her, and his heart came into his mouth. She stood for a
+moment as if in doubt, but not being quite sure, apparently, whether
+there had been one bottle or two, she made no remark, but went out of
+the room as quietly as she had come in.
+
+In ten minutes she was back again. Kelvin was still asleep. "I think
+there is no need for you to wait any longer," she whispered to Pod.
+"Mr. Kelvin may sleep for an hour, or even longer. Should he want you
+when he awakes, I will send for you."
+
+So Pod went, and very thankful he was to get away. When the
+dinner-hour came, he rushed off at once to Dr. Whitaker's, and telling
+that gentleman what he had done, left the bottle with him.
+
+Twenty-four hours later. Dr. Whitaker handed a sealed letter to Pod,
+with instructions to give the same privately into the hands of Mr.
+Kelvin at the first possible opportunity. That opportunity came next
+morning, when Miss Deane left the room for a few minutes while her
+cousin was dictating his letters to Pod. The moment the door was shut
+behind her. Pod, who had been on the watch, passed the letter into the
+hands of Mr. Kelvin. "You must read this in private, please, before
+Miss Deane comes back into the room."
+
+Kelvin looked at the lad, but broke the seal without comment. Then,
+glancing at the signature, "From Whitaker!" he said. "What on earth
+can he have to write to me about?"
+
+Dr. Whitaker's letter ran as under--
+
+
+     "My dear Kelvin,--
+
+          "I need not tell you that I have been truly grieved to hear of
+your long illness, as I do not doubt that you would be grieved were I
+in the same unfortunate predicament. As your clerk, young Piper, is
+frequently employed by me of an evening in making out my accounts, I
+have been enabled to question him pretty closely as to the progress
+and symptoms of your complaint. As a professional man, such details
+are never without interest for me, more especially where one of my
+friends is concerned. Certain things which Piper has told me of late
+(in answer to my questioning) have set me thinking very seriously.
+
+"I have a certain delicacy in writing to you as I am writing now.
+Druce and I, as you are well aware, are by no means the best of
+friends. He looks upon me as a juvenile who has hardly learnt the ABC
+of his profession--as a believer in new-fangled notions such as the
+world had never heard of when he was young; and, finally, he holds me
+in most general contempt. He is quite welcome to his opinion of me. I
+may have mine about him, only I keep it to myself. In such a state of
+affairs, for me to interfere, either verbally or by writing, with one
+of his patients, is a professional crime for which nothing less than
+hanging, drawing, and quartering ought to be punishment sufficient.
+Indeed, I may tell you, that unless the occasion had seemed to me a
+very serious one indeed, no such interference on my part would have
+taken place. But were I to go to Dr. Druce and tell him what I have
+reason to think about your case, how should I be received?
+
+"As it happens, there is no need to answer this question. I am not
+going to Druce. I am going to put him aside, and, breaking through all
+the rules of professional etiquette, to communicate with you direct.
+
+"My dear Kelvin, I have heard enough from Piper about your case both
+to puzzle and alarm me. Yours is certainly no ordinary liver
+complaint. I may tell you that much at once. What else it may be, I am
+hardly prepared as yet to say--or even to hint. But if you have any
+regard for my words, or any belief in my knowledge, you will do what I
+ask of you, and do it without hesitation or delay.
+
+"What I want you to do is this: To send to me by Piper, in a bottle
+sealed by your own hand, about half a pint of what ever liquid may be
+brought you to drink after you have read this letter--it matters
+little whether it be tea, barley-water, toast-and-water, or anything
+else. Do this unknown to anyone but Piper, who will at once bring me
+the bottle and contents. Whisper no word to anyone as to what you have
+done, and ask Piper no questions. He may be trusted implicitly, but of
+the details he knows nothing. Till you hear from me again, which will
+probably be to-morrow evening, take as little liquid as possible,
+and eat nothing but plain biscuits and dry toast. A little weak
+brandy-and-water will do you no harm, but either mix it yourself or see
+it mixed. Be sure that I am not asking you to do all this without a
+reason, and a very powerful one too. Above all things--_silence and
+secrecy_. Burn this as soon as read, and believe me.
+
+                                              "Your sincere friend,
+
+                                                        "Cyrus Whitaker."
+
+
+"Burn this letter," said Kelvin to Pod, when he had read it through
+twice. When he had seen it shrivelled into ashes, he lay back on his
+pillows, thinking, and neither stirred nor spoke till Miss Deane came
+into the room, some quarter o f an hour afterwards.
+
+"Olive," he said, but without turning his eyes towards her, "I feel
+more thirsty than usual this morning. If you have any barley-water
+ready-made, I should like you to get me some."
+
+She smiled, and went without a word. Five minutes later, she came back
+with a small jug and a glass.
+
+"Will you take a little of it now?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, just a little, and then you can put the things on the table
+within reach." After she had given him a little of the barley-water,
+he said, "Piper and I have rather a heavy lot of papers to wade
+through this morning, so, while we are finishing them, I wish you
+would just step round to the library and get me that book of travels
+we were talking about last night; or if that one is not at home, some
+other: you know the sort I like."
+
+As soon as Olive had left the room, Kelvin turned to Pod. "You have
+got a bottle in your pocket, I suppose?" he said.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Then pour that barley-water into it, and cork it up tightly."
+
+When this was done, Pod lighted a taper, and Kelvin sealed up the
+bottle with his own trembling fingers, and stamped it with the
+monogram of his ring. Then the bottle went back into Pod's pocket.
+
+"No more business to-day," said the sick man, wearily. "Take those
+papers back to Mr. Bray, and tell him to do the best he can with them.
+As for yourself, you will go at once to Dr. Whitaker, and give that
+bottle into his own hands. I suppose I may rely upon your fidelity and
+discretion in this matter, eh?"
+
+"You may do that, sir, with perfect confidence," said Pod, with much
+earnestness.
+
+"Yes, I think you are true and honest," said Kelvin, slowly, with his
+eyes fixed full on the boy's open face. Then, as Pod went out, he
+added to himself: "That letter of Whitaker's has instilled such a
+horrible suspicion into my mind, that I no longer know whom or what to
+believe."
+
+Next morning. Pod smuggled another letter into the hands of his
+master. It was very brief, but very much to the purpose.
+
+
+     "My Dear Kelvin,
+
+        "I must see you as quickly as possible, and in _private_. Your
+restoration to health, nay, your life itself, may depend on this. No
+one must know of my visit except Piper; and you must let me know
+through him when you can arrange to have me admitted to your room
+without any of your household being aware of my visit. Not a word to
+anyone. Burn this.
+
+                                                   "Yours ever,
+
+                                                             "C. W."
+
+
+For fully half an hour Matthew Kelvin remained buried in thought after
+reading this letter. Then he said to Pod:
+
+"Instead of Mr. Bray signing the letters this afternoon, you will
+bring them upstairs to be signed by me." At five o'clock, up came Pod
+with the letters. Kelvin was sitting up in his easy-chair by this
+time, and it struck Pod that he looked brighter and better than he had
+seen him look for some time past. When the letters were signed, and
+Pod was about to go, Kelvin put into his hand a sealed envelope. "Give
+this to Dr. Whitaker, and be sure that he has it to-night."
+
+Inside the envelope was a scrap of paper, on which were written these
+words:
+
+
+"To-morrow morning at half-past eleven.
+
+                                                   "M. K."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+VAN DUREN'S DREAM.
+
+
+Max Van Duren's stay on the Continent, instead of lasting for four or
+five days only, extended itself to a fortnight. During the whole of
+that time, Jonas Pringle remained in charge of the premises in Spur
+Alley. At any other time, the sudden departure of Byrne and his
+daughter, taken in conjunction with what else Pringle either knew or
+suspected, would have formed food sufficient for many an hour's
+restless pondering, it being a matter of principle with Pringle to
+suspect everybody and everything. But at present his own affairs were
+quite enough to occupy his thoughts. He had been waiting patiently,
+week after week, for an occasion to arise which should call Van Duren
+from home, and so give him an opportunity of bringing to a climax a
+certain hidden scheme at which he had been patiently working for
+upwards of a year. The wished-for opportunity was now here, but the
+advantage he had intended to derive from it seemed as utterly beyond
+his reach as before. In other words, the key at which he had laboured
+so long and so patiently, and which, he had fondly hoped, needed but a
+few more touches of the file to bring it to perfection, still
+refused--obstinately and maliciously refused--to open the lock of Van
+Duren's safe. And rarely could there have been a more opportune time to
+open it than the present. There were notes and gold in it to the amount
+of two thousand pounds, as Pringle knew full well. If he could only
+have obtained possession of these notes and this gold within a few
+hours of Van Duren's departure for Paris, he would have had time to
+change the notes and get three or four days' clear start before the
+faintest suspicion that there was anything wrong could have got abroad.
+It was for this that he had been biding his time so long; it was for
+this that he had put up with Van Duren's hard words and starvation
+salary. He had promised himself all along that he would have a day of
+glorious revenge; that at one bold sweep he would make himself master
+of enough, if judiciously invested, to secure for himself a comfortable
+little income for life. But all his delicate manipulation with the
+file, all his added touches, had hitherto proved ineffective and of no
+avail. The wards of the lock that held the iron door stubbornly
+refused to be coaxed; the Open Sesame was not yet found. Pringle was
+terribly chagrined. Still he never allowed himself to altogether
+despair. He felt that success was only a matter of time; but he would
+not have cared for success to come at a moment when there might chance
+to be little or nothing to reward his labours: he was anxious that it
+should come now, when the reward would be great. But Van Duren could
+not stay away for ever, and one afternoon brought the long-expected
+telegram, announcing that he might be looked for in Spur Alley before
+bed-time next night.
+
+"Curse him for coming back so soon!" said Pringle to himself, as he
+tore the telegram to shreds. "If he had only stayed away another day
+or two, I should have got my key to fit and open the lock. It may be
+months before he goes out of town again. It may be months before
+there's as much money in the safe again as there is now. But it's just
+like my luck!"
+
+Mr. Van Duren reached home about ten o'clock next evening. Pringle was
+there to receive him, and while Mrs. Bakewell was getting supper
+ready, the two men went into the discussion of sundry business
+details. But not more than ten minutes had passed before Van Duren,
+changing the subject, suddenly said: "By-the-by, I have not made any
+inquiry after my lodgers. How is Mr. Byrne?--Better, I hope. And Miss
+Byrne, is she quite well?"
+
+There was a deep longing in his heart to see Miriam again. She had
+promised to give him a definite yes or no immediately after his
+return, and he flattered himself that if he read the signs aright, he
+had little or nothing to fear. He had brought back with him several
+expensive presents for her. Never in his life before had he bought
+presents for anybody, his natural instincts being those of a miser;
+and it was not without a sharp pang that he had brought himself, even
+in the present instance, to part from his dearly-loved money. These
+presents had been in his thoughts all the way coming home. He would
+spread them out before Miriam, and watch her unfold them from their
+wrappers one by one; and in imagination he saw the sparkle in her eyes
+and the smile on her lips as she clasped the bracelet on her wrist, or
+posed before the glass while trying the effect of her new ear-rings.
+Then, before the freshness and surprise had time to evaporate, he
+would take her hand and press it passionately to his lips, and implore
+her to give him her answer once for all. If she condescended to accept
+his presents, how could he doubt what that answer would be? They would
+be married before summer was over; and when once Miriam was his wife,
+he would know how to bend her will to his--know how to teach her what
+was best for her comfort and his--from his own point of view.
+
+His first look from the cab, when he got in sight of the house, had
+been to the windows of his lodgers' sitting-room. But all was dark
+there, and his heart had chilled a little at the sight. It was almost
+too early for them to have gone to bed: probably they had gone out
+somewhere to spend the evening. He had secretly flattered himself that
+Miriam would be there to welcome him--that the least she could do
+would be to open the door of her sitting-room, ready to greet him with
+a smile and a pressure of the hand as he went upstairs to his own part
+of the house. But no Miriam was there to-night, evidently; and then
+the thought struck him that perhaps no one had told her of his
+expected return. This thought was not without its consolation; so,
+hiding his impatience under his usual impassive demeanour, he went
+indoors as if nothing were amiss, and not till he and Pringle had been
+talking together for ten minutes did he seem to recollect the
+existence of any such persons as Mr. Byrne and his daughter.
+
+Pringle had been expecting the question for some time, and was ready
+with his answer.
+
+"Mr. Byrne and Miss Byrne went away together in a cab two or three
+days after you left home."
+
+"Went away together in cab!" cried Van Duren. "But at least they left
+word where they were going, and when they might be expected back?"
+
+"Miss Byrne said they were going to the seaside for the benefit of the
+old gentleman's health; but there was nothing said about when they
+might be expected back."
+
+"Strange--very strange!" muttered Van Duren. Some presage of coming
+evil seemed to touch him already. He looked from side to side of the
+ill-lighted room, and shuddered. Pringle was watching him narrowly.
+
+"Did they take much luggage with them?" he asked.
+
+"I heard Mrs. Bakewell say that there was nothing left in their rooms
+but the bare furniture."
+
+"Have any letters been received here for them since they left?"
+
+"Not one, sir."
+
+"How was it you did not send me word, either by telegram or letter,
+when you discovered that they were going away?"
+
+"Because I was under the impression that they had told you, before you
+went out of town, that they were going away."
+
+This was not true, but it was necessary that Pringle should excuse
+himself somehow.
+
+"But did nobody ask them when they might be expected back?"
+
+"Yes; Mrs. Bakewell did. Miss Byrne's answer was that everything
+depended on the state of the old gentleman's health, and that they
+might be away only a week, or they might be away a month."
+
+"I would give twenty pounds this very minute to know where they are
+gone to!" cried Van Duren, emphatically, as he pushed away his chair,
+and began to pace the room with restless strides.
+
+Pringle sat watching him for a minute or two. That Van Duren was
+terribly chagrined, he could see plainly enough, and it pleased him to
+see it. The question with him now was, should he, or should he not
+tell Van Duren that he knew to what place his lodgers were gone? On
+the one hand, to keep Van Duren in ignorance of what he, Pringle,
+knew, would be a source of great gratification to him. But, on the
+other hand, if he were to reveal what he knew, was there not a faint
+probability that Van Duren might go in search of them--might leave him
+alone in the house for a few days longer, and so afford him another
+opportunity of making himself master of the treasure in the iron safe?
+This latter thought decided him.
+
+"I can tell you where Mr. and Miss Byrne are gone to, sir," he said,
+speaking very quietly, "and I won't charge you twenty pounds for the
+information, either."
+
+"Where are they gone?" asked Van Duren, abruptly, as he brought his
+walk to a sudden stand.
+
+"Their luggage was labelled for Marhyddoc, in North Wales."
+
+Jonas Pringle certainly never anticipated the effect which his words
+would have on Max Van Duren. The latter seemed like a man suddenly
+turned to stone. All the colour fled from his face, his lips turned
+blue, while into his eyes there came an expression of unspeakable
+terror. For a few minutes he stood like a man who neither knew where
+he was nor what he was doing, who had no thought for anything in the
+wide world but the terrible news he had just heard. Then he put out a
+hand, and seemed to be feeling for a chair, without knowing what he
+was about. Pringle took his arm and guided him to a seat.
+
+"A sudden spasm--nothing more," he said. "I shall be better
+presently."
+
+"Shall I get you a glass of water?" asked Pringle.
+
+Van Duren shook his head. "I have been taken like this once or twice
+lately," he stammered. "I must talk to my doctor about it."
+
+Mrs. Bakewell came in to lay the cloth for supper. This seemed to
+rouse him. "I shall not want any supper; I've changed my mind. You
+need not bring it in," he said. Then turning to Pringle, "To what
+place did you say that Mr. Byrne and his daughter were gone?" he
+asked.
+
+"To Marhyddoc, in North Wales."
+
+"Some little fishing or bathing place, I suppose--quiet and
+salubrious, suitable for an old man like Mr. Byrne. Strange, though,
+that they never told me they were going. You don't know, Pringle, do
+you, what their particular reason might be for choosing Marhyddoc, out
+of all places in the world?"
+
+"I don't know that, sir; they gave no hint on that point," said
+Pringle. "But I know this for a fact, that old Mr. Byrne was no more
+deaf than you or me, sir; that his long white hair was nothing but a
+wig, and his hump nothing but a sham; and that when he liked he could
+be as active on his feet as any gentleman of fifty or fifty-five can
+be."
+
+Max Van Duren sat and stared at his clerk like a man thoroughly
+stupefied. "How do you know all this?" he said, speaking in a low,
+hoarse voice.
+
+"Because I've seen it with my own eyes," answered Pringle. Then he
+told him all about the Euston Square episode.
+
+"But what possible object could Mr. Byrne have in disguising himself
+in the way you mention? and what could be his motive in trying to
+deceive me?"
+
+"Don't know, sir, I'm sure. But mightn't it all be a plant--a
+try-on--to get something out of you, either money or information, or
+something else?"
+
+"They got no money out of me--not a single penny," answered Van Duren.
+"And as for information----"
+
+In a moment it flashed across his mind that Miriam Byrne had indeed
+got certain information out of him, which information seemed to
+connect itself, in some mysterious way, with the journey to Wales.
+Would she and her father ever have gone to any such out-of-the-way
+place as Marhyddoc, if he had not told Miriam the story of the
+shipwreck? But even in that case, what possible object could be gained
+by their visit to Marhyddoc? The key to the great secret of his life
+lay there at the bottom of the sea, as far beyond their reach, even
+supposing them to have known of its existence, as it was beyond his.
+After all, it was perhaps nothing more than a singular coincidence
+that had taken them to that particular spot in Wales. Could it be that
+Miriam had grown to take so deep an interest in him that she wanted to
+see the very place where he had been shipwrecked? This was a thought
+that made his heartbeat wildly for a moment or two; but it was quickly
+succeeded by a feeling of deadly apprehension. What Pringle had told
+him about Byrne and his disguise, smote him with a sense of some
+hidden danger which he could not overcome. Why had Miriam pressed him
+so earnestly to give her all the details of the shipwreck? And why had
+they said nothing to him of their contemplated journey before he left
+home?
+
+He could not shake off the feeling that he was in the midst of some
+great peril. It was quite out of the question, that he should sit
+quietly down in Spur Alley, and have no knowledge of what was
+happening in Wales. Even at that moment, what terrible events might be
+taking place on which his fate might hang as on a thread! And yet
+again, how was it possible that any harm could happen to him having
+its origin in what he had told Miriam? He had simply told her that he
+had lost a box containing the whole of his worldly possessions; but he
+had given no hint as to the special contents of the box. How was she
+or her father to connect the Max Van Duren of to-day with the Max
+Jacoby of twenty years ago? And even granting that they knew his
+secret so far, there would not, even in that case, be the slightest
+link to connect him with the murder of Paul Stilling. But more than
+all else was he rendered uneasy by the fact of Byrne's disguise. There
+was something in that which he altogether failed to comprehend. He
+questioned Pringle again and again as to what he had seen at Euston
+Square, but with no other result than to add a more positive
+confirmation to what he had been told at first.
+
+"Pringle, I shall go down to Marhyddoc by the next fast train."
+
+"There is one at ten in the morning, sir."
+
+"That will suit me. Mr. Byrne and I have sundry business transactions
+together which necessitate my seeing him as soon as possible. I need
+not tell you how annoyed I am to find that he has gone away without
+leaving a message of any kind for me."
+
+He paused and looked at his watch. "I am terribly tired, and I must
+try to get a few hours' sleep before starting. You are a light
+sleeper, I know, and I will trust you to call me at six."
+
+"All right, sir."
+
+"You may also see Mrs. Bakewell for me, and arrange for breakfast at
+eight. You had better sleep here to-night, and I will go through the
+remaining letters with you during breakfast."
+
+
+Then, without another word, he left the room and marched slowly
+upstairs to bed. Van Duren had spoken no more than the truth when he
+said that he was terribly tired. He had been travelling continuously
+for eighteen hours, and was thoroughly worn out. The news told him by
+Pringle had taken away whatever appetite he might otherwise have had,
+while leaving the need of some refreshment strongly upon him.
+He was never without cognac in his bedroom. Of this he now took a
+powerful dose, and then flinging himself upon the bed, dressed as he
+was, in three minutes he was fast asleep.
+
+While sleeping thus, he had a dream--a dream more strangely vivid,
+more realistic in all its details, than any that he had ever had
+before.
+
+In this dream he himself was as it were an impersonal being, the
+spectator of a drama in which he was called upon to play no part. The
+scene of the drama in question was the bottom of the sea. Through the
+green and limpid twilight, the floor, covered with sand and shells,
+and huge, smooth-washed boulders, could be seen stretching away on
+every side till lost in the dim distance. Fishes of various kinds,
+some such as are never seen by mortal eye, swam silently to and fro in
+the liquid depths. The middle distance of the sea was filled up with a
+huge mass of wreckage and broken timber. There was no need to tell the
+dreamer of what good ship the wreck was now before him. Even in his
+sleep, his lips murmured, "That is the _Albatross_." In and out of the
+broken bulks, and rotting portholes, and shattered hatchways, strange
+monsters of the sea, big and little, kept crawling continually.
+
+But presently there was a quick, frightened movement among the fishes,
+and the dreamer beheld descending slowly from unknown heights a ladder
+made of stout rope and weighted heavily at the bottom. In a little
+while the weights touched the ground, and the ladder became stationary
+and firm. Soon there could be seen, coming down slowly and heedfully,
+a man in the full costume of a diver, and looking in it no unfit
+companion for the strange creatures whose haunts he had for a little
+while invaded. In a few minutes he was joined by another man similarly
+attired. Together the two men bent their steps towards the wreck.
+There was no need to tell the dreamer what they were there to look
+for. Would they find it, or would they not? But in his impersonality
+he had no further interest in having this question answered than a
+spectator at a play might have; indeed, so slightly was he interested,
+that he laughed aloud more than once as he watched the strange,
+awkward movements of the two men as they clambered around and about
+the wreck.
+
+Round and about, in and out, they moved without any apparent success.
+Evidently, the object they had come in search of was not to be found.
+At length, as if by mutual consent, they walked back to the ladder.
+One of them had got his foot on the lowermost rung, when his mate
+touched him on the shoulder and pointed back to the wreck. The
+sleeper's eyes followed the direction of the man's finger, and saw
+there--what? The spectral figure of a man standing on the broken
+bulwarks of the ship, and pointing downwards with outstretched finger
+to a heap of rotting timber and loose wreckage at its feet. The figure
+was diaphanous; the broken stump of a mast in front of which it was
+standing could be clearly seen through it. It seemed to have a
+wavering motion, very slight, but still perceptible, like that of a
+flame which quivers by the intensity of its own heat. Although its
+finger pointed downwards, the face of the figure was bent full on the
+face of the sleeping man--the same face that he had seen in the glass,
+haggard, deathlike, with a thin line of black moustache; while its
+black, inscrutable eyes gazed down through his eyes into his very
+soul. There was no laughter, no cynicism left in the dreamer
+now--nothing but an unspeakable horror that stirred his hair and
+chilled the beating of his heart even while he slept. He could not turn
+away his eyes from those other eyes that were staring into his; but for
+all that he could see, as we do see in dreams, everything that was
+going on around him. He could see the men moving slowly back towards
+the wreck, in obedience to the invitation of the spectre, of whom they
+seemed to have no dread. He could see them searching and turning over
+the heap of mouldering débris at which the finger was so persistently
+pointed, and presently he could see them drag from the midst of it a
+small square oaken box, the silver clamps of which were all tarnished
+and black with the action of the sea. How well he remembered that box!
+what cause he had to remember it!
+
+Carrying the box carefully for fear lest it should fall to pieces, one
+of the men brought it presently to the foot of the ladder, close to
+which, let down from the heights above, hung a cord with a hook at the
+end of it. To this hook the box was now fastened by one of the men,
+then a tug was given to the cord, and next moment the box began slowly
+to ascend, drawn up by unseen hands above.
+
+The finger of the spectre now pointed upward. Soon the box was lost to
+view, and as it disappeared, the twilight of the scene seemed to
+darken and deepen and the water to lose somewhat of its limpid
+clearness. It was as though night were reaching down with its hand of
+blackness to the bottom of the sea. Slowly but surely the whole scene
+grew blurred and indistinct as though one filmy veil of darkness after
+another were being drawn between it and the dreamer's eyes, till at
+length the familiar walls of the dreamer's bedroom began to grow out
+of the darkness, and Max Van Duren knew that he was awake, and that
+the dawn of another day was beginning to broaden in the east. From
+head to foot he was bathed in perspiration, and he was trembling in
+every limb. He sat up on the bed and gazed timidly around, as half
+expecting to see the eyes of the spectre staring at him from some dim
+corner of the room; but presently he heard a welcome footstep on the
+stairs outside, and then came the voice of Pringle, telling him that
+it was time to get up.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+PRINGLE'S DISCOVERY.
+
+
+Great was the glee of Jonas Pringle when he found himself left alone
+once more in Spur Alley. When he saw Van Duren off in a cab for Euston
+Square he mentally bade him good-bye for ever.
+
+So elated was he, so sure did he now feel that the moment of success
+was at hand, that he went out and bought a tin of preserved lobster,
+and a bottle of rum, and there and then held high festival with
+Bakewell and his wife in their dungeon below stairs. He calculated
+that, at the very soonest, Van Duren need not be expected back for
+three or four days; and what might not be accomplished even in that
+short time! He could not labour much during the day at perfecting his
+duplicate key; he had too many interruptions; he was wanted too
+frequently in the office by people who called to inquire after Van
+Duren. But after business hours, when the hush of evening crept over
+the busy city, then he could work away as long as he liked without
+fear of interruption. And surely, after all that had gone before, a
+few short hours only would now be needed to place the long-coveted
+prize in his grasp.
+
+All that day he remained very restless and unsettled, and seemed
+unable either to stay long in any one place, or to fix his mind on
+anything for more than a few minutes at a time.
+
+Van Duren had left him several important letters to write, but after
+getting as far as the date and "Dear Sir," or "Gentlemen," with one or
+other of them, his ideas became so mixed up and confused that he could
+no longer disentangle the subject of one letter from that of another
+in his thoughts; so that at last he had to fling down his pen in
+disgust, and rush off for a quarter of an hour to a favourite haunt
+round the corner. Indeed, he seemed to be running in and out all day
+long.
+
+Pringle made up his mind that, if requisite, he would work away at his
+key all night. When Bakewell and his wife were safe in bed--and they
+rarely sat up after ten o'clock--he would steal downstairs without his
+shoes, turn on the gas, and shut himself up in the strong room; and
+there, file in hand, and a fresh bottle of rum by his side, he could
+work on in safety till five or six o'clock next morning. But perhaps
+before that time the stubborn lock would yield and the great door fall
+back on its hinges, and then!---- But such a possibility was almost
+too much for calm consideration.
+
+Before beginning his work for the night, he would go down to a little
+water-side tavern that he knew of, where the _Shipping Gazette_ could
+always be found, together with sundry lists of vessels about to sail
+from London and other ports. He had not yet decided on the spot to
+which he should direct his flight, but he could make up his mind on
+that important point to-night, and pick out the names and dates of
+sailing of some half-dozen ships, so as to be ready for starting at
+any minute.
+
+As it happened, however, the evening turned out so wet and stormy that
+Pringle was obliged to put off his proposed visit to the river-side
+tavern till another day. This altered his plans a little. Instead of
+waiting till Bakewell and his wife were in bed, as soon as he had shut
+the office and hurriedly swallowed a cup of tea, he went to his own
+room and locked himself in, and set to work at once with his file. But
+he was afraid to go on working too long at a time without trying the
+key in the lock. At any moment his file might give the one last touch,
+which, Pringle felt convinced, was all that his key now needed to make
+him at once master of the situation. So, at intervals of half an hour
+or so, he stole downstairs to the strong room to try his key once
+more; and once more, on finding that the master-touch had not yet been
+given, he stole back to his own room and set to work again with a
+slow, quiet patience that would not know what it was to feel itself
+beaten.
+
+To-night, for a wonder, it was nearly eleven before the Bakewells went
+to bed. As soon as he felt sure that there was no longer anything to
+fear from them, Pringle removed himself permanently downstairs for the
+night. Seating himself on a pile of books close by the iron door, he
+went quietly on with his work. At half-past eleven he tried the key in
+the lock, but, for aught he could tell to the contrary, he might have
+been no nearer success than he had been a month previously. He tried
+again as the clocks were chiming the quarter before midnight, and the
+wards of the lock yielded and fell back as readily and smoothly as
+ever they had done before Van Duren's own key. The master touch had
+been given at last.
+
+Pringle, sitting on his heap of books, stared at the open door as
+though he could not believe the evidence of his senses. Was it, could
+it be possible that the golden prize for which he had laboured so long
+and so patiently was at last really within his grasp? His hands were
+all a-tremble, his head was burning, his mouth parched up. All at once
+it struck him that he felt very thirsty, and that it was close upon
+twelve o'clock. There would be time for one, or even for two last
+tumblers before the taverns closed. Where would he be before midnight
+should strike again? Not in London, he said to himself, but miles out
+at sea on his way to some far-off land.
+
+With some such thoughts as these flitting fitfully through his mind,
+he mechanically lowered the gas, and then, leaving the safe-door still
+open, but closing and locking the door of the room, he crept
+cautiously up the stone staircase, with his shoes in his hand, and let
+himself out at the front door with as little noise as possible. He had
+made no attempt to examine the contents of the safe. A brief glance
+into it had satisfied him for the time being. He knew for an undoubted
+fact that the money he coveted was there, and he asked to know nothing
+more. There was no fear that it would take to itself wings while he
+went to have a final glass at his favourite tavern.
+
+The final glass was duly imbibed, and at five minutes past twelve
+Jonas Pringle found himself in the streets again, and on his way back
+to Spur Alley. He was nearly at home, when suddenly his eyes fell on
+the figure of a woman who was standing full in the light of a street
+lamp, and apparently counting some money. There was something in the
+outline or attitude of the woman that sent a strange thrill to his
+heart. With a half-inarticulate cry, he hurried forward. Startled by
+his sudden movement, the woman looked up, and her haggard face became
+clearly visible in the lamplight.
+
+"Jessie!--my daughter!" exclaimed Pringle, and he sprang forward as
+though he would clutch her.
+
+"Father!" cried the woman, in a voice of shrill, sharp agony, as she
+suddenly flung up her arms. Then, before he could touch her, she
+turned and fled.
+
+"Jessie! Jessie! Don't run away from me!" cried Pringle, as he hurried
+after her.
+
+But he was no match for the fleet-footed woman in front of him. By the
+time he got to the corner of the street he was completely exhausted,
+and Jessie was already out of sight. He leaned for a moment or two
+against the wall, with a hand pressed to his side, while he gathered
+breath. Then, with a bitter sigh, he retraced his way slowly towards
+Spur Alley.
+
+"Found at last," he muttered to himself, as he stumbled painfully
+along--"found at last, but only to lose her again at the moment of
+finding! I would have forgiven everything--yes, everything, if she
+would only have come back to me!"
+
+During the last few minutes, he had forgotten all about the safe and
+its contents, and the treasure that lay ready to his hand; but now, as
+he proceeded to open the street door with his latch-key, the whole
+situation came back to his mind in a rush, but with a sense of
+strangeness as though it were something done by some other man, or by
+himself long years before.
+
+The house was as dark and silent as a tomb. He groped his way
+downstairs, and presently he found himself in the strong-room again.
+He sat down on the heap of books to think. To-night, of all nights in
+his life, he had seen again the daughter for whom he had been
+searching for years. He had seen her one moment, but only to lose her
+the next. She had fled from him, desperately determined to avoid him;
+and the chances were that, in that great wilderness of London, they
+should never meet again. His heart yearned towards her as it had never
+yearned before, but all her desire seemed to be to shun him. The
+question with him now was, whether he should take this money which lay
+ready to his hand, and go away for ever; or whether he should relock
+the safe, leaving the money untouched, and go on living his old life
+as if this dream of sudden wealth had never haunted his mind, and
+devote all his spare hours, as he had done, years before, to searching
+for his lost child, who, as to-night had proved, was so near to him
+and yet so far away. The chances were that he should never see Jessie
+again; and even if he should succeed in finding her, he had no proof
+that she would not elude him again as she had done already. If only he
+could have felt sure of finding her, and that she would stay with him
+when found, not ten times the amount of money in Van Duren's safe
+would have tempted him to leave London, and with it his last chance of
+ever seeing her again.
+
+His thoughts were all in a maze of confusion. He could not make up his
+mind what to do. Springing to his feet, he flung wide the door of the
+safe. He would at least feast his eyes on this treasure for which he
+had braved so much and laboured so long. There would still be time to
+decide afterwards what he should finally do.
+
+There were several iron drawers in the safe, all of them unlocked.
+These he opened one after another. One of them was full of small bags
+of specie, each of which was neatly tied up and labelled, to show the
+value of its contents. Another drawer contained bank-notes, drafts,
+and bills of exchange. Other receptacles held promissory notes, bills
+of sale, and various documents having a bearing on Van Duren's
+business. Pringle paused for a moment or two while he made a rapid
+calculation. In gold and notes alone, the safe held upwards of three
+thousand pounds. His most sanguine hopes were more than realized.
+Should he take this money and go, or should he not? At six o'clock
+that very morning he could drop down the river in an outward-bound
+ship, and all trace of him would be lost for ever. But to leave
+Jessie!
+
+There was one last drawer still to open. He drew it slowly out. It
+held neither gold, nor notes, nor bills of exchange. There was nothing
+in it but a small cedar-wood box, which box was locked. Pringle took
+it out of the drawer. It was very light, and not at all strong. What
+could there be inside it? Why should the contents of this box be held
+as of more account than the gold and notes that lay openly about?
+Perhaps within that little casket lay hidden some dark secret of Van
+Duren's life. With the aid of one of his files, which lay there on the
+floor, Pringle could force open the lid in a couple of minutes, and
+see with his own eyes what was shut up inside. No sooner thought than
+done--done without pausing to ask himself whether such an act would
+not shut him out from all possibility of retreat. So long as the box
+remained intact, so long as the gold and notes remained untouched, all
+that he had to do was to shut and relock the door of the safe, and Van
+Duren need never know anything of what had happened to-night.
+
+But the lid of the box was forced even while this thought was floating
+vaguely through his mind. He forced it, breaking it into two pieces as
+he did so. To his intense disappointment, there was nothing inside but
+a parcel of old letters.
+
+Yes, at the very bottom there was something more, and yet nothing of
+any great consequence: only a woman's portrait. He took it up with a
+sneer, and moved a few steps nearer the gaslight, so as to be able to
+examine it more closely.
+
+For a full minute he stood staring at the portrait without moving a
+muscle, with no more apparent life in him than a waxen effigy. Then he
+let the portrait drop as suddenly as though it had burnt him, and
+putting his hands to his face, he sank on his knees beside it on the
+floor. But not long did he remain thus. With a low cry, he started to
+his feet as though suddenly struck by some overwhelming thought, and
+hurrying across the floor, he pulled out the drawer that held the
+letters, and went back with it to the light. Holding the drawer under
+one arm, he picked out a letter here and there, opened it, read a line
+or two, glanced at the signature, and then put it back and took up
+another. Last of all, he picked up the portrait, kissed it, laid it
+atop of the letters, and put the drawer back into its place in the
+safe. Then once more he sat down to think.
+
+What a strange and terrible discovery was that which he had just made!
+The likeness was Jessie's likeness, and the letters were Jessie's
+letters. Max Van Duren was the villain who had robbed him of his
+child.
+
+Nineteen men out of twenty would have destroyed the letters of a girl
+for whom they had ceased to care, and whom they had cast upon the
+world without compunction, to starve, or die, or to live on in a way
+that was worse than death. But here the letters were. They had been
+written in the days when this man called Jessie his "wild rose," when
+she believed him to be everything that was good and honourable; when,
+at his persuasion, and for love of him, she ran away from the drunken,
+disreputable father who seemed to value her so little, but who found
+out how dear the motherless girl was to his heart when he had lost her
+for ever. Yes; here were the letters, overflowing with sweet, girlish
+confidence and outspoken love. Who could tell why Van Duren had kept
+them? Not he himself, if any one had put the question to him.
+
+Jonas Pringle had need to think. He heard the City clocks strike one,
+as he sat on the pile of ledgers by the open door of the safe, his
+elbows on his knees, his face buried in his hands. He heard the City
+clocks strike two, and still he sat like a man turned to stone.
+
+When, years before, he had first come to London, and had reason to
+believe that his daughter was hidden somewhere in the same huge
+wilderness, all his spare time for many weary months had been devoted
+to looking for her. But that could not go on for ever: and although he
+had long ago given up all active search for Jessie, the trick,
+acquired at that time, of peering up into the face of every woman who
+passed him in the streets, had never wholly left him. Thousands of
+times had he dwelt in imagination on the meeting which, he felt
+convinced, must one day take place between his daughter and
+himself--how he would snatch her to his heart and tell her that all
+the past was dead and forgiven. And now he had seen her, but only to
+find that she shunned him as though he were stricken with the plague.
+A thousand times had he sworn to himself that should he ever knowingly
+cross the path of the man who had destroyed his child, no power in
+heaven or on earth should baulk him of his revenge. And now that by a
+strange chance he had crossed the path of that man, should his oaths
+be all forgotten, and the revenge he had promised himself nothing but
+an empty dream? Not so, not so.
+
+But what form should his vengeance take? Not the poor, paltry,
+insignificant form of robbing this man of his gold. After what he had
+learned to-night, rather than take a penny of his money, he would have
+begged from door to door. What he wanted was not Van Duren's money,
+but Van Duren's life. He would like to have seen him come home the
+worse for wine, and in that condition have gone to bed, and then he
+would have set fire to the house and have burnt him as he slept. He
+would like to have treated him as some savage tribes treat their
+prisoners--torturing them hour after hour, killing them by inches
+through a long summer day. A death that would come quickly was too
+good for him. Something slow and lingering, something that would make
+him long for death as a prisoner longs for the order for his release,
+would not be one whit more than he, and all such as he, deserved.
+
+At length he heard the clocks strike four, and he knew that the bright
+May dawning was beginning to flood the streets with the grey and gold
+of another day. Then he stood up, stiff, cold, and weary, but with an
+intense fire burning at his heart that seemed to light him up from
+head to foot, and had already transformed him into another man. He put
+out the gas, and leaving the safe-door still unlocked, but locking the
+outer door, he crept upstairs to bed. He had matured his plan; he had
+thought out his scheme of vengeance; everything was clearly mapped out
+in his mind: he could now afford to take a few hours' sleep.
+
+He came down at his usual hour, washed, shaven, and brushed more
+carefully than common, and had breakfast with the Bakewells. He was
+very chatty and affable over the meal, and entertained them with a
+long and elaborate narrative of the latest murder, so that they all
+enjoyed themselves greatly. An hour later, after the post letters had
+arrived, he called Bakewell into the office.
+
+"I have just got a letter from the governor," said Pringle, "in which
+he tells me that he shall not be back home for a fortnight, or even
+longer. So, as you and your better half will have little or nothing to
+do during that time, he thinks you may as well take advantage of his
+absence and have a run out to the seaside, or down into the country,
+for a couple of weeks. And what do you think he has done? He has
+opened his heart as I never knew him to open it before, and has
+actually asked me to give you five pounds towards paying your expenses
+while you are away. Bakewell, what a lucky dog you are!"
+
+Bakewell was staggered by the news of his good fortune, as Pringle had
+perhaps intended that he should be: nor was his wife less overcome
+when told of it. However, they were nothing loth to go for a holiday
+on such terms; and so well did Pringle work upon them, and hurry
+forward their arrangements, that at six o'clock that evening he had
+the satisfaction of seeing them drive away to the station, and of
+finding himself left the sole inmate of the big, gloomy house in Spur
+Alley.
+
+This was what he wanted. He wanted to wait there, all alone, for the
+return of Van Duren. He went about his business as at ordinary times,
+but he hardly tasted drink at all. Neither did he sleep much. Of an
+evening he would sit all alone in Mrs. Bakewell's underground kitchen,
+smoking a long clay pipe, moistening his mouth now and then with a
+little cold tea, and now and then smashing a stray beetle. He would
+sit thus, his feet perched on the chimney-piece, listening to the
+clocks as they struck hour after hour, thinking his own dark thoughts,
+and waiting for the coming of Max Van Duren.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+A FOUND LETTER.
+
+
+It was evening--the evening of the day on which Matthew Kelvin had
+sent his brief note to Dr. Whitaker, making an appointment with him
+for half-past eleven next morning. He had desired to be left alone for
+an hour, and during that time he had contrived, with several intervals
+of rest, for his weakness was very great, to write a longer letter
+than had come from his pen since the first day of his illness. This
+letter, duly sealed and directed, now lay on the little table by his
+bedside. The address on it was very short, being simply--"Miss Lloyd,
+Stammars."
+
+By-and-by Mrs. Kelvin came into the room. As she did so, her son
+quietly thrust the letter under his pillow. The old lady came to the
+bedside, and beamed on him through her spectacles, as he lay there
+with his arms crossed under his head. "Why, Matthew, my dear boy, I
+have not seen you look so bright and well for many a long day as you
+have looked during the last few hours! You have got the turn at last.
+I feel sure you have. I knew that Dr. Druce would bring you round
+again after a time."
+
+"Yes, mother, I think I have got the turn at last, as you say,"
+answered Kelvin, gravely. "We will never let any one say a word
+against Dr. Druce again, will we?"
+
+"Ah, he's very, very clever," said the old lady. Then she stooped and
+kissed him, and as she did so, Matthew's arm stole round her neck, and
+pressed her head gently on his shoulder, and kept it there some
+minutes. When he let her go, she saw that there were tears in his
+eyes; but she was too wise to notice them, and she began at once to
+talk as though his recovery now were merely the question of a few
+days, or a week at the most.
+
+"But I shall not let you go back to business till you are quite
+strong," she said. "Don't tell me that your not doing so will cost you
+a great deal of money. I don't care if it costs a thousand pounds:
+what is that in comparison with your health? You must have a month at
+the seaside, at some cheerful place--Boulogne or Dieppe, where you
+won't have time to grow melancholy. And if Olive and I go with you, we
+shall not bore you overmuch with our society, but only be there to see
+that you take proper care of yourself, and do not poison yourself with
+those French dinners, of which you are so fond."
+
+"I'm sure Olive deserves a holiday as much as any one," resumed Mrs.
+Kelvin, a moment or two later. "What I should have done without her
+all this long time that you have been ill, I'm sure I don't know. She
+must be very fond of you, Matthew, to have done what she has done.
+Now, don't you think she is fond of you?"
+
+"Yes, I suppose she is fond of me--after a cousinly fashion," said
+Matthew, coldly.
+
+"Ah, you men!" sighed the old lady. "Whatever sacrifices a woman may
+make for you, in your own hearts you never think they are half as much
+as you deserve."
+
+At this moment there came a tap at the door, and Olive entered the
+room. She brought her cousin a basin of arrowroot, which he,
+remembering his promise to Dr. Whitaker, resolved not to touch.
+His eyes followed her curiously as she moved about the room. "I
+cannot--no, I cannot believe it!" he murmured under his breath. "There
+must be some damnable mistake somewhere."
+
+"I have just been telling Matthew that I have not seen him look so
+well for weeks as he looks to-night," said Mrs. Kelvin to Olive. "We
+shall soon have him all right again now."
+
+Olive started, and threw a quick, suspicious glance at the sick man.
+He was looking at her very gravely but very kindly, as she thought.
+"No: he suspects nothing, or he would not look at me in that way," she
+said to herself. Then her black brows separated and her face broke
+into a smile. "I really believe he is better," she said to her aunt.
+"I believe he has only been shamming all this time, and now he is
+getting tired of it. I should not be a bit surprised to see him come
+down to breakfast to-morrow."
+
+"I'd almost stake my life that Whitaker is making some strange
+blunder!" muttered Kelvin to himself. "However, I'll carry out his
+instructions, and let to-morrow prove to him how wrong he is."
+
+Olive was anxious that he should drink his arrowroot. He just put a
+spoonful to his lips, and then put it aside as being too hot. "Come in
+again after my mother has gone," he contrived to whisper to her. Then
+he lay back and shut his eyes, and presently both his mother and Olive
+bade him good night, and left the room.
+
+As soon as Mrs. Kelvin was gone to her own room, Olive came quietly
+back. She was on the tiptoe of expectation to know what her cousin
+could have to say to her. He did not keep her long in doubt.
+
+"Olive," he said, "I have been writing a letter this evening--a letter
+which I want you to deliver for me to-morrow morning."
+
+"Very well, Matthew. You know that I am entirely at your service. To
+whom is the letter addressed?"
+
+"To Eleanor Lloyd."
+
+"Ah!--then you have made up your mind at last to tell her everything?"
+
+"I have made up my mind to tell her this: that I have discovered that
+she is not the daughter of Jacob Lloyd, and, consequently, not
+entitled to his property. But I have not made up my mind to tell her
+that I've known this fact for more than six months, and have concealed
+it purposely from her. I cannot tell her that."
+
+"But why do you wish me to take the letter? Why not send it through
+the post?"
+
+"Because I am too weak at present to put down in writing more than the
+barest outline of the facts, and I want you to supplement by word of
+mouth what my letter fails to convey."
+
+"Why not wait till you are a little stronger--till you can tell her,
+in person, all that it is necessary she should be told?"
+
+"Not one day longer will I wait. Eleanor Lloyd shall know the great
+secret of her life before she is twenty-four hours older."
+
+"As you will. Perhaps you are right," said Olive, quietly. "There is
+no reason why Miss Lloyd should be kept in ignorance any longer."
+
+"None whatever. I don't remember anything in my life that I have
+regretted so bitterly as not having told Eleanor at first. But it is
+useless to speak of the past. The future is all we can now deal with."
+
+"Then your feeling of resentment towards Miss Lloyd has an existence
+no longer?"
+
+"It is wholly dead. A sick-bed alters one's views and feelings in many
+ways. How can a man have room in his heart for any petty jealousies or
+resentments when he sees the shades of death closing slowly round him?
+To me all such feelings now seem as strange as though they were those
+of another man, about which I had read somewhere, and had never been a
+portion of my own inner life."
+
+Olive longed to ask him whether his love for Eleanor was dead equally
+with his resentment, but she was afraid that the old wound might not
+yet be altogether healed.
+
+"Then you wish me to go to Stammars to-morrow?" she said.
+
+"I do. Miss Lloyd is there at present. I had a letter from Sir Thomas
+this morning, in which he casually mentions that fact. You had better
+start early--not later than ten or half-past, by which means you will
+get your business over by luncheon time. Of course, you will seek a
+private interview with Miss Lloyd, and not say a word to either Sir
+Thomas or Lady Dudgeon about your errand. Eleanor must be left to
+break the news to them in her own way and at her own time."
+
+"It will be a bitter task to have to do so."
+
+"It will, indeed, poor girl! Cannot you understand, Olive, my chief
+reason for wanting you to go to Stammars?"
+
+"You have told me already, have you not?"
+
+"I have told you one reason, but not the only one. You are a woman,
+Olive, and I want you to break this news to Eleanor, to whom, in any
+case, it must come as a terrible shock. You do not like her, I know--at
+least, I judge so from what you have said at different times. But
+this is not a question of likes or dislikes. It is a question of one
+woman being overwhelmed by a great trouble, and of another woman
+smoothing away the sharp edges of that trouble with a little sympathy
+and kindness--articles which cost so little, but, at such seasons,
+mean so much. This is all I ask you to do, Olive; this is my other
+reason for sending you to Stammars. Am I asking more than you care to
+perform?"
+
+"Certainly not, Matthew. It is not much that you ask me to do."
+
+"But it means a great deal."
+
+"How little men understand about us women!" thought Olive. "None of my
+own sex, who knew the circumstances of the case, would ever have
+dreamed of asking me to do what Matthew has asked me to do, and
+believes I will do."
+
+"Think what a revelation my letter will be!" continued the lawyer. "At
+one fell blow she will be robbed of name, wealth, and position. Think,
+and pity her."
+
+He lay back, exhausted by the exertion of having spoken so much.
+
+"What can I give you?" asked Olive. "Will you not have your
+arrowroot?"
+
+"No: I will take that later on. A little weak brandy-and-water is all
+I need at present."
+
+"And now I must bid you good night," said Olive, as soon as he had
+revived a little.
+
+He put the letter into her hand, and as he did so he drew her towards
+him and kissed her. "I should like you to start about ten in the
+morning," he said. She promised to be ready by that time, and then she
+went.
+
+"Whitaker's suspicion is nothing but a horrible nightmare," he said to
+himself, as Olive left the room. "He is wrong--utterly wrong." But for
+all that, Matthew Kelvin hardly slept a wink all night.
+
+Olive took the letter to her room, locked the door, and then, after
+deliberating for a few moments, she quietly tore open the envelope and
+read what was inside. "If it be requisite to deliver the letter, I can
+put it into another envelope, and no one will be any the wiser," she
+said to herself. "If I decide not to deliver it, then another envelope
+will not be needed."
+
+"A thoroughly business-like document," she said to herself, as she
+folded up the letter, "and such as any lawyer might write to any lady.
+If there is no resentment in it, neither is there any love. The
+resentment is dead without a doubt, but is the love dead also? Query.
+Well, I will take the letter with me: there will be no harm in doing
+that: but it by no means follows that Miss Lloyd will ever read it.
+How easy it will be to pretend that I have lost it, and then I can
+tell the story my own way--with a sting in it, and before witnesses
+too, if such a thing be anyhow possible. Oh! to see her humiliation!
+that will pay for everything."
+
+She was up betimes next morning, and ready to start for Stammars soon
+after ten o'clock. In answer to her anxious inquiries, her cousin
+declared that he was much as usual--neither better nor worse. "You
+will try your best to soften the blow, won't you, Olive?" were
+Matthew's last words to her.
+
+"You know that I will do my best," she said, with one of her faint
+smiles. She laid her thin fingers in his hand for a moment, and then
+she went.
+
+By-and-by came Dr. Whitaker. Pod succeeded in smuggling him upstairs
+unseen by anyone, and then took up a position in the corridor outside
+to keep away any would-be intruders. Mrs. Kelvin, especially, was to
+be kept out of the room. Were she to find out that her son was
+closeted with Dr. Whitaker, she would imagine at once that there was a
+conspiracy afoot to dispense with the services of her favourite. Dr.
+Druce. Fortunately, she was busy downstairs just about that time, and
+did not go near. Matthew had said that he fancied a certain sort of
+pudding--an elaborate pudding, which Mrs. Kelvin was positive that no
+one but herself could make properly--a pudding, as her son was quite
+aware, that would require her undivided attention for at least a
+couple of hours below stairs.
+
+Mr. Pod Piper, keeping watch and ward outside his master's door, had a
+long corridor all to himself, up and down which he could march as
+though he were a sentry on duty. After a time, from a door at the
+extreme end, there issued a pert-looking damsel, who smiled sweetly on
+Pod. In one hand she carried a broom, in the other a dust-pan.
+
+"Ah, Molly, and how are you this morning?" said Pod, with the air of a
+duke addressing a dependent. "Blooming as ever, I see."
+
+"I'm quite well, Mr. Piper, and I hope you are the same," answered
+Molly, with a little blush. Then she added, with a confidential air,
+"I've got such a beautiful rose downstairs. You shall have it for your
+button-hole, if you'll promise to wear it."
+
+"I'll wear it for your sake, Molly. But whose room is that that you
+have just come out of?"
+
+"Oh, that's Miss Deane's room. I've just been tidying it up a bit
+while she's out of the way."
+
+"You like her, of course? Everybody likes Miss Deane."
+
+"Then everybody's welcome to like her.--She's too sly for me.--But,
+see, I found this letter when I was sweeping just now behind her
+dressing-table. It must have slipped down without her knowing it. It's
+been opened; but as it's got master's name on it, I hardly know
+whether to leave it where I found it or to let master have it."
+
+"Allow me," said Pod, authoritatively, taking the letter from the
+girl's hand. "You were quite right, Molly, to ask my advice." As Molly
+had said, the letter was plainly addressed to Mr. Kelvin, and it had
+evidently been opened. As two-thirds of the office correspondence was
+seen by Pod in one form or another, and as this particular letter was
+not marked "Private," he felt no compunction about opening it and
+reading it. It was Gerald Warburton's first letter, in which he asked
+whether it was true that Jacob Lloyd had died with out a will, and
+that he was his uncle's heir.
+
+Pod's mind was made up in a moment. It seemed doubtful whether hi
+master had ever seen the letter: in any case, he should see it now.
+"You had better leave this in my hands, Molly," he said, still with his
+ducal air. "It is only an ordinary business letter, which has been
+given to Miss Deane for some purpose, and which she has evidently
+mislaid. You may depend upon my making it all right, and there will be
+no need for you to say a word about it." Then he kissed Molly and told
+her not to forget the rose, and then he let her go.
+
+"Another of your little tricks, Miss Deane, or else I'm vastly
+mistaken," said Mr. Piper to himself. "This letter has been cut open
+with a pair of scissors. The governor never cut open a letter with a
+pair of scissors in his life. Funny, very."
+
+Pod's watch came to an end in about an hour. He was summoned into the
+room, and, much to his surprise, found his master dressed and sitting
+in his easy-chair. How gaunt and hollow-eyed he looked! What a wreck
+of his former self! How loosely his clothes hung about him! Tears came
+into Pod's eyes as he looked at him. All Kelvin's sternness and
+arbitrary ways were forgotten in pity for the plight in which he saw
+him now. Dr. Whitaker, with his arms folded on the table, was
+regarding him attentively.
+
+"Piper," said Mr. Kelvin, "I want you to let Dr. Whitaker out, and you
+must contrive it so that my mother does not see him."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"After that, you will come and help me to crawl downstairs as far as
+my mother's sitting-room."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Dr. Whitaker rose and took his hat. "Beg pardon, sir," said Pod to his
+master, "but here's a letter which Molly the house-maid gave me just
+now. She found it in Miss Deane's room while sweeping behind the
+dressing-table. As the letter is addressed to you, I thought I had
+better let you have it."
+
+Kelvin took the letter with hands that trembled a little, and looked
+first of all at the direction, and then at the mode in which the
+letter had been opened. Dr. Whitaker came forward to shake hands.
+"Don't go for a minute or two," said Kelvin. "There is something else
+I want to say to you."
+
+Dr. Whitaker sat down again, and Kelvin drew out the letter and
+glanced first of all at the signature. He started when he saw the
+name, and then he ran his eye quickly over the contents; last of all
+he read the letter through, slowly and carefully.
+
+"This is dated nearly a month ago," he said, "and yet I have never
+seen it till to-day. It has been kept purposely from me. By what a web
+of treachery and deceit am I enmeshed! It is horrible--horrible!" He
+sat for a little while in silence, holding the letter in his hand, his
+eyes bent sadly on the floor. No one spoke.
+
+"Whitaker," he said at last, turning abruptly on the doctor, "I want
+to go to Stammars."
+
+"To Stammars! When?"
+
+"Now--at once."
+
+"Impossible! I would not answer for the consequences of such a mad
+act."
+
+"Whatever the consequences may be, I must go, and at once. Piper, run
+to the 'King's Head,' and order a brougham to be here in ten minutes
+from now." Pod was off like a shot.
+
+"Kelvin, you must be crazy to do this thing."
+
+"Perhaps so, my friend, but still, I shall do it. During the last
+half-hour it seems as if the scales had fallen from my eyes. I seem
+now to see that woman as she really is--not as I have always believed
+her to be. I sent her to Stammars this morning with a message of the
+utmost importance. How will she deliver that message? Not as I asked
+her to deliver it, but----What a fool I must have been to send her on
+such an errand! I tell you, Whitaker, that I must go after her: that
+there is not a minute to lose."
+
+"If you must go, you must, but in that case I shall go with you."
+
+And in that way the matter was settled. Dr. Whitaker, finding that
+further opposition was useless, yielded the point, but was determined
+not to lose sight of Kelvin till he had seen him safely back in his
+own room. A quarter of an hour later the brougham came round. Kelvin
+managed to crawl downstairs, a step at a time, supported on each side
+by Whitaker and Pod. Mrs. Kelvin, being still busy with her pudding in
+the back part of the house, knew nothing of all this. Matthew sent her
+a message by Mr. Bray, his chief clerk; but it was not to be given to
+her till after the brougham had started.
+
+Then Pod climbed on to the box beside the driver, and away they went.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+VAN DUREN IN WALES.
+
+
+In the dusk of a sweet May evening a man slipped quietly out of the
+back door of the "Ring of Bells" tavern--a low public-house,
+frequented chiefly by fishermen and labourers, in the village of
+Marhyddoc, and shunning the more frequented neighbourhoods, found
+himself presently in a pretty winding lane that seemed to lead to
+nowhere in particular, and was quite given over to solitude. Here the
+man sat down for a while on the trunk of a fallen tree. The house had
+become intolerable to him: he could stay in it no longer; so he had
+strolled out to this quiet nook, there to wait till dusk had deepened
+into dark. Not without difficulty would even Jonas Pringle have
+recognized in this man Max Van Duren. Hands and face had been stained
+till they were the colour of a gipsy's, and his hair had been dyed jet
+black. He had only been twelve hours in Marhyddoc, but he had already
+found out a great deal that it behoved him to know. Fortunately for
+Van Duren, the landlord of the "Ring of Bells" spoke English fluently,
+and was very fond of airing his accomplishment, besides being
+naturally of a garrulous turn of mind. As a consequence, Van Duren had
+very soon extracted from him all that he had to tell--more than enough
+to confirm his worst fears.
+
+In the portraits which the landlord drew of two of the strangers who
+were staying at the big hotel on the cliff, he had no difficulty in
+recognizing Byrne and Miriam. He could no longer doubt that he had
+been duped by these two; that they had only hired his rooms, and
+wormed themselves into his confidence, in order to extract from him a
+secret which, up to that time, he could have sworn would never be
+whispered by him in mortal ears. And they had succeeded but too well.
+What a weak fool he had been! How easily that girl had twined him
+round her finger! How well he could see the sneer that would curve her
+beautiful lips when she spoke of him to her father! He hated her now
+with as much intensity as he had loved her before. Had Miriam Byrne
+come walking down that lane in the May twilight--had she and Max Van
+Duren met face to face with no third person by, the chances that her
+father would ever have seen his daughter alive again would have been
+very problematical indeed.
+
+But with Byrne and his daughter at the hotel was another individual,
+according to the landlord's account--an elderly gentleman, whom Van
+Duren altogether failed to recognize. Not that he was greatly troubled
+thereby: he had far more important matters to occupy his thoughts.
+
+For the landlord had other news--news that he was in no wise loth to
+impart, that for Van Duren was full of intense significance. He knew
+all about the divers and their strange apparatus and dresses. He told
+his hearer how, in the first place, someone had come down to
+Marhyddoc, and, after some difficulty, had found out the exact spot
+where the schooner _Albatross_ had foundered twenty years before. The
+place was then marked with a buoy, and soon after that the divers had
+come. Everybody in the village had asked themselves what there was in
+the cargo of the _Albatross_ that could be worth the trouble and expense
+of recovery after having been for twenty years at the bottom of the
+sea: and for a long time the question asked by everybody had remained
+unanswered. But at last it had oozed out, nobody seemed to know
+exactly how, that the particular object for which the divers were
+instructed to search was a small oaken box, clamped with silver. The
+box was said by some to contain certain documents and title-deeds of
+immense value, for lack of which the rightful heir to a great property
+had been kept out of his own for years. Others knew for a fact that
+the box was full of sovereigns which were being sent out to America
+to buy slaves with. Others there were who averred that inside the
+silver-clamped box would be found the evidence of a terrible murder
+that had remained undetected all this long time.
+
+"But of course they have not succeeded in finding the box?" Van Duren
+had said to the landlord, burning with a terrible anxiety to know the
+worst.
+
+"But they have. Yes, indeed," said the man with a chuckle. Van Duren,
+on hearing this, got up abruptly and went to the window. His face was
+ghastly; his mouth twitched nervously in a way that he could not
+control; his staring eyes saw nothing that was before them. "The
+divers had been down three times without success," continued the man.
+"They went down again very early this morning, and in less than an
+hour they found the box. I saw it with my own eyes when they came
+ashore:--a small oak box, clamped at the corners, and with two letters
+on the lid."
+
+Van Duren tried to speak, but he was like a man under the influence of
+a nightmare. The words died away in his parched-up throat. Happily the
+landlord took his listener's silence as a sign that his narrative was
+interesting, and went on without noticing him.
+
+"When the box was brought ashore it was given into the custody of John
+Williams, the policeman. Yes, indeed. John took it up to the hotel on
+the cliff where the gentlemen are staying, and there he waited with
+the box on his knees till Mr. Davies of St. Owens, who is a
+magistrate, came, three hours later, and then they all went into a
+room together, the divers and the gentlemen, and the door was locked,
+and there the box was opened."
+
+Van Duren would have liked to say, "And what did they find in the box
+when they opened it?" but not for the life of him could he have put
+the question. He knew quite well--no one better--what would be found
+in the box; but none the less did he hunger to hear every detail from
+the landlord's lips. However, he had only to wait and say nothing; his
+host's natural garrulity would do the rest.
+
+"Whether they found title-deeds in the box, or whether they found
+sovereigns, or whether they found anything at all is more than I can
+exactly say. John Williams, the policeman, for all he's my own
+cousin's nephew, and I treated him to three glasses of brandy after he
+came down from the hotel, only shook his head and wouldn't say a word,
+though he knew very well that I wouldn't have whispered it to a soul.
+No, indeed. But John Williams will have no more of my brandy without
+paying for it like any other man."
+
+Such was the story told Max Van Duren in the little Welsh inn. His
+worst fears were realized. The sea had given up its secret. Everything
+was known. He was stunned by the blow, and seemed for the time being
+to have lost all power of cool thought, all possibility of looking his
+position steadily in the face and of deciding as to what steps it
+behoved him to take next.
+
+But even through the midst of the vague, unreasoning terror that now
+possessed him, through the ghastly dread that now held him as with a
+hand of iron, he could not help wondering by what means, through what
+special agencies, this unlooked for and terrible result had been
+brought about. Who forged the first link of evidence tending to
+implicate him in a crime committed so long ago that at times it almost
+seemed as if no such deed had ever really been done--as if it were
+nothing more than a distempered dream of his own imagining? What first
+induced Byrne and Miriam to come to his house and worm themselves into
+his confidence on purpose to elicit from him the particulars of the
+shipwreck of the _Albatross?_ How did Byrne first come to connect him,
+Max Van Duren, with the murder of Paul Stilling? And, which was more
+mysterious still, whence and how did he derive the knowledge which
+enabled him to connect the story of the shipwreck with that crime?
+Never once during all the intervening years had Van Duren troubled
+himself to make any inquiry after Ambrose Murray. He had never cared
+to ascertain whether the man he had so foully wronged were alive or
+dead, whether he had been pardoned and set at liberty, or whether he
+was still shut up in his living tomb. But now, to-day, it did occur to
+him to ask himself whether it was in anyway possible that it was the
+hand of Ambrose Murray which had linked together the fatal chain of
+evidence--a chain that would prove strong enough to hang him unless he
+took particular care what he was about. But he scouted the idea almost
+as soon as it came to him. If Ambrose Murray were still alive, it was
+merely as a harmless lunatic--as a melancholy madman whom one might
+perhaps afford to pity, but could certainly have no cause to fear.
+
+But it was certainly not the hand of a harmless lunatic that was at
+the bottom of this plot to bring his long-hidden guilt home to him. It
+was the hand, rather, of a man as strong, cunning, and unscrupulous as
+himself--a hand that, so far, had won every point of the game against
+him--a hand that would succeed in tying a halter firmly round his
+neck, unless--unless what? he asked himself, with a mixture of terror
+and despair. He did not know who his enemy was, where to look for him,
+or how best to confront him. He had got a sort of vague notion in his
+mind that Byrne was merely the puppet of a firmer will and a stronger
+hand; that his real enemy was lurking out of sight in the background,
+weaving round him, thread by thread, the meshes of a net from which in
+the end he would find it impossible to escape.
+
+Not till dusk had fairly set in did Van Duren venture outside the inn
+door. He seemed to have lost his appetite entirely; but he kept up his
+strength, and in some small way his courage also, by repeated doses of
+the inn's fiery spirits. When, at last, he did leave the house, he had
+no settled intention in doing so. The place for hours had been full of
+noisy, half-drunken company, all of whom, as he could not help hearing
+through the thin lath-and-plaster wall that divided his room from the
+tap-room, were loudly discussing some important topic in their native
+Welsh. That topic, as the landlord took care to inform him more than
+once, was neither more nor less than the finding of the long-sought-for
+box by the divers. At last he felt that he must either leave the house
+or go mad. So he wandered out into a quiet lane at the back of the
+village, and there sat down on the trunk of a felled tree.
+
+What should he do? What ought his next step to be? His mind was all in
+amaze of doubt and terror and perplexity. Should he hurry off to
+London by the first train, secure all his available property, shut up
+his house in Spur Alley, and drop quietly out of sight where no
+possible search for him could be made? Or should he stay and brave out
+everything?
+
+Presently he began to feel very lonely among the dim shadows of the
+silent lane. He fancied that he heard voices whispering, and the faint
+rustle of garments, as if someone were watching him stealthily through
+the foliage at his back. He looked round with a shudder, and then he
+rose and walked swiftly forward. In a little while the lane took him
+to a rising ground that overlooked the village and the sea. On his
+right, and no great distance away, rose the cliff on the summit of
+which was built the hotel where Byrne and Miriam were staying. Several
+of the windows were lighted up. Which were the windows of Miriam's
+room, he wondered? In the midst of all his doubts and fears for his
+own safety, he could not help thinking about the girl who had played
+such a short but important part in the strange drama of his life. He
+had no bitterer thought, even at this bitter hour, than the knowledge
+that this girl, whom he had learnt to love so passionately, had not
+only never cared for him, but had duped him from the very first; that
+all her smiles and looks and words had been utterly false; that it was
+her hand, and hers alone, that had struck him down; that but for
+her no harm could have happened to him; that but for her, the
+silver-clamped box, with its damning evidence, would have rested till
+doomsday at the bottom of the sea.
+
+Without knowing or caring whither it might lead him, he had
+unconsciously taken a footpath which brought him presently to a little
+side wicket that opened into the grounds of the hotel. From the wicket
+a winding path led upward through thick clumps of evergreens and
+brushwood to the house. There was for him, in his present mood, a sort
+of fascination, a grim satisfaction, in the thought of being so near
+these cunning enemies of his, who seemed so thoroughly bent on hunting
+him down, while all the time they believed him to be hundreds of miles
+away. He had little or no sense of present fear upon him. His dread
+lay in the unknown future. The next blow that would be struck at him
+would not be struck here, but in London. So long as these people
+stayed in Wales, he was safe. They had done their worst for a little
+time to come.
+
+He passed through the wicket, but as soon as he found himself in the
+grounds of the hotel, he diverged from the pathway on to the grass,
+where his footsteps were inaudible, and where the evergreens would
+shelter him from the view of any passer-by. But perfect quiet reigned
+around; not a sign of life was anywhere visible. No portion of the
+hotel could be seen from where he was now, but he knew in which
+direction it lay; and without knowing or caring to think why he did
+so, he kept pressing slowly forward and upward, till at length he
+emerged from the shrubbery into a more open part of the grounds, and
+therein the starlight he could see the big white building straight
+before him.
+
+On one side, the hotel was built close up to the edge of the cliff,
+which here sloped down to the beach, and the base of which was washed
+by every tide. Huge boulders and jagged pieces of rock protruded here
+and there from the face of the cliff; but these rugged features were
+softened and harmonized by the numerous tufts of broom and dwarf
+brushwood that grew among and around them, and by the soft, green
+mosses and many-coloured lichens that nestled between them, and crept
+lovingly over them, and made them beautiful with a beauty that was
+other than their own. Up the face of this cliff a goat or a chamois
+might probably have climbed by leaping from rock to rock, or from one
+clump of brushwood to another; but no human foot had ever been known
+to venture up or down it.
+
+It was now dark, and these more minute features of the scene were
+invisible to Max Van Duren. All that he could discern was, that the
+hotel was built close to the edge of the cliff, at the bottom of which
+cliff the tide was now washing heavily in with the noise of low
+thunder.
+
+Having satisfied himself that there was no one about, Van Duren left
+the shelter of the shrubbery through which he had hitherto crept, and
+swiftly crossing the intervening open space, he sought the shelter of
+another fringe of shrubbery which grew between the gradually rising
+edge of the cliff and the carriage-drive that led up to the main
+entrance of the hotel. Keeping well within the shade of the
+evergreens, and climbing higher step by step, a few minutes more
+brought him close up to one corner of the house. It was now requisite
+to move with extreme caution. Suddenly he heard the sound of voices,
+and two or three loud goodnights. Some one was evidently leaving the
+hotel, and would pass close by him in a few moments. It would never do
+to be found there; so he plunged deeper into the shrubbery, and
+presently found himself close to one of the lighted windows that he
+had seen from the valley below. He hardly knew whether to advance or
+retire. The question was. Who were the occupants of the room? If
+strangers only, he would go quietly back by the way he had come; but
+if there was a chance of seeing Miriam--well, to see her again, he was
+prepared to risk much. He hated her, or fancied that he did, and yet
+there was still a strange fascination for him in the thought that he
+was close to her, that he was only separated from her by the thickness
+of a wall. Had he met her there alone in the shrubbery, he would have
+strangled her, but after that he would have kissed her and wept over
+her, and would probably have ended all by jumping over the cliff.
+
+He crept close up to the window and peered through the Venetians.
+Fortunately for his purpose, they were not very closely drawn, and he
+could see into the room without difficulty. It was a large room, and
+was lighted by another window opposite to that through which Van Duren
+was now looking. This second window--a French one, by the way--was
+wide open, for the evening was somewhat sultry. Beyond it was
+small balcony, and then the cliff, and, a hundred feet below, the
+white-lipped waves. Round a table in the middle of the room, four
+gentlemen were seated in earnest conversation. Three of them Van Duren
+had never seen before, but in the fourth he had no difficulty in
+recognizing his quondam lodger, Mr. Peter Byrne. It is true that the
+white locks, the hump, and the general air of feebleness and
+decrepitude had all disappeared; but Byrne's strongly-marked features
+could not be mistaken for those of any other man. But hardly had Van
+Duren time to notice all this, before his eyes were drawn to and
+concentrated on an object that was standing in the middle of the table.
+He shuddered from head to foot, and turned suddenly sick as he looked.
+He had recognized the object in a moment. It was the silver-clamped box
+which the divers had brought up from the bottom of the sea: it was the
+box for the sake of which Paul Stilling had been stabbed in his sleep.
+
+Was the box full or empty? The lid was open, but Van Duren could not
+see inside. Anyhow, there was the box. What a host of terrible
+memories the sight of it called up in his mind! Trifling
+circumstances, all but forgotten, and that he had thrust persistently
+from his memory years ago, came back now with the vivid clearness of a
+photograph. Stilling's drunken laugh, the peculiar nervous twitching
+of his left eye, the broken nail on one of his fingers, the very patch
+on one of his boots, quizzically commented on by him as he was pulling
+on his slippers in front of the fire--how they all came back to Van
+Duren! As he stood there, it seemed to him but a few yesterdays,
+instead of twenty long years, since----
+
+He drew out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead, and shut out the
+sight for a moment. When he looked again, Miriam was there. She was
+bending over the back of her father's chair and saying something in
+his ear. She had never looked sweeter, in Van Duren's eyes, than she
+looked to-night, with her soft flowing grenadine dress, and her bows
+of ribbon here and there, and a tea-rose in her hair.
+
+He would have given all he had in the world, everything save life
+itself, to have called this girl his own and have won one smile of
+real love from her beautiful lips. Presently she lifted up a face that
+was radiant with smiles, then she pinched her father's ear playfully,
+and turned and left the room. And that was the last time that Max Van
+Duren ever set eyes on Miriam Byrne.
+
+A few minutes later the four gentlemen rose and left the room. They
+left the box behind them, still standing wide open in the middle of
+the table. From this Van Duren at once concluded that it must have
+been emptied of its contents. Had it not, they would hardly have left
+it there unguarded. Then all at once the thought struck Van Duren that
+if he could only obtain possession of the box, if he could only steal
+it away unknown to anyone, then would his enemies be deprived of the
+strongest link in their evidence against him--perhaps the only link of
+any value in a court of justice. The box could undoubtedly be sworn to
+as being that which had at one time belonged to Paul Stilling; but
+could the contents of the box, after twenty years' immersion in the
+sea, be sworn to with equal certainty? To him that seemed very
+doubtful indeed. In any case the chain of evidence against him would
+certainly be weakened in a material degree should the box not be
+producible by the prosecution. It would be worth risking much to
+obtain it. There it was within a few yards of him, in an empty room;
+why should he not take possession of it again, as he had done once
+before, long years ago? Not a sound could anywhere be heard save the
+low thunder of the incoming tide. But how was it possible for him to
+get into the room, unseen and unheard? He tried the sash of the window
+against which he was standing. Fortunately for his purpose, it proved
+to be unfastened. All that he had to do was to push up the sash
+sufficiently high, climb over the low windowsill, thrust aside the
+Venetians, and the box would be within reach of his hand. Five minutes
+would suffice for everything. If only he could make sure that no one
+would enter the room for five short minutes! But of that he could by
+no means make sure; he must run the risk of it. But even while these
+thoughts were in his mind, his hands had been busy with the window,
+and almost before he knew what had happened, he found that he had
+pushed up the sash high enough to admit of his ingress to the room.
+
+A minute later, and his hand was on the box. Even at such a moment as
+that it thrilled him strangely to touch it. He glanced into it: it was
+empty, as he had felt sure that it would be. Then he shut down the
+lid, and taking up the box, he placed it under his arm and turned to
+go. But at this instant the door was quickly opened, and some one came
+into the room. Van Duren turned instinctively, and as his eyes met
+those of the man who had entered, he gave utterance to a low cry of
+terror and surprise.
+
+There before him stood the man whom he had so terribly wronged--whom
+he had consigned without remorse to a living tomb--who would have
+become the hangman's prey had not his brain been too weak to bear the
+burden of his doom. This man, then, it was--who he had fondly believed
+in his heart must have died long ago--this man it was, who, like a
+sleuth hound, was now on his track, determined to hunt him down
+without mercy and without ruth. Ambrose Murray was but a wreck of his
+former self, but Max Van Duren knew him again the moment his eyes fell
+on him.
+
+Murray, in his turn, did not fail to recognise Van Duren. "Wretch!
+what do you here?" he exclaimed, as he advanced into the room. His
+right hand was buried in the breast of his frock-coat--an habitual
+action with him; but Van Duren took it at once that his fingers were
+grasping some hidden weapon, and as Murray advanced he fell back step
+by step.
+
+He did not answer Murray's question. He seemed, indeed, as though he
+had not heard it. His face worked with emotion. Surprise, and terror,
+and anger seemed to glare out of his eyes in turn; but still he did
+not speak.
+
+On first entering the room Murray had not missed the box; but now his
+eyes travelled from Van Duren to the table, and then back again, and
+he understood everything.
+
+"Villain! bloodthirsty villain!" he cried. "Would you steal that box a
+second time?" and with that he took two or three rapid strides towards
+Van Duren.
+
+But the other, still without answering, and still facing his enemy,
+fell quickly back. Murray was now between him and the window by which
+he had entered; but he seemed to remember that there was another
+window behind him, and it was towards this that he was now making his
+way. He still evidently suspected that Murray's hand held a pistol,
+and that he might be fired at any moment.
+
+The latter continued to advance. "Max Jacoby, I have you at last, and
+this time you shall not escape me!" he exclaimed, and therewith he
+strode swiftly to the bell-rope and pulled it violently.
+
+But at the first sound of the bell, Van Duren turned quickly and made
+for the open French window. Before Murray had time to utter a single
+word of warning, he was on the balcony. Next moment his hand grasped
+the railing, and with a loud, mocking laugh he vaulted over and
+disappeared in the darkness below. He had either not known, or had
+forgotten, that the balcony was built immediately over the edge of the
+cliff.
+
+A few moments later Peter Byrne and two or three others hurried into
+the room in response to the bell's imperative summons. Ambrose Murray
+was lying senseless on the floor, and the silver-clamped box was no
+longer there.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+THE MESSAGE TO STAMMARS.
+
+
+It was on the forenoon of a certain Saturday in May that Olive Deane
+found herself jogging slowly along the road that leads from Pembridge
+to Stammars. The morning was sunny and the road pleasant, but Olive
+had no eyes for anything: her own tortuous thoughts occupied her
+fully. Should she break as gently as possible the news she had to
+tell, and then give Eleanor the letter after having thus paved the
+way? Should she put the letter into her hand without a word, and
+simply wait to be questioned as to anything further that she might be
+supposed to know? Or--and this was the course that approved itself
+more fully to her--should she say nothing about the letter, but tell
+the news her own way, with sting and venom, and before whatever
+audience chance might give her an opportunity of assembling to hear
+it? Over and over in her mind she kept revolving these different
+courses, as the ramshackle old fly in which she was seated jolted and
+creaked its way slowly along the quiet country roads.
+
+Lady Dudgeon, released at length from further attendance on her sick
+sister, was panting to get back to London for the remainder of the
+season. Sir Thomas, accompanied by his faithful Gerald, had come down
+on the Friday to fetch her ladyship. They were to stay at Stammars
+over the week end, but on the Monday morning the whole family would go
+up to town.
+
+In due course. Miss Deane arrived at Stammars, only to find that Lady
+Dudgeon, accompanied by Miss Lloyd, had gone shopping to Pembridge,
+and that she must have passed them somewhere on the road. They would,
+however, so she was assured, be back in time for luncheon, so she made
+up her mind to await their return. Sir Thomas and Mr. Pomeroy were
+somewhere about, so the servant told her; but them, at present, she
+did not want to see. The young ladies, Sophy and Carry, had gone with
+their mamma, so that Miss Deane was left perforce to the evil company
+of her own thoughts. "Miss Lloyd, indeed!" muttered Olive, when the
+servant had left the room. "This is the last day that she will have a
+right to call herself by that name. What will her name be to-morrow?
+Should her ladyship have occasion to go shopping to-morrow, will she
+take this nameless pauper with her in her carriage? Not if Lady
+Dudgeon is the woman I take her to be."
+
+After all, she had not long to wait--but little over an hour--before
+she saw the Dudgeon equipage rolling solemnly up the main avenue of
+the park. Her colourless cheeks flushed while she looked. Her heart
+beat painfully. The moment so long looked forward to was close at
+hand.
+
+She was still undecided as to the precise mode in which her
+communication should be made to Eleanor. She found it impossible to
+make up her mind. Circumstances at the last moment would probably
+decide for her.
+
+From the place where she was standing she could see the entire length
+of the avenue. She could see the two fat greys and the fat coachman,
+as they came every moment, but not yet could she see who was in the
+carriage behind--the carriage respecting which her ladyship had spoken
+in such disparaging terms to her husband, but which was still deemed
+good enough for country wear. Presently she saw Sir Thomas and Mr.
+Pomeroy emerge from the shrubbery and go to meet the carriage. Then it
+stopped, and Lady Dudgeon and Miss Lloyd alighted, and all four walked
+slowly towards the house. Gerald and Eleanor lingered a little behind
+the baronet and his wife, and to Olive's jaundiced eyes they seemed to
+be deep in earnest and loving conversation. In fancy she heard
+Pomeroy's low and tender tones and Eleanor's half-breathed replies.
+She set her teeth, and her lips tightened as she looked. "Before they
+are two hours older," she murmured under her breath, "he shall know
+that she is a beggar, and she shall know that her hero is nothing
+better than a vulgar adventurer!" And in the heat of her passion she
+took Matthew Kelvin's letter out of her pocket and tore it in two.
+"What has to be told I will tell in my own way. I have been a fool to
+hesitate so long."
+
+But Olive was altogether mistaken in imagining that Pomeroy and Miss
+Lloyd were whispering love's sweet nothings to each other as they
+walked across the park. Gerald was merely giving, in animated terms, a
+description of the last new opera, which he had been to see a few
+nights previously. Eleanor hungered, but hungered in vain, for one
+tone of affection, for one whispered word of love. He knew that she
+was going away--going to leave Stammars, probably for ever--and yet he
+made no sign. She had long ago forgiven the deception that he had
+practised on her; he could hardly help seeing that she had forgiven
+him; and yet he still maintained the reserved and impassive demeanour
+that had marked him from the day of his confession in the library.
+Perhaps, after all, his love for her had been nothing more than a
+passing fancy. If such were indeed the case, if he felt that he had
+been mistaken, if his affection for her was not of a texture
+sufficiently strong to stand the wear and tear of a lifetime, then he
+was right to draw back while there was yet time to do so. His doing so
+proved one thing: that although, in the first instance, he had sought
+her for her wealth, and although his confession had led her to believe
+that he now loved her purely for herself, yet when he discovered that
+he had over-rated the strength of his feelings, he had retired
+honourably from the field, instead of staying to win her, as he might
+so easily have done, and with her that money which had first tempted
+him to follow her. To know this was only a poor sort of consolation,
+but it was better than none. How strange it seemed to her that she
+should have given her heart away to this man, given it beyond all
+power of recall, and yet that he should have nothing to give her in
+return! Was the romance of her life to have this poor and ignoble
+ending? It seemed so, indeed, just now. She only knew that, despite
+all the arguments urged by her pride, her love was still his as
+thoroughly as ever it had been. He was chatting to her now, as they
+walked up the avenue together, as any ordinary acquaintance might have
+done, of the new opera and the new prima donna, and yet how happy she
+felt to be walking by his side, how she had thrilled from head to foot
+when she first caught sight of him standing there with Sir Thomas!
+Yes, whether he loved her, or whether he hated her--her heart was
+still his beyond all possibility of recall.
+
+If Eleanor had but known how much it cost Gerald to maintain this cold
+and reserved demeanour towards her! If she had but known how he longed
+to clasp her to his heart, and whisper in her ear how fondly he loved
+her! He often felt that not much longer would his tongue keep silence;
+that some moment, perhaps when he himself least intended it, the
+pent-up words would burst from his lips, his arms would stretch
+themselves forth and draw her to him, and in a few brief moments
+everything would be told. The task he had imposed on himself was fast
+becoming unbearable--would have become altogether unbearable, but that
+happily there seemed at last a prospect of its coming to a speedy end.
+He had had a letter from Marhyddoc, in which Ambrose Murray held out
+strong hopes of his search being brought to a successful issue. Should
+such really prove to be the case, then would Murray's first task be,
+with the proofs of his innocence in his hands, to seek the daughter
+whom he had hitherto refused to claim. Then would the necessity for
+this odious concealment come to an end; then would everything be told
+to Eleanor. Therefore did Gerald school himself to keep silence for a
+little while longer, hoping and believing that the future would
+compensate for everything.
+
+Miss Deane's eager eyes watched the party of four come slowly up the
+avenue, and saw them at length ascend the steps and enter the house.
+Inside the hall Sir Thomas and Pomeroy went off together to the
+library, while Eleanor accompanied Lady Dudgeon to her sitting-room.
+Five minutes later a servant came to tell Olive that her ladyship
+would see her. The moment so intensely longed for had come at last.
+Olive's pale face grew a shade paler as she followed the servant along
+the passage.
+
+Lady Dudgeon was seated at her davenport as usual. Miss Lloyd was
+sitting close by, finishing a sketch in water-colours. "Good morning.
+Miss Deane; I am pleased to see you. I hope Mr. Kelvin is no worse,"
+said her ladyship, offering Olive two frigid fingers.
+
+"Mr. Kelvin is no worse, madam, than he has been all along. He is
+still very ill--too ill to leave his room; and having something of
+importance to communicate, and being still too weak to write down the
+particulars, he has deputed me to come in his stead."
+
+"Something of importance to communicate to me or to Sir Thomas?" asked
+her ladyship. Eleanor rose and was about to leave the room.
+
+"My errand is to Miss Lloyd. It concerns her more nearly than anyone
+else."
+
+"Eleanor, my love, had you not better take Miss Deane to your own
+room?"
+
+Eleanor flushed a little. In her heart she had never liked Olive. She
+had always had a vague distrust and dread of her. How such a feeling
+had originated she could not have told: none the less it was there. "I
+have no secrets from you, Lady Dudgeon," said Eleanor. "Whatever Miss
+Deane may have to communicate can just as well be told here as
+elsewhere."
+
+"Are you sure that you would not prefer to see her alone?"
+
+"Quite sure."
+
+"Then Miss Deane may as well be seated." And her ladyship dipped her
+pen in her inkstand, and made believe that she was about to go on with
+her correspondence.
+
+Miss Deane drew a chair quietly forward and sat down. Eleanor, looking
+distrustfully at her, caught a momentary glance out of her black eyes,
+so full of malignant triumph that her heart sank within her, and a
+presage of coming misfortune chilled her suddenly from head to foot.
+
+"When Mr. Jacob Lloyd died," began Olive in a low voice, ignoring
+Eleanor, and addressing her remarks directly to Lady Dudgeon, "he left
+behind him a large quantity of miscellaneous papers. Those papers were
+taken possession of by my cousin, Mr. Kelvin, whose intention it was
+to go through them, arrange them, and indorse them at his leisure.
+This process was interrupted by his sudden illness. During the last
+few days, however, feeling somewhat stronger, he has endeavoured to
+occupy himself with them for an hour or two now and then. Yesterday he
+came across a document in Mr. Lloyd's own writing of a very singular
+nature indeed."
+
+She paused for a moment, as if to gather breath. Then she went on,
+speaking more slowly and deliberately than before, so that each word
+might go home to her hearers, and with her eyes still fixed on Lady
+Dudgeon.
+
+"It is a document which would seem to prove conclusively that the
+young lady hitherto known as Miss Eleanor Lloyd was not the daughter
+of the late Mr. Jacob Lloyd--nor indeed any relative of his whatever,
+but simply the child of some unknown parents, adopted by Mr. Lloyd and
+his wife out of charity or compassion."
+
+Eleanor's face by this time was whiter than Olive's. She did not
+speak, but sat staring "with wide-open eyes, as in a picture," and
+with one hand grasping the back of a chair, as if to keep herself from
+falling.
+
+"Good gracious me! whatever is the woman talking about?" cried her
+ladyship, taking off her double eye-glass, as if to make sure that it
+was really Olive Deane who was sitting there.
+
+"Mr. Lloyd, as your ladyship may remember," resumed Olive, without
+heeding the interruption, "died very suddenly, and without making a
+will. This young lady,"--indicating Eleanor by a slight inclination of
+the head--"has, consequently, no claim whatever to a single sixpence
+of Mr. Lloyd's property. She is, in fact, neither more nor less than a
+pauper."
+
+At this word a little cry burst involuntarily from Eleanor. She ran to
+Lady Dudgeon, and sinking on one knee, buried her face in the elder
+lady's lap.
+
+"Miss Deane, you forget yourself!" said Lady Dudgeon, with severity.
+"You forget that Miss Lloyd is my guest."
+
+"I ask your ladyship's pardon if I have committed any offence. I was
+but making a simple statement of fact."
+
+"That has yet to be proved. But, in any case, the statement was most
+offensively made." Then she patted Eleanor's cheek affectionately.
+"Keep up your spirits, my dear. Don't get downhearted. There must be a
+mistake somewhere. Miss Deane's story sounds far too romantic to be
+true."
+
+"I believe your ladyship is sufficiently acquainted with Mr. Kelvin,"
+said Olive, not without a touch of sternness, "to be quite aware that
+he is not a man who would be likely to send me to Stammars on such an
+errand as this unless he were perfectly sure of the facts he had to go
+upon. Had there been any doubt in the matter, I should not have been
+here to-day."
+
+"Oh, Lady Dudgeon, it is not that I fear poverty!" cried Eleanor.
+"Don't think that. You know that I have never really valued the riches
+that were said to be mine."
+
+"That's true enough," murmured her ladyship.
+
+"It is the thought of having lost the dearest and kindest man that
+ever breathed that wrings my heart. I have lost--my father!"
+
+"Hush, my dear--hush! Even if it should turn out that you are not Mr.
+Lloyd's daughter in reality, you will always have the consolation of
+knowing that he loved you as such. Nothing can deprive you of that."
+Then turning to Olive, she added: "Since Mr. Kelvin has made this very
+clever discovery--which, mind you, as I said before, has yet got to be
+proved--he is, doubtless, clever enough to have found out the person
+to whom Mr. Lloyd's property really does belong?"
+
+"The heir-at-law is a certain Mr. Gerald Warburton, a nephew of Mr.
+Lloyd, but a person whom Mr. Kelvin has never seen."
+
+"But a person with whom he will at once place himself in
+communication?"
+
+"Undoubtedly, madam."
+
+"Miss Lloyd's interests in this matter must not be allowed to suffer.
+The case appears to be one that requires the most minute and strict
+investigation, and I shall at once place it in the hands of Mr.
+Barclay."
+
+Olive bowed.
+
+"Mr. Kelvin will no doubt either seek an interview with Miss Lloyd, or
+write her full particulars, as soon as he is strong enough to do so."
+
+"I decline to let Miss Lloyd be troubled in the affair. She is going
+up to town with me on Monday next. Mr. Kelvin had better communicate
+direct with Mr. Barclay."
+
+Again Olive bowed.
+
+"I will not fail to deliver your ladyship's message."
+
+"Perhaps, after all, it's quite as well that you did not marry Captain
+Dayrell," said Lady Dudgeon to Eleanor. "He would hardly have liked
+having to give up your dowry."
+
+Eleanor rose to her feet, and stood for a few moments with her hands
+pressed to her temples, as though striving to realize to herself the
+strange tidings that had just been told her. "I have no name--no
+home," she said, in a dreamy way, as if communing with herself. "I can
+work for my living; I am not afraid of that. But--but I have lost my
+father, and I have no name!"
+
+At this instant the door was opened, and in walked Sir Thomas.
+
+"Eh--what's this?--what's this?" he said, cheerfully. "Hope I'm not
+intruding, as what's-his-name says in the play. Rehearsing a little
+comedietta, or what?"
+
+"Run away to your room now, my dear," said Lady Dudgeon, as she rose
+and kissed Eleanor. "Every cloud has its silver lining. Keep up your
+spirits, and remember that you shall never want for a home as long as
+Sir Thomas and I are on this side of the grave."
+
+Eleanor did not wait for another word, but hurried out by the opposite
+door as Sir Thomas came forward. Then the baronet had to be told
+everything, and it is needless to say how great was his surprise,
+which he expressed in far more voluble terms than his wife had done.
+
+"If our Nelly ain't Jacob Lloyd's daughter, whose child is she?" he
+said, after he had had time to calm down a little. "Kelvin found that
+out, I suppose, at the same time that he found out the other."
+
+"At present he has no clue whatever to the parentage of Miss Lloyd."
+
+"Why, it's quite a romance! I must call and see Kelvin to-morrow, and
+talk it over with him myself."
+
+"To-morrow is Sunday, Sir Thomas," said her ladyship, severely. "And
+on Monday morning we start for town."
+
+"Ah, so we do," said the baronet, scratching his chin with an air of
+perplexity.
+
+"I have decided to place Eleanor's interests in the hands of Mr.
+Barclay, so that the less you interfere personally in the matter the
+better."
+
+"Quite right, my dear, quite right. But what's to become of the poor
+girl meanwhile?"
+
+"For the present she will stay with us, as usual. It is too early yet
+to legislate for her future."
+
+Her ladyship said this with an air that seemed to forbid further
+discussion. Her husband took the hint, and remarking that he had
+several important letters to write, he trotted back to the library.
+
+"I am going to have a cup of chocolate in my dressing-room," said her
+ladyship to Olive. "Unless you are in a hurry to get back home, you
+may come and keep me company."
+
+Olive was in no hurry to get back; in fact, she had something for her
+ladyship's private ear, and was glad of such an opportunity for
+telling it.
+
+Lady Dudgeon, on her side, was actuated by a very natural desire to
+elicit from Miss Deane some further particulars of the strange story
+which she had just heard. She felt sure that there must be several
+interesting details, which it might not be advisable that Eleanor
+should be made acquainted with, but which Miss Deane could have no
+object in keeping from her. It was certainly not her intention to
+cross-question Olive--she was above doing that--a delicate hint to
+Miss Deane that her ladyship was willing to listen to anything she
+might feel disposed to tell her, ought to be sufficient to elicit any
+details that might hitherto have been kept in the background.
+
+Notwithstanding the kind way in which she had spoken to Eleanor, Lady
+Dudgeon felt very considerably annoyed in her own mind at the thought
+that her pet protégée, whom she had taken everywhere and introduced to
+everybody, lauding her to the skies as everything that was good and
+beautiful, and who had, in a certain sense, as the presumed heiress of
+twenty thousand pounds, shed a reflected lustre on her chaperon,
+should turn out to be nobody knew whom, and without a sixpence to call
+her own. Nothing could have been more mortifying. She had liked the
+girl from a child, and would no doubt have continued to like her just
+as much had Jacob Lloyd died a bankrupt, and would probably have made
+a sort of humble companion of her, or would, in any case, have seen
+that she was properly provided for; but to have introduced the girl to
+all her fine friends and acquaintances on a footing of equality, and
+now to discover that she had no claim to the status so given her--that
+was indeed a bitter pill for her ladyship to swallow.
+
+She knew well--no one better--how censorious is that Society of which
+she herself formed a component atom; how one of the chief conditions
+of its existence is that it shall revenge itself without mercy on
+every _faux pas_ of its votaries in which they may be found out. She
+knew quite well the sort of remarks that people would make. They would
+say that she had wilfully allowed herself to become a party to a
+fraud. They would say that she had done her best to pass off a
+portionless girl as an heiress, and, in the eyes of Society, what
+crime could well be more heinous than that?
+
+It was very, very mortifying, and she could not help, in her secret
+heart, visiting upon Eleanor some portion of blame for what had
+happened. It seemed well-nigh incredible to her that the girl could
+have lived all these years in utter ignorance that she was not Jacob
+Lloyd's daughter. Of course, all these minor points would have to be
+inquired into and thoroughly sifted later on. Much bitterness was yet
+to come, but the foretaste she had of it already was very far from
+being to her liking.
+
+Not a shadow of all this was discernible in her ladyship's manner as
+Miss Deane followed her upstairs; but Olive had a poisoned arrow in
+her quiver of which Lady Dudgeon knew nothing.
+
+A cup of chocolate was brought for each of them, and Lady Dudgeon, as
+she sipped at hers, chatted away to her companion about Sophy and
+Carry, and what girls they were for wearing out their boots; about the
+late flower show; about Mrs. Diplock's last baby, and the state of Mr.
+Kelvin's health--while waiting for an opportunity to work the
+conversation round to the desired point. But Olive was in no mood for
+such man[oe]uvring. She had something to say, and she was determined
+to say it. A break in the flow of her ladyship's small-talk was caused
+by the intrusion of a servant to ask a question, and Olive seized the
+opportunity.
+
+"There is one circumstance that took place while I was at Stammars,"
+she began, "which I have sometimes thought since I ought to have
+mentioned to your ladyship at the time. To-day I regret more than ever
+that I omitted to do so."
+
+"To what circumstance do you allude, Miss Deane?"
+
+"Your ladyship must please to pardon the question, but did it never
+strike you, did you never notice, that there was some hidden
+understanding between Miss Lloyd and Mr. Pomeroy?"
+
+"Good gracious. Miss Deane, whatever do you mean?"
+
+Lady Dudgeon was surprised for the moment out of her assumed
+equability.
+
+"To put the case in plain language, and it will perhaps be best to do
+so," said Olive, "has your ladyship never had reason to suspect that
+Miss Lloyd and Mr. Pomeroy were engaged to each other?"
+
+"Impossible! such a thing is utterly impossible!" was Lady Dudgeon's
+emphatic reply. "I know Miss Lloyd too well to believe anything of the
+kind. For once, Miss Deane, your surmises have led you altogether
+astray."
+
+"Possibly so; I hope so," said Olive, resignedly.
+
+There was an awkward silence. Her ladyship fidgeted, but said nothing.
+Singular to say, she seemed far more put out by what Olive had just
+said to her than by the far more important disclosure that had been
+made to her half an hour previously.
+
+"You--you mentioned some circumstance," she said at last, not without
+a touch of irritation. She felt as though Olive were doing her a
+personal injury.
+
+"Yes; a little circumstance of which I was the accidental witness. But
+probably your ladyship will not think it worth while to listen to it."
+
+"Probably it is not worth listening to, but still there can be no harm
+in your telling me."
+
+"One evening, some two or three weeks before my cousin was taken
+ill," began Olive, "I was sitting in the bow-window of the back
+drawing-room. The curtains were partly drawn, and when Miss Lloyd came
+into the room she did not see me. She sat down at the piano and began
+to play: and as there was no third person present, I saw no reason for
+making my presence known. But after a time Mr. Pomeroy came in. He had
+just returned from a journey, and was evidently in search of Miss
+Lloyd. He hurried up to her, and, before I had time to say a word, he
+had folded her in his arms. Then he called her his darling, and kissed
+her several times."
+
+"How dreadful--how very dreadful!" exclaimed Lady Dudgeon, with a sort
+of terror.
+
+"And then----Miss Lloyd kissed him back."
+
+Lady Dudgeon could only put down her cup of chocolate and groan.
+
+In saying that Eleanor kissed Gerald back, Olive told a lie, a
+weakness that she was never guilty of unless she had some particular
+end to serve.
+
+"And do you really mean to affirm, Miss Deane, that you saw
+these--these shocking things with your own eyes?" Lady Dudgeon
+contrived to say at last.
+
+"Certainly; exactly as I have told your ladyship."
+
+It was indeed dreadful. She had been hoodwinked and bamboozled under
+her own roof, and by this girl for whom she had done and sacrificed so
+much. Her feelings had been outraged in their tenderest point. Eleanor
+Lloyd was deposed from her throne for ever. What could anyone do for a
+person who could so far forget what was due both to herself and
+others?
+
+Lady Dudgeon strove her hardest to hide from Olive the effect which
+her words had upon her. "Well, well, young people will be young people
+till the end of the chapter," she said at last, with a ghastly attempt
+at cheerfulness.
+
+"Mr. Pomeroy will now have an opportunity of proving the
+disinterestedness of his affection," said Olive, in her slow, incisive
+way. "He can now let the world see that it was not Miss Lloyd's money,
+but Miss Lloyd herself, that he fell in love with."
+
+"What a strange person you are, Miss Deane!" her ladyship could not
+help saying.
+
+Olive smiled coldly, and then rose to go.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+WINGED WORDS.
+
+
+It was not in the nature of things that Sir Thomas Dudgeon should long
+keep to himself the news which had just been told him. He was bursting
+to tell somebody, and as Gerald was to a certain extent one of the
+family, it seemed only right that Gerald should know all. So into the
+sympathetic ear of his secretary the whole story was volubly poured,
+with many a comment, and many an expression of sympathy for poor
+unfortunate Eleanor. "I feel as if I loved her better now than ever I
+did before," the baronet finished up by saying. "She shall never want
+for a home as long as I'm master at Stammars."
+
+"It has come at last, and I'm glad of it," said Gerald to himself,
+"and has thereby saved me the necessity of telling a very disagreeable
+story. I can't at all understand why Kelvin should have kept this
+knowledge to himself for so long a time. There seems to me something
+strangely underhand in his way of dealing with the affair. However,
+better late than never--better that she should hear it from him than
+from me. I must go and find her at once."
+
+Fortunately, Sir Thomas did not detain him long. The old gentleman was
+anxious to have an hour or two with Cozzard, and to go round the farm
+on Grey Dapple once again. He sighed to think that it would be his
+last opportunity for doing so before his return to that hateful
+London. On Monday morning they were all to go up to town, and then
+farewell to the dear delights of the country for at least two months
+to come.
+
+Gerald's puzzle was how to contrive an interview with Eleanor without
+the knowledge of Lady Dudgeon. As it happened, he was on pretty good
+terms with Tipper, the young person who, among her other duties, acted
+as maid to Miss Lloyd. Her he now contrived to capture, and putting
+half-a-crown into one of her hands, and a note into the other, he
+found no difficulty in inducing her to do his bidding. All he said in
+the note was--
+
+"Pray do me the favour of meeting me for five minutes in the
+conservatory as soon as possible."
+
+Ten minutes later Eleanor was there.
+
+A faint blush suffused her face as she came towards Gerald, but it was
+easy to see that she had been crying. She took Gerald's extended hand
+frankly, and then, before she knew how it happened, he had possession
+of the other one also.
+
+"I have heard everything," he said, "and I could not rest till I had
+seen you."
+
+She did not answer for a moment, but her eyes flushed with tears, and
+Gerald felt her hands tremble within his like two frightened birds.
+
+"It is a very strange story," she said, "and I feel at present that I
+cannot altogether realize it."
+
+"It is indeed a strange story--far too strange for Kelvin to lend
+himself to unless he had satisfied himself that it was true."
+
+"The hardest--the bitterest part is to discover that he whom I loved
+so dearly while he lived, and whose memory I have cherished so fondly
+since I lost him, was not my father--was nothing but my benefactor. It
+makes me feel as if there were no such thing as reality in the world,
+as if life itself were nothing more substantial than a dream." She
+sighed, and releasing her hands from Love's sweet custody, she went
+and sat down on a garden-chair, and Gerald seated himself close by
+her.
+
+"Nothing can change my love for him, or cause it to diminish by one
+iota," she said. "If he was not my father in reality, he acted a
+father's part by me, and he was my father in the sight of Heaven. God
+bless him! God bless him for ever!" she said passionately, and then
+she burst into sobs.
+
+Gerald thought it best to say nothing for a little while; but he took
+her hand and pressed it softly to his lips, and was not repulsed.
+
+In four or five minutes Eleanor had recovered her calmness. "You asked
+me to meet you here, Mr. Pomeroy," she said, "having something, I
+presume, that you wish to say to me, and here am I monopolising your
+time with my own selfish troubles. But you must forgive me this once,
+and I will not offend again."
+
+"You are right. I have something to say to you," said Gerald,
+earnestly. "Sir Thomas has told me everything. You are no longer the
+heiress people believed you to be. You are poor like myself. Pray
+pardon my frankness; but that very poverty it is that gives me courage
+to speak." He paused for a moment, and in the pause they both heard
+the plashing of a tiny fountain in the distance, and the crabbed voice
+of old Sanderson crooning some old-world ballad to himself as he bent
+over his work.
+
+"Several weeks ago, in a moment of forgetfulness," resumed Gerald, "I
+said certain words to you which, bearing in mind the reason that first
+brought me to Stammars, ought never to have been said by me. I
+confessed my fault, and you forgave me. Since that time, whatever my
+feelings may have been, I have so far schooled myself as not to offend
+again. Now the case is different. No one can say now that I seek you
+for your money. The reason which has kept me silent so long exists no
+longer. To-day--here--now--I can tell you how dearly I love you--how
+dearly I have loved you from the moment I first saw you! Here, to-day,
+I ask you whether you can give me back love for love, heart for
+heart--whether you can learn to care for me sufficiently to share your
+poverty with my poverty and to become my wife?"
+
+Again he stooped and kissed her hand, but she would not let him keep
+it. Her eyes were wet, her bosom heaving. Her colour came and went,
+then left her altogether. Twice she tried to speak, but could not.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Pomeroy," she said at last, "your words have come upon me so
+suddenly that indeed I know not how to answer them! Your pride would
+not let you seek me when you believed me to be rich: my pride will not
+let me give myself to you now that I am poor."
+
+"But supposing," said Gerald, "that I had come to you at eleven
+o'clock this morning--supposing I had come to you five minutes before
+Miss Deane delivered her message, and had asked you then to become my
+wife, what would your answer have been?"
+
+This was a question that seemed to require consideration.
+
+"When you asked me to meet you here, I thought you had something to
+tell me. I did not know that I was coming here to be catechised."
+
+"What I had to tell you I have told. To you, perhaps, it seems hardly
+worth the hearing. To me it means everything."
+
+She turned her eyes for a moment on his. Their glance seemed to say,
+"Pity my embarrassment, and don't say cruel things to me."
+
+"I must repeat my question," said Gerald. "If you were as rich to-day
+as you believed yourself to be yesterday, and I were what I am, would
+you in that case reject my suit as positively as you are doing now?"
+
+"I hardly know. Perhaps not," was the whispered answer.
+
+"Those words are enough. They tell me everything--they tell me all
+that I want to know!" cried Gerald. "If you would not have rejected me
+yesterday, you shall not reject me to-day!" and before Eleanor knew
+what had happened, she was folded tightly in his arms, and a rain of
+sweet kisses was falling on her forehead, her eyes, and her lips.
+
+It was fully half a minute before she could free herself. "You are the
+most impetuous person I ever met with," she said. "And see how you
+have crushed my collar, and disarranged my hair. It's--it's really
+disgraceful." And with that she turned of her own accord, and shyly
+hid her face on Gerald's shoulder.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+VAN DUREN'S FLIGHT.
+
+
+When Max Van Duren came to his senses he found himself in darkness and
+alone. A low damp wind was blowing in from the sea, sighing and
+groaning as if burdened with messages from the dying to loved ones at
+home. The tide had come to its height, and was now flowing out again,
+with deep muttered undertones that lent solemnity to the darkness. Van
+Duren's first thought was that he had died and was coming to life
+again in another world. Presently he felt something trickling slowly
+and softly down his face, and his finger, following the tiny stream to
+its source, found that it proceeded from a huge gash in the side of
+his head. Then in a flash the whole circumstances of the evening came
+back to him--the scene in the room at the hotel, his attempt to steal
+the casket, the sudden apparition of Ambrose Murray, the scene in the
+balcony, and his own wild leap out into the darkness. Whither had that
+leap landed him? He was now lying on his side, and he contrived to
+raise himself on one elbow and look round, but only to fall back next
+minute with a groan. He could see the sky and he could hear the sea,
+and he could make out that his body seemed to be lying among some
+large stones or pieces of rock, but beyond that he could tell nothing.
+He lay very quiet for a little while, thinking with all his might.
+What troubled him most of all--far more than his own present
+condition--was the doubt as to whether the vision of Ambrose Murray,
+which he had seen in the room was that of a real man or was merely a
+spectre. He was no believer in ghosts--or he told himself that he was
+not, despite his strange experience of the face in the glass--but for
+all that, he was inclined to doubt the bodily existence of Murray. "I
+was weak and ill and excited," he said to himself "I had eaten nothing
+for four-and-twenty hours. My nerves were in a state of tension that
+had become almost unbearable. I was just in a condition to see or
+imagine anything. I had been thinking of Murray, and I imagined that I
+saw him there bodily before me. If my brain had only been as cool then
+as it is now, I should never have seen him. With the daylight these
+silly fancies will vanish--but will it ever be daylight again?"
+
+Even while he was reasoning with himself, a thin streak of pallid grey
+was beginning to lighten in the east, though he saw it not for a
+little while. He was weak with long fasting and loss of blood. The
+calmness of despair had settled down upon him. He neither knew where
+he was nor cared greatly to know. Had anyone been there to whom he
+could have given himself up, he would have yielded himself willingly.
+"The game's played out and I have lost it," he muttered to himself
+again and again.
+
+But little by little the dawn broadened, and the stars paled one by
+one, and with the slow coming of the daylight there grew upon Van
+Duren a restless desire to know what it was that had really befallen
+him. His mood changed. The wish to live, to escape, began to grow
+again within him. But first to ascertain where he was and what had
+happened to him. Bit by bit, as the daylight deepened, and first one
+object and then another shaped itself faintly out of the darkness, he
+began to realize his position. There below him was the sea, there
+above shone the white buildings of the hotel--there, in fact, was the
+very balcony over which, in his fright, he had so madly leaped. He had
+come down on his head and had at once been rendered insensible, and
+his senseless body had begun to turn over and over in its rapid
+progress down the steep face of the cliff to the wild waves lapping
+at its feet, for at that time it was nearly high water. But about
+two-thirds of the way down his body had been caught by two projecting
+boulders, and there held, and there it was now. The box for which he
+had risked so much had been dashed from his arms in the fall, and,
+rolling down the cliff, had doubtless been carried far out to sea by
+the refluent tide.
+
+Van Duren did not know--he never knew--that the people of the hotel,
+urged on by Ambrose Murray after his return to consciousness, had come
+out with lanterns to search for him, but without much expectation of
+being able to find him. They knew well what a little chance of life
+anyone would have who leaped over that balcony, either by day or
+night. Had the tide been out, they would have gone down to the sands,
+in the full expectation of finding the stranger's body at the foot of
+the cliff. But the tide was up at the time, and, if not killed by the
+fall, Van Duren would undoubtedly be drowned and his body carried out
+to sea. It seemed useless to make any prolonged search, and they
+quickly took themselves and their lanterns indoors.
+
+As daylight advanced, the necessity of getting away from so
+dangerously prominent a position to some place of shelter and security
+impressed itself with increasing force on Van Duren's attention.
+Besides which, he was the prey to a burning thirst. When he began to
+move, it seemed as if every bone in his body were bruised--but move he
+must. There was now a broad stretch of brown sand at the foot of the
+cliff. If he could only reach that, he could manage to crawl along it,
+and so, in time, reach the inn where he had taken shelter yesterday.
+He was dreadfully weak and ill, but the effort must be made. He got
+down to the sands at last, but how he could not have told anyone--he
+hardly knew himself; and so, by about half-past six, he found himself
+once more in the shelter of the little inn.
+
+To the landlord, his statement that while walking in the dark he had
+slipped over the edge of the cliff seemed by no means improbable. Such
+slips had happened before to strangers, and in more cases than one
+with fatal results. So his head was washed and strapped up, his
+clothes well brushed, and some breakfast put before him. He tried to
+eat but could not; he could only drink. But while thus left alone for
+awhile he had to consider what his next step ought to be. It seemed by
+no means improbable that his enemies might come to the conclusion that
+he had lost his life through his mad leap from the balcony. In that
+case they would probably trouble themselves no further about him. But
+in so serious an affair it would not do to leave anything to chance.
+Now that their business at Marhyddoc was at an end, they would hasten
+back to London; and it was just as likely as not that one of the first
+things they would do would be to obtain a warrant for his arrest, and
+send some one to Spur Alley in search of him. In such a case his only
+chance of safety lay in being beforehand with his enemies. If he could
+only reach Spur Alley before them, he could possess himself of the
+money in the safe, and then, leaving Pringle in charge of the
+premises, seek some secure hiding place, and there await the progress
+of events. Even with a start of one or two days only, there were a
+good many things that he could turn into cash; and, if the worst came
+to the worst, why there was that other world across the Atlantic,
+where energy and talent never fail to attain their meed of reward. To
+catch the next train back to London was evidently the first step that
+it behoved him to take. An hour later he was at the station.
+
+As a slight measure of precaution, in case there should be any inquiry
+made after him at Marhyddoc, he took a ticket as far as Crewe only.
+Arrived at that station, it would be an easy matter for him to book to
+any point he liked. He had not been in the train more than five
+minutes before he fell into a deep sleep, and remembered nothing more
+till he was roused to give up his ticket at Crewe. He got out of the
+carriage giddy, dazed--staggering like a man the worse for drink. He
+had evidently-lost a great quantity of blood while lying-exposed on
+the cliff. A cup of coffee and cognac revived him in some degree. He
+was determined to get forward to London at all risks, and he now
+rebooked to Euston. He was fortunate enough this time to get a
+compartment to himself. The giddiness in his head still continued, and
+to this was now added a strange, surging noise in his ears. When
+travelling in former days he had often amused himself by fancying
+that, underlying the roar and rattle of the train, there was a kind of
+rude articulate voice, and by trying to find out the words that the
+voice said to him. To-day he heard this voice clearly enough, and
+clearly enough he understood the two words that it said to him--that
+it kept on repeating with a kind of rhythmic iteration, hundreds, nay,
+thousands of times--two words only without change or variation: "Stop,
+murderer!" At first it was a relief when the train halted for a minute
+or two at a station; for a minute or two the voice ceased to stab him
+with a repetition of its dull, passionless cry. But by-and-by, to his
+previous torment there was added this other, that the moment the train
+came to a standstill at a station he heard voices, at first far away
+in the distance, then gradually coming nearer, the voices of men in
+pursuit, eager, full of menace, always crying aloud the same two
+words, "Stop, murderer!" He knew quite well, and it was a fact that he
+kept repeating to himself as earnestly as though he were striving to
+impress it upon some second person, that these voices were altogether
+imaginary--a delusion of his own weakened brain. But that did not
+prevent the illusion from growing on him to such an extent that, after
+a time, he found himself getting quite excited lest the train should
+not start again before the pursuing voices, growing momentarily
+louder, should come yelling on to the platform itself, and proclaim
+his terrible secret to the world at large.
+
+What an everlasting journey it seemed to the poor, haunted wretch! At
+length Willesden was reached, and there Van Duren alighted. There was
+some sort of vague idea floating in his brain that at every London
+terminus there might already be some one on the look-out for him, and
+he would not venture into Euston. He chose rather to make his way on
+foot through the starlit lanes--for it was dark again by this time--as
+far as Cricklewood. There he found a return cab, and into that he got
+and was driven to town.
+
+In the streets of London, busy even at that late hour, there seemed
+shelter and protection for him. Here he was only one atom among four
+million others. What place could there be to hide in like London
+itself? He still heard the voices in the distance, but the roar and
+rattle of the streets partially drowned them. He discharged his cab at
+the corner of Eastcheap, and made his way towards Spur Alley on foot.
+
+It was necessary to use most extreme caution in approaching his house.
+For aught he knew to the contrary, there might have been some one set
+to watch it already. For fully half an hour he lingered about it,
+without daring to go too near to it. There was no light in it visible
+from the street, except in Bakewell's underground kitchen. Everything
+looked as quiet, dark, and secure as usual. Suddenly a happy thought
+struck him. He knew the tavern that Pringle was in the habit of
+frequenting. Perhaps Pringle was there now. It was worth while to go
+and see. From his clerk he could at once learn whether any particular
+inquiries had been made after him during his absence.
+
+Jonas Pringle, in the act of conveying a glass of hot rum-and-water to
+his mouth, had never been more startled in his life than he was when
+his eyes met those of Max Van Duren staring fixedly at him through the
+glass door of the tavern. He put down his glass untasted, and for a
+moment or two he thought that his master was dead, and that he had
+seen his ghost. But presently the face appeared again, and beckoned
+him to go out into the street. Then, when he had got outside under the
+gaslight, he saw that it was indeed his master, but terribly changed.
+Half a dozen eager questions satisfied Van Duren that no particular
+inquiry had been made after him, and that Pringle knew nothing. It was
+hardly likely, at so late an hour of the night, that anyone would come
+and ask for him. He might utilise the next few hours in making his
+preparations and getting clear away. So Pringle was sent first to open
+the door, and then, two minutes later. Van Duren slid in like a
+shadow, and heard, with a sigh of relief, the heavy door locked and
+bolted behind him. For a few hours to come there would be rest and
+safety.
+
+He said nothing to Pringle explanatory of his sudden appearance, or of
+the condition in which he was--unshaven, haggard, and with a great
+wound on one side of his head. He flung himself on to a couch, and
+told Pringle to lower the gas and order some coffee. He hardly seemed
+to hear his clerk's explanation that the Bakewells had gone out for a
+holiday, but that he, Pringle, would make him some coffee. Five
+minutes later, when Pringle came to ask him whether he would not like
+some toast with his coffee, he was fast asleep on the sofa.
+
+Pringle went back to his coffee-making, chuckling to himself, "What a
+fool he was to come in search of me, if he only knew! What a fool he
+is to let me make his coffee for him! Why shouldn't I put a dose of
+poison in it? That wouldn't be such a bad sort of revenge; and if I
+hadn't decided on something different, I might perhaps have adopted
+it. He looks half crazy to-night. Something queer has happened to him
+while he's been away. How did he come by that gash in his head? But
+all that matters nothing to me. It only matters to me that he's here,
+under this roof, in my power. Better, far better for him had he never
+set foot across this threshold again!"
+
+He was wide awake when Pringle took in the coffee. "This is kind of
+you, Pringle," he said, and he began to drink it eagerly.
+
+"I find that I shall have to leave home again the first thing in the
+morning," he said. "I shall sit up a great part of the night arranging
+matters, as I may have to go away for some considerable time. You,
+however, may go to bed. I will call you about six, and will then give
+you all needful instructions before going away."
+
+Pringle nodded his usual careless goodnight, and went. But instead of
+going upstairs to the room he usually occupied, he took off his shoes
+and stole down to the basement floor. He had put out the kitchen gas
+before taking up the coffee, but a few embers still glowed in the
+grate.
+
+In the passage that led from the foot of the stairs to the strong-room
+there was still a faint glimmer of gas, as there was in the strong-room
+itself, in which the gas was seldom turned entirely off. The safe
+was locked as usual, and seemed never to have been touched since Van
+Duren left home.
+
+"He's nearly sure to come down here some time in the night, and here
+I'll wait for him," muttered Pringle to himself.
+
+He groped about in the dark till he had found Bakewell's easy-chair,
+in which he established himself comfortably in front of the fire, with
+his feet on another chair, and there in the dark he waited. He could
+hear Van Duren moving about occasionally, and two or three times he
+seemed to pace the room for several minutes. The fire slowly burnt
+itself out, the crickets chirped loudly in the silence, the city
+clocks clanged out the hours one after one, some lightly and
+carelessly as it seemed, others solemnly and slowly, as though warning
+all who might hear them that they were another hour nearer eternity.
+Still Jonas Pringle sat waiting, nor ever closed an eye.
+
+At length, about three o'clock of the early summer morning, he heard
+footsteps slowly descending the stone stairs, and he knew that the
+occasion for which he had waited so long had come at last. The kitchen
+door was shut, but not latched, so that he could hear but not see
+anything that might happen outside. The footsteps came slowly and
+deliberately downstairs, and then went along the passage towards the
+strong-room. Then Pringle, listening intently, heard the bolts of the
+great iron door shoot back as the key was turned, and next moment he
+knew that Max Van Duren had entered the strong-room. He was still
+without his shoes, and rising from his seat he stepped noiselessly
+across the floor, and opening the door a little way, looked out. There
+was still the same faint glimmer of light in the passage, but the
+brighter glare that issued through the open door of the strong-room
+showed that Van Duren had turned up the gas inside. As quietly and
+stealthily as a tiger creeps on its prey, Pringle stole along the
+passage, and only paused when he reached the fringe of stronger light
+that issued from the room.
+
+There, with his back towards him, stood Max Van Duren, peering into the
+open safe, some of the contents of which were already scattered on the
+floor. For a few seconds--while a clock might tick twenty times--he
+stood watching him with a devilish sneer on his face. Suddenly Van
+Duren turned, and his eyes met the eyes of Pringle. An exclamation of
+surprise burst from his lips; but before he had time to stir from the
+place where he was standing, Pringle had dashed forward, had seized
+the handle of the door, had pulled it to with all his might, and had
+turned the key. Max Van Duren was locked up in his own strong-room,
+ten feet below the surface of the earth.
+
+"Caged at last!" muttered Pringle to himself, as he drew out the key
+and put it in his pocket. "Past three o'clock: it will be broad
+daylight soon. I think I could relish some breakfast. Pity old Mother
+Bakewell isn't here to get it ready for me." Whistling a tune under
+his breath, he went back into the kitchen, flung open the shutters,
+and began to set about lighting a fire. "Shall I have those two eggs
+boiled or poached?" he asked himself, as he prepared a foundation of
+firewood and paper. "I think I'll have 'em poached, just for variety.
+I'm sick of boiled eggs."
+
+Van Duren had not been silent all this time. "Pringle! what devil's
+trick is this?" were his first words as he sprang at the closing door.
+"Pringle, Pringle, I say, you have fastened me in! Open the door, you
+fool, or it will be worse for you!" But Pringle was in the kitchen,
+cutting the string of a bundle of firewood.
+
+"Come, now, Pringle, my good fellow, a joke's a joke, as everybody
+knows, but I've had enough of this. If you only knew how important is
+the business I've got to attend to, you wouldn't keep me here, I
+know." Pringle by this time was down on his knees, blowing away at the
+blaze like a pair of wheezy bellows.
+
+"What do you want of me? What's your grudge against me?" cried Van
+Duren, behind the iron door. "Do you want an advance of salary? You
+shall have it. Twenty pounds a year advance. Do you hear that? Twenty
+pounds a year. If that's not enough--thirty. Only open the door, and I
+promise you fifty. Think of that--fifty pounds a year advance!" Still
+no answer, though he could plainly hear the rattle of crockery, as
+Pringle proceeded to set out the breakfast-tray. "Come, now, Pringle,
+we've had enough of this tomfoolery. I'd like to join you over
+breakfast. I want to tell you my plans. I want to talk things over
+with you before I go. Open the door, there's a good fellow."
+
+The only notice Pringle took of this appeal was to turn the gas three
+parts off at the meter, the effect of which was to reduce the jet in
+the strong-room to a mere point of flame, and so leave Van Duren in
+almost total darkness. "One had need be economical in these days,"
+muttered Pringle to himself. "Gas is very expensive."
+
+For a few moments Van Duren was silent. It might be that he began to
+despair, that he began to see how useless any further appeals would
+be, that it began to dawn on his mind what Pringle's purpose really
+was. But in a little while he spoke again. "Pringle, Pringle, I say,
+where are you? What have I done to you that you should serve me like
+this? Fiend--monster--bloodthirsty villain! If you want to get rid of
+me, knock me on the head and have done with it. Don't leave me here to
+starve. That is too horrible!"
+
+"These eggs are hardly as fresh as they might be, for all I gave
+twopence each for 'em," muttered Pringle! "But that's the worst of
+London eggs--you never can depend on 'em." Then he made himself some
+toast, taking care not to spare the butter, and presently everything
+was ready for him to begin. "I like my coffee made ally Frongsey," he
+said, contemplatively. "It's certainly an improvement on the old
+English style. Those Frenchmen don't know a great deal, but they do
+know how to make coffee."
+
+When everything was ready for him to sit down to, he walked along the
+passage to the iron door and rapped at it with his knuckles. "Max Van
+Duren, are you there?" he said, simply and sternly.
+
+Van Duren, who had been silent for some little while, responded
+eagerly. "Yes, yes, Pringle, I am here! I knew it was only one of your
+queer practical jokes."
+
+"I am now going to get my breakfast, after which I shall smoke a pipe.
+When I have finished my pipe, I will come and have some talk with you.
+Till then you may as well be silent, and behave like a reasonable
+being." With that he turned on his heel.
+
+"Pringle, my good fellow, don't leave me here all that time; don't
+leave me here in the dark in this horrible den!" But Pringle was gone
+already, and this time he shut behind him the wooden door at the foot
+of the stairs that opened into the passage, and then he shut the
+kitchen door, so as to ensure himself still further against being
+disturbed; then he rubbed his hands with an air of enjoyment, and
+proceeded to pour out his coffee.
+
+He took half an hour for his breakfast, and another half-hour for the
+pipe that followed, and then he told himself that he was ready for
+business. All this time the prisoner in the strong-room had maintained
+the most perfect silence.
+
+Opening the outer door, Pringle traversed the passage, and, as before,
+rapped with his knuckles on the inner door. As before, he said, "Max
+Van Duren, are you there?"
+
+"I am here."
+
+"Then listen; come closer to the door and listen. You would doubtless
+like to know why I have shut you up here. That is what I am going to
+tell you. But first you must answer me one or two questions. Do you
+know the village of Dunhope, in Berkshire?"
+
+No answer.
+
+Pringle repeated the question with more emphasis. "If you won't answer
+my questions, I can't tell you what you are so anxious to know."
+
+"I did know a place of that name some years ago."
+
+"Just so. You knew it some years ago. If we were to say seven or eight
+years ago, we should not be very wide of the mark. Knowing Dunhope so
+well, you perhaps knew a young girl who lived there once on a time--a
+girl whose name was Jessie Ember. Eh! am I right or wrong?"
+
+"You are right; I did know a girl of that name."
+
+"We are getting on famously. A little bird has whispered to me that
+you made love to this girl, that you persuaded her to leave her
+situation, and that, relying on your solemn promise to make her your
+wife, you brought her to London; but that when you had once got her
+here, you quite forgot your promise to marry her. Are these things
+true, or are they not?"
+
+There was a long pause. Then came the answer, with a sort of groan--
+
+"They are true."
+
+"Soon tiring of the girl, you turned her adrift to starve or die,
+or--or to become one of earth's forlornest creatures; it mattered not
+to you."
+
+He paused, overcome by an emotion that, despite all his efforts, would
+not be wholly suppressed.
+
+"Am I not right?" he asked, a moment or two later. "Have you ever,
+from that day to this, troubled yourself to make one single inquiry
+after the girl whom you once swore that you loved better than life
+itself? Do you even know whether she is dead or alive?"
+
+"Who are you that you talk to me in this way? By what right do you ask
+me these questions?"
+
+"Who am I? I will tell you who I am. I am Jessie Ember's father! Who
+has more right to question you than I?"
+
+"You her father! Oh, Heaven!"
+
+It was little more than a whisper, that seemed instinct with surprise,
+terror, and anguish.
+
+"Scoundrel! unmitigated scoundrel!" began Pringle. Then he paused.
+"But I only demean myself by calling you names. You are where you
+are--and I am satisfied."
+
+"What do you want of me? I am rich, and----"
+
+"Singular, isn't it, that I should have been with you all this time,
+and never have discovered till the other day that you are the man I
+have been looking for for years? But things do come about strangely in
+this world."
+
+"Unlock the door, and I will make you rich for life."
+
+"Ha! ha! I can be rich for life without unlocking the door."
+
+"How?"
+
+"By waiting till you are dead, and then constituting myself your heir.
+No will required. No legacy duty to pay. Funeral expenses next to
+nothing. I saw such a splendid grey rat leap from behind the old
+ledgers the other day."
+
+"Villain! you would not murder me?"
+
+"Murder you! Ha! ha! Certainly not. What put that idea into your
+head."
+
+"Then why don't you open the door?"
+
+"Now you are asking a leetle too much--just a leetle. I would do
+anything in the world for you except open this door. You know you
+robbed me of my child--you ruined her and deserted her. It was only
+one of your little practical jokes. It's my turn now. This is one of
+_my_ jokes. You don't object, I hope?"
+
+"Then you are going to leave me hereto starve--to die?"
+
+"Oh no, I'm not going to leave you. There you are mistaken. I shall
+come a dozen times a day to see you. These little dialogues are
+interesting. I'll bring my pipe after awhile, and come and keep you
+company; but on this side the door, you know--on this side the door."
+
+"Have you no pity? Will nothing move you?"
+
+"It will be quite a little holiday for you. Nothing to do--absolutely
+nothing to do. I will do all the business, attend to the letters, and
+answer all inquiries. 'Has Mr. Van Duren got back home yet?' 'No, sir,
+he is still in France, but I am expecting him every day.' Ha! ha! and
+you here all the time! Won't it be a lark, Van, my boy, eh?"
+
+A deep groan was the only reply.
+
+"And now I'm just going round the corner in search of an early nip to
+digest my breakfast. Don't get downhearted, because I shan't be long
+away. No, no, I value you too much to stay away from you for very
+long."
+
+And, turning on his heel, Jonas Pringle walked leisurely away,
+whistling to himself as he went.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+TOLD AT LAST.
+
+
+Olive Deane had taken her leave of Lady Dudgeon and was crossing the
+hall towards the side door, close to which the fly that had brought
+her from Pembridge was still waiting, when suddenly the doors at the
+opposite side of the hall were opened, and, as they swung back on
+their hinges, a sight met her eyes that for a moment or two seemed to
+turn her to stone.
+
+Supported on one side by Dr. Whitaker, and resting his other arm on
+the shoulder of Pod Piper, like a man newly risen from the tomb,
+Matthew Kelvin stepped slowly and painfully across the threshold. His
+thin, bent form, his long, bony fingers, the worn, hollow face, the
+pinched nostrils, the deep-sunk eyes, and the grave-like pallor that
+overspread his features, made up a figure that looked far more weird
+and startling when seen thus in the full glare of day than in the
+semi-obscurity and amid the appropriate surroundings of a sickroom.
+
+A strange, fierce light sprang to the sick man's eyes the moment he
+saw who was standing there. Olive's cheek whitened as she looked, her
+breath came more quickly, she pressed her hand involuntarily to her
+heart, as though she were in pain; then she went two or three steps
+nearer, and then she halted again, as though in doubt or fear.
+
+"Matthew! You here!" she said at last.
+
+"So you are not gone yet!" was the answer. "It is well. I have
+something to say to you. Follow me."
+
+Then the ghastly procession began to move slowly forward again, and,
+preceded by one of the baronet's servants, it crossed the hall and
+went in the direction of the library.
+
+Olive stood aside to let it pass--stood aside with clasped hands, and
+with her heart on her lips, as it were, longing, yearning for one
+word, one look of kindness or recognition from her cousin, but in
+vain. Matthew Kelvin's eyes were set straight before him, and he
+looked neither to the right hand nor the left, till he reached the
+library, where the servant at once wheeled forward a large easy chair,
+into which he sank, breathless and exhausted.
+
+Olive, following silently behind, was the last to enter the room. She
+shut the door behind her, and stood quietly in the background,
+unheeded for the time by everyone. Vague, dark forebodings were at
+work in her heart. What did it all mean? she asked herself again and
+again. That strange look in her cousin's eyes, the way he spoke to
+her, the presence of Dr. Whitaker--all signs and tokens of something
+that boded no good to her. Had everything been discovered? She
+shivered from head to foot as this question put itself to her.
+
+As soon as Mr. Kelvin was seated, the servant and Pod Piper left the
+room.
+
+"Why, bless my heart! is that you or your ghost?" cried Sir Thomas,
+starting up from his chair and rubbing his eyes.
+
+He had been taking forty winks surreptitiously--a little weakness in
+which he indulged three or four times a day, without ever permitting
+himself to acknowledge that he had been asleep.
+
+Gerald, in the act of reaching a book from one of the upper shelves,
+turned with the volume in his hand as Kelvin and the others came into
+the room.
+
+"He will be better in a little while," said Dr. Whitaker to the
+baronet, who had crossed the room, and was now standing, with his
+hands under his coat-tails and pursed-up lips, gazing down with
+compassionate eyes at the half-conscious man before him.
+
+"What a wreck! What a terrible wreck!" murmured the baronet. "I--I
+never dreamt that he was half as bad as this."
+
+Dr. Whitaker put something to the sick man's nostrils, which he
+inhaled eagerly, and presently he began to revive.
+
+"I trust. Sir Thomas, that you will pardon my intrusion," he said, at
+last, speaking in a strange, husky voice, that was little more than a
+whisper, and was totally unlike the well-remembered voice--clear and
+confident--of Matthew Kelvin. "That my business here is of a very
+pressing kind you may well believe, when you see me thus and so
+attended."
+
+"Whatever your business may be, Kelvin," said the baronet, kindly, "it
+is almost a pity that you did not put it off till you were a little
+stronger, or else that you did not send for me. I would have gone to
+see you willingly. You know that."
+
+"Yes, yes; I know all you can say," said Kelvin, a little querulously.
+"But it was necessary that I should come here in person, and without
+an hour's delay."
+
+"You don't mean to say that there's going to be a dissolution of
+Parliament?" cried Sir Thomas, eagerly.
+
+Kelvin, smiling faintly, shook his head.
+
+"Ah! I was afraid there was no such luck," said the baronet.
+
+"I am here on the same errand that brought Miss Deane here this
+morning."
+
+"But Miss Deane has told us everything, and a queer story it is."
+
+"She has not told you everything, Sir Thomas."
+
+"Well, I hope there's not much more to tell. I hardly know already
+whether I'm topsy-turvey or how."
+
+"You have, I presume, read the letter that I sent by Miss Deane?"
+
+"Miss Deane gave me no letter. She told me a long rigmarole about----"
+
+"Oh, Matthew! I lost the letter!" cried Olive, coming a step or two
+nearer. "I lost the letter; but I knew what you had written, and I
+delivered your message just the same."
+
+"You could not know what I had written, unless you had read my
+letter," said Kelvin, coldly and sternly.
+
+"Oh, Matthew! Why do you say such cruel things of me?" cried Olive,
+imploringly. "You know how I knew what the contents of your letter
+would necessarily be."
+
+"Has the message which Miss Deane gave you been given also to Lady
+Dudgeon and to Miss Lloyd?" asked Kelvin of the baronet.
+
+"Certainly--to both of them. They were told first of all."
+
+"I hope you will not think that I am asking too much if I ask you to
+be kind enough to request the favour of Lady Dudgeon's and Miss
+Lloyd's presence here for a few minutes."
+
+"We'll have them here in a brace of jiffeys," said Sir Thomas,
+heartily.
+
+Gerald rang the bell, a servant came in, and a message was sent to
+Lady Dudgeon and Miss Lloyd.
+
+"I felt sure there was some mistake in that queer story which Miss
+Deane told us a couple of hours ago," said the baronet, cheerfully.
+"Such things never happen in real life, you know. One sees them on the
+stage sometimes, and laughs at them."
+
+Nobody answered him, and he began to whistle under his breath.
+Dr. Whitaker was busy giving his patient a cordial, which he had taken
+the precaution to bring with him in his pocket.
+
+A minute later, Lady Dudgeon and Miss Lloyd entered the room.
+
+"I suppose I ought to make myself scarce, but I shan't," said Gerald
+to himself. "I shall not leave the room unless they tell me to go. The
+climax is on us at last, and I think it will be found presently that
+I've as much right here as anybody. Besides, my darling may want me to
+back her up."
+
+He dropped quietly into a chair in the background. Only one person
+there seemed to be aware of his presence. Who that person was need
+hardly be said.
+
+Lady Dudgeon was genuinely shocked to see Mr. Kelvin looking so ill,
+and chided him gently for venturing so far from home. Eleanor went up
+to him, and shook hands with him. He saw the tears standing in her
+eyes, and his own eyes fell before her. Love and remorse were busy in
+his heart.
+
+"How bitterly I have wronged her!" he groaned to himself "What a
+confession is this which I am here to make?"
+
+"The letter which I wrote this morning," began Mr. Kelvin, struggling
+manfully with his weakness, "and which, by some strange mischance,
+appears to have been lost, was addressed to Miss Lloyd. It would
+appear, however, that my cousin, Olive Deane, who was certainly
+cognisant of most of the circumstances of the case, has told you what
+were the contents of the letter. There are certain other
+circumstances, however, of which as yet you know nothing, and it is of
+these that I am now here to speak."
+
+He paused for a moment or two to gather breath, and to moisten his
+lips again with the cordial.
+
+"I presume Miss Deane has told you," he went on, "that while recently
+wading through some of the late Mr. Lloyd's papers, I came across
+certain documents which prove conclusively that Miss Lloyd is only
+that gentleman's adopted daughter, and that, consequently, there being
+no will, she is not the heiress to his property. Is not that, may I
+ask, what Miss Deane has told you?"
+
+"That is precisely what Miss Deane told us," said Lady Dudgeon; "and I
+hope, with all my heart, that you are now come to tell us that it's
+all a mistake, and that our dear Eleanor is Miss Lloyd after all."
+
+"Hear, hear!" cried Sir Thomas, as if from the back benches of the
+House.
+
+"I am sorry to say that what Miss Deane told you is perfectly true,"
+said Kelvin. "There is no possibility of mistake as to the main facts
+of the case."
+
+"Dear, dear! what a pity--what a very great pity!" interposed the
+baronet.
+
+"You may remember, Sir Thomas," resumed Kelvin, "that some little time
+after Mr. Lloyd's death, I once or twice mentioned to you that amongst
+his papers I had not been able to find any clue as to where Miss Lloyd
+was either born or baptized. It was requisite, before taking out
+letters of administration, that I should have some trustworthy
+information on this point; but there being no particular hurry in the
+matter, and I being busy at the time with other important work, one
+week went on after another without my making any serious effort to
+supply the necessary link. Still, when the discovery did come, it was
+as great a surprise to me as it can possibly have been to any of you."
+
+"Then you think there is not the slightest possibility of there being
+any mistake in the matter?" said her ladyship.
+
+"I have in my possession a document, written and signed by Jacob Lloyd
+himself, in which he states that the young lady, supposed to be his
+daughter, was merely adopted by himself and his wife in her infancy."
+
+"Is no clue given as to her real parentage?"
+
+"None whatever. But I have also in my possession a sealed packet which
+I will presently give to Miss Lloyd--a packet addressed to her by Mr.
+Lloyd himself, but with instructions that it should not be given to
+her till after his death. Inside this packet I think it quite possible
+that Miss Lloyd may find all the particulars she would like to know."
+
+"Does it not seem somewhat strange, Mr. Kelvin," said Lady Dudgeon,
+"that after bringing up Eleanor as his own child, Mr. Lloyd should
+have left her totally unprovided for?"
+
+"I think there can be no doubt, madam, as to Mr. Lloyd's intentions.
+That he intended to provide handsomely for his adopted daughter, no
+one who knew him could doubt. But he was a very dilatory man in many
+ways, and he put off making his will from day to day and year to year,
+till at length death surprised him suddenly, and no time was given him
+to repair his fatal omission."
+
+There was a pause. Dr. Whitaker whispered something in his patient's
+ear, but Kelvin only shook his head impatiently.
+
+"You remarked just now, Mr. Kelvin," said Lady Dudgeon, "that there
+were some other circumstances connected with this remarkable case
+which you thought it desirable that we should become acquainted with."
+
+"Precisely so, madam. It is for that purpose that I am here. The
+revelation I am about to make is a very painful one--very painful and
+humiliating to me. But I have made up my mind to make it, and I will
+not shrink from doing so whatever may be the consequences to myself."
+
+Once more he paused and put the cordial to his lips. That he was
+deeply moved, all there could plainly see, but Olive Deane alone was
+in a position to guess the cause.
+
+"This is the confession that I have to make," he began at last. "The
+news you have heard to-day respecting Miss Lloyd, has been in my
+possession not for a few days only, as you probably imagine, but for
+five long months."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Kelvin!" cried Eleanor.
+
+"Dear me, Mr. Kelvin, what a very strange person you must be!" cried
+her ladyship. "Are we to understand that this secret has been in your
+possession for five months, and that you have never spoken of it till
+now?"
+
+"That is what I wish your ladyship to understand."
+
+"But what could your motive possibly be for keeping a piece of
+information of that kind to yourself for so long a time?"
+
+"I will tell you what my motive was--tell you all. Eighteen months ago
+I made Miss Lloyd an offer of marriage."
+
+"Bless my heart! now who would have thought that?" cried Sir Thomas.
+
+"Miss Lloyd rejected me. Six months later I tried my fortune again,
+but with no better result. It seemed to me--but I may have been
+mistaken--that in the second rejection there was an amount of disdain,
+of--of contempt almost--that stung me to the quick, and I vowed that
+if the opportunity were ever given me I would be revenged."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Kelvin, how you misunderstood me--misread me!"
+
+"To seek revenge on a woman because she rejected you! That was very
+despicable, Mr. Kelvin." This from her ladyship.
+
+"I know it and feel it now. I did not know it or feel it at the time.
+My mind must have been warped by its own bitterness. So when an
+opportunity came, as I thought it had come when this secret respecting
+Miss Lloyd found its way into my keeping, I did not fail to seize it."
+
+"And I certainly fail to see in what way the keeping to yourself of
+this information respecting Miss Lloyd could avenge a fancied slight
+in times gone by."
+
+"There stands the temptress"--pointing to Olive Deane--"who first
+suggested the idea to me. She--she it was who said to me, 'By keeping
+back the information that has come into your possession so strangely,
+till Miss Lloyd has become accustomed to her new position, till a life
+of ease and self-indulgence shall have become, as it were, a second
+nature to her, till she has learned to love--perhaps till her wedding
+morn itself--then will her fall from wealth to poverty seem infinitely
+greater than it would do now: then will yours be a revenge worthy of
+the name!'"
+
+All eyes were turned on Olive Deane, who was still standing in the
+background not far from the door. Her eyes were bent on the carpet and
+her face was deathly pale. Suddenly she lifted her eyes and flashed
+back a look of scorn, that took in every one there except her cousin;
+a bitter smile curled her thin lips for a moment, then she drew a
+chair forward and sat down without a word. No one spoke.
+
+"I am telling you this," resumed Kelvin, "not as blaming my cousin for
+her suggestion, but as a confession of my own weakness and wretched
+folly. That my feelings were very bitter against Miss Lloyd, I need
+hardly tell you, and yet how I despised myself for doing as I was
+doing, no one but myself can ever know. Not once, but a hundred times,
+did I vow to myself that I would write to Miss Lloyd and tell her
+everything, and a hundred times the recollection of her look and her
+words when she rejected me, came to my mind and held me back. Then
+came my illness, which lasted so long that I began to fancy I should
+never get better again, but all through it the wrong that I had done
+Miss Lloyd lay with a terrible weight on my conscience, and the first
+day that I was strong enough to hold a pen I wrote to her that letter
+which she ought to have received this morning."
+
+"All this was very, very wrong of you, Mr. Kelvin," said Lady Dudgeon.
+"Unfortunately, however, none of us can undo the past, and I am quite
+sure that in this case your own conscience will be your severest
+punishment. Miss Deane said something about a nephew of the late Mr.
+Lloyd being the real heir."
+
+"Yes, a certain Mr. Gerald Warburton. Now that I have broken the news
+to Miss Lloyd, it will be my duty at once to communicate with Mr.
+Warburton--though, strange to say, I discovered for the first time
+this morning that he had already written to me during my illness, but
+that the letter had been purposely withheld from me." He looked
+steadily at Olive as he said these words, but whatever her feelings
+might be at learning that he had somehow discovered her treachery with
+regard to Warburton's letters, she still kept her eyes fixed
+stedfastly on the carpet, and gave him no answering look.
+
+"And now, Miss Lloyd," resumed the lawyer, "I will give into your
+hands that packet which I ought to have placed there five months ago.
+I dare not ask you to forgive me for the wrong I have done you. Such
+forgiveness would be an excess of generosity such as I have no right
+to expect."
+
+He took a small sealed packet from his pocket. Then he stood up and,
+weak as he was, would have walked across the room to Eleanor, but she
+crossed the floor hurriedly and took the packet from his hands.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Kelvin, I forgive you fully and willingly!" she said with
+emotion. "Pray, pray do not let the thought of what is past ever
+distress you again!"
+
+Then, when she saw that the packet was addressed to her in the
+handwriting that she remembered so well, she kissed it with tears in
+her eyes and went slowly back to her seat by Lady Dudgeon.
+
+"Unfortunately, Sir Thomas," resumed Kelvin, "my confessions are not
+yet at an end, and I must crave your attention for a few minutes
+longer."
+
+"No apologies are needed, Kelvin--none whatever," said Sir Thomas. "I
+am entirely at your service."
+
+Kelvin bowed.
+
+"At my recommendation, Sir Thomas," he said, "you, a little while ago,
+took into your service the gentleman who is now sitting there."
+
+"Pomeroy, you mean. To be sure--to be sure. And a very useful fellow
+I've found him. I'm your debtor for recommending him to me, Kelvin."
+
+"When I asked you to take him into your service, sir, I did not know
+one thing about him that I know now."
+
+"Ay--ay--what is that? Can't know anything bad of Pomeroy. Good
+fellow, very."
+
+"My dear! such remarks may be a little premature," interposed her
+ladyship gently.
+
+"From something that came to my knowledge only a few hours ago, I have
+discovered that Mr. Pomeroy's chief motive in desiring to enter your
+service, was that he might have an opportunity of being near Miss
+Lloyd, and of thereby winning her affections and inducing her to
+become his wife."
+
+"Bless my heart! I would never have believed that of Pomeroy--never!"
+
+Again Kelvin looked fixedly at Olive but she still kept her eyes
+turned persistently from him. She was stupefied. How had all this
+knowledge come to him--first the knowledge of Gerald Warburton's
+letter, and now of the secret arrangement between Pomeroy and herself?
+Had that still darker secret come to his knowledge likewise?
+
+"I can only apologise, Sir Thomas," resumed Kelvin, "for having
+inadvertently been the means of introducing, under your roof, a person
+whose designs were such as I have mentioned, and I trust----"
+
+"You are not to blame, Kelvin--not in the least," said the baronet.
+"But this is very sad--very sad indeed. What have you to say, Pomeroy,
+to all this?"
+
+"Only that what Mr. Kelvin has just stated is, to a certain extent,
+true," said Gerald coolly. "My inducement in seeking to enter your
+service was certainly the hope of being thereby brought into daily
+contact with Miss Lloyd, with whom I was specially desirous of
+becoming acquainted."
+
+"That is easily understood," said her ladyship. "Miss Lloyd at that
+time was supposed to be worth twenty thousand pounds. Mr. Pomeroy's
+audacious candour is quite refreshing."
+
+"I will be candid," said Gerald with an amused smile. "For me to see
+and become acquainted with Miss Lloyd was to love her, and when that
+fact became patent to me, it would not do to sail any longer under
+false colours. I told Miss Lloyd that I loved her--the confession
+slipped out one evening unawares--but the first time I met her
+afterwards I confessed to her what my reasons had been for entering
+this house, asking her at the same time to forgive the wrong I had
+done her, and to forget the words I had said. From that day to this
+Miss Lloyd and I have been good friends: nothing more."
+
+"Bless us all! what goings on under ones very nose, and I to know
+nothing about them!" cried Sir Thomas.
+
+"But this morning altered the position of affairs entirely," went on
+Gerald. "You, sir, a little while ago told me what Miss Deane had just
+told you--that Miss Lloyd was Miss Lloyd no longer, and had nothing in
+the world but her own sweet self that she could call her own. This
+being the case, I at once sought Miss Lloyd--found her--told her that
+my love was still unchanged, and would not leave her till I had won
+from her a promise to become my wife. That promise I hold, and I shall
+claim its fulfilment from her before she and I are many weeks older."
+
+"Well done, Pomeroy! That's manly--that's as it should be!" exclaimed
+Sir Thomas. "I knew you would turn out a decent fellow at bottom."
+
+Her ladyship was slightly scandalised. "My dear!" she pleaded, "you
+are too enthusiastic. You let your heart run away with your head."
+
+She drew her skirts round her, pushed back her chair a little, and
+perching her double eye-glass on the bridge of her high nose, she
+stared curiously at Eleanor.
+
+Lady Dudgeon's feelings just now were of a very mixed kind. Her
+affection for the girl, the growth of long years, struggled with her
+very natural vexation at finding how thoroughly she had been
+hoodwinked, how completely she had been ignored in the matter by
+everybody. On the other hand, there was a spice of romance about the
+affair that appealed to some hidden feeling, of whose existence she
+herself was hardly aware.
+
+"Child! child!" she said in an aside to Eleanor, "if you had but given
+me your confidence! Two paupers! What are you to do? How are you to
+live? It's dreadful to contemplate!"
+
+Kelvin's cheeks flushed as he listened to Gerald's words. He set his
+teeth and glared savagely out of his hollow eyes at his successful
+rival. Was it for this that he had humiliated himself by his recent
+confession? What a fool he had been to acknowledge so much before all
+these people! This mere adventurer had carried away the prize for
+which he had striven so boldly and sacrificed so much. Bitter indeed
+were his thoughts just then. The emotion was too much for his
+strength, and he fainted.
+
+Olive was by his side in a moment, but Dr. Whitaker spoke sternly to
+her.
+
+"Stand back, if you please," he said. "I will attend to Mr. Kelvin."
+
+She flashed a look of hate and defiance at him. Her overwrought
+feelings could contain themselves no longer.
+
+"I will not stand back," she said, speaking in her clear incisive way.
+"Who has more right by my cousin's side than I, who have nursed him
+through his long illness?"
+
+Dr. Whitaker did not answer. He was trying to bring back his patient
+to consciousness. Olive sank down at her cousin's knees, and took his
+cold hand in hers and pressed it to her lips.
+
+In a little while Matthew Kelvin opened his eyes and looked feebly
+round, as if striving to bring to memory where he was, and whose were
+the faces that were bent over him. Last of all, his eyes met those of
+Olive Deane, and with a flash, as it were, everything came back to
+him. Then he saw whose hand it was that was holding his. With a look
+of loathing and hate that almost killed the soul within her, he flung
+Olive's hand from him, and, trembling in every limb, he staggered to
+his feet.
+
+"Poisoner!--begone! Quit my sight for ever!" he cried; and then he
+fell back into his chair.
+
+As it were an echo, came the word "Poisoner!" from the lips of every
+one in the room. Olive, who had risen to her feet when her cousin
+flung away her hand, staggered back as if suddenly smitten.
+
+Lady Dudgeon was the first to speak. "Surely, sir," she said,
+addressing herself to Dr. Whitaker, "there must be some terrible
+mistake in all this! The accusation just made by your patient can
+hardly be that of a man in his proper senses."
+
+"I am afraid, madam," said Dr. Whitaker, very gravely, "that the
+accusation made by Mr. Kelvin is but too well founded. We have it on
+evidence which cannot be disputed that my patient has been the victim
+of an elaborate system of slow poisoning. Suspicion points in one
+direction, and in one only: in the direction indicated by my patient
+himself."
+
+"It seems altogether incredible," urged her ladyship. "What possible
+motive could Miss Deane have for attempting so dreadful a crime?"
+
+"Let Miss Deane answer you herself," said Olive.
+
+She was standing as she had stood from the moment when her cousin
+hurled at her that terrible word. Everything was lost: she knew it but
+too well, and she nerved herself for one last supreme effort.
+
+"Lady Dudgeon is curious to know my motive for doing that which I am
+said to have done. Her curiosity shall be satisfied. My motive was my
+love for Matthew Kelvin. He loved me once, or I dreamt that he did. A
+passing fancy on his part, perhaps--soon forgotten by him, but never
+by me. I have never ceased to love him, I would give my life for him
+at this moment. When I found how persistently his heart was set on
+Miss Lloyd, I thought--foolishly enough, no doubt--that if I could
+have him all to myself--if I could see him daily, hourly--if he were
+ill and I could nurse him--I might perhaps succeed in winning back the
+love which I could not believe had ever been wholly lost to me. He was
+taken ill, and I nursed him. But to think that I would have let him
+die--the man whom I loved with my whole heart and soul--is utterly
+absurd! I understood too well what I was about to fear any such
+catastrophe. I could bear to see him suffer, simply because
+I loved him so much, and wanted him so wholly and entirely to
+myself. But I would not have let him die. Your ladyship looks
+horrified. Be thankful, madam, that your affections move in a less
+erratic orbit--that yours is a heart whose equable pulsations could
+never be quickened as mine have been. But I--I was not born in the
+frigid zone. Love to me is existence itself--for what is life without
+love?"
+
+"What a dreadful person! We might all have been murdered in our beds!"
+said Lady Dudgeon in a loud aside, as she felt in her pocket for her
+smelling-salts.
+
+"Matthew!" said Olive, passionately, advancing a step nearer her
+cousin, "you have bid me begone, and I know that there is nothing left
+for me but to obey. All is over between us. I played for a heavy
+stake, and I have lost it. I leave you now, never to see you again. I
+go forth into the world--whither, I neither know nor care. Listen to
+these my last words--listen, and believe. I would shed my heart's
+blood for you. Had you died through me, I would have killed myself an
+hour afterwards. I never loved you more than at this moment. That love
+I shall carry with me. Nothing can deprive me of it. Time will soften
+the hardness of your judgment. Then sometimes you may think of me with
+a touch of the old kindness, and say to yourself, 'Her greatest fault
+was that she loved me not wisely, but too well.'"
+
+Still keeping her eyes fixed on her cousin, but vouchsafing no glance
+to any one else, she moved slowly towards the door. She reached the
+threshold, and there for a moment she paused.
+
+"Farewell, Matthew! farewell for ever!" she said; and her voice had a
+ring of pathos and despair in it that her hearers never forgot. Then
+she drew her veil over her face, and the next moment she was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+"AND YOU SHALL STILL BE LADY CLARE."
+
+
+On leaving the library after the scene with Olive Deane, Gerald had
+whispered to Eleanor: "Don't open the sealed packet till you have seen
+me again. I shall be in the conservatory half an hour after luncheon."
+
+To the conservatory Eleanor went at the time specified, taking the
+sealed packet with her, and there she found Gerald awaiting her
+arrival. There was a bright, happy look in his eyes, such as she had
+not seen in them since that never-to-be-for-gotten evening when he
+first took her in his arms and told her that he loved her. He came to
+meet her as soon as she opened the door, took both her hands in his,
+kissed her, and led her to a seat where they would be safe from
+interruption.
+
+Eleanor did not feel at all like a young lady on whom fickle Fortune
+had been playing one of her strangest practical jokes; she did not
+feel a bit like the genteel pauper Lady Dudgeon had called her: she
+felt very, very happy. It was wrong of her to feel so--very wrong; but
+she could not help it.
+
+"I dare say you thought my request a very singular one," said Gerald,
+as he sat down beside her, "but you will hear something still more
+singular before the day is over."
+
+"This has been a day of surprises," answered Eleanor. "It seems like
+twenty years since yesterday."
+
+"It will seem like twice twenty when you shall have heard all that I
+have to tell you."
+
+He looked into her eyes, and in their shrinking depths he seemed to
+read a question which she was afraid to put into words: "Are you going
+to tell me that you love me no longer?"
+
+A kiss--or it may be half-a-dozen, for in such cases one soon loses
+count--did something towards reassuring her.
+
+"I asked you not to open the sealed packet till you had seen me again,
+because I thought it better that I should first tell you a certain
+strange story, of which as yet you know nothing, and so prepare your
+mind for what you will find there when you come to open it."
+
+"But--but how is it possible that you can know anything as to the
+contents of the sealed packet?"
+
+"It is quite possible, as you shall presently hear," answered Gerald,
+with a smile. "But before I go any further, I want you to promise me
+one thing."
+
+"Only one! I think I may promise that. But tell me what it is."
+
+"Simply this. That nothing I may tell you this afternoon will be
+allowed in any way to prejudice the promise which you gave me this
+morning."
+
+"The promise which you stole, you mean."
+
+"Well, then, the promise which I stole. But since you put the case in
+that way, I must change my request into a warning. Take notice, that
+I, John Pomeroy, do hereby warn you, Eleanor Lloyd, that whatever I
+may have to tell you to-day notwithstanding, I shall consider you
+bound in honour to fulfil and carry out a certain promise which,
+whether it was stolen from you or given of your own free will, is none
+the less a promise, and binding on your conscience as such. I cannot
+just now call to mind the particular Act of Parliament applicable in
+such cases, but I have no doubt that there is one. Consider yourself,
+therefore, as having been properly warned."
+
+"And now, sir, may I ask of what strange, eventful history all this
+may be looked on as the prologue?"
+
+Her lip quivered a little as she asked this question. She was
+beginning to fear she knew not what. Involuntarily her fingers
+closed more tightly on the hand that was still holding hers. The
+close contact seemed to give her strength. "What need I fear now
+I know that he loves me?" she asked herself; and her heart whispered
+back--"Nothing."
+
+"A strange, eventful history, indeed," said Gerald; "so strange, that
+I hardly know how to begin it."
+
+His tone was grave enough now. He was, in truth, puzzled how and where
+to begin his revelations.
+
+"Once on a time," he said, at last--"that is to say, some five or six
+months ago--I was living very quietly in a little town in the south of
+France, when, one fine morning, I was summoned post haste to London. A
+certain lady, an old friend of yours. Miss Bellamy by name, was the
+person whose imperative summons I felt bound to obey."
+
+"Do you know Miss Bellamy?" asked Eleanor, opening her eyes very wide
+indeed.
+
+"Miss Bellamy used to buy me sweets when I was a very small shaver
+indeed. In fact, there is a legend current that she assisted at the
+cutting of my first tooth."
+
+"But why did she send for you all the way from France?"
+
+"Some seven weeks previously, she had sent through the post, to Mr.
+Kelvin at Pembridge, the very sealed packet about which so much has
+been said to-day. That packet had been placed by Mr. Lloyd in her
+hands many years before, with a request that she would keep it
+carefully by her till after his decease. When that event took place,
+Miss Bellamy was at Guernsey, and six months elapsed before the packet
+reached the hands of Mr. Kelvin. Immediately on receipt of it, his
+duty was to communicate to you those facts of which you were allowed
+to remain in ignorance till this morning. Finding, after a lapse of
+several weeks, that Mr. Kelvin had done nothing in the affair, Miss
+Bellamy sent for me, and asked me to go down to Pembridge, and
+ascertain from Kelvin the reason of his unaccountable inaction. I went
+down to Pembridge and saw Kelvin--whom I had once met years
+previously; but, singular as it may seem, I said nothing to him of the
+one particular object that had taken me there. At that time Olive
+Deane was living with her cousin, and it was suggested by her that, as
+Sir Thomas Dudgeon happened to be in want of a secretary, the place
+might perhaps be one that would suit me. She suggested, too, that I,
+being a poor man, might improve my fortunes by marrying an heiress,
+the heiress in question being Miss Eleanor Lloyd. For reasons of my
+own, I appeared to fall in with her views. The situation was procured
+for me, and I made my appearance at Stammars.
+
+"One of my reasons for acting thus was my desire to see and be near
+you. I had heard a great deal about you at different times, and I
+wanted to make your acquaintance, and judge you for myself before
+letting you know that I was in any way mixed up with your private
+affairs. I wanted, in fact, to meet you as an utter stranger."
+
+"Before you go any further," said Eleanor, "I should like to ask you
+one question. When you first came down to Pembridge, did you know that
+I was not Mr. Lloyd's daughter, and, consequently, not entitled to his
+property?"
+
+"I did know it."
+
+"Then it was very wrong of you to let me live on in ignorance of my
+real position. You were making yourself the accomplice of Mr. Kelvin."
+
+"Granted. But I had very special reasons for acting as I did. I
+suspected the existence of some plot or scheme against you which I was
+desirous of fathoming. Besides, I could not find in my heart to be the
+one to strike the cruel blow that would deprive you of name and
+fortune, and shake the very foundations of your life."
+
+"The cruelty lay in not telling me. You did me a great injustice, and,
+at the same time, you deeply wronged Mr. Warburton the real heir."
+
+"Oh, if Mr. Warburton's anything like a decent sort of fellow, he
+won't mind a bit when it's all explained to him," said Gerald, with a
+twinkle in his eye.
+
+Eleanor looked excessively pained. "You talk so strangely," she said
+in a faltering voice, "that I hardly understand you."
+
+Gerald's arm went round her waist, and before she could offer any
+resistance half a score kisses had been rained on her cheeks.
+
+"Oh! my darling," he cried, "cannot you see through it? Cannot you
+understand it all? I--I am Gerald Warburton!"
+
+"You Gerald Warburton!" she said, as if repeating the words
+mechanically after him, but without comprehending what they meant. She
+put his arm aside, and stood up and stared into his face, as she might
+have stared had she been walking in her sleep, and were now coming
+back to consciousness.
+
+"You Gerald Warburton!"
+
+He drew her down gently on to the seat again, and made one of her
+hands a prisoner in his.
+
+"It is even as I have told you," he said.
+
+"It was I who Miss Bellamy sent for when she became alarmed by
+Kelvin's long silence. It was then, for the first time, that I heard
+your real history. Up to that day I had always looked upon you as my
+cousin. I came here under an assumed name, and I accepted the
+secretaryship to Sir Thomas Dudgeon, simply that I might see you and
+be near you, myself unknown. To see you and be near you was to love
+you. I determined, if it were possible to do so, to win you in the
+character of a poor man. Whether I have succeeded or failed, you know
+best."
+
+"All this seems very hard to believe," said Eleanor at last. "And yet,
+if you tell me it is true, I suppose it must be so." She sighed; and
+then, in a low tone of voice, as if speaking to herself, she said:
+"'Lord Ronald is heir of all my lands, and I am not the Lady Clare.'"
+
+"Yes; but what says his lordship in conclusion? 'We two will wed the
+morrow morn, and you shall still be Lady Clare.'"
+
+She gazed at him sadly, wonderingly.
+
+"Don't forget your promise," he said. "With Heaven's help, this day
+month we will be man and wife!"
+
+"Then you knew from the first that you were Gerald Warburton, the
+heir, and that I was--nobody?"
+
+She seemed as if she wanted his further assurance before that fact
+would impress itself with sufficient clearness on her mind.
+
+"I knew, dearest, what I have just told you. I heard it from Miss
+Bellamy before I first came down to Pembridge."
+
+"You came to me as a poor man, and stole my heart away before I knew
+what had happened--stole it away, perhaps, for mere amusement. But now
+that you have thrown off your disguise, now that I know you for the
+caliph himself, the amusement is at an end, and you had better give me
+back a poor trifle for which you can now have no possible use."
+
+"As if that poor trifle, as you call it, were not the one treasure
+which I hold as far more precious than aught else the world could
+offer me. I have won you, and I mean to keep you, so you may as well
+resign yourself to your fate."
+
+"Are we in a land of freedom, or are we not?
+
+"You are not in a land of freedom."
+
+"Then resistance is useless?"
+
+"Entirely so."
+
+Eleanor mused for a moment.
+
+"Tell me this," she said. "Why did you make that confession to me one
+day in the library? Why did you accuse yourself of having been
+actuated by mercenary motives?"
+
+"Because I had been told of the interview between young Piper and
+yourself. I knew, after that, what your thoughts must be concerning
+me, so that, all things considered, it seemed to me the best thing I
+could do was to cry 'mea culpa,' even at the expense of lowering
+myself for a time in your estimation."
+
+"But rather than do that, why not have confessed everything? Why not
+have told me then what you have told me to-day?"
+
+"Because at that time my plans were not ripe for such a confession.
+Because I could not then have taken you to your father."
+
+"My father, Gerald!" she cried, as she started to her feet. "Oh! say
+those words again!"
+
+It was the first time she had called him by his real name, and it
+thrilled him strangely to hear it from her lips.
+
+"Eleanor, your father--I do not speak of your adopted father this
+time--is still alive--is waiting and longing to see you. I had a
+telegram from him only a few hours ago. See, here it is." He took a
+telegram from his pocket, opened it, and read aloud as follows:
+
+"Everything proved. Our task is at an end. Come at once, and bring my
+daughter with you."
+
+These words, "my daughter," from a father whom she had never seen,
+moved Eleanor strangely. Her heart beat so fast, that for a little
+while she could not speak.
+
+"If I have a father," she stammered out at last, "why did he not send
+for me before? Why have you kept me from him all this time?"
+
+"The story that I have now to tell you," answered Gerald, "is a very
+painful one, but that it will have a happy ending there is proof
+positive in the telegram which we have just read together. It is the
+same story in substance as you will find told by Mr. Lloyd in the
+sealed packet. I think it will be better that I should tell it to you
+first, and leave you to read it afterwards."
+
+Eleanor was trembling a little. She could not help it. She seemed to
+dread hearing what Gerald might yet have to tell her. He tried to
+comfort her after the foolish fashion of people in love. Then drawing
+her close to him, so that her head rested on his shoulder, he went on
+with his narrative.
+
+"Many years ago, in a small provincial town more than two hundred
+miles from this place, there lived four young ladies who had all been
+schoolfellows together, and who, now that they were grown up, were
+bosom friends. One of these young ladies married a gentleman, Ambrose
+Murray by name, and a doctor by profession. You are their only child,
+and your name is Eleanor Murray. Another of the young ladies married
+Mr. Jacob Lloyd, and you were their adopted daughter. The third
+married my father. The fourth remained unmarried, and is your friend
+and mine--Miss Bellamy.
+
+"A few months after you were born, a terrible misfortune befel your
+father. He was arrested on a false charge of murder, was tried, and
+condemned to die."
+
+"Murder! Condemned to die!" gasped Eleanor.
+
+"The charge was a false one, dearest--don't forget that. But before
+the day came that would have left you fatherless, his mind gave way
+under the shock, and his sentence was commuted into one of
+imprisonment for life. Your mother, frail of health and delicate from
+a child, found the burden of life more than she could bear, and
+Heaven, in its pity, took her to itself."
+
+Gerald paused, and as he did so he felt that Eleanor was sobbing
+silently, with her head still resting on his shoulder.
+
+"Then it was, when you were left alone in the world, that Mr. Lloyd
+and his wife took you to their hearts and home. They had no children
+of their own, and they adopted you as their daughter, even to giving
+you their name--for, as you must remember, your fathers innocence had
+never been proved. The evidence at the trial had been terribly against
+him, and the world still adjudged him to be guilty.
+
+"Shortly after their adoption of you, Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd removed to
+Pembridge, where they were entire strangers, and, except Miss Bellamy,
+no one ever knew that you were not their own child.
+
+"And so years went on till Mrs. Lloyd died. It was shortly after this
+event that Mr. Lloyd, mindful, probably, of the uncertainty of life,
+put into Miss Bellamy's hands the very sealed packet about which we
+have heard so much of late. In case Miss Bellamy should survive him,
+it was to be given over by her into the hands of Mr. Kelvin, who had
+had the management of Mr. Lloyd's affairs for years. Mr. Lloyd himself
+doubtless shrank from telling you the real facts of your history; but
+as your father was still living, it was imperatively necessary that
+you should be made aware of them whenever he--Mr. Lloyd--should die.
+To Mr. Kelvin was delegated the task of breaking the news to you. In
+what way he has fulfilled that task we have now seen.
+
+"All these long years Mr. Murray had been shut up in his living tomb.
+In the course of time his senses had mercifully been given back to
+him. Two or three times a year Miss Bellamy went to see him, and took
+him tidings of you and of the outside world. He knew that you were
+safe and well, and he would not let your young life be blighted by the
+sad story of his wrongs and sufferings."
+
+"Oh, if some kind friend but told me!" exclaimed Eleanor. "It was
+cruel, cruel to keep me in ignorance of what it was my simple right to
+be told! It was my place, not Miss Bellamy's, to go to see him and
+comfort him."
+
+"It was at Mr. Murray's own frequently-expressed desire that you were
+left in ignorance."
+
+"All those years--all those summers and winters while I was growing up
+a happy, careless girl, he--my father--was shut up between the
+terrible walls of a prison. I--I cannot bear to think of it!"
+
+"But it is air over now, and in a few hours more you will be with
+him."
+
+"And you know him, Gerald! You have seen him and talked with him! No
+wonder some instinct of the heart bade me love you."
+
+Gerald kissed her again--whether for the twentieth or twenty-first
+time in the short space of thirty minutes, matters nothing to nobody.
+He felt that he had long arrears to make up. Then he went on with his
+story.
+
+"The first time I ever saw Mr. Murray was in Miss Bellamy's
+sitting-room a few nights after my arrival in London in answer to her
+summons. Your father had escaped from prison, and had come to Miss
+Bellamy, as the only person living whom he knew, for shelter."
+
+"Escaped! Oh! if I had only been there to receive him!"
+
+"He and I became friends at once when he knew that I was the son of
+one whom his wife had known and loved so well. Fortunately, no very
+extreme search was made after him, and I may so far relieve your mind
+at once by telling you that he has never been re-captured. In making
+his escape from prison, Mr. Murray's mind seemed to be possessed by
+one idea, and one only. That idea was the possibility, or probability,
+of being able to prove to the world his innocence of the dreadful
+crime laid to his charge twenty long years ago.
+
+"How and by what means this great end has at last been accomplished,
+it would take me too long to tell you in detail now. That may be left
+for an after occasion. That he has succeeded completely and fully in
+what for a long time seemed an utterly impossible task, this telegram
+in his own words is ample proof. Not till he should have so succeeded
+would he allow you to be communicated with, or even to be made aware
+of his existence."
+
+"How very strange of him! If he had but trusted me!"
+
+"But the troubles of the past are over now. I propose to start for
+London by the six o'clock train this evening, and to take you with me.
+We shall find your father waiting at Miss Bellamy's to receive you."
+
+"This evening! See my father this very evening!"
+
+"Why not? Has he not sent for you?"
+
+"I shall have to speak to Lady Dudgeon, and--and----"
+
+"And you will be ready equipped for your start by 5.30. I will ask Sir
+Thomas to let Fenton drive us to the station in the wagonette."
+
+Eleanor stood up and pressed both her hands to her head. "I am far
+from sure that it's not all a dream," she said.
+
+Her eyes were still tear-stained, but a wan April smile was hovering
+faintly round her lips.
+
+"Kiss me, and try to discover whether you are awake or asleep that
+way."
+
+"Does my father know that you are acquainted with me?" she asked
+suddenly.
+
+"Not till a few days ago was he made aware that I had ever seen you."
+
+"Then all the time you have been at Stammars you have known my father,
+but without making him aware that you knew me, as you have known that
+I was not Mr. Lloyd's daughter, and that you yourself were the heir to
+his property."
+
+"It would be impossible to state the case more briefly and clearly."
+
+"Even now I hardly seem to see clearly the motives by which you were
+actuated. But I have heard so many strange things to-day, that that is
+hardly to be wondered at."
+
+"The two most powerful motives that actuated me were these: your
+father's strongly-expressed wish that you should be left unaware of
+his existence and of the terrible story of his life till he himself
+was prepared to reveal everything; and secondly, my desire to win my
+wife as a poor man wins his--for himself alone, and not for whatever
+worldly goods fortune may have encumbered him with."
+
+"I am afraid," said Eleanor, still with a smile, "that you are a far
+more enigmatical character than I took you to be--that I shall find
+you far more difficult to understand than, in my simplicity, I ever
+dreamt of."
+
+"You hold the key to my heart, and that unlocks everything. When you
+come to know me better, as I hope you will do some day, you will find
+that, like most of my fellows, I am very shallow when properly gauged.
+Only, perhaps, I have the art of hiding it better than some. But now I
+must leave you for a little while. Remember, I shall expect you to be
+ready by half-past five. In fact, I have already telegraphed that we
+shall leave for London by the six o'clock train."
+
+He pressed her hastily to his heart, and then she fled.
+
+It was half-past seven when Eleanor and Gerald alighted at King's
+Cross Station. Miss Bellamy was there to meet them. Eleanor's arms
+were round her neck in a moment.
+
+"Oh, my dear Miss Bellamy!" she exclaimed, half laughing and half
+crying, "how happy it makes me to see you again! I thought you had run
+away from me forever."
+
+"Only for a little while, love. I had some one else to look after of
+late--someone who is anxiously waiting to see you."
+
+They all got into a cab. There was no opportunity for much
+conversation as they rattled through the noisy streets; but just then
+Eleanor did not want to talk. She sat holding Miss Bellamy's hand very
+fast and inwardly trembling.
+
+It was a good hour's drive to Ormond Square, but to Eleanor it seemed
+only a few minutes. Gerald, having handed the ladies out of the cab,
+took his leave for a little while, promising to call again in an hour.
+Eleanor, still like one in a maze, and still clinging tightly to Miss
+Bellamy, found herself next moment indoors.
+
+"Take off your hat, love, but don't bother about anything else just
+now," said Miss Bellamy.
+
+Then they went upstairs, and then a door was flung open, and there,
+in the middle of the lighted room, Eleanor saw standing a tall,
+frail-looking man, who seemed as though he were obliged to steady
+himself by clinging to the back of a chair, and whose lips were
+working with nervous excitement.
+
+"Eleanor Murray, there is your father!" said Miss Bellamy, in a voice
+that was not without a touch of solemnity.
+
+Eleanor staggered forward into the room. Ambrose Murray met her
+half-way, and caught her in his arms. She fell on his breast in a
+passion of sobs.
+
+"Oh, papa, papa! why have you kept me from you all this time?" was all
+she could say.
+
+Miss Bellamy came gently out and shut the door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER. XII.
+THE STRONG-ROOM.
+
+
+"No chance of anybody hearing him but the dead folk in the churchyard,
+and they'll only grin to themselves and take no notice." So muttered
+Pringle to himself as he stood at the foot of the stairs and listened
+to Van Duren's cry for help.
+
+And he was right. So long as the doors were kept shut, Van Duren's
+loudest cries would not penetrate beyond the basement-floor of the old
+house. In the office above people might, and did, come and go on
+business, but not the faintest echo of that terrible cry of despair,
+that was so near and yet so far away, ever reached them.
+
+Pringle was there, as usual, to attend to the different callers, so
+far as it was possible for him to do so in the absence of his chief.
+Many were the inquiries during the day as to the probable date of Van
+Duren's return.
+
+"He may be here at any time, or he may be away for another week. Most
+uncertain in his movements," Pringle would say to the inquirers. And
+as soon as they were gone he would rub his hands, and chuckle to
+himself, and mutter: "Revenged at last! Every dog has his day, and
+mine has come now."
+
+And so the day slowly wore itself through till evening came round
+again. Pringle shut up the office at the usual time, and then, after a
+hearty tea, he prepared to sally forth for the evening's enjoyment. He
+told himself that he would take the entire round of the haunts where
+he was known, indulging himself with a glass or two at each of them,
+and have, altogether, a very pleasant time of it.
+
+Before starting he went to bid Van Duren good-bye.
+
+"If the postman comes while I'm out, you'll kindly take in the
+letters, won't you?" he said, with a sneer. "There have been more
+inquiries than usual for you to-day. What fun it was to send them
+off--some with one excuse, and some with another--and you within a
+dozen yards of them all the time! But I must go now. You are very
+pleasant company, Mr. Van Duren, but I must leave you for a little
+while."
+
+Thus saying, Pringle locked the outer door, and having made sure that
+he had the latch-key in his pocket, he put down the kitchen gas, and
+let himself out by way of the front door, which he clashed to after
+him with a bang loud enough to wake every dismal echo that had its
+lodgment in the dismal old house in the churchyard.
+
+It was close upon midnight when Jonas Pringle came picking his way
+carefully along the silent streets in the direction of Spur Alley.
+This care on his part was necessitated by the number and strength of
+the potations in which he had indulged during the evening. He knew
+quite well what he was about; he knew that he had taken more than was
+good for him; he knew that his course along the streets was rather a
+mazy one; he knew that his speech was a little thick, and that short
+words were infinitely preferable to long ones; but for all that, it
+was only his legs that were affected: his head was still as coldly
+calculating as ever it had been.
+
+He had just turned the corner of Spur Alley, and was within a few
+yards of the house, when suddenly a woman, who had been sitting in the
+shadow of the steps, sprang to her feet, stood for a moment gazing
+fixedly at him, and then took to her heels and quickly disappeared
+round the opposite corner. A presentiment that it was his daughter
+shot through Pringle's heart the moment he set eyes on her. He shouted
+to her to stop, but she never even turned her head. He made an
+abortive attempt to run after her, but that was equally unavailing.
+Then he sat down on the steps where his daughter had been sitting--for
+he felt sure that it was she--and began to cry.
+
+He was roused by the clocks striking the half-hour after midnight. He
+got up, shivering from head to foot, and let himself in by means of
+the latch-key. He did not go downstairs, but stumbled his way to his
+own room, and, without undressing, flung himself on his pallet, and
+slept unbrokenly till long after broad daylight.
+
+He lighted the kitchen fire and got his breakfast ready before going
+near his prisoner. Last night's excitement and dissipation had left
+him, if such a thing were possible, harder and more cruel than before.
+Not one single grain of pity for his wretched victim made itself felt
+in his heart when, after breakfast, he went and knocked at the door of
+the strong-room. He was still convinced that it was his daughter whom
+he had seen over-night, and the sight of her only served to freshen up
+his wrongs, and to intensify a hatred that needed no additional fuel.
+
+"Max Van Duren, are you still alive?" The cried, rapping with his key
+on the door.
+
+A deep groan was the only reply for a little while.
+
+Pringle kept on hammering at the door. "Why don't you answer me?" he
+screamed.
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Pringle, give me a drop of water, or else leave me
+to die in peace!" It was hardly to be recognized as the voice of Van
+Duren, so faint and full of anguish was it.
+
+Pringle's only answer was a laugh.
+
+"Pringle, I am dying!" pleaded the imprisoned man. "The wound on my
+head has opened afresh, and I am slowly bleeding to death. I am
+too weak to stand. A few hours will end everything. Give me some
+water--give me a pillow for my head--give me a little light--and then
+you may leave me to die."
+
+"All very fine, Mr. Van, but you don't get over me with any of your
+dodges. Once get the door open it would be all over with me."
+
+"Pringle, I swear to you that I am dying--that I have not strength to
+walk across the floor."
+
+"Then die," cried Pringle. "It is all you are fit for. Ask for no pity
+from me." And with that he strode away without waiting to hear another
+word, and shut the outer door behind him.
+
+He stayed in the office as usual till evening; but he did not go near
+Van Duren again all day. He had found a bottle of brandy upstairs in
+Van Duren's room; this he appropriated, and his devotions were paid to
+it so often during the day, that when evening came very little of it
+was left. When he had closed the office, he sallied out, as on the
+previous evening, but still without visiting his prisoner. He had no
+appetite to-day; he could not eat. All he craved was more drink, and
+so long as he had money in his pocket there was no difficulty in
+getting that. Again he took what he called his rounds, and again it
+was close on midnight when he found himself back in Spur Alley.
+
+He was fumbling with his latch-key, when a hand was laid lightly on
+his shoulder. He had heard no sound of footsteps, and he turned with a
+low cry of terror. He turned and saw that it was his daughter who had
+touched him.
+
+"Why, Jessie--Jessie, my darling! is that you?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, it is I," said the woman, bitterly. "What have you done with Max
+Van Duren?"
+
+"Oh, never mind him just now. But why don't you kiss me, Jessie? Why
+don't you kiss the foolish old man that has never ceased to love you,
+and search for you, and long for you, day and night?" He was half
+laughing and half crying as he spoke.
+
+She just put her lips to his cheek, but he was not satisfied till he
+had drawn her to him and she had kissed him again and again. Then she
+repeated her question: "Father, what have you done with Max Van
+Duren?"
+
+"Oh, I've got the scoundrel in safe custody, never fear!"
+
+"In safe custody! What do you mean?" she asked, anxiously.
+
+"Come inside, and I'll tell you all about it."
+
+He had succeeded in opening the door by this time, and his daughter
+followed him into the dark entrance-hall.
+
+"You needn't be afraid of meeting anything worse than black-beetles,"
+he said, with a chuckle. "Follow me, Jessie, and mind the stairs," he
+added, when he had bolted the front door. "There's fifteen of 'em;
+I've counted them many a time. We shall find a glimmer in the kitchen,
+I dare say."
+
+They groped their way down, and entered the room.
+
+"Many a worse crib than this," said Pringle, as he turned the gas full
+on.
+
+Then he stirred the fire, and drew a chair up for his daughter and
+another for himself, and produced a bottle of brandy.
+
+"And now for a comfortable little confab," he said, gleefully. "I've
+quite a lot to tell you, dear; and I dare say you have something to
+tell me."
+
+"Suppose you tell me your news first," said the woman.
+Neither in her manner towards him, nor in her mode of addressing him,
+was there the slightest trace of tenderness, or any token by which a
+stranger would have guessed that the man before her was her father,
+whom she had not spoken to for several years. Her hard mouth and her
+watchful eyes never for a moment relaxed their hardness or their
+watchfulness.
+
+"Funny, wasn't it," began Pringle, rubbing his lean, yellow hands in
+front of the fire, but with his eyes fixed on his daughter, "that I
+should have been Van Duren's clerk for three years before finding out
+who he was?"
+
+"And how did you find it out at last?" asked Jessie, without any
+apparent emotion.
+
+"I was rooting about among his papers one day, when I found some of
+your letters, my dear. It was the greatest surprise I've ever had in
+my life."
+
+"He has kept my letters, has he?" said the woman, in an eager,
+passionate way, breaking for a moment through the restraint she had
+hitherto put upon herself.
+
+"He _has_ kept them; so much the worse for him, as things have turned
+out," said Pringle, grimly.
+
+"What did you do next?"
+
+"I put back the letters where I had found them, and waited for him."
+
+"And waited for him?" cried the woman, wonderingly.
+
+"Yes; he was away from home at the time I discovered the letters, and
+I waited till he came back."
+
+"And what did you do then?"
+
+"It was only the night before last that he got back home. I had made
+up my mind from the first how to act. He was only here for the night.
+He was going to start away again next morning; but I guessed he
+wouldn't leave without visiting the safe in the strong-room. So
+instead of going up to bed, I came down here and waited in the dark
+for him. I seemed to have been waiting a month, but it was only a few
+hours, when he came. He went forward into the strong-room, and turned
+on the gas. Then I stole swiftly after him. He did not hear me--he did
+not see me till the last moment; and then it was too late. Before he
+could reach the iron door, I had shut it on him and turned the key."
+
+"You locked him in!"
+
+"I locked him in. I made him my prisoner; and there he is at this very
+moment."
+
+The woman had changed colour and started to her feet when her father
+made this disclosure. But another thought seemed to strike her, and
+she sat down again, her ashy face turned full upon him, and a strange,
+half-savage, half-defiant look in her eyes, which it was just as well
+that the old man did not notice.
+
+
+Pringle lighted his pipe.
+
+"There's nothing like taking things comfortably," he said. "What a
+fanny girl you are," he added presently. "I thought when you heard how
+I had bowled out the scoundrel who had blasted both your life and
+mine, that the least you could say would be, 'Well done!' But there
+you sit as cool as a cucumber, and as mum as a mouse--just as if I had
+been telling you a bit of news out of yesterday's paper."
+
+"Your news has taken me so much by surprise, that I don't know what to
+say," replied Jessie; "I want time to think it all over."
+
+"But aren't you glad, girl, that we've got the villain fast? Isn't it
+sweet to you to feel that his turn has come at last? My wrongs are
+deep, but yours are deeper. You ought to exult in what I've done!"
+
+"So I do, but I can hardly realize it yet. I keep on fancying it must
+all be a dream."
+
+"It's an uncommon ugly reality as far as he's concerned," answered
+Pringle. "I don't think he'll trouble us long. I think another day and
+night will about finish him."
+
+Gradually the warmth of the fire, and the brandy he had taken and was
+still taking, had a somnolent effect upon Pringle. He found his
+eyelids closing involuntarily.
+
+"I don't think an hour or two's snooze would be a bad sort of thing,"
+he said.
+
+"Where is this strong-room that you talk about?" asked Jessie.
+
+"Why, close by here--on the bottom floor--just at the end of that
+passage."
+
+"And the keys--who keeps them?"
+
+"Who should keep them but me? I've got them safe enough, never you
+fear," and he tapped his pocket to verify the fact.
+
+He poured himself out some more brandy, and when he had drunk it she
+assisted him to the sofa, lowered the gas a little, and then took up
+her own position in the big easy-chair on the opposite side of the
+fireplace.
+
+A few minutes later her father's deep, regular breathing told her that
+he was fast asleep.
+
+Then she crossed noiselessly over to where he was lying, and began
+to feel for the pocket that held his keys. She was not long in
+finding what she wanted. Then she lighted a candle, and taking the
+candle-stick in one hand and the two keys in the other (after giving
+a last look at her father), she set out in search of the strong-room.
+
+The little Dutch clock in the kitchen was on the stroke of eight when
+Jonas Pringle opened his eyes. He opened them, rubbed them, shut them,
+and opened them again. He might well stare and ask himself whether he
+had not taken leave of his senses. On a mattress in front of the
+kitchen fire, a coverlid thrown over him, lay the form of Max Van
+Duren. His eyes were shut and he was breathing heavily. Pringle was
+still staring at this terrible object, and trying to pull his wits
+together, when his attention was attracted by the noise of footsteps
+descending the stairs, and next moment Jessie ushered into the room a
+stranger, who at once crossed to where Van Duren was lying, and gazed
+fixedly down on him. The stranger was, in fact, a doctor whom Jessie
+had summoned by bribing a passing milk-boy to go and fetch him.
+
+Van Duren was an utter stranger to him.
+
+"Who are you, and what have you come for?" screamed Pringle. "Get out
+of this, or it will be worse for you! I'll have no thieving quacks
+here."
+
+"Who is this man?" asked the doctor.
+
+"My father."
+
+"Then the sooner you have him removed the better. He must be either
+drunk or mad."
+
+Jessie took her father by the shoulders and pressed him down by main
+force on to the sofa.
+
+"Speak another word at your peril," she said sternly. "Disturb this
+gentleman again, and as sure as I am what I am, I'll have you locked
+up in there--in there, do you understand?" and she pointed in the
+direction of the strong-room.
+
+There was something in his daughter's face that cowed him--that
+frightened him even. He had never seen such an expression on any other
+face. He sat down without a word.
+
+The doctor was down on one knee by this time, examining the
+unconscious man.
+
+"How did he come by this terrible wound on his head?" he asked
+presently; "and why has he been allowed to sink so low? Some one ought
+to have been called in two days ago."
+
+"It's only about two days since he got home," said the woman, "and he
+brought the wound with him. How he came by it nobody knows but
+himself. Then, he was accidentally"--with a glance at Her father--"shut
+up in the room where he keeps his books and things, and couldn't help
+himself, and there I found him about two o'clock this morning."
+
+"Was he conscious when you found him? Did he know you?"
+
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why did you not send for medical assistance as soon as you found
+him?"
+
+"Because he wouldn't let me--he wouldn't hear of it."
+
+"More fool he," said the doctor brusquely. "What did you give him to
+eat or drink?"
+
+"All that I could persuade him to take was a little brandy and water."
+
+"Well, I can do nothing for him till he wakes," said the doctor as he
+rose to his feet. "I may tell you that he appears, so far as I can
+judge at present, to be in about as bad a way as it is possible for a
+man to be. I don't think it advisable to disturb him, and this sleep
+may do him good. I will call again about ten o'clock. Should he awake
+before then send me word, and till I arrive keep on giving him a
+teaspoonful of brandy every few minutes." With that the doctor went.
+
+Jessie was kneeling by Van Duren's head, and she never moved to let
+the doctor out. Pringle, with his red, watery eyes, and doubled-up
+back, still sat on the sofa, his elbows resting on his knees, and his
+chin in the palms of his hands, looking like a ghoul waiting for its
+prey. Suddenly his daughter turned her head, and their eyes met.
+
+"Look on your work and be satisfied," she said.
+
+"I am looking, and I am satisfied," was the grim reply.
+
+"And now," said the woman, speaking quietly, but with the same look on
+her face that had already cowed him, "you had better leave me, or
+there'll be harm done. I know there will. If you hadn't been my father
+I should have stabbed you to the heart before now for what you have
+done here"--pointing to the dying man. "Go! go! or worse will come of
+it."
+
+Pringle cowered before her, and muttering something to the effect that
+a good wash would freshen him up, he slunk out of the room and
+shuffled upstairs, coughing painfully as he went.
+
+Jessie resumed her watch by the unconscious man, bathing his brows now
+and again with a little vinegar. Presently he opened his eyes and
+gazed up wonderingly into her face. Then he tried to raise himself on
+his elbow, but fell back with a groan. Jessie gave him a little
+brandy, and that seemed to revive him.
+
+"Where am I; what has happened?" he murmured.
+
+"Hush! don't talk now," said Jessie. "The doctor will be here in a
+little while, and give you something to revive you."
+
+"The doctor? The----Ah! everything comes back to me now. It was you
+who opened my dungeon and helped me, bit by bit, to crawl here. What
+good angel sent you to me, Jessie?"
+
+Then, before she could answer, he began to mutter to himself in
+German, a language which he very rarely spoke, and evidently knew her
+no longer.
+
+At this moment there came a sound of loud knocking at the front door.
+At the noise Van Duren again turned his eyes on Jessie.
+
+He looked at her as he had never looked at her before: with a pathos
+and tenderness indescribable. But he did not speak.
+
+Jessie's quick ears had heard her father open the door in answer to
+the knocking, and now there was a sound of footsteps coming down the
+stone stairs that led to the kitchen. Next minute the door was pushed
+open, and three men came into the room. One of them was Peter Byrne,
+and the other two were members of the police force in plain clothes.
+Byrne was startled at the sight before him, but he did not lose his
+presence of mind.
+
+"There, gentlemen, is the man you are in search of. This is Max Van
+Duren, formerly known by the name of Max Jacoby."
+
+One of the officers advanced. "Max Jacoby, you are charged with being
+the murderer of one Paul Stilling, at Tewkesbury, many years ago, and
+I hold a warrant for your arrest."
+
+"A warrant for my arrest!" echoed Van Duren feebly. "You have come too
+late, gentlemen--too late, I say! I am beyond your reach now. I am
+going where you dare not follow me!"
+
+His eyes closed once more; he breathed three or four times, and then
+not again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+CONCLUSION.
+
+
+On the sands at Boulogne-sur-mer. Time, a sunny afternoon. The persons
+are Mrs. Kelvin and her son. The lady is half sitting half reclining
+in the Bath chair in which she has been wheeled down to the sands.
+Matthew Kelvin is sitting on a camp stool close by his mother, smoking
+a cigarette, and dividing his attention between the bathers and a lazy
+skimming of the London papers, which have just come to hand. He is
+looking infinitely better than when we saw him last, and his mother
+thinks that if she can only persuade him to stay away from that odious
+business for another month, he will become as strong and hearty as
+ever he was. It is her fixed belief that Matthew cannot really be
+happy out of his office, and it is a belief that he had never cared to
+disturb.
+
+Mrs. Kelvin's attention, like that of her son, is half distracted from
+the gay scene before her. The steamer has brought her several letters,
+which she is reading intermittently, smiling to herself now and then
+as she reads, and anon lifting her eyes to note the latest arrival on
+the sands, or to watch for a moment the kaleidoscopic changes in the
+ever-varying groups of loungers and bathers with which she is
+surrounded. There is one letter, however, that she has kept till the
+last. Her face clouds as she opens it. She glances at Matthew, and
+sees that he is still busy with his newspapers. The letter does not
+take her long to read, and, with a little sigh, she puts it back into
+its envelope. The sigh rouses Matthew--he looks up.
+
+"What is it, mother?" he asks. "Have Mrs. Aylmer's preserves turned
+out badly? or has Miss Rainbow's ancient tabby given up the ghost at
+last?" He takes her hand, and squeezes it with a little affectionate
+gesture.
+
+"Matthew," says the old lady very gravely, "I have had a letter this
+morning from Olive Deane."
+
+He turns quickly round, and his face seems to harden as he turns.
+
+"And has she really dared to write to you?" he says, sternly. "Does
+she think that the past can be so soon forgotten?"
+
+"My dear, you are not like you talk in that way," answers Mrs. Kelvin,
+as she lays her hand caressingly on her son's shoulder. "I never
+rightly understood the reason of that terrible quarrel between you and
+Olive. You were too ill for me to question you much at the time, and
+since you have been better the mere mention of Olive's name has seemed
+so distasteful to you, that I have spoken of her as little as
+possible. But to say that I should not like to know how it happened
+that you fell out so strangely, would be to say that I am not a
+woman."
+
+Under his breath Mr. Kelvin calls himself by a very strong name for
+having spoken so hastily. He has carefully concealed from his mother
+the fact of Olive Deane having been implicated in any way with regard
+to his long illness. He has dreaded the effect such a revelation might
+have upon her. He has allowed her to surmise and wonder as to the
+origin of their sudden estrangement, but he has never really
+enlightened her.
+
+"Olive went off to Stammars one morning with a letter from you,"
+resumes the old lady. "An hour later you rush off after her, although
+you have not been out of your room for two months. You come back after
+a time, but Olive does not. Next day she sends for her boxes, but from
+the hour when she set out for Stammars till now, I have never set eyes
+on Olive Deane."
+
+"Yes, it must have seemed strange to you," says Mr. Kelvin, after a
+pause; "but the subject was such a very painful one that I always felt
+reluctant to mention it."
+
+"You never thought, dear, how painful it must be to me to be left in
+such a state of doubt and uncertainty."
+
+"I know that I ought to have told you long ago. I will tell you now."
+He pauses while he looks at his watch and folds up his newspaper. "The
+facts of the case can be told you in very few words," he says. "Olive
+Deane, during the time that I was ill, suppressed a very important
+private letter that had been sent to me through the post."
+
+"That was wrong, very wrong indeed," says the old lady, gravely. "Had
+any other than you told me of it, I could not have believed them."
+"That morning when she went to Stammars it was with a letter from me
+addressed to Miss Lloyd. That letter she also suppressed, after
+having, I presume, opened it and read it. I was very angry with
+her indeed. I spoke my mind very strongly on the point, and we
+parted--never, I hope, to meet again."
+
+Mrs. Kelvin does not speak, and Matthew, looking up, sees that her
+eyes are full of tears. "How would she feel, and what would she say,
+if she knew everything?" he asks himself. "But she must never be
+told."
+
+"What you have just told me has pained me deeply," she says at last.
+"But what a strange thing to do! What could her motive possibly be? I
+believed in her as implicitly as if she had been my own child. And
+then how kind and attentive she was during your illness!" Matthew
+shudders. "She was simply invaluable to me at that time. And so fond
+of you, too! And now you tell me these strange things about her. I--I
+can't understand it at all."
+
+"The subject is a very painful one to both of us. Suppose we say
+nothing more about it," says Matthew, speaking very gently.
+
+"I thought it strange that she never once mentions your name in her
+letter," says Mrs. Kelvin, as she wipes her eyes. "It is just as well
+to know that the girl is not without a home. She writes me that she
+has accepted a situation with a family who are going out to the Hague
+in a couple of months; so that she is not likely to trouble any of us
+in time to come."
+
+At this moment, who should march gravely up, and raise his hat with
+what he firmly believes to be an air of the most refined fashion, but
+Mr. Pod Piper? Mr. Piper wears a wideawake and a fashionable tweed
+suit. He has taken care to button up his coat two minutes ago, so as
+to hide from Mr. Kelvin's eyes the elaborate filigree chain, of Palais
+Royal workmanship, which is festooned across his waistcoat. But the
+huge pin in his scarf cannot be so easily kept out of sight, and all
+the time he is talking to Mr. Kelvin he feels--and the feeling gives
+him what he calls the "tingles"--that that gentleman is critically
+regarding it, and as he stands there he inwardly resolves that he will
+make a present of it to his bosom friend, Bob Tacket, the very day he
+gets back to Pembridge, and that he will never wear another pin in his
+scarf as long as he lives.
+
+"Why, Piper, is that you?" says Mr. Kelvin, in his most pleasant
+voice. "Got back safe and sound, eh? How have you enjoyed yourself?"
+
+"Oh, splendidly, sir!--thanks to you. Never had such a holiday before.
+Paris is a wonderful place, sir!"
+
+"I suppose you speak French like a native by this time, eh?"
+
+"Not quite that, sir. I know about fifty words, and I've got along
+famously. Fifty words are quite enough to go from one end of the
+country to the other with: a smile and a shrug go such a long way with
+the French."
+
+"I think you had better not cross till to-morrow morning," says Mr.
+Kelvin. "You can then take over with you some papers for Mr. Bray. We
+dine at six, and you must dine with us to-day."
+
+Pod stammers out something--he hardly knows what--and colours up to
+the roots of his hair. Dine with the governor! What will they say at
+Pembridge when he tells them? He feels himself grow an inch taller in
+two minutes. After a few kind words from Mrs. Kelvin, he is dismissed
+till six o'clock.
+
+Pod's trip to Paris is accounted for by the fact of his employer
+having made him a present of a twenty-pound note and a week's holiday.
+Ten pounds out of the twenty Pod has given to his mother. With the
+remaining ten, and some previous savings, he has enjoyed himself for a
+week in Paris.
+
+"You don't mean to say, Matthew, that that boy has been to Paris all
+alone?"
+
+"I suppose he has. Why not?"
+
+"Consider his age. Consider the temptations of such a place."
+
+"Oh, I would trust Piper anywhere. He's got the head of a man of
+thirty on those boy's shoulders of his."
+
+"He seems a shrewd boy, certainly. You appear to have taken a quite
+uncommon interest in him of late, Matthew."
+
+"Yes, I do feel a great interest in him. It is not often I take a
+fancy, but I've taken a fancy to Piper, and I mean to put him in the
+way of making his fortune."
+
+"As how?"
+
+"By having him articled to a first-class legal firm, and afterwards by
+purchasing a partnership for him, or else by setting him up on his own
+account."
+
+"But that will cost a great deal of money."
+
+"Not so much, perhaps, as you imagine. But whatever the cost may be, I
+have made up my mind to do it, and do it I will."
+
+Mrs. Kelvin knows nothing of the great service which Pod Piper has
+rendered her son. She does not know that but for Pod's shrewd
+thoughtfulness and presence of mind she might perhaps no longer have
+had a son. But Matthew Kelvin knows, and does not forget.
+
+"But if you want to have young Piper articled, why not article him to
+yourself, Matthew?"
+
+"Because I think we shall be better apart, and that it will be better
+for him to leave Pembridge for a few years. Because, too----"
+
+"Because what, dear?"
+
+"Because I have some serious thoughts of retiring from business before
+long."
+
+A pause. Mrs. Kelvin tries to adjust her spectacles, but cannot, her
+hand trembles so much.
+
+"The business, Matthew, that was built up by your father and
+grandfather, through so many years of industry and thrift?"
+
+"Yes, the business that was built up by my father and grandfather, and
+that has been crowned by me with many years of quiet work. Mother, I
+am rich enough to give it up. I shall never marry and have children,
+and--I am ambitious.--Because my father and grandfather lived and died
+two quiet country lawyers, that is no reason why I should be content
+to do the same. To-day is not as yesterday. I have larger views and
+different aims than theirs. I am sick and tired to death of the petty
+drudgery necessitated by a business like mine. I want to get into
+Parliament, I want to----"
+
+"Into Parliament, Matthew! How proud I should be to see you there!"
+
+"Would you? Then I hope you will see me there before this time next
+year. I know for a fact that Sir Thomas means to give up his seat next
+spring. Some of his chief supporters have been coquetting with me
+already. But if I become M.P., I must give up my profession and devote
+the whole of my time to my new duties. I hope to make my mark yet
+before I die."
+
+"You are right, and I was wrong," says Mrs. Kelvin. "Business must be
+given up. You have a career before you. After a time, perhaps, you
+will marry, and then----"
+
+"Never, mother. I shall never marry," says Matthew very gravely.
+
+The tide has been coming in very quickly, and a bigger wave than
+ordinary now comes creaming up nearly to their feet. They must move at
+once.
+
+"It is time to go, the breeze is growing chilly," says Mrs. Kelvin.
+"You must tell me more of your plans and thoughts to-morrow."
+
+As they turn the corner of the Etablissement, they meet and pass three
+people--a lady and two gentlemen--who are on their way to the sands.
+
+"What a remarkably handsome woman!" says Mrs. Kelvin to her son.
+
+"Just my thought, mother. I wonder what country woman she is--not
+English, certainly."
+
+But in saying this, Matthew Kelvin is mistaken. The lady who has
+attracted the admiration of himself and his mother is, in fact, none
+other than our old acquaintance, Miriam Byrne--now Mrs. James Baron.
+The gentlemen with her are her father and her husband.
+
+Mr. Kelvin and Peter Byrne have never met, and are unaware of each
+other's existence. They have both been prominent actors in that
+strange drama which has had Eleanor Lloyd and Gerald Warburton for its
+central figures--a drama which must of necessity have worked itself
+out in an altogether different manner had neither of them, or only one
+of them, played a part in it. Yet, to-day, they pass each other,
+knowing nothing of all this, each going his own road, never to meet
+again. So runs the world away.
+
+Mr. Byrne looks younger and more jaunty than ever. His new set of
+teeth are marvels of dentistry and gleam whitely in the sun every time
+he smiles--and to-day he seems to be one perpetual smile. There is a
+fine bright colour on his cheeks, the origin of which it might not be
+wise to inquire too curiously into. His blue frock-coat is tightly
+buttoned, so as to show off the elegance of his figure. He wears
+lemon-coloured gloves and carries the slimmest of umbrellas.
+
+Nearly everyone turns to look at Miriam. Various types of French and
+English beauty are by no means uncommon on the sands at Boulogne, but
+Miriam's peculiar style of face is very rarely seen in the north of
+Europe, and it strikes the gay crowd with all the freshness of
+novelty.
+
+Miriam is dressed in the latest fashion of seaside extravagance. She
+is quite conscious of the sensation which she creates as she moves
+slowly along, but she has been used to be stared at from the time that
+she can remember at all. To be admired seems to her as natural as to
+breathe: admiration is her birthright, and she accepts it with the
+serene self-unconsciousness of a queen accepting the homage of her
+subjects.
+
+Mr. James Baron is one of those fair-haired, blue-eyed young Saxons
+who seem all to have been cast in the same mould, and of whom there is
+little or nothing to be said. But he is Miriam's choice, and Miriam
+loves him, and that is enough.
+
+The services rendered Ambrose Murray by Peter Byrne and his daughter
+have been most liberally rewarded. But, in addition to this, some old
+mining shares which Byrne had long looked upon as utterly worthless
+have--to use his own phrase--"turned up trumps" at last, and the old
+poverty-stricken days in Amelia Terrace are at an end for ever.
+Through Gerald's influence, a capital situation has been found for
+young Baron with a large wine firm at Bordeaux, so they are all
+keeping holiday together for a little while before the young couple
+set out for their new home.
+
+"Papa," says Miriam with a smile, "if anyone had told you, three
+months ago, that you would be walking here with James and me, that you
+would call James 'my dear boy' a hundred times a day, and that you
+would have actually given me away--with your blessing--to the man
+whose name you could not bear to hear me mention, what would you have
+said?"
+
+"I should have recommended the immediate application of a strait
+waistcoat. But circumstances alter cases, as we have all lived to
+prove, and it's only your narrow-minded people who will never admit
+that they are in the wrong."
+
+"Do you remember how shocked you were when I told you to what use I
+should put Mr. Warburton's money if it ever came into my hands?"
+
+"Ah, my dear, you never really understood the secret of my opposition
+to your little love affair. James, here, has a great deal to thank me
+for. I knew your disposition, dear, better than you knew it yourself.
+I knew that if your courtship were allowed to go on in a quiet,
+conventional, hum-drum sort of way, without any parental opposition to
+infuse a spice of romance and difficulty into the affair, you would
+never learn to care quite so much for James, or to value him so highly
+as you would do if your wishes were judiciously thwarted for a time.
+You like your husband all the better because you have had a difficulty
+in making him your husband. It is a sort of weakness by no means
+uncommon with your sex. As I said before, James has much to thank me
+for."
+
+Mr. Baron and his wife both burst into laughter.
+
+"Trust papa for never being without an excuse!" says Miriam.
+
+The scene changes. The accident ward in a London hospital. Time, eight
+p.m.
+
+On a pallet in one corner of the ward, between which and the long row
+of other pallets stands a big black screen, lies all that remains of
+Jonas Pringle. He has breathed his last but a few minutes ago.
+Kneeling on the floor, her face buried in her hands, is the dead man's
+daughter. Run over in the streets when drunk, he has been brought here
+early in the afternoon. He is just able to tell his daughter's
+address, and then he lapses into unconsciousness. He never opens his
+eyes or speaks again, but with his daughter's hand clasped in his, he
+sleeps himself away as gently as though he were a little child hushed
+on its mother's breast.
+
+Jessie is roused at last by a hand laid gently on her shoulder. She
+looks up, and sees one of the visiting sisters of mercy. She rises to
+her feet, and the sister, who has thought she was crying, is surprised
+to see that her eyes are dry and tearless.
+
+"He was your father," says the sister, with a slight touch of surprise
+in her voice.
+
+"Yes, he was my father," says Jessie, gently.
+
+Then she asks for a pair of scissors, and having cut off a lock of her
+father's hair, she wraps it in a piece of paper, and places it inside
+the bosom of her dress. Then, still with dry and tearless eyes, she
+kisses the dead man's cold forehead.
+
+"I've got money at home," she says to the sister, who is standing
+quietly by. "The parish mustn't lay a finger on him. I'll bury him
+myself."
+
+Then, with a muttered good night, she turns and goes. She stands for a
+moment at the hospital door, gazing up and down, the rainy, lamp-lit
+street, and shudders as she gazes. Then she draws her scanty shawl
+more closely round her, and stepping out into the rain, she hurries
+away--whither?
+
+
+Again the scene changes. The great drawing-room at Stammars. Time,
+nine p.m. of a January evening.
+
+It is Miss Sophy's birthday, and there is a large gathering of young
+people to celebrate the event. There are only five grown-up persons in
+the room, and all of them are known to us. First and foremost come Sir
+Thomas and Lady Dudgeon, looking exactly as they have looked any time
+these ten years. That thin, dreamy-looking, white-haired gentleman in
+the corner, with a very tiny young lady on his knee who is resting
+from her romps for a few minutes, is Mr. Ambrose Murray. That dark,
+foreign-looking gentleman, and that handsome lady, who are walking
+through a quadrille with two partners of the mature age of twelve, are
+Mr. and Mrs. Warburton. They two, together with Mr. Murray, having
+eaten their Christmas dinner with dear, kind-hearted Miss Bellamy,
+have come down for a month's visit to Stammars.
+
+Mr. Murray can now bear his own name, and is as free to come and go as
+any one. Acting on the advice of friends, he went back to the asylum
+from which he had escaped, and gave himself up. A case was then
+prepared for the Home Secretary, and that high functionary, having
+considered the same at his leisure, has been graciously pleased to
+advise that Ambrose Murray be granted a free pardon, and that the
+conviction recorded against him be considered null and void.
+
+Eleanor and Gerald have been married three months, and are as happy as
+they deserve to be. This morning they walked through the lanes and
+fields, as far as the little churchyard in which Jacob Lloyd sleeps his
+last. Eleanor always feels as if she must have had two fathers--one
+in the past and one in the present. With tears in her eyes, she
+talks to her husband of the dear father who lies here, and she kisses
+the wreath of everlastings she has brought with her before she lays it
+gently on his grave.
+
+On their way back they call at the lodge to see "little Miss Waif," as
+Gerald calls the child whom, a year ago, he found so strangely in the
+hedge bottom. It has never been claimed, and probably never will be
+now. Eleanor has had it christened after herself, and is very fond of
+it. Gerald, too, has a sneaking sort of liking for the child. He
+cannot forget that it was while he was holding it in his arms, and
+blushing to the roots of his hair, that he first saw Eleanor, and
+first spoke to her. Many a laugh have they had about that incident
+since their marriage. That the child's future will be carefully looked
+after we may safely assume.
+
+When ten o'clock strikes, the juveniles troop off to supper, and Sir
+Thomas buttonholes Gerald, and takes him off to the smoking-room.
+There is something on his mind which he is evidently bursting to
+confide to Gerald.
+
+"Look here, Pomeroy," he says--he can't forget the old familiar
+name--"I'm going to tell you something that I've not told to anybody,
+and that I wouldn't have her ladyship know just yet for the world. What
+do you think? I've made up my mind to resign my seat!"
+
+"You do indeed surprise me!" says Gerald.
+
+"I mention this to you because I think it would be a good chance for
+you to try to get into parliament yourself. You know, Pomeroy, I
+always said you were cut out for an M.P."
+
+"You flatter me, Sir Thomas. All the same, I'm greatly obliged to you
+for honouring me with your confidence in this matter, although I shall
+not be able to do what you have so kindly suggested. My wife and I
+have made up our minds to travel for a couple of years before I settle
+down to anything."
+
+"Ah, that's a pity now! because I could have given you such a lot of
+support."
+
+"May I ask what your motives are for resigning your seat?"
+
+"I've found out, Pomeroy, that it was never intended by Nature that I
+should write M.P. after my name. And then I hate London. I'm never
+either well in health or happy in mind when I'm there. Give me,
+instead, what my wife calls 'the dull pursuits of country life.'
+Though why she should call them dull, I can't for the life of me see.
+What can be more exciting, for instance, than a show of prize
+bullocks, or a good ploughing match? And where is there anything in
+all London half as pretty as a field of wheat on a midsummer morning,
+especially when the crop's a good one, and the field happens to be
+your own?"
+
+"It will be a great disappointment to her ladyship."
+
+"That's the deuce of it," says Sir Thomas, with a dismal shake of the
+head. "Between you and me, I dread telling her. There will be an
+explosion, my boy--an explosion. But I've made up my mind to go
+through with it, and go through with it I will."
+
+He jingles the loose change in his pocket and whistles under his
+breath, but is evidently far from easy in his mind.
+
+It need hardly be said that Eleanor stands higher in the favour of
+Lady Dudgeon than ever she did before. If she is penniless herself,
+has she not a husband who is worth twenty thousand pounds? Her
+ladyship could afford to condone much in face of such a golden fact as
+that. Not that there is anything to condone in the case of Eleanor, as
+matters have turned out; but had it unhappily been the case that
+Gerald was not his uncle's heir, it may be feared that Eleanor's
+offences would have been altogether past condonation.
+
+The evening wears on, and one after another the young people take
+their leave, till only a few are left, who are not going home till
+morning. These, tired out at last with dancing and romping, gather
+round Ambrose Murray, and beg of him to tell them a fairy tale. So he
+tells them a tale in which there is a giant and a dwarf, and a castle
+with walls of brass, and a magic horn that hangs by the gate, and a
+beautiful princess who is shut up in a dungeon, and a brave knight who
+has many wonderful adventures and hair-breadth escapes.
+
+When the tale is done, being a little weary, he bids the children a
+kindly goodnight, then he shakes hands with Sir Thomas and Lady
+Dudgeon, and asks them to excuse his retiring. Eleanor goes with him
+to the foot of the stairs, where they kiss each other and say
+goodnight. Eleanor stands and watches him as he goes slowly up the
+wide staircase, looking very tired, she thinks. He turns when he
+reaches the landing, and smiles, and waves his hand to her. She blows
+him a last kiss. Next moment he is gone, and she hurries back to the
+drawing-room.
+
+When Ambrose Murray reaches his room, he rakes the glowing embers
+together, and puts out his candle. He often sits in the dark for
+hours. Then he draws up one of the blinds, and looks out. The
+atmosphere is very clear, and the sky is brilliant with stars. He
+stands there for a long time, gazing up at the stars with rapt look on
+his face. His thoughts are evidently far away--far away, it may be,
+from earth and all its weariness and troubles. By-and-by he goes and
+kneels down by the side of his bed, and clasps his hands.
+
+And there next morning they find him, still kneeling, still with
+clasped hands, and with a look of ineffable peace on his white, worn
+face--of that peace which passeth all understanding.
+
+
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+______________________________________________
+BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, SURREY.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Secret of the Sea. Vol. 3 (of 3), by 
+T. W. Speight
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 57815 ***