The Project Gutenberg eBook of The girl he loved

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The girl he loved

or, Where love abides

Author: Adelaide Stirling

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

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Street & Smith, 1900

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

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

The Girl He Loved

OR,

WHERE LOVE ABIDES

BY

ADELAIDE STIRLING

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

STREET & SMITH CORPORATION

PUBLISHERS

79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York

Copyright, 1900

By Street & Smith

The Girl He Loved

(Printed in the United States of America)

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

THE GIRL HE LOVED.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. SWEETHEARTS.

CHAPTER II. THE PERSON IN BLACK.

CHAPTER III. A GIFT OF JUDAS.

CHAPTER IV. “A HORRID OLD MAN!”

CHAPTER V. HER WEDDING-DAY.

CHAPTER VI. A VERY CLEVER PERSON.

CHAPTER VII. HER LADYSHIP SHUFFLES THE CARDS.

CHAPTER VIII. “A BIT OF THE TRUTH.”

CHAPTER IX. REVENGE—AND A BALLROOM.

CHAPTER X. A TIRING DAY.

CHAPTER XI. NEWS OF ADRIAN.

CHAPTER XII. THE ICY BARRIER.

CHAPTER XIII. IN LEVALLION’S HOUSE.

CHAPTER XIV. A DOVE-COLORED GOWN.

CHAPTER XV. A WOMAN’S RING.

CHAPTER XVI. THE SIN OF SYLVIA ANNESLEY.

CHAPTER XVII. THE SEALED LETTER.

CHAPTER XVIII. A GROWING CLOUD OF WITNESSES.

CHAPTER XIX. IN OUTER DARKNESS.

CHAPTER XX. A WICKED WOMAN’S TONGUE.

CHAPTER XXI. WHITE POPPIES OF OBLIVION.

CHAPTER XXII. THE MOONLIGHT PICNIC.

CHAPTER XXIII. THE DARK GLASS.

CHAPTER XXIV. ALONE WITH THE DEAD.

CHAPTER XXV. A DEAD MAN’S SWEETHEART.

CHAPTER XXVI. TRIFLES LIGHT AS AIR.

CHAPTER XXVII. THE EVIDENCE IN THE CASE.

CHAPTER XXVIII. “I SAW—NO ONE!”

CHAPTER XXIX. “WILFUL MURDER.”

CHAPTER XXX. A CLOUD OF BLOOD.

CHAPTER XXXI. A BAD MOVE.

CHAPTER XXXII. A TRIVIAL INCIDENT.

CHAPTER XXXIII. LEVALLION’S HEIR.

CHAPTER XXXIV. “FALSE AS A PACK OF CARDS.”

CHAPTER XXXV. GOOD-BY.

CHAPTER XXXVI. A MOUSE-HOLE.

CHAPTER XXXVII. A GRAY-LINED CLOAK.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. ARRESTED.

CHAPTER XXXIX. MR. JACOBS.

CHAPTER XL. AT THE HINGES OF DEATH.

CHAPTER XLI. “I LOVED YOU BEST.”

CHAPTER I.

SWEETHEARTS.

“Thomas, my son!”

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

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

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

“What are you doing?” she inquired.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sir Thomas Annesley lit a contraband cigarette.

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

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

Sir Thomas coughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Suppose he had not come!

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

Miss Annesley dropped her pirated parasol.

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

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

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

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

He caught her hands a little closer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Not at all?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER II.

THE PERSON IN BLACK.

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

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

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

Gordon laughed.

“Why do you call her that?”

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

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

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

“Well?” she did not look at him.

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

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

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

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

“There’s Tommy.”

Gordon smiled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

She nodded, her face like a crimson flower.

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

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

Gordon caught her up like a child.

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

“I don’t even know his name.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But she sat pale and quiet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER III.

A GIFT OF JUDAS.

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

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

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

“My Nel,” she read breathlessly.

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

“Always yours—my very dearest,

“ADRIAN.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The boy nodded.

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

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

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

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

“You wanted me?” Somehow Ravenel was nervous.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lady Annesley’s answer made her jump.

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

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

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

Ravenel watched the Umbrella go to a wardrobe.

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

Sylvia Annesley read the obstinate face like print.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ring and ribbon were gone!

CHAPTER IV.

“A HORRID OLD MAN!”

Lord Levallion was bored.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ravenel Annesley started furiously.

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

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

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

Ravenel stamped her foot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ravenel nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Umbrella rose stolidly.

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER V.

HER WEDDING-DAY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lord Levallion returned to his seat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Take her to town for a week.”

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

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

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

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

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

But he got no answer.

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

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

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

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

“Well, hurry up and I’ll wait!”

Ravenel, sponge in hand, flung the door open.

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VI.

A VERY CLEVER PERSON.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Adopt one!” said Levallion, not unkindly.

The duchess shook her head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A light dawned on the duchess.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tommy was appalled for one instant.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you want to come?” slowly.

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

The duchess looked at her.

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

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

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

CHAPTER VII.

HER LADYSHIP SHUFFLES THE CARDS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“RAVENEL.”

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER VIII.

“A BIT OF THE TRUTH.”

The Duchess of Avonmore was worried.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He watched the girl in and rang for his servant.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mrs. Murray laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER IX.

REVENGE—AND A BALLROOM.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two hours later the whole room was agog.

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

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

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

The duchess gave her a stare.

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

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

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

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

“When are you going home?” he said.

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

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

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

“But you go in a fortnight,” coolly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Levallion smiled.

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

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

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

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

A curious, slow gleam came into her eyes.

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

“If he can pass his exams. Certainly!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER X.

A TIRING DAY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He could not, indeed.

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

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

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

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

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

But something struck her dumb and powerless where she stood.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XI.

NEWS OF ADRIAN.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes. Will you come, or stay here?”

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XII.

THE ICY BARRIER.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Tell me,” she said thickly.

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

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

“Naturally,” with ugly quiet.

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

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

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

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

“Why should you care?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“My husband,” she said quietly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XIII.

IN LEVALLION’S HOUSE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He looked very ill,” she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lady Levallion crushed her hands together under the table.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Both made Ravenel feel an unutterable sneak.

Why had she never told Levallion all about Adrian?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XIV.

A DOVE-COLORED GOWN.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But he did not answer for a moment.

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

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

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

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

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

Levallion shrugged his shoulders.

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

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

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

The woman sprang up as if he had struck her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Poor devil,” said Lord Levallion slowly.

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

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

Levallion leaned forward and spoke almost in her ear.

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

“People will talk!” she gasped.

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

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

Levallion laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XV.

A WOMAN’S RING.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An hour ago! Lady Levallion clenched her teeth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m here. It’s Nel. Do you want me?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lady Levallion stopped her ears and ran.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She caught his arm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lady Levallion forgot she was a countess.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XVI.

THE SIN OF SYLVIA ANNESLEY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sir Thomas forgot he was Sherlock Holmes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Levallion chuckled, but his eyes were very sweet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She held out her hand for the emerald ring.

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

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

But it was not Sister Elizabeth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ravenel caught her breath.

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

He gazed at her in blind stupefaction.

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

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

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

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

“Say it!” She stamped her foot.

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

“RAVENEL.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He was at the party and was kind to me.” With a sudden aside she remembered, and faced him stonily. “But there’s no earthly sense in all this! Of course, when I heard you had a wife already I knew you had excellent reason to leave me. It was the first honorable thing you ever did.”

“A wife—me!” His hand on her shoulder relaxed suddenly. “Who told you a lie like that? And how in the name of God did you dare to believe it?”

“Mrs. Murray—Hester Murray—told me. As for believing it, it seemed all of a piece.”

“Hester Murray told you—Hester!” His face had been pale enough, but it was blanched now. He remembered suddenly that he was in Levallion’s house, talking to Levallion’s wife—that at any cost no one must come in and find her like this.

“Sit down,” he said. “And I can’t stoop; would you mind picking up that ring?” for it looked like a glove cast down for battle. “Now, tell me about Mrs. Murray. What did she say?”

“That you found Mrs. Gordon very expensive and a drain on you, and that it had been a boyish folly of yours,” she said from her chair at a decent distance from his. “Who did she mean, if not your wife?”

Adrian Gordon was dumb. In Levallion’s house Levallion’s wife asked him this!

CHAPTER XVII.

THE SEALED LETTER.

“She was not my wife,” Gordon said at last, for there was no reason he should not clear himself, if he dared not answer her plain question. “I never had a wife and never will have. The woman Hester Murray meant was nothing to me, though it was true she was in trouble and I helped her, till I found out she was a worthless liar. If Mrs. Murray dared,” he hesitated, “to tell you that, some one must have made it very much worth her while.”

“Adrian,” said Ravenel, her eyes straight on his, “you mean that? Because we’re just as if we were dead, you and I. We’ve got to tell the truth.”

“You know it’s true,” he answered heavily. “That woman lied to you. Only I can’t see how it was her business,” with the vile conviction on him that only at Levallion’s own bidding would Hester Murray have helped him to take a wife, and with pressure even then. He roused himself sharply.

“Never mind that, it doesn’t matter.” Since it was too dangerous to touch on! “You say I didn’t go to the duchess’. Well, I wrote to you that I couldn’t go; that it was my only day to marry you.” She could hardly hear him, saw him as in a mist through scalding tears of relief that was yet worse anguish. “I waited all day. I came back that night and threw gravel at your window, tried every door in the house, and couldn’t wake you or Tommy. Jacobs came out to bark, and found it was a friend—but no one else. And at dawn I had to go. Surely you must have heard, or Tommy must! I made all the noise I dared.”

“I never heard,” she answered, with a tearless sob, “and Tommy could not have heard any one in the garden, for he slept on the other side of the house.” She would not tell him how she had cried herself to sleep on the floor that night, and never waked till dawn. She went on sharply: “If I had heard Jacobs bark I should never have thought of you, because your letter said the next day was—was when you were coming for me.” Not the pains of hell could have made her say “our wedding-day.” “I was only wretched because I’d lost your ring and had such a dreadful disappointment at the party. I never dreamed you had come for me while I was out.”

“But, of course, I came! I wrote I should.” He stared at her with a puzzled frown. “And you said you got my letter?”

“Oh, I got it,” slowly. “But you must have made a mistake in it. It said you would come for me on the 14th, and be at the duchess’ on the 13th. Look!” with an uncontrollable impulse she did what she had meant not to do, and threw on the table that lying letter she had kept because she was not brave enough to burn it. “Read for yourself.”

Tear-stained, rubbed out with long poring over, it lay in his hand, but he was looking at the envelope instead of the enclosure.

“You see it was sealed!” she cried. “No one could have opened it.”

“That is just it,” said Gordon quietly. “I never sealed a letter in my life. I never owned a seal with ‘A’ on it. That was some one else’s work, Nel, not mine.” He shook the letter out painfully with one hand and let the light slant across it. “Look,” he said, “the dates have been rubbed out and altered. Just five minutes’ work and a bit of sealing-wax, but they’ve ruined you and me. See, I wrote, ‘I can’t go to the duchess’!’ And one flick of a rubber made it, ‘I can go!’ But who could have done it? Who could care?”

“Lady Annesley.” There were no tears in her eyes, just as there lurked no doubt in her heart. “The letters all went to her first. I thought it had escaped her notice, because of the London postmark, and the seal—like a fool!—for in an Annesley house there must have been plenty of seals with ‘A’ on them. And Tommy warned me that very morning that he thought she had her eyes on you and me. I might have known it—when her ladyship was kind!” bitterly. “She couldn’t have dared do it. She had no reason.”

Lady Levallion laughed, and it was ugly laughter.

“She’s allowed a thousand a year now, and a house,” she said, in a voice like her laugh. “She has been able to shake the dust of dulness and Annesley Chase and mortgages off her feet. Oh! she had reason enough. Tommy said she meant Levallion to marry me, but the funny part of it is that in the end she had nothing to do with it.”

“What do you mean?” with a dull horror at the look on her face. “And what did you mean just now about Lady Annesley’s ring, when I said you sent mine back?”

“I meant just that,” she answered bitterly. “I thought I lost your ring, but I never did, since it’s here in my hand. Who could have sent it to you but Sylvia? And I know now how she got it. She cut the ribbon off my neck when she tried on that wicked dress she gave me. She pretended to arrange the train just to pick the ring off the floor. I thought even then I must have dropped it in her room, but I was afraid to ask. And then when I was going to stay with the duchess she gave me a ring of hers—and it was the note I sent that ring back to her in that you know by heart. She simply enclosed my ring in it to you. Oh”—she was getting out each jerky sentence breathlessly—“I see it all now! Just like A, B, C, one thing after another. Except,” listlessly, “how she found out about it in the first place; but she was always suspicious. It all began with my trying on that dreadful dress—that I only took for you to see.”

“And Levallion saw you instead,” quietly.

“You’re wrong!” she cried. “It was all Sylvia. Levallion had nothing to do with it. It was I! I, who, after you went, got wicked. Married him with my eyes open, to hurt you.” She covered her face.

But all he said was almost to himself.

“Nel, my Nel all the time!”

“Not now,” fiercely, “nor ever! Adrian, can’t you see it? We’re done for, just as though we were dead.”

“I’ll see Lady Annesley first,” grimly.

“You can’t!” she whispered. “Not now. She lied to me, but I—I married Levallion of my own accord. And he was good to me. I can see now that if I’d had the sense to tell him he might have—but what had I to tell?” breaking off with a sick sob. “Only that you had thrown me over. I couldn’t expect him to write and ask you to take me back again. And I thought you were married and had lied to me.”

“You couldn’t do anything,” feeling sick as he saw himself as he had been all this time in her eyes. “I wouldn’t wonder at anything you did. Tell me, is Tommy also thinking me a scoundrel?”

A penciled letter seemed such a little thing to be able to drag a man’s honor in the dust, and take away from him all that life held. There were both dismay and anger in his eyes as he waited for her to answer.

“Tommy only knows I was engaged to you, that I lost my ring and you left me without writing. You needn’t think I told any one the rest,” simply. “Adrian, what are we going to do? Levallion—he’s been good.” She faltered, stopped. Yet he knew her white lips were not for Levallion.

“We can’t do anything. I must go away,” and he touched the lace at her wrist as if the very hem of her garments were sacred to him; his eyes swept with the old look from her bronze hair to her little shoes. But from the sight of her wet eyes, her trembling lips, he turned away, cursing himself that in blind madness he had believed even her own handwriting against her; wincing at the remembrance that “Levallion had been kind.” Levallion, whose kind acts, to his knowledge, had been two, and one of them might very well bear another significance. He could not forget that it was Levallion who had sent him to India.

“Go? You can’t go! You’re not fit!” She was frantic as she looked at his changed and ravaged face. How worn he was—how like, with quick horror—to Levallion! “Where can you go?”

“Town,” laconically. “Rooms, till I’m better.”

Like a flash she saw him sitting alone in those rooms, with a broken ring, a lying letter, in pain, old in his youth.

“You can’t go. It would kill me!” she said quietly. But she drew away from him so that her lace was out of his reach. If he touched the flesh of her wrist she knew that not Tommy, nor honor, nor Levallion, could keep her from following him to the end of the world.

“I must. I can’t stay here!”

“I could nurse you, take care of you!” wildly, her face bloodless over her lace tie, her collar of Levallion’s pearls.

“Any one on God’s earth but you!” said Gordon, with a quick shudder. He leaned back in his chair as if he were faint. He had known the light of his life was gone out, but he had not known alien fingers had extinguished it against Ravenel Annesley’s will.

The hard words, the exhaustion in his face, steadied her, as pain always did.

“You’re worn out. I had no right to tell you,” she said miserably. “I’ve only hurt you.”

“You’ve shown me heaven,” he answered, and bravely, for all his pain of body and mind. “Just that, after being through hell and out again. Go now, Nel. They’ll wonder—you’ve been so long! Give me the ring. I can keep that, can’t I? It’s all I have, you know.”

“But I’ll see you again?”

“Not alone,” gravely. “It isn’t likely. So this is good-by.”

Good-by! After to-day, then, she would see his face no more. Would never hear his voice, that could move her as no voice on earth would ever do; would be alone till she died, the ungrateful, unloving girl Levallion had been good to. And he would be alone, too, but out in the world where he could forget her, as men forget and women never.

Ashy pale, she put that unlucky ring in his hand; silent, broken-hearted, turned away from him; and had never loved him so much as now, when he bade her go.

“Nel!” he said, and she turned at the door. But not to go back to him, not to touch his hand nor to kiss him but once before she went, for she read his face aright and knew he would have died a thousand deaths first. Only to stand and look at him as he at her, the truth for the first and last time spoken between them. After this it would be Levallion’s wife who met him, never Nel Annesley who had loved him neither wisely nor well, but madly and in the bitterness of her soul.

“Good-by, sweetheart,” he murmured. “Be good. Don’t forget me,” and shut his eyes that he might not see her go.

And neither of them heard the quiet breathing of Sister Elizabeth, where she stood goggle-eyed in Adrian’s bedroom.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A GROWING CLOUD OF WITNESSES.

“My dear child, how are you?” cried the duchess and kissed Ravenel on both cheeks.

She was the last arrival of the house-party, and she sank into a low chair by the fire and surveyed the scene, covertly and without her long-handled glasses.

The big hall of Levallion Castle was lit by two fires and a sufficiency—no more—of shaded lamps. There were plenty of cozy corners and secluded chairs behind the great square pillars supporting the low roof, where dull gold gleamed fitfully in the fire flicker. Among the orderly disorder of chairs and tables and palms, people were sitting in twos and threes—occasionally drinking tea, laughing, warming themselves, and wondering what sort of a married man Levallion made. His past record happily did not point to a dull sojourn under his roof.

But the duchess, like Gallio, cared for none of these things.

Her red, comfortably handsome face was turned to the sumptuous figure at the tea-table, all white velvet and Russian sable and floating, wavy chiffon.

“I am Annesley’s little girl, turned into an accordion-plaited angel!” thought her grace, blind to everything but surprise. For Ravenel under her wing had been only a remarkably pretty girl, rather quick, almost shy. And here stood a beautiful woman, utterly self-possessed, and a work of art from her carefully dressed hair to the way her great gray eyes looked up from her tea-making.

“A maid, that’s the reason of those beautifully done waves!” thought the duchess. “But how much prettier she is than I imagined. A woman with those eyebrows and that upper lip might do anything. But what color there is in her face, with those gray-blue eyes and black eyebrows and that surprising bronze hair! She looks—eh, what—Levallion? Oh, tea!”

“It’s usual at this hour—or would you rather——”

“Don’t worry me, my good man!” smartly. “She looks well, Levallion; happier, I think!”

“She is very well.” He glanced at his wife across the buzzing room. The duchess was right, she did look happier. The queer, stony look that had been in her eyes was gone. It seemed to him that the change in her dated from one evening when he had found her sitting alone in her room, with a burning color in her cheeks and quick unwonted questions on her tongue. He remembered them now. “Levallion, you really love me? You didn’t marry me because Sylvia arranged it—nor just to have a wife? You would have married me all the same even if I’d told you why——” but she had never finished.

“I married you for love, and nothing else,” he had answered quietly, and she had watched him as he said it, then turned from him and spoke laboredly, over her shoulder.

“I’ll do my best to be a good wife to you.”

But even now he never imagined how at that moment she come of her own accord to believe in what was true, that he had known nothing of Sylvia’s maneuvering. And her duty lay plain before her. To take up the life she had deliberately made for herself and be a loyal wife to the man who had always “been good” to her. Very barren, very dreary, in spite of Levallion’s kindness that life lay before her, but she would tread it faithfully to the very end. And unconsciously a great joy leaped to her eyes and ever since had burned there steadily. Adrian might be lost to her a thousand times more than ever, but in her soul she could worship him, for he had been true.

But Levallion, poor fool, had thanked God for that rapture in her eyes; a man, too, who was not in the habit of thanking God for anything.

“There’s peace in her face,” said the duchess shortly, having followed his eyes in that long pause. “Well, well! You’re a better man than I thought, Levallion. Send Tommy to me with the tea cake. You make me nervous when you watch me eat.”

Sir Thomas came without much alacrity. He had a better opinion of the duchess’ shrewdness than Levallion; and he was not easy in his mind. He knew quite well that Ravenel’s renewed beauty and the quiet of her face dated from that interview with Adrian Gordon, that he had not discovered in time to prevent. He was uncomfortably conscious that for all he knew the household might be sitting on a volcano.

“And how are you?” inquired his friend with her mouth full. “I hear Lady Annesley is cutting a dash at Harrogate. I don’t suppose you miss her!”

“Not much!” stolidly, though he would rather a hundred times have been back under her ladyship’s rule and been sitting half-fed at Annesley Chase with the old Ravenel, than here in Levallion’s house with a sister who would not meet his eye.

“I’m not pining away for Lady Annesley.”

“She’d give her eyes to be here,” the duchess chuckled unkindly. “You seem to have an extremely cheerful collection. By the way, how’s young Gordon? I hear he’s been very ill here?”

“He’s better,” shortly. “He had a sort of relapse last week. But he’s coming down to dinner to-night. We”—hastily—“haven’t seen anything of him. He’s had a nurse.”

But the duchess merely murmured that it was a sad case, a man with a shattered bridle arm being of no further use in a hussar regiment; and passed serenely on. She had no intention of telling Tommy that she had found out all about that marriage that never came off. The curate at Effingham had talked, and the whole parish knew about the couple who had never come to be married, but had wasted a special license and the curate’s time. Ravenel’s past was no business of any one’s but Levallion, who would never hear it.

“If she has any sense she knows by this time that Levallion’s little finger is worth a whole string of lovesick soldiers,” she thought. “I never saw a man so softened and improved in all my life. He looks twenty years younger. But all the same, if he’s wise, he won’t press his distinguished young relative to an indefinite stay.”

But even the duchess felt a shocked pity that night at dinner as she looked across the flowers and gold plate and saw how very ill and worn Captain Gordon looked. Why, the man was a death’s head. A romantic, undesirable death’s head, with its arm in a sling. She glanced at Ravenel and saw to her infinite relief that she was not so much as looking Gordon’s way. Exquisitely fair in ivory satin and burned orange velvet, she was talking to the man on her right hand with her old childlike mirth. But the duchess was near-sighted. Sir Thomas Annesley could have told her that there was anything but mirth in Ravenel’s steady eyes. And truly repentance, impotent pain, and fear were doing their work. Under that smart bodice Lady Levallion’s heart was aching dully while she made conversation, as many a better woman’s has done and will do while the world goes round.

She knew quite well that the width of a white table-cloth separated her from Adrian as utterly as a gulf of a thousand miles. Knew that after dinner he would never speak to her, except in the few sentences decently demanded from guests to hostess; that as soon as he could he would get away from the house.

“Oh, I’ve simply got to speak to him!” she thought. “If I have to make the chance myself,” for there were two things she had forgotten to ask him, and one of them rankled. Why had he said he was too poor to marry her openly, and all the while was Levallion’s sole heir? The probable successor to the richest earldom in England is not usually considered a bad match, even by more greedy people than Ravenel. And who was the woman who had come to ask after him; though she cared very little, or she determined to think so. She came out of her thoughts with a jerk, suddenly conscious that she had not the least idea what the man beside her was saying.

“I was thinking how pretty all the women are,” she observed quickly, to avoid having to say. “I beg your pardon.”

Lord Chayter surveyed the table. It was quite true, every woman there was a picture in her way; and nearly all he saw were dark; and made a foil to the peachy loveliness, the curled bronze head of their hostess.

“My own wife’s the only one of ’em I’d care to kiss though!” he remarked, rather after the manner of Levallion, who was his dearest friend.

“That’s very charming—and proper—of you!”

“No! It’s the ‘hard kalsomine finish’ that appals me,” coolly. “Come now, Lady Levallion, you don’t mean to say you can’t see it?”

For Ravenel, who owned no rouge-pot and eschewed powder, was looking at him bewilderedly.

“I thought——” she began, and then laughed, but not too gaily, “was everything in the grand world a sham, even down to the lovely color on the women’s cheeks?”

“That all things were what they seemed? Well, they ain’t unfortunately! You really ought to be congratulated on your cook, Lady Levallion. I never ate better chicken done with almonds than this.”

“I hope you won’t get tired of it,” she returned. “Levallion is so fond of almonds. He arranges the dinners, you know. I should have roast beef and plum tart, he thinks—and so I would!”

Lord Chayter thought she looked as if she lived on peaches and cream; but he did not say so, for something caught his attention.

“Do you never have the blinds down in this room?” he inquired suddenly. “Oh, I see, there are none. But don’t you think it’s rather uncanny to look over the table and candles and things, and the ladies’ pretty frocks, to those blank, dark windows? It makes me feel creepy,” frankly. “As if ghosts might be peering in!”

“We never use this room when we’re alone. The windows must be a fancy of Levallion’s. I don’t see very well how we could have blinds on them.”

For the state dining-room was on the ground floor in the oldest part of the castle, and the windows were sunk deep and narrow in the six-foot wall which slanted away from them till each foot-wide window-glass made the apex of a wide stone V.

“I should!” said Lord Chayter, who was fat and fair and screwed-up eyed. “Makes me nervous. Now look, just opposite us! Couldn’t you swear some one was looking in? though, of course, it’s all fancy.”

Lady Levallion’s glance followed his and grew suddenly startled. For, though it was gone in an instant, even as she looked at it, there had been something like a white face, like gleaming eyes, pressed to the window-pane of the embrasured window.

“There, you see! Though it’s either imagination or a gardener’s boy,” said Lord Chayter. “Don’t look so frightened.”

“I’m not frightened,” quietly, “but I think you’re right. Those blank windows make the room uncanny. I’ll have something done to them to-morrow,” but like lightning her thoughts had flown at the sight of that face against the glass to the strange woman who had come to inquire for Adrian; though there could be no earthly connection.

“Let her look!” she thought contemptuously. “She won’t see much to please her. And not a soul in the house knows anything about Adrian and me, and that’s all I care about.” Quite unconscious that Tommy and the duchess suspected what Sister Elizabeth knew; and that every wind that blew, every hour that passed, was pushing her nearer to the greatest horror any woman can face.

“Screens would do it,” returned Lord Chayter serenely, turning some attention to his dinner, and determining to drop a hint to Levallion. For there were windows on both sides of the big room, and it seemed a coincidence that if any one had looked in they should have chosen the side behind and not facing Lord Levallion’s sharp eyes. He gave the subject what he considered a happy turn.

“Captain Gordon looks pretty shaky! He ought to be careful, if he prefers earth to heaven,” he observed. “Better keep him here and let some of these charming ladies take him in hand. He wants a course of petting, the platonic kind, you know!” Ravenel caught the duchess’ eye, and rose thankfully.

“Any one on earth to nurse me rather than you!” Adrian had said. But her punishment would be more than she could bear if she must stand by and see any of these women do it. She utterly forgot that white phantom face at the dark window.

CHAPTER XIX.

IN OUTER DARKNESS.

And yet it was not such a phantom after all! Inside were women in satin gowns, sitting at their ease among lights and flowers and frivolous talk. Outside in the damp chill of the autumn rain stood another woman, raising herself uncomfortably to the level of that unblinded window. Cold to the bone, sick with envy and despair she saw the lighted room as the stage at a theater, where she should have been among the actors, but had been cast out into the pit.

Oh, the night, and the rain! What a fool she had been to come out in her house dress without a mackintosh; she would be wet to the skin. Suddenly, fiercely, she knew she did not care; and she raised herself on tiptoe on the stone terrace, clinging with one trembling hand to the sharp stonework round the window. It was senseless, useless, yet she must see. And, perhaps, if luck were in her way, if she came night after night, might see something that, if it did not turn Levallion to her again, might at least turn him from some one else.

There was Levallion with his back to her. She had tried the other side of the room first and left it hurriedly for fear of his eyes. And over his shoulder, opposite him, she could see the girl who had supplanted her; whom she—Hester Murray—had helped to do it. A sheer physical pang made her move back from the window. Lady Levallion in her ivory and orange, her exquisite young throat and arms bare, her face immaculately fresh and young, was not a sight the woman who shivered in the rain could bear to look on. Ten years ago she had been within an ace of sitting in her place; a year ago would have been hand in glove with all that well-dressed company who surrounded her. To-night she knew quite well that not one of them but would have cut her in the park. For things had come out! Her not being asked to Levallion’s wedding had set a match to the train, and poor, kindly, drunken Bob Murray had made a scene one night before a lot of people, and said things that made even Hester’s gods of money and smartness look at her askance. He had named no names, it was true; but he had said quite enough. And then he had departed from her house, from her and her boy forever; saying they were no concern of his. And though Levallion did not believe her, for excellent reasons, when she told him she had no money, it was quite true. Her debts—that she had made sure would be paid for her—had swallowed up all she possessed. It took all she could scrape to keep her boy at school, and her tenancy of the raw new bungalow in Levallion’s own village was her last throw, her forlorn hope. When he was tired of his new toy, perhaps he might come back to her; at all events she would give him the chance and trust to luck to pay her rent!

But she was not thinking of those things now. Only that her downfall had been all her own fault. A little carelessness, an unskilful lie found out, and her life had toppled about her ears. And even this marriage of Levallion’s was partly her work. She could still see Ravenel Annesley’s face as it looked in the glass the day she had told that mad lie about Adrian Gordon.

“The girl cared then,” she thought, pressing her hand to her burning eyes. “And he’s here still. If she cares now Levallion will get rid of her. I know him. Oh, I hope she’ll care! I wonder what there was between them, and if Sylvia told the truth about their meaning to get married.” Once more she raised herself to peer through the barren window, and saw Adrian Gordon plainly enough to catch with a fierce leap of her heart how very ill he looked. “He may die yet! But it would be better if he lived, perhaps, and made love to his old flame,” with the coarse thought of a woman who habitually speaks daintily. “If he does Levallion shall see it, shall——” She had been so occupied with Adrian as not to notice that two faces, Lady Levallion’s and Lord Chayter’s, were turned curiously in her direction, but she felt their eyes with sudden intuition and moved swiftly away into the dark. It was no part of her schemes to be seen looking at Levallion’s dinner-party like a dismissed servant.

“All that for her,” she thought bitterly, “and nothing for me and the boy! I would have done better to have stuck to Bob. He never drank till I ran away from him; he would have been kind to me. Oh, Levallion’s a devil! a devil!” It was all she could do not to cry it aloud. “If I can’t get anything out of him, I’ll be even with him. I’ll find some way to make him feel. If I know anything of faces that pink-and-white girl won’t be able to keep away from her old lover. And then we’ll see. Levallion in a rage would do anything, anything! Oh! I’m not done yet, I’m not despairing yet. Not with Adrian Gordon in the house and Levallion in love with his wife. Oh, my God!” and this time she spoke in a dreadful croaking whisper. “What a fool I was ever to imagine for one instant that he was in love with me!”

She drew away into the scant shelter of an evergreen, and pushed her wet, uncurled hair out of her eyes. She had no motive for staying here shivering and drenched, but the air and the rain even were better than sitting alone by her solitary fireside, when no one of all the people she had ever asked to dinner would dream of coming to see her. Once start the truth about a woman who lives by her wits, and a hundred things true and untrue come up to confirm it. Hester Murray’s pitcher had gone once too often to the well; it was broken for good and all now. And Levallion, who had once been her slave, had forbidden her to come within his gates.

“Well, he can do it,” she thought defiantly, “but he can’t make me obey him! I’ll try one more window and then I’ll go. I don’t want to kill myself.” And the sharp shiver that went through her made her move hastily through the darkness. It was odd, but the drip of the rain from the house made her think of earth falling into a grave. It was ghostly, terrifying to lurk outside in the dark, while women no better than she sat at their ease on the other side of a window-pane.

Stumbling, for all her slim grace; weary, for all the passion that burned in her, she made her way round the house in the pitchy darkness that had somehow got on her nerves. There was a little alcove in the drawing-room, whose modern French window reached the floor—it was odd how well Mrs. Murray knew the house—it would do no harm to glance in there, if the blind was up. They would be coming out from dinner soon; and she might as well see all she could before going back to that lonely house where no one ever came. And once more that pang at her heart sickened her. All this might have been hers once, and had been thrown away.

There was no standing on tiptoe to reach this second window. Before she neared it she saw the square of light it flung on the grass, saw the convenient rose-bush which would shield her from any one inside. And if there had been any one to see the fierce white face, so changed from that of the Hester Murray who had been all smiles and softness, they might have shrunk away as if they saw an evil spirit.

“Ah!” she drew in her breath sharply, for she had builded better than she knew.

Dinner was over; the men were coming into the drawing-room; one, with his arm in a sling, coming straight to this alcove, unconscious, though Hester did not know it, that it already held his hostess looking for a book for which the duchess had asked her. He had sat down wearily before he saw the gleam of orange and ivory the watcher outside had seen long ago, as she saw Lady Levallion drop the just-found book and turn to him quickly, breathlessly.

Yet her words might have been shouted on the housetops; there was no need for Mrs. Murray to strain her ears to catch those compromising utterances through the glass.

“Won’t you go to bed? You look so tired!”

He nodded. He could hardly bear to look at her whom once he had never wanted out of his sight.

“I’ll go directly. I meant to go away to-morrow, but the doctor won’t let me travel till the end of the week.” His eyes on her wistfully, saying what his lips dared not—that it was not his fault that he was making things so hard for her.

“He’s quite right,” she answered, for the benefit of any one who might be outside the curtained recess. “We are very glad to have you,” but the hard-held look of her face told Gordon what he knew—that the words were a mockery.

Mrs. Murray remembered suddenly that she had not seen Levallion come into the room. An unreasoning and instinctive terror caught her heart, and sent her noiselessly, invisibly in her dark dress, yards away from the lighted window. And just in time.

Levallion, sauntering with apparent aimlessness, an Inverness cape thrown over his shoulder, an unlit cigarette in his mouth, came round the corner of the house, Lord Chaytor’s recital of the half-seen face at the window having set him wondering if it were real or not. But he had seen no one, and in front of the window he stopped and lit his cigarette, deciding Chaytor had looked upon more champagne than was good for him.

His unseen neighbor slipped behind him, paused for one second to look under his upraised arm before she took to her heels. And both of them saw the same sight. A girl turning from a man with a curious, pitiful gesture, stopped half-way; and the man, left alone, covering his haggard eyes with his hand. Levallion turned like a flash and had Hester Murray by the elbow.

CHAPTER XX.

A WICKED WOMAN’S TONGUE.

“I heard you breathing,” Levallion said composedly. “No, don’t you struggle; I’ll let you go! Only be kind enough to tell me what earthly pleasure it gives you to look in my windows.”

“No pleasure,” said Hester Murray, after a minute, when her frightened heart had seemed to choke her, and the quick withdrawal of his contemptuous grasp to make her a thing of no moment. “Only misery. Oh, Levallion! Won’t you be less hard on me? If you let me come here and be friendly with your wife it would set things right again. It kills me to be alone without a friend in the world.”

“What things? What do you mean?” sharply.

She dared not tell him. He would never help her if he knew.

“Nothing much,” she said, shivering, only half-artificially. “I’ve lost all my money, and—and people seem to have dropped me! To stay in your house with the duchess might help me.”

“Has she dropped you, too,” he inquired, wondering if, after all his careful analysis, she was not such a fool as she seemed.

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her lately,” though she knew well enough.

Levallion’s hawk eyes narrowed as he peered at her in the rainy darkness. Her wet hair strayed in lank locks down her face, that for once was not smiling. (How he had grown to loathe Hester’s smile!) He put up a suspicious hand on her thin shoulder and recoiled. She was wet to the skin, her thin house-dress a sticky, sopping mass.

“Look here, Hester!” he said almost kindly. “Better give up this business and go home. You won’t mend matters by being seen hanging about here after dark, merely get some very unpleasant illness.”

“I wish I’d died long ago.” There was something strained in her voice; even in the dark she did not look at him.

“I see what you mean about having no money.” It was odd how that queer note in her utterance killed the pity in him. “You had plenty.”

“There were debts—old debts,” she gasped, eagerly grasping at this chance, at least. “Debts from ten years ago——”

“You told me there were none,” he shrugged his shoulders. “If there were, ten-year-old debts are outlawed.”

“I had kept on paying a little on them. I didn’t know that obviated any time-limit. They sold me up for the principal and interest.” Only desperate hope made her speak the truth. “I tell you, Levallion, I haven’t a sou!”

“For an astute woman you haven’t managed well,” he said, after what seemed a long time. “If you had five hundred a year allowed you, quarterly, do you think you would be able to stay at home in the evenings?”

Five hundred a year to the woman who had had five times as many thousands spent on her! But she swallowed her rage, her contempt at his beggarly offer.

“I suppose—I could,” she said slowly. “But—oh! it’s not my poverty that hurts me, it’s——”

“Do go home, I beg of you!” said Levallion coldly. “You are not yourself. And, remember that you shall be supplied with what I consider an adequate income if you will leave this place and live elsewhere”—for, after all, he could not let the woman starve, dire and evil as had been her sins against him.

“I’ll go—I’ll do anything,” she muttered, with a sudden exhaustion that made her clutch the dripping bushes beside her. “But listen to me first. In spite of everything, I care for you still. I’d do anything for you. I’ve no pride left. If you will come and see me sometimes, your marriage shall be as if it had never happened——”

“Have the goodness,” interrupted Lord Levallion icily, “to leave my marriage out of the question. It concerns you in no way whatever.”

“It concerns me, because it kills me to see you taken in, deceived!” she cried fiercely, and so quickly that he could not stop her. “You could have seen it for yourself, not ten minutes ago, if you had not been besotted about her. Ask your wife what she knows about Adrian Gordon, and why she did not marry him,” utterly reckless now as to whether her lie about Adrian’s wife were found out or not. “She was engaged to him fast enough; but he was poor and you were rich. It was better to marry you, and have him come and stay in your house. Ask Sylvia Annesley—but she’ll lie to you! Ask that big-eyed brother of hers, who never lets his sister out of his sight. She never loved you, and she can love—in her girl’s way! Not like me, for I’ll love you till I die. Oh, Levallion!” panting, wild, she seized his arm, “don’t throw me over! Think of the boy, think how I have no world but you!”

“Don’t touch me,” said Levallion, with sudden acrid fury, as if he had waked from some bad dream in which he was bound and speechless. “Go!”

“Say that if you’re ever miserable—unhappy—you’ll come back to me!” She was pleading for her very life, as a fool does when death is certain. “Levallion!”

A curious stiffness came over the man from head to foot. When it broke he would have no power over tongue or hand; and this was a woman.

“Go away. Be quick!” he said hoarsely. “Because of what’s past you shall have your money, but not if you stay in my village. Your lies——”

“They’re truth,” contemptuously. “Ask, ask, and you’ll see!” She was so close to him that he felt her breath on his face. “Then perhaps you’ll come to me.”

“If you were dying in the gutter I would not come to you,” he spoke so evenly that she did not know that death stood closer to her than even Lord Levallion. “If you crawled after me on your knees, I would not change to you—or the boy! No matter what happened, neither you nor he shall ever get anything from me but the bread I would give to a beggar. Do you understand?” and in the dark she could not see his face.

“Oh! you think so now, I know. But when you find her out——”

That curious strained rigidity seemed to drop from him like a garment. A dreadful, fiery pain shot through his heart, ran in his blood, curved his fine hands.

“Go!” said Levallion thickly, “before I kill you with my hands.” But as he turned on her she had seen his eye.

She shrank away and ran, madly, where she neither knew nor cared. She had gone too far with him! He would murder her out here in the dark. Her dry, shut throat could make no sound in the terror that would not let her scream. Trembling, stumbling, falling and getting up again, Hester Murray fled through the darkness and rain. Her gown, that had been a soaked whisp, was a mass of filthy mud, her hands were caked with the clay of the roads, but she ran still, round and round sometimes, but, by degrees, more in the right direction. It was not till her breath absolutely would not come to her aching lungs, and the blood beat in her face, that she came to herself, and realized where she was. Alone on a country road, nearly at her own house, with not a soul following her, not a sign of those devilish eyes that had gleamed murder at her through the dark.

“He would have killed me!” she said to herself as soon as her choking heart-beats would let her. “I’ll never get anything from him but that five hundred a year that’s no use. Does he——” but a noise startled her, and she ran again like a drunken woman, staggering from side to side till she reached her own door.

Her wet hair down her back, her hands filthy, her black, gauzy gown an indescribable mass of mud and twigs and tatters, the blood purple in her pulsing face, she burst into her own drawing-room, where a lamp burned dimly, though there was no fire in the grate.

“Does he think I’m a fool? That I won’t pay him out, if I have to break myself to do it?” she cried fiercely, since her one maid went home at night, and there was no one to hear her.

But she was wrong, for a man’s voice answered her from the depths of a high-backed chair that was turned away from her.

“A fool! No one could see you and think that,” and the owner of the voice rose, looked at her, and recoiled with a quick word.

“But what is the matter with you? You are hurt—drowned—tell me quickly.”

Hester Murray, in her wet, unspeakable gown, sat down on one of her clean chintz chairs and told him. Whether the exact truth, or not, does not matter; but crimson-faced, glittering-eyed, she was a dreadful sight as the quick words came from her lips.

What he said, what she answered, she could not remember half an hour later, as she dragged her exhausted body up to bed, with a curiously compounded drink in a tumbler, which was to counteract the effects of exposure and fright. She fell asleep as soon as she felt the comfort of her warm bed, only muttering now and again as sleep gained on her:

“I’ll do it. He brought it on himself. It was—his fault. I hate him. I hate him!” and the fury of the thought wakened her for one burning, choking instant till her queer potion took hold of her, and she fell fast asleep, as they say men have done in the rack.

CHAPTER XXI.

WHITE POPPIES OF OBLIVION.

Levallion, left alone on the wet grass, had never made one step after her.

Alone, in the night and the rain, he had fought down that dreadful passion, that loathing that had made him forget everything but the desire to be rid of a venomous thing. He fought down, too, a harder thing; the shame that comes after the breaking out of a devil’s temper, whose leash has given way under strain; and at last could turn and go into his house, join his party, as if nothing had happened.

“Well! Did you discover any one?” Lord Chayter inquired covertly.

Levallion looked at him.

“There was no one there,” he said calmly, not knowing that to have told the truth would have been to put a bar in the way his young wife must travel. He could not tell Chayter what was none of his business, and might work round through the women to Ravenel.

His eyes passed his friend and found his wife.

“By ——!” said the man’s mind heavily. “If ever I saw innocence, there it sits. What do I care if she was engaged to Adrian twenty times over, she did not marry me to be Lady Levallion! She married me because she was wretched, and if I would have listened to her, she would have told me the whole story. Ask Sylvia!” he smiled as he alone could smile when his heart ached. “I would as soon ask the devil for holy water! And if Tommy did not punch my head for impertinence if I asked him—gad! I’d kick him. I’m not in my dotage that I believe the statements of an angry, hysterical woman.”

But, in spite of himself, Levallion saw every action of Ravenel’s through a magnifying-glass all the next day. It rained, and there was no shooting to speak of; the men were at home by luncheon-time, and up to that Lady Levallion had been with them, chaperoning Mrs. Damerel, sick and against her will, since to kill birds for pleasure was to her a crime. And all that afternoon she never spoke to Adrian Gordon, nor he to her. They might have been utter strangers with a preconceived dislike to one another. But Adrian looked like a haunted man, who deliberately turns his eyes from the sight he dare not see.

“Levallion,” said a charming voice in his ear at tea-time, “I have an idea!”

It was Mrs. Damerel, who had for years cherished a platonic—and unreturned—affection for her handsome, sharp-tongued host.

Levallion repressed the obvious retort.

“Tell it,” he drawled; “I never have any!”

“Let us have a fancy ball to-night—oh! I know there are only twenty of us, but it’s enough. The men can wear evening dress,” shrewdly, “but the women must all dress in their favorite flower, and wear masks. We’re nearly all the same height, and it would be so amusing. Fancy,” with a delighted laugh, “if you were to take me for your wife!”

“You never gave me a chance! You refused to poison Damerel,” calmly. “Every woman her favorite flower—delicious! But what a revelation of character! What’s yours? The flower of silence?”

“Then we may?” cried Mrs. Damerel, and hoped she blushed, though it would have taken sharper eyes than Levallion’s to see it. “I’ll tell Lady Levallion. My flower, indeed! We will all be quite secret, and you can guess when you see us,” abandoning her choice of the rose of silence for the more exciting mistletoe of kisses. “Oh, Levallion! don’t you think the duchess would be lovely as a cauliflower?” in a wicked whisper. “She is so like one.”

“I’ll inquire,” said Levallion briskly, and he did, with Mrs. Damerel’s compliments, perfectly aware the duchess detested her.

Ravenel jumped at the proposal, since it would be better than nothing, would pass the time of which she yet grudged every hopeless, useless minute since they only brought the day nearer when Adrian would be gone. She looked at the tea-gowned women around her with some interest, though before they had been to her little more than moving shadows who yet must be entertained and amused.

There were only seven, counting herself and the Duchess of Avonmere, for Levallion had no opinion of people who asked ten ordinary husbands and wives to their houses and expected it to be a cheerful gathering. Thirteen men, of whom only two were husbands, kept things stirring. It was no business of Levallion’s where the three uninvited husbands had betaken themselves.

“I believe,” she said to herself, “that I know what flower each one of those women will choose!” and she laughed as she sent an order to the greenhouse that every one was to have exactly what their maids asked for.

The thought of her own favorite flower took the color from her cheek. Oh, the white may that had filled the whole world that day that she and Adrian parted—forever—without knowing it. Never again would Lady Levallion smell may of her own free will. She looked up almost guiltily as Levallion spoke to her under cover of getting Mrs. Damerel’s second cup of tea.

“You look tired; slip away and rest,” he advised, with a look of coldness that was not like him—to her. “And be wise in time, Ravenel; don’t wear real flowers to-night, unless you want to resemble the sweepings of Covent Garden!”

Lady Levallion nodded.

“It was that shooting; it made me feel sick,” hastily; and if he did not believe her, seeing Adrian’s face and hers, he liked her courage. If she had come to him and cried and confided, he would have despised her, even while he dried her tears. To ease your own soul by piling your indiscretions or sorrows on some one else was against Levallion’s creed.

“I have no favorite flower,” she said, with a laugh, having crushed down the ghosts of flowers she loved and hated, “and—listen, Levallion, bend your head down, and—neither have any of them! They’re racking their brains now to discover what their adorers prefer.”

Levallion laughed. He had not thought she knew so much, all his dear friends being truly but mirrors of the pose of the moment, on the tastes of the “man in possession.” And her laugh lightened his heart, and made him remember that Hester Murray was, and always had been, a liar.

“Mind you look better than the lot,” he remarked cheerfully, and without much anxiety, for not a woman in the room could come near her for looks.

“My favorite flower will depend on what Celeste has in her boxes,” she thought, as she went up-stairs. Ordinary evening dress was to be worn at dinner, as usual; but before the men came to the picture-gallery, where they were to dance, the ladies could have time to change and put on their masks, which Mrs. Damerel’s maid was making out of black silk, exactly alike, with black hoods to match and cover the hair, which might betray the wearers.

Celeste, with a face of despair, had nothing.

“There are pink roses, but they would be so ordinary, my lady,” she said, rooting wildly in her stores. “Nothing else, unless——” She opened a cardboard box doubtfully, and gazed at its contents. “They are not gay flowers!” she commented.

“They will do, perfectly,” said Ravenel, after one second. “They are very—appropriate. Sew them on firmly, Celeste, and make me a little wreath that will go under my hood.”

An old tag of poetry had leaped into her memory as she looked at the white mass in the box, but she had no tremors lest any one else should remember and apply it.

She looked at herself narrowly in the glass when, after dinner which, by the way, was anything but good, Levallion having had a fresh battle with Carrousel on the subject of the disappearance of the first orchids of the season—she achieved her toilet, and, with thankfulness, hid herself in her thick, black mask. For behind it she could let her mouth take what shape it liked, and, thank God! for one night need not be always smiling.

Levallion was late. He stood at one end of the long picture-gallery, whence he had coolly banished all his ancestors as being too hideous to contemplate, and looked between the walls covered with modern French pictures to the far end of the room.

There were the guests in a group—and for a moment he was honestly puzzled, for the women were all of a height, as Mrs. Damerel had said.

Then he laughed, for he saw the duchess. And the duchess had taken Mrs. Damerel’s words to heart and bedecked herself with real and veritable cauliflowers—but with what a genius!

On the white velvet gown were bestowed wreaths and bunches of the white part of her homely vegetable, which were almost as velvety as the gown itself.

She disdained either mask or hood, and her curled, gray head rose over her ornaments with the air of a woman who may be fifty, but has slain a spiteful foe with her own weapon, and knows it.

“The blue one with forget-me-nots is Lady Chayter.” Levallion looked again at the group. “Artificial! Artificial! I don’t believe she ever picked a real one in her life.

“Yellow and Maréchal Niel roses—Mrs. Arbuthnot. That sweet vision of chiffon and lilies is Betty Beauchamp! Betty—who has a new young man every month in the year!” and he grinned.

It was more amusing than such nonsense usually turned out. But from Lady Gwendolin Brook, in dull-orange and evil orchids, he turned his head in disgust, commenting dryly, that she was too modern for future parties of his.

“I always stood up for her, too, which is awkward. But I never understood what she really was, till I saw those devilish brown-spotted orchids,” and his eyes found Mrs. Damerel and laughed. Shy and modest violets covered Mrs. Damerel’s lilac satin, mistletoe having been unprocurable. Mrs. Damerel—who shot, and hunted, and smoked, and usually put her conversation into plain terms! She might put six masks on her face when she forgot not to stick out her self-asserting elbows. And then he looked no more, for his glance had fallen on a woman in white, standing alone at a little distance from the others.

It was Ravenel in a plain, ivory satin gown, covered with great trails of white poppies with purplish-black hearts, and dull-green velvet leaves.

Over a mass of the pallid flowers of sleep and death her face and head were tragic in the black shroudings that he had somehow never thought looked sinister on the other women.

And not her mask alone sent a chill to Levallion’s heart. Her eyes, black and anxious in their narrow eyeholes, were fixed on Adrian Gordon, who for once stood beside her, was whispering in her ear.

And as he spoke her somber eyes flashed with a sudden brightness, a joy they had never had for Levallion.

“White poppies!” even at his own expense, Levallion was cynical. “Well, I suppose I may be glad she does not wear the roses of rapture and silence.” And he cursed with some thoroughness himself for his suspicious thoughts and Hester Murray for her lying tales, even the innocent white poppies, because they meant “oblivion”—the oblivion of a woman who says to herself every morning that she has forgotten. As he walked over to the duchess to congratulate her on her masterpiece of decoration, he felt exceedingly cross and out of sorts. But, being Lord Levallion, determined to keep his eyes and ears utterly away from his wife throughout the evening. Every girl has a school-day love-affair; let her bury hers to-night under her white poppies! To spite himself and prove Hester was wrong, he had half a mind to ask Adrian to stay on indefinitely, but even Levallion knew he could not do that.

“My dear Levallion,” said the duchess, as the music—obtained by a miracle of money and a special train!—struck up, “pray don’t wriggle! You’re not sitting on a pin, are you?”

“It’s Damerel,” returned his lordship affectedly. “Don’t look at the egregious fool! He’ll make you ill.”

The duchess glanced at Mr. Damerel, who had turned his dress clothes into a walking funeral with tuberoses, even unto the seams of his trousers.

“He’s very funny!” she said doubtfully.

“He ought to be put into a hearse,” snapped Levallion. “I wish I’d never read any poetry! I should not be able to remember so many quotations about the idiocy of man,” but the particular verse in his mind did not apply to Mr. Damerel’s trousers, and he never glanced at his wife as she passed him, though her white train brushed his feet.

Slowly the words were putting themselves together in his mind, and he knew more than Ravenel did:

“Now, those are poppies in her locks,

White poppies she must wear;

Must wear a mask to hide her face

And the want graven there.”

Ravenel had gone no further; Levallion’s vilely accurate memory supplied two lines more:

“Or—is the hunger, fed at length,

Cast off the care?”

And at the memory of the quick and sudden glory of Ravenel’s glance at Adrian, the man could not but wince. He looked up and saw her standing beside him.

“Aren’t you going to dance with me?” she said. “You can pretend you didn’t know it was I, you know!”

Pretend, indeed, when he would know her in her grave-clothes with a cloth over her face! He rose a little stiffly, and put his arms around her waist. He danced well for all his forty-seven years, and he knew it; the two floated smoothly down the long gallery to the tune of “Bid Me Good-by and Go,” and Adrian Gordon, who had never danced with the girl he loved, had to step back as she passed him in Levallion’s arms.

“Oh,” said Ravenel, who had not seen him, “you’re holding me too tight! And you’re out of breath, Levallion.”

“I am forty-seven,” he returned, rather grimly, stopping by the lower door. “Now run off and amuse yourself. I must go and condole with Mrs. Damerel. Did you know she wanted me to send seven miles after dark for a bunch of mistletoe? In October!” and he deliberately, and of a set purpose, never turned his eyes toward his wife during the remainder of the evening, and, when “kitchen lanciers” rent the air, retired, without ostentation, to the library.

It was dark, and he turned on the electric light irritably.

“What did you do that for?” said the cross voice of Sir Thomas. “Oh, I beg your pardon, Levallion! I didn’t know it was you.” He rose from his knees at the window.

“Why are you praying instead of dancing?” inquired Levallion, casting himself into a chair.

“I was watching some one, Levallion. I wish you’d put out the light and come here! I’m sure there’s some one trying to get into the conservatory.”

The light went out as he spoke. Sir Thomas was much mistaken if Levallion did not swear; certainly he groaned inwardly.

At first he saw nothing as he strained his eyes into the darkness, and then, against the soft, rose-colored glow of the conservatory, between him and it, he was conscious of a woman’s figure. Somehow that restless, black shape touched Levallion’s nerves.

“Stay here; don’t say anything to any one,” he said, very low, as if the woman could hear him. “It must be one of the servants, but I’ll just find out!”

Whatever deviltry Hester had in mind should not be done. He would, from a safe screen of orange-trees, that would keep him from view of the people inside or out of the greenhouse, watch his chance, and make her understand that, though his lawyer had that day received his orders, a telegram to-morrow could revoke them. The woman was capable of anything—as he had good cause to know—and suppose she frightened Ravenel! Levallion was not long in getting to his covert. But, though he stared through the leaves till his eyes ached, he saw no more of that prowling wolf outside; he was just going away, when two people sat down on a secluded seat not a yard away from him and effectually cut off his retreat. For as he hesitated for one second, he heard his own name, in Ravenel’s voice.

“I tell you Levallion had nothing to do with it,” she was saying angrily. “If I thought he had, I’d want to kill him—or I’d go with you.”

“What did you want to ask me?” Adrian Gordon made no direct answer.

“Two things, though they don’t matter to me now,” wearily. “I wanted to know why you said you were too poor to marry me when you were Levallion’s heir—though I didn’t know it.”

Levallion stood paralyzed. Hester, then, had not lied—for a wonder! He felt as if something hurt him unbearably, but he did not even try to escape it. He wondered dully what Gordon would say.

“I can’t tell you, except that I,” lamely, “always thought he would marry.”

Levallion, white with relief, leaned against his orange-tub. Though, of course, he had known Adrian would never tell his wife the thing she asked.

“Can’t you see,” said Ravenel fiercely, “that it’s the only weak point in the whole thing. I know about the letters. I know about the ring; but this hurts me because——”

“Because it looks like a lie.” Perhaps Levallion was no more sick at heart than Adrian. “Well, it is quite true! I never counted on being Levallion’s heir,” though if she had not been Levallion’s wife he might have given a different answer.

“I believe you—don’t be angry! I feel as if all the world were a lie since—since Sylvia,” her voice, that began passionately, broke off in dragging despair, “separated you and me.”

“What was the other thing?” said Adrian slowly. “Nel, for God’s sake, take off that black hood and let me see your face! I am going away to-morrow,” with quiet and jealous pain. “Why have you got on white poppies? The real ones always smell to me like laudanum—and death!”

“I’ve got them on because they mean oblivion,” she answered bravely. “I’ve got to live my life, Adrian. I made it for myself—and Levallion has been good to me. The only way I can go on with it is to forget.”

“What about me?” very low.

“You can fight it out as well as I can,” bitterly. “I can’t get rid of Levallion even to please you.”

“I don’t want you to. Two wrongs,” hardly, “don’t make a right.”

In the silence Levallion felt curiously and impersonally sorry for them; mad as it seems, liked Adrian better than he ever had before.

“Ask me the other question,” Adrian said quietly, “and then you must go on. I don’t want you to be missed, and found with me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” not knowing that one day every soul in the house-party would remember just how many minutes she had been absent with Adrian Gordon. “Oh, the question! I only wanted to know—though your concerns are none of my business since Lady Annesley sent you away from me—who the woman was who came down with you that first day and asked for you that night at the door.”

“Asked for me?” in utter surprise that Levallion felt was real. “Came down with me? Nel, be sensible; don’t imagine rubbish! You know perfectly that what I thought you had done to me had made me loathe all women. I don’t think I’ve spoken to one since. Lady Annesley sent me back your ring. No woman could come and inquire for me.”

“One did,” obstinately.

“Then I don’t know who,” and Levallion was glad he did not. “Nel, you distrusted me once with good reason for a great thing; don’t fuss over rubbish now.”

Levallion heard a rustle of silk. Had Ravenel moved? But her voice came from exactly the same place.

“I’ve got to go on till I die,” she said in a carrying whisper. “Go away to-morrow, Adrian, or I can’t bear it. The only thing you can do for me is never to see me again.”

“I know; don’t say it, will you?” roughly. “In old times I’d have quietly poisoned Sylvia and killed Levallion, but now I can only go away.”

“Don’t speak like that about Levallion; he’s more to be pitied than either of us. If he died to-morrow——”

“If he died, would you marry me?” Gordon interrupted sharply.

“I’d cry myself sick. I wouldn’t look at you.” The loyal, grateful voice fell till a listener farther away than Levallion could not have heard it.

“It’s time for me to go,” thought Levallion; her loyalty, that was not love, hurt him unbearably. “Let her say good-by to him, and then—we’ll see! If I were not her husband I could make her love me best in a week!”

Deftly, inch by inch, he made his way past their unconscious backs, doing his best not to hear any more. He was a dishonorable eavesdropper already, but he did not care. He would not have any one else hear, though, and that rustling of silks had been unpleasantly close.

Whoever it had been was gone now. Levallion hurried to the library to tell Tommy they had seen a kitchen-maid watching the quality; hurried to the picture-gallery to see who was missing besides Ravenel!

“Gad, I wish it had been any one else!” he thought wretchedly. For the only woman absent was Lady Gwendolen Brook, of the orange gown and the evil orchids. And that she entered at that moment did not reassure him, for with her was Scarsdale, and Jimmy Scarsdale believed in the honor of neither man nor woman, and always said so—with examples.

“Levallion, have you seen Ravenel?” cried the duchess. “We’re waiting for her to go to supper.”

The two latest arrivals exchanged glances.

“Then don’t wait,” returned Levallion lazily, with his best manner. “She’s with Adrian in the conservatory. I don’t wonder you’re hungry, I am quite a wreck. I interfered with my cook’s amours, and he quite cowed me with his dinner to-night. Come, if you wish me to live till morning,” and the duchess never knew that he was inwardly cursing himself, fate, and two, if not three, of his guests, as he took her down-stairs.

“She’s had time enough,” Lady Gwendolen and Scarsdale were close behind him, “to say everything by now. She hasn’t been up here for an hour. I wonder——”

Scarsdale hushed her by a look at Levallion’s back.

It was a gorgeous joke on Levallion, but not good enough to quarrel for. Besides, Lady Levallion was meeting them as they reached the dining-room.

Somehow every one stared at her as she let them pass her at the door. She had taken off her mask and hood like the others, and, under her crown of poppies, her face was white, exhausted, beaten, the face of a woman who has said good-by to love and youth.

Lord Levallion helped the duchess to game pie, and finished the quotation that had worried him all the evening:

“Lo, these be poppies—not for you,

Cut down and spread.”

He put his untasted supper of plain almond soup, which was all he ever took at night, on the first floor for Mr. Jacobs, who licked the plate scrupulously clean, and immediately after was as thoroughly and scrupulously sick. Sir Thomas hastily removed him as a footman removed the remains, and, being a conscientious master, dosed him till he was sick again, for there was froth about his mouth, and Sir Thomas feared fits.

It was not a pretty incident, but luckily only Levallion and Tommy beheld it—unless the outraged cook peering through the pantry door saw the insulting treatment Levallion gave his soup. No one else thought anything about it.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE MOONLIGHT PICNIC.

Levallion, contrary to his custom, rose early the next morning and repaired to Mrs. Murray’s house, meaning to strike terror into her soul by threats of withdrawing her allowance.

There was no smoke coming from her chimneys, and, as he was about to dismount and knock her up, an untidy female emerged from the back premises and announced that their late tenant had decamped without the formality of giving notice. She had, to the station-master’s knowledge, taken a ticket for London on the preceding morning, and Levallion decided, with some relief, that it must, after all, have been a kitchen-maid whom he and Tommy had seen looking in the conservatory.

He was not to be pleased on reaching home to find he might have spared himself his journey, for the post brought a letter from Hester, posted in London, in which she implored his forgiveness for her foolish outspokenness, thanked him for his bounty, and hoped “that one so unworthy as she might never set eyes on him again.”

“Too humble,” quoth his lordship, in the seclusion of his drawing-room; “means something.”

But the precise meaning did not occur to him. And Sir Thomas’ bleak face at breakfast put Hester out of his mind. Mr. Jacobs had nearly died in the night, was even now in a parlous state. Sir Thomas was of the opinion that he must have been poaching in the afternoon and eaten poison laid down for marauding cats; an opinion with which the vet. agreed, going so far as to mention prussic acid.

“It could not have been on my land, then,” Levallion informed the gathering that surrounded unlucky Mr. Jacobs. “I don’t allow poisoning.”

“It’s prussic acid, my lord, wherever he got it,” the vet. returned obstinately. “But he’s round the corner.

“It’s likely that soup last night saved him.”

“I dare say,” said Levallion indifferently, but he stroked Mr. Jacobs, who licked his hand. All dogs worshiped Levallion, just as every dog Mrs. Murray ever owned mysteriously pined away and died under her care.

It was a gorgeous morning, clear and cold. Levallion had no special desire to shoot, but anything was better than staying at home as special policeman, under the amused eyes of Gwendolen Brook. He was utterly astounded as he joined the other men to find Adrian, on a fat pony, was going with them.

“Queer thing, honor!” he meditated. “A badly bred man would have stayed at home. I’ll look out he doesn’t overdo himself.”

Afterward Adrian Gordon remembered that never had Levallion been to him as he was that day. No mother could have looked after a child better than Lord Levallion, the man he had good reason to hate. And Jimmy Scarsdale saw it—with a grin that was wasted. Lady Levallion must be as deep as the sea.

Lady Levallion looked anything but deep at that precise moment. She had thankfully sent her flock of women to a golf tournament ten miles away, and was seated in the garden with Tommy and the recovering Mr. Jacobs. Wrapped up in a big cloak she looked very young, dreadfully tired. Sir Thomas saw it downheartedly, and connected it with her silly and marked absence with Captain Gordon the night before, a piece of idiocy he was too angry to mention. Though he would have been angrier still if he had known every word she had said had been overheard by Lady Gwendolen—and others.

“Jacobs was poisoned,” he said moodily. “Just wait till I find out where he got it.”

“Miles off, I dare say. Levallion won’t allow it. What’s he growling at?” for Mr. Jacobs stood bristling, weakly ferocious.

“That beastly cook,” with exasperation, “what on earth do you keep him for? Jacobs, come here, Jacobs!” But the dog had been through the garden, and Tommy raced after him in time to see Monsieur Carrousel launch an enormous stone that barely missed Mr. Jacobs’ head.

Sir Thomas seized his dog by the collar.

“What, the——” he began; and saw Ravenel standing by him, out of breath, but looking inches taller than her height.

“May I ask,” she said to the bearded, elegant person who was kind enough to cook his dinners, “why you are pulling my rockery to pieces?” with a glance at the fern-covered stone on the path.

“The dog is dangerous. He threatened my life,” with a majestic rage.

“You are quite wrong, the dog is harmless. If you are afraid of him, remember that you will be quite safe in your kitchen. This—is my garden!” She turned her back with a manner the duchess would have envied. “Come, Tommy, and bring the dog.”

“Why were you so down on him?” Tommy inquired when they were out of ear-shot. “I really believe Jacobs would have bitten him. Goodness knows why, but he hates the man!”

“So do I,” hotly. “There is not a seat in the garden where I can go without finding him in the neighborhood. I feel as if he had the evil eye on something; he makes me shiver. Levallion’s going to send him away.”

“When’s Gordon going?” said Tommy abruptly.

“To-morrow.” She grew scarlet. “Tommy,” she said miserably, “don’t be horrid to me! I don’t deserve it. I don’t mean even to speak to him before he goes.”

“All right,” gruffly, but he slipped his arm in hers as he had not done since he came. “I say, Ravenel, I’ll be glad when the others go! They’re no good, except the duchess.”

“I can’t bear them,” with sudden viciousness. “I feel all the time that if I were down in the world not one of them would speak to me—even Lady Chayter. The others are—well, her ladyship was a good imitation of them!”

“That reminds me,” he picked up Mr. Jacobs and rolled him in Ravenel’s cloak. “I’m sure I saw the old Umbrella yesterday, in the village.”

“Oh, nonsense!”

“I did, then; looking mighty out at elbows. What do you bet she’ll not be up here, whining to you?”

“She can whine,” deliberately, for whatever Lady Annesley had done, it was sure to be no secret to the Umbrella. “Hateful old wretch!”

“Beats me how Levallion ever was a friend of Sylvia’s,” observed Tommy idly. “By George, I get hot all over when I think how I used to hate him.”

“He’s kind,” in a stifled voice. “But oh, Tommy! Sometimes I feel as if I should scream with the shut-up-ness of being grand! The fine clothes and too much to eat, and—it’s rather awful being Lady Levallion!”

“It’s better than her ladyship,” the boy said dully. “Brace up, Ravenel! Nobody in the world is downright happy, I believe.”

He lit one of Levallion’s cigarettes to avoid conversation, and refused to see she was crying. When he threw away the stump she was sitting quite motionless, but she was dry-eyed.

At dinner he looked at her covertly and wondered why on earth she wore a black gown. It made her eyes look dark and gave the red and white of her face an unearthly clearness.

“She looks awfully old, somehow,” the boy thought uneasily. “I hope she doesn’t go and make another break to-night. She looks——” even to himself he did not say “desperate.” After all, he knew no reason why she should be.

But when he went into the drawing-room, after putting Mr. Jacobs to bed, something caught at his heart. Neither Ravenel nor Captain Gordon were there; and all the women but the duchess had a furtive look.

“Beasts, women!” Sir Thomas retreated as suddenly as he had entered, determined to fetch his sister to her senses, or die. But at an open window in the hall something moving outside in the moonlight caught his eye, and checked his hasty walk. He hung out recklessly, and saw two figures disappear into the shrubbery, a man and a woman in a black dress!

“She’s mad,” said the boy, with something like a sob in his throat. And turned round to see Ravenel and Levallion looking at him.

“I—I felt dizzy,” he stammered, scarcely believing his eyes; for if this were Ravenel, who was that outside?

“I don’t wonder,” said Levallion cheerfully. “In another minute I’d have hauled you in by the legs. Come and play blind man’s buff with the rest of the idiots I have taken into my house.”

“I think I’ll take a stroll. It’s hot in there. Where,” in pure blank desperation, “is Gordon?”

“Gone to bed. He starts at seven,” and just as if he were sorry for the girl who stood by in silence, Lord Levallion did not look at her as he followed her into the lights, the scent, the circle of women—enlightened by Lady Gwendolen—that made his own drawing-room a place of torment.

Sir Thomas, in his thin shoes and no cap, slipped unnoticed out into the moonlight, pure curiosity his only motive. The woman had looked like a lady, a lady’s long dress and voluminous evening cloak had showed plainly where she stood in the clear moonlight. The night was bright as day, the air warm, almost balmy, as if the moon had brought back summer when the sunset chill was gone.

“I don’t believe it was any old kitchen-maid last night,” he thought, as he followed the path by which that mysterious man and woman had vanished. “I could see very well, but I believe it was well—whoever it was now!” rather feebly. No one had told him of the lady who had come to ask for Gordon, and he had never chanced to pass that new bungalow that had given Levallion such an unpleasant surprise. Against his will there cropped up in his mind those old stories of Levallion; if one-half of them were true, there must be several women ready to eat their hearts by staring in at his respectable married windows! Sir Thomas hoped devoutly there was not going to be any fuss. The path led him from the gardens into the park, across the grass among the deer, and into a thick tangled wood. But the boughs were leafless, and the moon showed him that the path went on still, a dark thread between the dead bracken under the crowding trees. It wound on and on, and the night silence of the wood somehow quieted Tommy Annesley. Through the arching boughs overhead he could see the cloudless indigo sky; the moon peeped at him in uncanny suddenness from different directions as the path twisted. He stepped more and more cautiously, as if the noise of a breaking twig under his feet would have been a crime in the stirless quiet of the wood.

“This is rot,” he thought, stopping once. “No one can be here,” but something drove him on again even while he called himself a fool. The curious awe that was on him deepened till, without knowing it, he was moving noiseless as a midnight thief walking a strange road. With a queer thrill he pulled up standing; slipped before the moon caught the telltale black and white of his clothes in the surrounding dimness, behind the trunk of a great girtled oak. The path had stopped, as suddenly as the trees and undergrowth it ran through. Before him was a clear, circular space, covered with wan, short grass, and drifts of brown, dead leaves the moon made fantastic. In the middle of it stood one huge oak-tree, where clusters of dead leaves still hung like banners against the moon on the branches that stretched over a solitary flat rock; dark, high, like an altar.

“What on earth,” thought Sir Thomas, peering cautiously. His bewilderment could not put itself into words.

The oak-tree was between him and the moon. If there was any one beside it, they were blotted out against its thick bulk of darkness. But what was that clear, steady glitter on the rock? A crystal, starry glitter that in one spot turned to worn gold?

A quick rustling behind him made him turn with apprehensive annoyance. No one likes to be caught inspecting the world from behind a tree. But the rustling was Mr. Jacobs.

“Lie down!” whispered Sir Thomas savagely. “What silly fool let you out?” He grabbed the humble Jacobs—who had been vastly proud of escaping from bed and scenting him out—in his arms, that he might not bark; and suddenly felt that he was glad the dog had come. For the place was ghostly.

“It’s impossible, though, to lug him and edge round a bit nearer!” he thought, deeply interested in that glitter which was no business of his. “By George!”

A man had come from against the tree, hoisted himself rather clumsily on the breast-high rock, and seized the golden shining point that had taken Sir Thomas’ eye. A familiar pop, and a quick gurgling came through the quiet air; Tommy nearly dropped Mr. Jacobs as he grabbed his jaws together to stop a bark.

“Champagne! a—well, I’m blowed! I’ve come all the way out here to gaze on a moonlight picnic. Lord knows who they are!” as a woman swung herself lightly, boyishly, beside the man and stretched her hand out for the glass he held.

The two were whispering—and oh! if Tommy Annesley could only have heard those muffled voices!—presently the man laughed, and a woman’s laugh answered him; shrill, hysterical, strained; full of that fierce madness that would change the sound of the laugh of the sister you grew up with, and make it unrecognizable. The incongruous horror that was in that laugh caught Tommy’s nerves, slacked his grip of Jacobs. He had never dreamed any woman’s laugh could sound like the howl of a wild beast.

Mr. Jacobs felt he could not bear it. He gave a low, shivery growl, and before Sir Thomas knew it, was on the ground, running like a wiry white devil straight to that picnic-party that sat unawares. He ran quick—that was what froze Tommy’s voice in his throat. If he had barked it would not have mattered what he rushed at, but a silent Jacobs was another thing, as dogs and cats knew.

Before Sir Thomas could get clear of his hiding-place, the need was over. Jacobs had flown straight at the man’s legs, where they hung over the rock, but with a wild leap his prey had sprung to the top of the mighty slab, where he stood upright, never making the slightest motion toward the woman beside him, whose long cloak had hung over his menaced legs. Tommy heard Jacobs fall back heavily as he missed his spring; saw him pick himself up, trot deliberately back to his master, slowly and with puzzled growling, as of a dog who had been deceived.

The boy stooped and took something from the dog’s shut jaws. He had seized the woman’s cloak.

“Not her, or she’d have yelled!” he thought with relief. And then as the man moved, a living silhouette against the cold moonshine, Sir Thomas Annesley knew him.

“I wonder,” he thought, sick and shaken, “if the moon’s made me crazy?” He made a step toward the pair on the rock—and oh! if he had only gone close to them—and then drew back. It was no business of his. But the thing was so unpleasant that he held his tongue about it.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE DARK GLASS.

“Adrian’s gone,” said Lady Levallion to herself as she woke the next morning. She knew she ought to be glad of it, thankful that he was no longer in Levallion’s house; for which reason, probably, she dragged herself out of bed and thought with blank loathing of the empty day before her; of the women who must be amused; of Levallion, who must not see she missed any one.

“I might as well pretend not to care if Tommy died!” she said bitterly. “For it’s just the same. If I know anything about Adrian, he will never see me again, of his own accord.”

There was a letter on the plate at breakfast, and for one-half second she thought he might have written a bare half-dozen words of farewell to the woman he had meant to live and die with. But the common envelope, the scrawled address, undeceived her. It was a begging letter, and she opened it listlessly, and hardly noticed some scraps of torn pasteboard that fell out of it. But as she read the soiled half-sheet of common writing, Gwendolen Brook nudged Colonel Scarsdale. Lady Levallion’s face was a dull crimson from forehead to chin.

Even Levallion noticed it, as she stuffed the letter into her pocket and gathered up those fallen bits of pasteboard. Noticed, too, that the very instant breakfast was over, she went to her own sitting-room, scarcely waiting to hear the plans for the day. Yet it was not the letter that had brought the blood to her face. That was from the Umbrella, as Tommy had prophesied; and the news in it was late for the market, except that it gave chapter and verse of what Ravenel had only guessed at.

Lady Annesley had turned Adams out, she had lost her savings, was at a farmhouse half a mile off, with no money and—she thought—dying. Would Miss Ravenel come to her, as she could not die with her wickedness on her mind? It was she who had warned Lady Annesley of that wild dream of marriage with Adrian Gordon, she who had shown him Ravenel’s torn Sunday frock on the day of the duchess’ party, and said that as Miss Annesley could not go to the fête for want of a dress, she had gone to the country town with Sir Thomas.

“This is the card Captain Gordon left for you the day you was out,” it wound up. “I send it so you may see it is true. Her ladyship cut his ring off your neck that day you know of, and gave me five pounds to post it to him. I kept the torn card just to have something to hold over her. But she didn’t care, and she turned me off. I’m a dying woman, I feel it. They’ll let me die here; if you’ll come over and say you know me—and, oh, Miss Ravenel, do come and say you forgive me! For I saw you at your wedding, and I wake up at nights and see your face, which was like a dead person’s. I don’t want money, the parish can bury me, only you to say you did not mind about Captain Gordon.”

“I won’t go,” thought Ravenel, laying down the letter.

“She always hated me. She’s only doing this to pay Sylvia out. I couldn’t see her. I won’t let any one tell me things—or pity me,” but even as she said it she knew she would go. She was never a good hater, and the woman was dying—or thought so.

She laid the scraps of card on the table and pieced them together. There was one bit gone. The Umbrella must have left it in her ladyship’s rubbish-basket. But she made out the penciled pitifully guarded scrawl, in spite of the missing corner.

“Dear Miss Annesley”—it ran—“how have I missed you? Didn’t you get my letter? I sail to-morrow, but after mess. Please.”

“Forgive her!” said Ravenel, making sense well enough, for she knew the missing words must have been, “I’ll come back to-night” and “meet me,” because of Adrian’s story of his useless waiting in the garden. “I can’t forgive her. I don’t believe I ever forgave anything in all my life, or forgot, either. I’ll send her money, but I never want to see her as long as I live.”

A sound at the door startled her into saying, “Come in” before she swept the patched card off the table. It was only Levallion, but his face grew gray as he saw her put her arm sharply over the torn card, the scrawled letter. Something that had been on his lips died there, and there flashed up in his mind, like an instantaneous photograph, the memory of Adrian falling in a dead faint under the trees, and the little inarticulate, dreadful cry with which Ravenel had sprung toward him.

“Are you coming out?” he said. “They are waiting for you,” and he went away without waiting for an answer.

Her back had been to the door. She had not seen his face, nor could she dream that outside in the lonely passage he stood for one instant, and hid his worn face in his hands. The next second he threw into a jar of flowers a scrap of penciled card Lady Gwendolen had said sweetly was his wife’s; “Lady Levallion had dropped it.”

“It’s not very valuable,” Levallion had answered, glancing at the scrap, and taking in both sides of it with the quickness habitual to him. But now, when he had seen her poring over some fragments exactly like it, he cursed his quick eyes and Lady Gwendolen. For on one side of the quarter-card was “Gordon—Hussars.” On the other, “I’ll come back to-night. Meet me. ‘A. G.’” No wonder Ravenel had turned red and torn it up.

“Quid pro quo!” said Lord Levallion slowly. “It’s my turn now, I suppose, having taken a wife instead of borrowing one. But I don’t think there’ll be any meeting!” He straightened himself, wearily, and went out shooting as if his heart was not like lead. Somehow, he had lacked either courage or inclination to tell Ravenel what he knew. And she never dreamed he would have listened to the silly, childish story that meant nothing now, except to her and Adrian.

She sent some money to Adams, with a carefully written note to the effect that she knew of nothing she had to forgive, since nothing Lady Annesley or her maid had done had caused her any harm. It was a lie, of course, but there was nothing else Levallion’s wife could say. She breathed freer when it was gone.

But when the shooting-party came home, Levallion’s face somehow worried her. All the softness was wiped off it, and he talked as the old Levallion had been wont to, not the new. She waited for him in her dressing-room till the gong went for dinner, but he never came. And when he passed her in the drawing-room on his way to give his arm to the duchess, she stopped him.

“Levallion,” she whispered, her hand on his arm, “what’s the matter? Aren’t you well?”

“Perfectly, thank you,” he said quietly, but he never looked at her. A sudden gust of wicked temper shook him like a leaf; if they had been alone he would have broken out in questions that would have ended in relief; but here before every one made him shake off her hand as if it had been a snake—to wish the next second that he had kissed her before the whole room.

For as he looked straight before him he met Lady Gwendolen’s amused, insolent eyes, and knew that all he knew she knew also; and his knowledge of it besides. His lordship went into dinner with the cheerful conviction that at forty-seven he had made a fool of himself—before the people! And it did not soften his heart to his wife.

A curious second light, born of strained nerves, made him slip away from the men some ten minutes after the women had left the dining-room. And crossing the hall was what he had expected, Ravenel in a hat and cloak, hurrying to a side door. Levallion’s heart turned over.

“Where are you going?” he said very quietly. But his hand that caught her arm was not gentle.

“To—out—the man’s waiting——” she gasped, utterly terrified. “Levallion, don’t look at me like that! It’s a poor woman who sent for me this morning, and I wouldn’t go. She’s sent again to-day; she isn’t dying, but she must see me. Thought I could go and be back before you came out of the dining-room. The woman knows me, she used to be Lady Annesley’s maid. Look!” she held out a scrawled letter.

But no one knew better than Levallion that any letter might mean anything. He flickered it to the ground contemptuously.

“You have excellent reason to go and see your stepmother’s maid,” he said, careless that he betrayed ill-gotten knowledge. “But I fancy not to-night. You can drive over in the morning. Go back; take off those things; try and remember that if I was blind other people are not.” His low, furious voice carried farther than he knew, to where, on the turn of the staircase, Lady Gwendolen Brook stood breathless with laughter. Having seen the note delivered which sent her hostess from the drawing-room, it had been a delightful way of passing time to follow her. But she had not anticipated anything so amusing as this.

“Levallion,” said Ravenel, “you’ve no right to speak to me like this!” She threw off her cloak and hat, and in all her white satins faced him paler than he. “Now, if the people you’re afraid of do come,” she whispered contemptuously, “they won’t see anything to amuse them. But listen to me you shall. Even though I don’t know what you are suspecting. Read those.” With a gesture that was superb, she stooped for the letter he had dropped, put it and another into his hand; “then go outside and speak to the boy who’s waiting to take me to the farmhouse, and then tell me, if you like, what you are thinking about me.”

“As you like.” He shrugged his shoulders, having in his day written many a letter that meant other things than were in it. But as he read, his face changed. There was nothing in those letters but their face value.

“Ravenel,” in the stillness she heard the men rising in the dining-room, heard a quick rustle of silk on the stairs, and moved sharply round a corner so that she was out of sight. But Levallion was quicker. They stood now in the porch of the side door, as much alone as in Sahara, and she saw in the dim light that his hard mouth trembled.

“I have behaved abominably,” he said with a humiliation that sat ill on him. “I—I found half a card this morning; and I heard something you said to Adrian the other night. I thought——”

“Here’s the rest of it. It was six months ago I was to meet Adrian,” she answered simply, for she knew what must have been on the card. “Did you think it was to-night? That I meant to meet another man, and steal out of your house to do it?”

“I feel like Othello, whom I always considered an egregious ass!” said Levallion slowly. “You see, it was just what I should have done, in Gordon’s shoes.” He slipped card and letter into his pocket.

To Ravenel’s own surprise, the tears came to her eyes.

“You wouldn’t,” she cried hotly. “Never! Why do you lie about yourself? You know nothing would make you do a thing like that.”

“Nor you, either.” She had never heard his voice so slow, so gentle. “I was a fool to doubt you. But I heard—the other night in the conservatory. I thought you cared still; that this—that when I cared at last, fate was having its revenge on me. But I know better now!” Before she could stop him he stooped and kissed the hem of her gown.

“Don’t,” she gasped. “I’ve been wicked. I thought at first when I found out—for I never found out till I saw the ring they cut off his finger—and heard how he got it—that you had known all Sylvia did.”

“My poor little child,” he said soberly. And then wistfully: “You’ll be as happy as you can, won’t you? I—I try, you know.”

“I’m happy, and I’ll be happier,” she answered bravely. “I—you know I like you, Levallion?”

For sole answer he held her hand, hard. Hope waked in him somehow, loyalty and liking were a good half the battle.

“We must go back,” he said. “You forgive me? I was brutal, but it cut, you know,” simply.

Of her own accord Lady Levallion leaned forward and kissed his cheek; afterward she was glad.

“What does this thing mean?” he asked, with a look at one of the letters. “She says she isn’t dying, but that she thought to say so might hurry you. What is it that you must know to-night, or it will be too late?”

“It can’t be anything! All she can tell me is dead and gone,” said Ravenel, with shame. “Oh, Levallion! I hate your knowing how wicked I was, to worry you—and all that.”

“Hush, hush!” almost roughly. “Don’t talk like that. Look here, I’ll tell you what we’ll do! We’ll go over to the farm when the others have gone to bed. The hour won’t matter if they’re sitting up with her. I’ll tell the boy, go, go now.”

There was a kind of awkward hush when Lord and Lady Levallion entered the drawing-room. The duchess had gone away that day, and her absence had loosened Lady Gwendolen’s tongue. Lord Chayter rushed into the breach.

“Where’s that stuff you were talking of the other day?” he asked Levallion. “You said it cured headaches, and I’ve a most infernal one.”

“I said it enlivened the soul, if you had one,” dryly. “It isn’t a medicine. It’s a liqueur, Eau de Vie Magique. But I think I drank it all. I don’t know where it is.”

“In your dressing-room,” said Ravenel promptly. “I’ll get it.” There was something in the women’s faces that troubled her, something covert in their eyes that she was glad to escape from.

Mr. Jacobs arose hastily from a secluded corner and followed her out; and as he lumbered affably beside her she never dreamed that her life hung on whether he came with her or not.

Five minutes later she was back; panting, white, with startled eyes, a squat bottle in her hand.

“Have you seen a ghost?” said Levallion, from where he stood by the liqueur-stand.

“No!” she gasped—and she looked as if she had seen murder!

“Jacobs frightened me—dreadfully! He—I think there must have been a cat.” As she held the bottle out to him it shook in her hand.

“It’s a dead cat, then,” said Tommy. He rose and went to see where Jacobs had gone to, but no one took any notice of his movements.

“I shall have to dose you!” said Levallion lightly. “Your nerves are all off. There’s very little here. Chayter, I’d thought there was more. And it looks muddy!” He poured it out and glanced at it. Instead of being clearly green it was a little clouded.

“Seems so, somehow!” Levallion sniffed it suspiciously.

“Smells of almonds.” He raised the glass to his lips and tasted it, giving the bottle to Ravenel.

“Levallion!” Her shriek terrified them, born of unreasoning terror as it was. “Put it down, don’t touch it!” Wildly, frantically, she tried to snatch the glass, but she was too late.

Levallion had mechanically swallowed the strangely flavored mouthful. He turned to her, smiling. “It’s quite spoiled. You’ve——”

The empty bottle fell from her hand, crashed to atoms on the floor.

“Levallion,” she screamed, “speak to me!”

He swayed toward her, his handsome face convulsed; crashed, like a log, to the floor. As she sprang to him he struggled, his teeth clenched.

“We ought to have gone!” he gasped. “Ravenel—she’s been—too much for me!”

But when she would have lifted his head it dropped lifeless on her breast.

CHAPTER XXIV.

ALONE WITH THE DEAD.

“He’s poisoned; he’s dying!”

It was many a day before any one in that room forgot the sound of Lady Levallion’s voice. She crouched on the floor, holding Levallion as she had never done, and his face was ghastly against her white satin gown.

“Hush!” cried Chayter roughly. “For God’s sake, Scarsdale, send some one for a doctor!” but some one had gone already.

In the horrid silence that had fallen on the room each rattling breath Levallion drew sounded harder than the last. All the men were round him, there was a bustle of servants, a calling for useless remedies; but toward their hostess not one woman stirred. It was sinister, ominous, to see them crowded together in their smart gowns; a wide space between them and the overthrown liqueur-stand, and Ravenel huddled on the floor with a dying man in her arms. So it was that Doctor Houghton saw them, when at last he came. The bare floor, the rucked-up rugs, the litter of broken glass and silver round Lady Levallion—white as her gown, against which Levallion’s black clothes stood out in horrible limpness; and behind them and the kneeling men about them, that wall of silks and satins, of inimical women’s faces. Even as he stooped and touched Levallion’s hand that picture stamped itself on Houghton’s brain.

“They think she did it,” he thought, like lightning, as he wiped the froth from the stiff lips.

“Clear the room!” he said. “Send the ladies away. No, not you!” as Ravenel only clutched Levallion more fiercely. But when they were gone he tried none of the remedies he had brought with him. Adrian Gordon, Lord Levallion, had been dead this half-hour past. Very gently Houghton laid the handsome, dark head back on Lady Levallion’s knees; and no one, she least of all, saw it was the living face, and not the dead, that he looked at so long and steadily.

“They hate her, and, if I’m not careful, she’ll be hanged because a handful of women don’t like her,” he thought, after that long look at the girl Levallion had married. It was part of his trade to read faces. This one, if he knew anything, was innocent. For no guilty woman would ever have been utterly unconscious of self as this girl was; or could have sat clinging to the dead man as did she.

“If she’d done it, she’d be crying on a sofa,” he was thinking, even while he listened to Lord Chayter’s story of what had happened. “Or if she had nerve enough to touch him her face would show the strain. She’d bare her lower teeth like they all do when they’re guilty.”

“Don’t whisper, Lord Chayter,” she said sharply. “You can’t wake him! Doctor Houghton, it was I brought him the bottle—and owed him everything! He was kind—to me.”

Every man in the room but Houghton knew that she and Levallion had quarreled that very night; not one of them knew how they had made it up again. But at the dreary, tearless voice, perhaps, only Jimmy Scarsdale did not feel a lump in his throat.

“Don’t talk,” said Houghton gently. “Never mind us. You could not help what was in the bottle.”

“I—Jacobs frightened me,” she said vaguely. “But, oh! why don’t you do something?”

She looked up, caught Houghton’s eyes, and felt frantically at Levallion’s heart, that was stone cold.

“It doesn’t beat!” she cried, like a frightened child. “I can’t feel it. Levallion!” the cry rang out as it has done since the ages of ages; the useless, desperate call of the living to the dead.

“Dear Lady Levallion,” said Houghton softly, “he can’t hear you! I got here too late.”

She looked at him as if she were dazed.

“Too late,” she said; “it’s all too late.” She swayed forward till her face lay on the Levallion’s breast that could shelter her no longer.

“Let her lie!” said Houghton savagely. “It’s the only kindness we can do her. Good God, are there no women in this house to come to her, that she is left to men? To me, who barely knows her?”

“You sent the women away,” said Scarsdale slowly.

“And if one of them had cared for her I might have ordered her out till I was black in the face.” But he dared not say it aloud. He was tall, young, and strong; and he lifted Lady Levallion in his arms as if she had been a child. But, though he rang and rang her bedroom-bell, it was minutes before any one answered it. But the strong face of the Frenchwoman who came at last pleased him, also the little cry with which she ran to her mistress.

“Your master’s dead,” he said bluntly, “and your mistress has fainted. Help me to get her to bed. Where’s Sir Thomas?” for it had suddenly come over him that Lady Levallion’s brother was nowhere to be seen.

“He ran out after his dog that came raging through the servants’ hall a long time ago. He knew nothing.”

With quick fingers she was loosening Lady Levallion’s gown. “Oh, Monsieur Houghton, I did go to the drawing-room door to help my lady, but Lady Chayter say to me you would not let me in. So I run out of doors to see if Sir Thomas is anywhere, and he is not.”

“Don’t try to rouse her too much,” Houghton returned, as if he were thinking of something else. “I’ll give her something to make her sleep, by and by.”

He strolled into the next room as though to give Celeste time to put her mistress into bed, but he did not stay there. It was Lady Levallion’s dressing-room, and opened, as he knew, into a passage that led to her husband’s. Doctor Houghton went in quietly, perhaps to see if it was there they were bringing Levallion. But the room was empty.

Levallion’s dressing-gown that he would never wear again lay waiting for him, his half-read novel was on the table by his bed; the trivial comforts of the room were dreadful to the man who had been Levallion’s friend, perhaps his only real one, except the Duchess of Avonmore. Houghton looked deliberately round the room.

There, over the bookcase, was the shelf from which Lady Levallion must have taken the bottle—that bottle which lay in flinders down-stairs, that not the cleverest detective on earth could say had been the one Levallion owned or not. There were other bottles left, chiefly curios in the way of drinks which Levallion had been too wise to try. Doctor Houghton did not look at them, did not touch anything. He scarcely knew why he had come there, except that there might be something that would tell a tale. And there was not one earthly thing.

“There’s no doubt that he was poisoned, and with some preparation of prussic acid,” he thought, staring idly before him. “And he did not do it himself, for there never was a man who loved life better than he. And he loved his wife, if ever I saw devotion in a human being. Now what, I wonder, made those women behave like that to her to-night, just as if they knew something to her discredit! I’ll lay odds,” grimly, “that when five women get together against one, there’s nothing they don’t think they know about her, especially when her looks beat them all. And every one of those women behaved inhumanly to-night.” He pursed his clean-shaven lips as he tried to remember just on what terms Lady Levallion had been with her husband, and the only out-of-the-way thing that came to his mind was the night a strange woman had come to the door, and Lady Levallion had looked inwardly furious.

“She probably had good reason to, if any kind friend had aired poor Levallion’s past to her,” he thought, with wrong-headed shrewdness. “Anyhow, I’m going to do my best for her till I find out she’s guilty. If Levallion were here,” with incongruous reasoning, “he’d like me to. I believe,” tenderly, “he would have given even the devil fair play. At any rate, he wouldn’t want his wife’s name dragged in the dust, and it sha’n’t be, if I can help it. Though, perhaps, I’m a fool with my foregone conclusions. No one’s breathed a word against her.” And yet he had known the second he entered the drawing-room that every soul in it thought Lady Levallion had murdered her husband.

“I don’t believe it was any one in the house who did it,” the man said to himself, because he was cross-grained to begin with, and had been rubbed the wrong way. “I’ll go and find Sir Thomas. He ought to be with his sister instead of chasing dogs,” and he turned the handle of the closed door that led into the corridor, instead of going back the way he had come. The door stuck, and he gave it a vicious jerk. As it swung forward something dark fell soundlessly on the floor, and the man’s quick eye saw it. With it on the palm of his hand he moved close to the electric light, and saw what it was. A tiny triangular rag of tweed, thin, rather worn, a small, irregular check of fawn and brown, with a red thread in it.

“Now, where,” said Houghton to himself, “have I seen the trousers that came out of?” And the cloth was so familiar that it struck him it must have come from Levallion’s own wardrobe.

“Well, the only thing that looks like a clue is disposed of!” he thought, shrugging his shoulders. But he put the little rag carefully away in a pocketbook. It seemed hopeless to prove when and how it had caught in the door, but less things than that rag had saved women’s lives.

He hurried down-stairs at a sound of bustle in the hall. There were boxes and rug-straps being piled there, and it may be forgiven Doctor Houghton if he thought there might be some one among the house-party who could not get away fast enough.

“A band of robbers could not be in a greater hurry!” he thought bitterly. And then his face lit up.

Some one inside the drawing-room door threw it open. A voice Houghton knew said authoritatively:

“What’s this, gentlemen? Surely you understand no one and no luggage,” emphatically, “is to leave this house till I hold my inquest.”

It was Doctor Aston, the coroner. But before Houghton could move toward him a hand caught his arm.

“I went for him.” Sir Thomas Annesley looked fifty years old. “Was it right?”

Houghton nodded. But it came over him suddenly that if there were things he did not know the coming of the coroner would be the beginning of the end for Lady Levallion.

“Go to your sister,” he said gently. “But, stop! What’s this about your dog frightening her, and——”

“Nothing,” said Tommy drearily. “He went up with her, and I suppose he saw a cat or something. I found him raising Cain in the kitchen, and some one opened the door and let him out. I ran after him, but I lost him. When I came back they said you were with Ravenel, and I thought I’d get the coroner. How on earth, Doctor Houghton, did that bottle get poisoned? Levallion gave me some of it only a little before dinner.”

Houghton could only shake his head.

Half a mile off the only soul who would have told him sat up on the death-bed that till now she had only half-believed in.

“Get Miss Ravenel,” she cried clearly, loudly. “Get her, or they’ll hang her.”

“Hush, my poor soul!” said the farmer’s wife pitifully.

“Lady Levallion, then!” the Umbrella clutched at the air as if to grasp the life that was leaving her.

“I want to tell—I——” She turned suddenly rigid, a dreadful stiff figure, only its eyes alive.

“Tell her they’ll murder him! they——”

She fell forward on the bed.

CHAPTER XXV.

A DEAD MAN’S SWEETHEART.

“Levallion’s drawing-room!” said Houghton to himself bitterly. “Inside his own house, that fools say is a man’s safest place.”

For he and his assistant had but now finished a hateful task, to Levallion’s friend, and if there was doubt about who had killed Levallion, there was none about the poison that had done it.

“There was enough prussic acid in his stomach to kill a horse, let alone a man!” Houghton thought, as his assistant departed with his ghastly paraphernalia. “And God knows what form it was given in, perhaps, but I don’t.”

With his own hands he made Levallion’s body ready for his grave, but not even Houghton’s skill could cross the dead hands on the breast. He lay as death had found him, with his arms outstretched to the woman he loved. Houghton drew the sheet up to the chin, and looked at the dead man’s face.

Handsome, in a hard-bitter way, Levallion had always been. Dead, the unearthly beauty of his face caught Houghton’s breath.

Every saturnine line, every sardonic curve, had been wiped off it. Over the hard eyes the white lids were gentle; the lips that had been weary so many a day under the dark mustache were set in ineffable peace. For all the majesty of that still, set face, there was a strange youth in it, as though death had brought him gently to a very far land, where there were neither the lies nor the shams he had scorned—and the joy of it was written on the dead man’s face.

“That was Levallion!” said Houghton involuntarily. Perhaps no one but he had known that, until six months ago, when Ravenel came into it, Adrian Gordon, Lord Levallion, had been weary of his life. Neither goodness, nor fair dealing, nor common chastity had the man ever met. Small wonder that his tongue was keen as his eyes, or that cynicism was written on the corners of his lips.

“The real Levallion, who had to die just as he cared to live. Well, God give his murderer justice!”

He did not know he spoke aloud, and he wheeled as some one answered him.

“There’s no justice,” said a voice that made his blood stop in him, “or I’d be there, and not he.”

Lady Levallion, all dressed as if it were day instead of seven o’clock in the morning, stood at his elbow.

“I beg your pardon!” said Houghton stupidly. For his life he could have made her no more sensible answer.

“I married him. I didn’t love him——”

If he had not seen her speak he would never have known it was Lady Levallion’s voice.

“I——”

He looked at her sharply. Every bit of color was gone from her face. She was grayer than the dead man.

“Go and rest. You’re doing no good here,” he said sharply, as people speak to hysterical patients. But there was no hysteria in her narrowed eyes.

“How can I rest? It’s all my fault,” she said slowly.

“Why do you say that? It’s nonsense.”

“I don’t know why, but I feel—no, no! I don’t mean it!”

She had broken off with terror in her voice, and for the first time Houghton doubted her. Yet a woman in grief will say anything. And in grief she was, for, as if she were alone, she fell on her knees by Levallion.

“I’d have died for you a hundred times, rather than this!” she was whispering in the ears that could not hear. “If you could only know that, I could bear it.”

Houghton turned away sharply to the door, so that no one else should see what was between two people—the living and the dead. The awful incongruity of the whole thing came over him. The man’s own drawing-room, all flowers and silk hangings and carved ivory, where, instead of rose-colored lamps, four unshaded candles burned at the head and foot of the couch where Levallion lay covered with a white sheet, where Lady Levallion knelt motionless in a plain serge gown that—or, perhaps, it was not the gown—made her ghastly.

“What am I to do?” she was muttering. “Levallion, what am I to do?”

With a strange passion she kissed his lips, his shut eyes.

“You believed in me, you trusted me,” she said, very low, but in the silent room the whisper carried. “Oh, wherever you are, trust me still! Even if I—hold my tongue.”

Doctor Houghton felt suddenly and physically sick. Then he remembered he had no right to have listened. No right to judge any woman who was mad with grief, as this one was. He went to her, to try and get her away, and something in her attitude made the suspicion in him die down again. Lady Levallion was crouched close to the dead man’s breast, pressed to him as a child in trouble to its mother. Whatever she meant to be silent about it was not any guilt of her own. For, as if it were her only refuge, she was clutching Levallion’s body.

“Come to your brother,” said Houghton softly. “Come away.”

“I only want Levallion,” she said very pitifully. “He was kind to me,” in the old parrot cry. “Let me stay with him.”

The man nodded, because he could not speak. In spite of himself he was assured that even if Lady Levallion got up at the inquest, and swore that she herself had killed her husband, it would not be true.

“I wish I’d died for him,” she said, with a strange involuntary turning to the man who a moment ago had judged her. And Houghton believed her.

In the silence he shivered, for the chill of death, as well as morning, was in the great room. He had had a hard night’s work and no sleep, but he could not go and leave Lady Levallion. Any chance comer might hear her say something senseless, might retail it at the inquest.

“Why did you bring him here?” she cried suddenly. “This awful room—he was alive here only a little while ago.”

“It seemed best.” The man could not say that one reason was lest he should disturb her by taking Levallion to his own room, so that she came in and saw him before he was made ready for his coffin; the other, that here the jury would more easily view the body. He thanked God she had not got here before he carried Levallion back from that bare table in the justice-room, that she had no thought of what had been done there.

“You must come with me,” he said, and for the first time she looked at him.

“You care!” she said sharply. “Oh, I thought there was no one who cared but me—and Tommy! And I never cared till to-night. God knows I’d sell my soul to have him back—even to know what he would like me to do.”

“Tell the truth!” said Houghton involuntarily, and saw freezing terror in her eyes for the second time that night.

Her answer was absent, curious.

“I’ve nothing to tell. In my inmost soul I believe, I will believe, I’ve nothing to tell. Oh, if I’d only made you happy, perhaps——”

“Look at his face,” said Houghton simply.

But she barely heard him.

Once more she drew to her breast—now that it was too late for the man who had longed for her love to feel it—the face she had never held there in life. With anguish she kissed the shut eyes—for there are two kinds of love in a woman’s heart, and if she had given one utterly to Adrian Gordon, it was the other, that is best and highest, that was Levallion’s now. If she cared this hour whether Adrian Gordon lived or died it was not for his own sake so much as Levallion’s.

“Good-by,” she whispered. “I’ll never see you again. You were too good for a little fool like me. And if I’ve brought you here, I’ll pay for it.”

She took no more heed of Houghton than if he had been a stick or a stone, as she let him follow her to where Celeste waited in the hall. But though Doctor Houghton went to bed the thoughts in his mind kept the sleep he needed away.

CHAPTER XXVI.

TRIFLES LIGHT AS AIR.

“The last jury on earth he would have wanted!”

Doctor Houghton looked at the country neighbors whom the very irony of fate had assuredly brought together as jurors at the inquest on the death of Lord Levallion. He had systematically neglected or despised them all, and there was not a man among them who really wondered at the tragic ending of a man who had been so notoriously unpopular. Since not one of them owed either benefit or injury to Levallion they should give a strictly impartial verdict, Houghton thought, as he was sworn; yet it had struck a curious anger in him when, as they viewed the body, not one of them had said “poor Lady Levallion;” and he realized that the whole county thought her a victim to a loveless marriage.

He was apparently the first witness; and, stripped of its technicalities, the gist of his evidence was that the late Lord Levallion had certainly been poisoned with some form of prussic acid in the liqueur he drank. The post-mortem left no doubt of anything but the precise form in which the poison was administered.

“Some one, any one, might have been in his dressing-room during the evening,” he finished slowly. “I found this in the door, caught in the lock,” producing his little rag of tweed, “but I am afraid it is no clue; for the stuff is familiar to me, and was very likely a suit of Levallion’s own, which he might have worn that afternoon. Any thought of suicide is out of the question!” sharply, as a juror murmured something. “Lord Levallion was the last man to do such a thing. He was a man of very superior intellect, and was, of late, supremely happy.”

He did not notice that a girl was sitting in a dark corner behind him as he stepped down from the witness-stand, and stood where the face of each fresh witness would be clearly seen. For the servants were called in, and one by one dismissed as useless.

All of them had been sitting in the servants’ hall when Sir Thomas Annesley’s dog had come through there as if it were mad, and run all round the room and thence into the kitchen; where a terrified scullery-maid let it out.

Mrs. Briggs, the housekeeper, almost inaudible for nervous weeping, had heard nothing till told his lordship was dying. She had been sitting in her own parlor with Carrousel, the cook, who had a toothache. He was with her when the dreadful news came.

“No, neither of us,” she sobbed, “had ever left the room. I was dozing by the fire, he was walking up and down. No”—again—“it was impossible the chef should have left the room and come back without my knowledge.”

Carrousel came next, a tall man with a short, dark beard, and very blue eyes. He was neatly dressed in a black coat and gray trousers, and looked most unlike a cook.

On being sworn and interrogated, he shook his head.

“I can tell you nothing, monsieur,” he said. “I was not well; my teeth were aching; I walked the floor in the housekeeper’s room. I heard nothing.”

“What time did you go there?”

“At ten o’clock. At twenty minutes past eleven they came and told me his lordship was dying.” His florid face paled a little.

One juror asked if he had not heard Sir Thomas’ dog barking in the kitchen.

“No, monsieur,” respectfully. “The housekeeper’s room is some distance from the kitchen. I heard no noise. I was glad to sit by the fire, perhaps to doze. It was as well, perhaps. I have had no sleep since. Milord was an excellent patron to me. He understood eating.”

There was a listless detachedness in his voice, as of a stranger who is utterly apart from his surroundings.

“What did you serve his lordship for dinner?” the coroner said suddenly.

“It was not that which killed him,” Carrousel returned gravely; “since the whole society partook of the same plates. My cooking does not give even an indigestion, much less death. Monsieur does not mean that he suspects me?” patiently.

“You are here to answer, not ask,” Doctor Aston returned coldly. And with an extraordinary knowledge of cooking and flavoring and accidental poisoning, he asked question after question of the chef, fruitlessly. The man quietly, without anger, cleared himself. It was impossible that he could have tampered with any portion of the dinner, since every one of his four kitchen-maids had seen it all prepared. As for any of his almond flavoring—which in sufficient quantity was poisonous—having been put into the bottle which killed Lord Levallion, almond flavoring was a thing for small pastry cooks. When he required it he used almonds, of which his lordship was very fond. He had in his possession absolutely nothing with a smell of bitter almonds, which could have been stolen and added to the bottle to hide some other taste.

The jury stirred impatiently—there had been no question of poison in the dinner—till it suddenly occurred to them that from the coroner’s minute questions Carrousel had been obliged to account for every instant of his time from six o’clock till twenty minutes past eleven. If there had been any juggling with bottles in Levallion’s dressing-room, the busy cook could have had no hand in it; for the kitchen-maids’ evidence tallied with his.

Carrousel stood an instant, as if watching for a question that did not come.

“You can stand down,” said the coroner, and for one second the cook’s listlessness vanished. There was relief in his face, as of a man who has patiently despatched a disagreeable duty.

The butler succeeded him, and, having charge of the cellar, was all but turned inside out with questions, the result of which was that there had been absolutely no other bottle of Eau de Vie Magique in the house, which could have been poisoned and substituted for Lord Levallion’s own, nor had he ever seen, or heard of, such a liqueur in his life. There was no doubting his honesty, nor his distress about his master’s death.

Levallion’s own man was called—the only old servant in the house. He did not look particularly honest—Levallion had more opinion of brains than honesty, perhaps—but Houghton thought, perhaps erroneously, that he was the only clever witness they had had so far; and the first who would not be content with clearing himself, but determined to find out the murderer.

“My name, sir? John Lacy,” he said, his hard, light eyes taking in every face in the jury, with as much scorn for their capacity as Levallion could have had. “I have been with his lordship ten years.”

“Did you ever see the bottle of liqueur with which Lord Levallion was poisoned?”

“I don’t know,” quietly. “I saw the bottle of Eau de Vie Magique which he kept in his dressing-room. It was given to him this summer by a gentleman in Aix.”

“Do you mean it was taken away and another substituted?”

“I couldn’t say that, sir. But I know the liqueur was all right last night at seven o’clock, for Sir Thomas Annesley came up to my master’s room with him, and his lordship made him drink a glass of it before my eyes. Sir Thomas seemed very down, and as if he wanted to speak about something. But his lordship put him off.”

A little rustle of interest ran along the jurors’ bench.

“Then if it was Lord Levallion’s own liqueur he drank, you contend it was poisoned during the evening?”

“I’m certain of it, sir.”

“Did Lord Levallion to your knowledge possess any poison?”

“No!” said Lacy flatly. “If you mean he committed suicide, it’s out of the question. His lordship was more contented than he had ever been in his life—or since I knew him. Somebody gave it to him!”

“Was he on bad terms with any one?”

“Plenty of people!” calmly; “but none of them would be likely to do it. I might about as well accuse her ladyship of doing it as sensibly as any of the”—he stammered—“the others!”

“Do you mean Lord and Lady Levallion were not on good terms?” sharply.

“I didn’t mean to imply that, sir,” flushing. “I said, and I think, Lord Levallion was more than happy. I never heard of any trouble between the two, except that last night I did hear them having a few words about going out or something, as I was passing through the hall. But it was nothing at all, sir!” hastily. “I beg you don’t think I’m insinuating anything against my lady.”

“Were you not in Lord Levallion’s dressing-room during the evening?”

“No, sir! I left it all neat, and was gone down-stairs almost as soon as his lordship left the room. I never went to his dressing-room of an evening till I was rung for.”

“You did not touch the bottle?”

“Yes, sir! I put it up on the shelf, and I scratched my hand on it for about the tenth time. It was a rough-made, molded bottle, with a sort of seam down each side, and time and again I’ve caught a scratch inside my hand from that rough seam.”

“Were you alone in the room?”

“No, sir; his lordship’s second man was with me. It was not either of us that tampered with the bottle.”

“Is that it?” The coroner pointed to some fragments of glass on a tray.

“I couldn’t say.” Lacy fingered each scrap slowly; none were bigger than a shilling. He looked up suddenly. “In my opinion it isn’t!” he said. “But you will understand that in the state the bottle is it can be only my opinion. I wouldn’t like to swear to it, but I think it. All I can say is that it is bits of glass and label which might be the one that was in the dressing-room. I wouldn’t swear it was the same.”

“Will you swear it is not?” sharply.

Lacy took the fragments and dust of paper-labeled glass to the light; went over each bit with the seeing fingers of a blind man, as well as faultless eyesight.

“It’s not the same bottle,” he said, after what seemed an hour. “There’s a pink smear on the label. His lordship’s bottle, when I left it, was clean.”

“That does not prove it a different bottle,” judicially. “Only perhaps that some one touched it.”

“To the best of my belief,” returned Lacy doggedly, “that is not his lordship’s bottle. I can’t find the seam on any of the pieces.”

“Or in the dust,” said a juror scathingly.

But Lacy stuck to his opinion and was let go. For some reason, and to Houghton’s wonder, the coroner never mentioned that rag of tweed.

A frightened footman took his place, who had taken coffee to the ladies after dinner.

“Were all the ladies in the room then?” asked Aston.

“Yes, that is—no, sir! I took in coffee and a note for her ladyship,” stammering, “and she gets up and leaves the room and Lady Gwendolen Brook after her.”

“With her,” the coroner half-corrected.

“Just as you say, sir,” abjectly. “I’d got out in the hall with my tray when Lady Gwendolen come out and run up-stairs after her ladyship.”

“Oh!” said the coroner quietly; “you can go.”

He called Lady Gwendolen for the next witness, and Houghton’s mouth tightened.

He remembered how the women had stood when he arrived, how aloof, how ironical. If he were not mistaken, the drama would begin with the new witness.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE EVIDENCE IN THE CASE.

Lady Gwendolen Brook, darkly handsome, exquisitely ready, even to her hat, to leave Levallion Castle the first possible instant, took the oath with a fastidious wonder as to where the little crowd of servants had kissed the book.

It was quite exciting to be a witness; she felt aggrieved that the jury were all “country frumps,” who might not appreciate the charming picture she was making as she answered a few innocuous questions. Presently she would give a dramatic recital of Levallion’s dreadful, staggering fall as he drank the liqueur his wife had brought him. But the gently spoken coroner suddenly put drama out of her head.

“Did you go to your room when you left the drawing-room last night after dinner?” he said mildly.

Terror caught Lady Gwendolen by the throat. Did the man dare to think it was she who had been to Levallion’s room to poison him?

“No!” she said sharply, angrily. “I went after Lady Levallion, to—to ask if anything was the matter.”

“Why did you think anything was the matter—and how far did you go after her?”

The second question made her ready to say anything to clear herself—from what was not in any one’s mind but her own.

“I went to the head of the stairs outside her room,” she said, “and she shut her door as I got there. I stood a minute in an open doorway, and she ran past me in a cloak and hat—as I thought she would,” flurriedly.

“Why did you think it? And did you come down then? Did any one see what you did, or where you went?”

Lady Gwendolen glanced wildly round the room as if for some one who might prompt her. Jimmy Scarsdale had told her to hold her tongue if she had to go on the stand, but Jimmy had not known this horrid coroner would suspect her. She caught Houghton’s hard blue eyes, and her last remnant of self-control left her.

“No, nobody!” she cried. “But if you think I went to Lord Levallion’s dressing-room, I can show you I didn’t. I went after Lady Levallion for fun, and to see if I could find out what her little game was. She dropped a card—a torn card—at breakfast-time, and I picked it up; and gave it for fun to Levallion. It had on it, ‘I’ll come back to-night. Meet me,’ and I knew there was some lark on, I had almost forgotten it, when Lady Levallion got a note in the drawing-room after dinner. She was standing beside me, and she crumpled it all up in a hurry. She said to herself, quite loud, ‘I’ll have to go,’ and she flew out of the room.”

“All this has nothing to do with your movements, has it?” queried the coroner politely.

“Everything!” She was what Lacy called “utterly rattled” and frightened. “I thought Lady Levallion was going to slip out and meet—a man—and I thought what a huge joke it would be on Levallion, who had suddenly grown so domestic. When Lady Levallion passed me in her outdoor things I ran to the turn of the stairs to see where she went. And I heard Levallion come out of the dining-room and stop her. They fought like cats and dogs, and I dared not go down till they moved. As soon as they did I ran back to the drawing-room. I can tell you every word they said if you like. I never heard him in such a temper. And he had been annoyed all day, ever since I gave him that card.”

Houghton’s head was buzzing like a sawmill. There had been trouble, then, of which he knew nothing. But he could not make it fit with that memory of Lady Levallion’s face as she clung to the dead man. The coroner’s voice steadied him to clear attention.

“Why did you give the card you found to Lord Levallion instead of his wife? And how did you know it was hers?”

“Because I saw her drop it!” she answered the second question first, as women do. “I gave it to Levallion for amusement, to see what he would do. He had grown so very married and dull, and stuck his wife on such a pedestal over us all, that I wanted to give him a jar. He told me with all the air in the world that there was no one like her, and I wanted to see if he meant it. I knew he must have heard every word she said one night in the greenhouse to Captain Gordon about marrying him if Levallion died. Colonel Scarsdale and I saw him——” She stopped. Jimmy would throw her over for this, bag and baggage, and she needed him just now. But the thing was beyond Jimmy’s jurisdiction already.

“Be good enough to say what you mean, clearly. You saw whom?”

“I saw Levallion moving away behind some orange-trees one night in the conservatory. Captain Gordon and Lady Levallion were talking and he was listening. They didn’t know he was there.”

“How do you know he was listening?”

“Because I heard some one behind me where I was sitting and I knew it was not Captain Gordon and Lady Levallion, who were just in front of us. I looked through the flowers and saw Levallion. He must have heard every word they said. We did!”

“Who do you mean by we?”

“Colonel Scarsdale,” crossly. “He heard, too. He can say what he likes, but he did!” for Jimmy would have to back her up now. This man meant to know just why she had taken enough interest in Lady Levallion’s doings to follow her. Otherwise she could not prove by any earthly means that it was not she who had been prowling round Levallion’s dressing-room.

“Colonel Scarsdale will answer for himself,” slowly. “For just a few moments more I must trouble you, Lady Gwendolen. Were you in the conservatory by accident, or a thirst for amusement?”

“Accident—I don’t know,” she stammered. “Lady Levallion and Captain Gordon had left the room where we were dancing, and they were gone for such ages that they kept us waiting for supper. I went partly to get cool, and partly to see if they were there.”

“And stayed to listen to their conversation?”

“I couldn’t get out,” angrily. “You don’t understand! They were on one side of me and Levallion was standing still on the other. I could hear his heart beat and his shirt-front creak. I couldn’t go past either him or his wife.”

“Did what you heard repay you for your forced stay?”

“It was just the tail end of a silly flirtation,” viciously, “if that is what you mean! Rubbish about her having to forget, and not being able to get rid of Levallion to please him. And something about sending Captain Gordon back a ring.”

“Yet you were sufficiently interested to listen.”

Lady Gwendolen shrugged her shoulders.

“It was interesting enough,” she said. “He said that in old times he would have——” She stopped, her very blood seemed to stop in her; her callous heart to turn over with horror. If she told what Gordon said, and it was true, she was putting a rope round his neck. The thought made even Gwendolen Brook sick.

“He would have what?”

“I won’t tell you!” she gasped.

“I am afraid you have no choice,” said the coroner quietly; and the jury whispered together.

“He said in old times”—it was like dragging out every reluctant word—“he would have poisoned Levallion, but now he could only go away. I know he didn’t mean it!” wretchedly; “it was just flirtation.”

“Flirtation is apparently an elastic word,” Doctor Aston said dryly. “Is that all?”

Lady Gwendolen had vices in plenty, but her blood and breeding went against lying. She thought of her oath, of the Bible she had kissed, of—and this went home—how useless it would be to perjure herself when Jimmy Scarsdale might certainly give her away.

“I forget,” she gasped. But the coroner had seen her stop another sentence on her tongue.

“I am very sorry, you naturally hesitate,” he said—and even Houghton was not sure whether he was earnest or sarcastic—“but I must have the whole, if you please.”

“Well, then, he said would she marry him if Levallion died!” defiantly. “It meant nothing. I know a woman who gave a man a note about the same thing. ‘I, so and so, promise that on the death of my husband I will marry you, so and so, within a year.’ But, of course, she won’t do it!”

The jury gasped. They were not smart, but estimable county magnates who were not accustomed to playing with the Ten Commandments.

Lady Gwendolen misunderstood the gasp, and rushed further into the mire.

“Of course I don’t wonder Captain Gordon was excited,” she cried valiantly. “He was Levallion’s heir till his marriage, and the nurse who looked after him while he was ill here told my maid that Lady Levallion had been engaged to Adrian Gordon when she married Levallion! The nurse heard them——”

“I think that is enough hearsay,” said Aston quickly. “You can step down.”

“Cannot I go? Must I stay here?” with a disconcerted glance at the roomful of servants.

“I must ask you to take a chair,” said the coroner absently.

“But you can’t want me any more!” wide-eyed. “You see, surely, that it was only because I wanted to see if Lady Levallion was going out to meet Captain Gordon that I went up-stairs after her.”

“Why did you think she had gone to meet him? He had gone to London.”

“Because the card said, ‘I’ll come back to-night’ and ‘meet me’; it was signed A. G. What else could I think? But it was all silly nonsense. You can’t think any of it had to do with——” But she did not finish the sentence. Vain, heartless, empty-headed woman that she was, Gwendolen Brook saw suddenly what her foolish evidence had done. She had made a fool of herself, had brought Jimmy Scarsdale and herself into a nice mess—and Jimmy would half-kill her. Of the anything but nice mess in which she had involved her hostess she would not think. She began to cry from terror and humiliation.

Monsieur Carrousel moved quietly forward from among the servants, and handed pretty, foolish Lady Gwendolen Brook a chair.

Colonel Scarsdale came in stolidly, and when he saw Gwendolen’s face hidden in her ring-laden hands was stolid no longer.

“She made an ass of herself!” he thought swiftly, and wondered what the devil he was to do.

He pulled at his mustache as the questions began; he had no wish to be mixed up in the thing, but, on the other hand, if Lady Levallion had poisoned her husband—as he honestly thought she had—she could clear herself. Downright lies, too, would be no use if Gwendolen had told all she thought; which was probable, since she would not look at him.

“Will you be good enough to tell us what you heard one evening in the conservatory?” said the coroner, blandly, and Scarsdale made up his mind.

“There were so many evenings in the conservatory,” he said slowly, “I don’t remember any particular one.”

Lady Gwendolen’s hands dropped from her face. Was Jimmy going to fail her?

“On this particular evening you had danced. You went into the conservatory to wait for supper. Did you hear any conversation, or know that any one was there?”

“I heard a couple of people talking. I didn’t listen.”

“How near were they?”

“I couldn’t tell you. It was not very light.”

“Did you, on your oath, recognize the voices?”

“I couldn’t swear to them. One man’s voice is very like another’s when he whispers.”

“Did you know the woman’s voice?”

“I thought at the time it was Lady Levallion, but I supposed she had a right to be in her own conservatory.”

“In fact, you recognized her voice?”

“I may have imagined it.”

“Did you hear what the man said to her?”

“I heard the usual conservatory love-making,” calmly. “I couldn’t repeat any of it.”

“Yet the lady with you heard distinctly!”

“Women have quicker ears,” hastily.

“Did you hear anything said about what might be done if Lord Levallion died?”

“Yes,” said Scarsdale slowly. “But a man in love is no more accountable than one in drink.”

“Did you hear Lady Levallion’s answer?”

“No! She whispered something, if it were she.”

“Was there any one else in the conservatory, to your knowledge?”

“There was some one behind us. I don’t know who it was.”

“Was it Lord Levallion?”

“I couldn’t say,” sensibly, “I certainly did not either see him or hear him speak. I knew there was some one, but it might have been two people for all I know. Levallion was in the picture-gallery with the others when I got back. They were just going down to supper.”

“Was Lady Levallion there?”

“No! She was standing just inside the dining-room door when we went down to supper. She was alone.”

“Is that all you can recall of the evening?”

“I think so. There was nothing to stamp it on my mind. Sir Thomas Annesley’s dog ate some soup and was sick,” insolently. “I saw that at supper.”

“Who gave him the soup?”

“Levallion. No one else took any,” slowly, struck for the first time with the thought that there might have been a reason for Mr. Jacobs’ indisposition.

“Did you, from that evening, see any cause to take an interest in the movements of Lady Levallion and Captain Gordon?”

“I suppose we all laughed a little at Levallion letting them flirt under his nose. But they scarcely spoke to each other in public afterward.”

“In that case, then, it was common talk that he overheard them in the greenhouse?”

“People talk of anything in the country.”

But his half-truths had done more harm than good, except to get him out of any further connection with the distasteful business. A juror whispered something to the coroner; and Sir Thomas Annesley was called.

The boy’s brown face was thin and haggard. He had no thought of where suspicion might go, but he had an honest misery in him because Levallion lay dead upstairs. There was a moment’s diversion as Mr. Jacobs, who came in with him, growled and bristled so fiercely that he had to be removed.

“It’s Carrousel! The dog hates him,” said Sir Thomas angrily, as some one said something about a “vicious brute.” “The dog is as kind as milk.”

“Why does he hate unoffending people, then?” inquired the coroner, who detested dogs.

“Oh! Carrousel was always hanging round where Levallion and my sister could see him, and I suppose Jacobs knew they didn’t like it. I don’t know any other reason.”

Monsieur Carrousel looked unjustly injured.

“Pardon, messieurs!” he cried, “but it never occurred to me until milord said so, that it was forbidden for me to take the air on his estate.”

“You kept on taking it, all the same,” said Tommy angrily. “I believe it was you poisoned my dog, too!”

The coroner hushed him sharply.

“What do you mean about your dog being poisoned?”

“I mean Levallion did not eat his soup one night at supper and gave it to Jacobs,” grimly. “The dog was sick, and I worked over him all night. The vet. said it was prussic acid, and I thought he might have eaten meat poisoned for poachers’ dogs, but I don’t think so now. I think it was the soup that Levallion didn’t taste.”

Carrousel turned livid with fury.

“It was not poisoned in my kitchen, then!” he shouted. “Ask who was in the dining-room before the other guests, first!”

“Another word and you leave the room,” said Aston quietly. “Sir Thomas, are you convinced that poisoned soup was meant for Lord Levallion?”

“Since he was poisoned last night, I am,” grimly. “It was a twenty-to-one chance against his giving it to my dog. Levallion had soup every night.”

“Who do you think poisoned it?” bluntly.

“I don’t know. But I do know that there was a strange woman hanging round outside the house that night, for Levallion and I both saw her. He was angry because she was spying in the greenhouse, and he went there to try and pounce on her. I think he knew who she was.”

“Do you mean she could have got in and put poison in Lord Levallion’s soup? It sounds impossible.”

“Not when you know that they were having a sort of masquerade in the house!” valiantly. “All the women were wearing black masks and had their heads tied up in black rags. Any one might have walked in, for the doors were all open, and all the plates of soup were standing ready on the dining-table because we kept supper waiting. Any one who’d looked in the window enough to know where Levallion sat could have easily doctored his soup.”

“But the servants would hardly have let them?” incredulously.

The butler asked permission to speak, a ray of hope in his face.

“If you please, your honor, Sir Thomas is right,” he said. “After placing the soup on the table I went to announce supper, and sent the other men off to attend to various things, so that, when I got back five minutes after, the room was empty. I didn’t wonder his lordship did not eat his soup, for it was cold and uninviting-looking. Her ladyship waited quite another five minutes for the party at the dining-room door.”

“Her ladyship—Lady Levallion—was in the dining-room when you got back?” evenly.

“No, sir! but outside the door,” respectfully.

But for one long instant Sir Thomas Annesley stood speechless with rage and surprised horror. Would they dare to think it was Ravenel who had done it?

CHAPTER XXVIII.

“I SAW—NO ONE!”

“No one dares to insinuate,” he broke out the second he got his breath, “that——”

“No,” said the coroner quietly. “Be good enough, Sir Thomas, to tell just what you saw of this woman outside. Did you observe her on that occasion only?”

“I saw her the next night. I followed her from the garden into the park. She was sitting on a rock in the moonlight, drinking champagne with a man. I couldn’t see her face, nor his; but she was wearing an evening cloak and I thought she was a lady. My dog went for the man, but he missed him——” He stopped something on the end of his tongue, as if he remembered there was no need to tell more than he was asked.

“Your dog appears to be ubiquitous!” dryly. “Did you know the man?”

The room was breathless with interest. Every soul in it, except Carrousel, leaned forward; but the question had apparently small interest for the cook.

“The man,” said Sir Thomas unwillingly, “was, to the best of my belief, Captain Gordon, though I thought him in bed at the castle. Levallion said he’d gone to bed, as he was leaving early in the morning.”

And if he had known the deadly gist of his evidence taken with Lady Gwendolen’s, he would have perjured himself ten times over.

“The woman was no one of the house-party? You are sure?” searchingly.

“She was a stranger, as far as I could tell. All the other women were in the drawing-room but my sister, and she and Levallion went in there while I was hanging out of the hall window watching the woman in the garden.”

“You are sure it was Captain Gordon in the wood?”

“I would be, but for one thing. My dog was furious when he saw him, and he was fond of Gordon. I thought afterward perhaps it was some one stouter than Gordon, but dressed like him.”

“How was he dressed?”

“In a Norfolk jacket and loose knickerbockers. I saw them against the moonlight.”

“You say Lord Levallion seemed to know who the woman was?”

Tommy nodded.

“I’m sure he did! He said afterward that it must have been a kitchen-maid; but maids don’t wear trains and long evening cloaks. I meant to tell him I’d seen her again, but when I went to his dressing-room last night before dinner he wouldn’t talk. And I drank some of that liqueur that he died of four hours afterward. It was all right then!”

The coroner nodded, knowing it already.

“I won’t trouble you any more,” he said. “Except to ask you if you would know that mysterious woman if you saw her again?”

Even Carrousel waited for the answer.

“I don’t know,” reluctantly. “I’d know her if she wore those clothes, but I never saw her face. Only I’m sure that she had something to do with the thing.”

“You were not in the house at the death of your brother-in-law, I think?”

“I ran out the back way after Jacobs. I thought he was after the cook, and I tore up-stairs and then down and outside till I found Jacobs, trying to get back into the house again. Then I sent for you, as soon as I found out what had happened.”

Tommy moved to Houghton’s side as one after one the house-party came in, and had, except Lord Chayter, to acknowledge that they had all heard and talked of Lady Levallion’s flirtation with her husband’s cousin. Houghton laid a quick hand on his shoulder, for the boy was livid with fury and outraged pride. Each guest in Levallion’s house had given his or her version of his wife’s flirtation with Adrian Gordon, come by either from sight or hearsay; of Levallion’s knowledge of it; of his quarrel with his wife half an hour before he died.

“My God!” whispered Tommy, half-choked. “Do they mean——”

“Hush! Wait!” said Houghton, in his ear. “There is only Chayter left.”

And Lord Chayter, to Tommy’s surprise, had other things to say. To his knowledge, and Lady Levallion’s, some one had been in the habit of spying round the house after dark. He had twice seen a face at the dining-room window, and had once pointed it out to Lady Levallion. Had also told Lord Levallion, who said it was nonsense. But Lord Chayter was of the opinion that Levallion had not meant what he said. “There were plenty of people, men and—well, more especially women, if you like! who had a grudge against Levallion.” (With which the jury agreed.) “In my opinion that loiterer was probably one of them,” ended Lord Chayter abruptly. “That’s what it seems to me.”

And Sir Thomas could have hugged the ugly little man. Aston called the last witness.

The room was packed by this time. Every one in the house but the boot-boy being in it, and no one had remembered him. Alone, through the silent, deserted house, Lady Levallion came to the shut door of the library, and, as if she saw none of the familiar faces, walked into the hot, close room.

She wore the coarse, blue serge Houghton had seen her in at dawn. Levallion had hated black. She had not a black gown to wear, and did not care. White as wax she took the oath, and, stony-eyed, faced the coroner. But she had to try three times before she could answer the first question.

“Yes,” she said huskily, “it was I who went to my husband’s room for that bottle of liqueur.”

“Before that,” said the coroner unexpectedly, “what had you been doing?”

“I was down in the hall talking up to him. I wanted to go out and he would not let me. He was annoyed with me because of something he imagined, till I told him why I wanted to go out.”

“Why was it?”

“A woman whom I had known was dying. She sent for me. I showed Levallion her letter, and he said we would both go after the others had gone to bed.”

“He was not annoyed, then?”

“Oh, no!” lifelessly.

“Why had he thought you wished to go out?”

“I dropped a card with some writing on it. Levallion thought it referred to last night, whereas it was one I never got, and four months old.”

“How did it reach you, then?”

“My stepmother’s maid had it. It was she who was dying and wanted to explain something to me that I knew already.”

“What—exactly?”

“I don’t think I need say. It concerned,” she twisted her hands hard together, “no one but me and Levallion,” she finished unexpectedly.

“Was it the card, a four-months’-old card, that was taking you out?”

“No. The woman who sent it to me was dying, and wrote me two letters begging me to come to her that night and let her tell me something before it was too late. She had behaved badly to me. She was sorry.”

“And Lord Levallion would not allow it?”

“On the contrary, he was going to take me, but——” she could not finish. With a sharp breath, an uncontrollable passion, she cried out: “Oh! Doctor Aston, I think, now that I’ve had time to think, that perhaps the woman knew something, knew some one meant to poison Levallion. That it was that which made her send for me. And I didn’t go. I can’t forgive myself that I didn’t go!”

“Where are her letters?”

“I can’t”—Carrousel looked really affected—“I can’t find them. I thought Levallion had them. Weren’t they in his pocket?”

“No. They have never been heard of till now. But I can easily send for the woman.”

“She died last night,” said Lady Levallion slowly. “Some one must have her letters. Some one might have picked them up when—he fell.” The last two words seemed to choke her.

But not a soul in Levallion Castle had seen those letters.

“Lord Levallion was annoyed about a card?” the coroner barked back obstinately.

“A card I never got, about something that was over long ago,” bravely. “That card referred to last May. Some one had told Levallion it was last night. I told him the truth—and he believed me. Whatever that card had to do with me once, it was not now.”

“Then you were on good terms with Lord Levallion when he sent you for that liqueur?”

“On better terms than ever in my life,” hardly able to answer.

“Describe what you did when you left the drawing-room.”

“I went straight to Levallion’s dressing-room. I took the bottle off a shelf and I thought it felt warm in my hands, like a ring some one has been wearing. And then my brother’s dog, who was with me, barked and startled me. I nearly dropped the bottle. I wish I had!”

“What did he bark at?”

Lady Levallion swayed where she stood.

“I don’t know,” she muttered. “I—he flew at the door and banged it as he jumped against it. I—I—thought”—Carrousel put a hand to his mouth as if to hide his pity for his mistress—“I thought it must be a cat in the hall. I caught Jacobs by the collar and he got away from me and tore back through my rooms and out into the hall.”

Some one who had no business there, since he had not been called as a witness, had come softly in behind her, but where he stood could see her face plainly in a mirror. The face he knew every line and curve of, just as he knew every tone of Ravenel Levallion’s voice. Something in both of them caught at his heart.

“Did you see the cat?”

“I saw no one, nothing,” said Lady Levallion deliberately. She looked round the crowded room as though she were hunted, looked at the Bible she had kissed but now. Her voice came suddenly to the waiting-room, clear, unfaltering as a bugle. “I saw absolutely no one. No one!”

And Adrian Gordon, whom no one had noticed come in, knew she lied.

“What did you do then?”

“I ran back to the drawing-room. I was frightened to be there alone. The dog had startled me. I never looked at the bottle, but when Levallion said it smelled of almonds”—and Heaven knew where she got her self-control to speak of it quietly—“I tried to stop his drinking it. I remembered it was almond soup that had poisoned my brother’s dog.”

Carrousel started furiously and then sat still. Lady Levallion might say what she liked.

“Where were you the night the dog was poisoned?”

“At supper. But I never thought of its being the soup till it flashed over me when Levallion spoke of the liqueur smelling of almonds. I suppose it made me think of prussic acid.”

If she had sobbed, fainted, been interestingly weak, the jury might not have sat so stolid. Each word she said was somehow setting them to think it was a desperate woman who stood so quiet and yet so bold before them.

“Before supper?” said the coroner slowly.

“I had been in the conservatory with Captain Gordon. He left me at the dining-room door; he was not well and went to bed. I went into the dining-room”—Houghton could have screamed at her to hold her tongue—“and it was empty. I stood at the door and waited for the others.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“You were alone in there, and alone in the dressing-room?” said the coroner, after what seemed a year.

“Yes,” listlessly. And then the faces of the jury seemed suddenly to leap into her eyes; live men, not automatons. She started, as if to back away from the dreadful thing that was written in those faces. But she stood dumb before them.

And every man of them thought it was the dumbness, the confession of guilt.

The coroner held out a rag of tweed toward her.

“Did you ever see a suit of clothes of this stuff?” he said. “Had Lord Levallion one?”

There was that desperate terror in her eyes now that Houghton knew. She looked from the jury to the coroner and back again.

“I don’t think he had,” she gasped. “I would not know.”

“Did you ever see a suit like them?”

“I—never—saw—one,” said Ravenel Levallion, white-lipped.

Sir Thomas Annesley caught Houghton’s hand and pointed to Adrian Gordon, dressed in that very tweed, thread for thread; and standing as if he were turned to stone.

CHAPTER XXIX.

“WILFUL MURDER.”

Sickened, helpless, Adrian Gordon had stood, indeed, for the last five minutes, as a man who comes on some awful bit of cruelty he cannot stop. Ravenel’s hunted face, her desperate eyes, her answers about seeing no one—that instinct told him was a lie—paralyzed him with sick astonishment.

They were baiting her like a helpless beast, justly enough if they were right. But every drop of his blood knew they were wrong. And she was not defending herself, was not telling all she knew; for he knew what that veiled look in her eyes meant. He had seen it before, when her thoughts were one thing and her words another.

“Think, Lady Levallion,” said the coroner earnestly, “for even if you saw no one in Lord Levallion’s dressing-room, some one might have been there! This rag of tweed was caught in the door, in the box of the door-latch.”

“I don’t know it,” was all she said. “I didn’t see any one.”

Something like a flash of lightning went through Adrian Gordon’s brain. She knew it well enough, since it was a suit he had worn that May that was dead and gone—not that very suit he was wearing. She had seen some one, and was lying because she knew the clothes they wore. He strode into the middle of the room, tall, strong, blackly angry.

“Be good enough to put me on the stand,” he cried roughly, for she should lie no more for so inconceivable a suspicion; to defend a man who had been miles away. “And look at my clothes, if you want to know where that rag came from!”

Lady Levallion caught her breath, stared at him with narrowed eyes, and, without a word, slipped like water to the floor. But he never even seemed to see, never stirred, as Houghton came quickly forward and took her to a sofa.

Gordon took the tweed scrap and held it against his coat.

“You see!” he said contemptuously. “Now, perhaps you will think I poisoned my cousin! Fortunately, I was miles away that night, and with half a dozen other men, who can tell you so.”

“Then I hardly see——” began the coroner.

“I will help you,” and every soul in the room saw the sudden likeness to the dead Levallion as he spoke. “I was in London, but my clothes weren’t. I had two suits exactly alike. I wore one of them down here the day I was taken ill. They cut the coat off me, and when I got better I sent up to town for the other coat, and my man sent me the whole suit. I put it on and forgot about the other, with the cut coat. And I’ve never seen it from that day to this. But”—and he tapped the rag of tweed—“that came out of it. And that I can swear, for I spilt something on it, and you can see the edge of the stain on this. It was some one, dressed in my clothes, who caught their knickerbockers in Levallion’s door, whether Lady Levallion saw them or not.” He laughed coldly, as he saw that in spite of what he said the jury’s eyes were glued to the knickerbockers he had on. “Some one stole those clothes, perhaps you can tell me who!” he cried. “Till you find out that, it might be as well to accuse no one.”

Houghton, bending over Lady Levallion in a distant corner, drew his breath. He understood something now of that terror that had been on her.

“I wish to God she’d told me, instead of lying!” he thought, as he saw her coming to. “They won’t believe one word he says now; for he can’t prove it.”

Nor could he. Not a servant in the house had known anything about his clothes. He had taken the second suit out of his box himself, and shoved the spoiled suit in there; from whence, on going back to town, he found it had vanished. The story was lame.

The coroner asked him a hundred questions that might have made any woman flinch to hear, since her name came in each one. But Ravenel, leaning sick and faint on Tommy’s shoulder, never winced. All that bygone story of the card Adrian Gordon told. His face was set like flint as he spoke.

“I don’t ask other men’s wives to meet me after dark,” he ended contemptuously. “If the letters from that woman that prove it are lost, there has been culpable negligence somewhere.”

When told Sir Thomas Annesley had seen him at night with a strange woman in black, he looked round the room quietly, as if to see which of the servants was like him in figure. But none was as tall, except Carrousel, who was stouter, and had a beard.

“Sir Thomas was mistaken,” he said slowly. “But I do not doubt he saw some one in my clothes. I was in my room. I know no woman with whom I would go out.”

“To whose knowledge were you in your room?”

“Levallion’s. He came and sat with me.”

“Lord Levallion’s!” said Aston slowly, and deadly disbelief in a man who could only call a dead witness crept into each juror’s soul.

Gordon shrugged his shoulder.

“Have you all gone mad?” he said coldly. “If I can’t prove I was in my room when Sir Thomas thought he saw me, I can prove I was in town last night. Just call my servant in, will you?”

And his man routed the jury, horse and foot. Captain Gordon had been in his own rooms, playing cards with some other gentlemen, with whom he had dined at the club. The man gave half a dozen names of men whose word would be taken on their oath, or not. Carrousel sat listening, with a curious scorn. It was all so different from his ideas of justice; so short-sighted, so biased. He even smiled a little at the foolish tale of those two suits of clothes, till Captain Gordon said quietly that his tailor’s book could settle that question.

His sternness, his contempt for stupidity and foregone conclusions had made the jury almost forget he had not been able to prove he was not the man who had drunk champagne in the wood. But, as he stepped down, the coroner recalled Lady Levallion; and she came, a living, breathing woman now, instead of one of stone. Relief was in her eyes, in her very hands, as they hung at her sides. But Houghton was looking like a man distraught at the coroner’s face.

“You swear that you had no part nor lot in the poisoning of your husband; that you saw no one in the dressing-room who could have put poison into that bottle of liqueur, or changed it?”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “I swear I had no hand in it. That I tried, even at the last minute, to save him.”

“Then,” said Doctor Aston slowly, “how did you come by these? A housemaid found them this morning behind your window-curtains, in your bedroom.”

He held out to her a bottle of Eau de Vie Magique, half-full, with a rough seam running down each side of the bottle; a tiny flask full of clear, faintly green liquid, that, as he uncorked it, smelled of bitter almonds in the hot room.

Lacy started forward.

“That’s my lord’s bottle!” he cried. “I thought the other was not.”

“Exactly,” said the coroner. “And this is distilled laurel-water and deadly poison. I analyzed it and gave some to a cat, which died in three minutes, with every symptom of prussic-acid poisoning. Gentlemen of the jury, we have heard all the evidence.”

“You shall hear me!” Lady Levallion’s face was on fire. “What do I know about those bottles?—nothing but that they were put in my room by some one. Find out who did that”—for, with that deadly conviction gone from her mind, she could speak out, since that disappearing shadow in Levallion’s dressing-room—a shadow that had been substance enough to bang the door in Mr. Jacobs’ face, and run—had not been Adrian Gordon—“and you may find out who murdered Levallion. It was not I, for I would have died for him.”

Every man of the jury turned to look at her, but not one of them spoke. To their stolid, conventional minds it seemed clear enough that she and Gordon had had reason to wish Levallion out of the way, that the poisoning was her work, an unhappy, probably rejected, girl, who had been deceived into a marriage with a callous, heartless rake; that the story of the second suit of clothes was a trumped-up fiction of her old lover’s.

To the childish tale of the woman who had been seen looking in the windows they paid no attention. Plenty of people would have been glad to gape at the quality. One by one they filed out into the next room, some pitying even while they judged; others, a wife who could kill her husband like a dog, needed nothing but justice!

Lord Chayter moved to Lady Levallion’s side.

“My dear child,” he said nervously, “no one believes you did it,” but he knew he lied.

She could not answer. She looked at the women who had eaten her bread, and not one of them met her eyes; looked at Tommy, at Houghton, at every soul but Adrian Gordon, who stood apart in futile anger against every one, himself included.

“If it had not been for my alibi they would have thought I did it,” he thought. “And now, because some one is too clever for them, they’re putting it on her. On Nel!” the horror of it made him quiver from head to foot. “And I swore myself clear like a fool! No wonder she won’t look at me. I’d have been hanged before I did it, if I’d known! I wish to God I’d got here at first,” and he turned his back flatly on a man who was bold enough to come forward and greet him as Lord Levallion.

“Tommy,” said Houghton sharply, “take your sister away!” He moved to Doctor Aston and laid a hand on his sleeve.

“Permit me to congratulate you on your methods of conducting an inquest,” he said, and his low voice was furious. “You are responsible for a damnably iniquitous thing if they commit her to trial. Where was your housemaid who gave that fool’s evidence, and when did she give it? Not here, for I was your first witness.”

“The second,” said Aston uncomfortably, knowing perfectly well that to begin an inquiry with evidence like that was simply making all subsequent testimony worthless, in nine cases out of ten. “The girl was in the room when you entered it. There she is now!”

Houghton followed his eyes, and saw a pale, fat-faced girl turning to follow her fellow servants from the room.

“Find the man who that anemic, hysterical fool is in love with before you go far on her evidence!” he observed contemptuously. “Supposing it true, which I don’t, you’d no right to begin the inquest with a biasing fact like that. An astute man like you should know that much.”

“I had a right to conduct my inquest as I pleased!” hotly. “If you must know, the girl was too terrified to speak before the other servants. She came to me in floods of tears. I believe it cost her honest pain to come at all.”

“Honest!” returned Houghton, as cold as the other was hot. “Thanks to you and her——” He turned away without finishing. Because he was convinced, without any reason except a dogged belief in Levallion’s wife, that she was innocent, gave him no hope of upsetting the opposite conviction of a pigheaded man like Aston.

He stood in silent, dogged endurance till, after an interminable time of waiting, the jury filed in again. But the end of the chairman’s speech made his heart turn over.

“Two attempts having been made to poison Lord Levallion, both of which were in the power of one person only, your jury are compelled to find a verdict of wilful murder against Lady Levallion.”

Houghton was poor; the wives and children of each juryman were his patients; but he would not have cared if they had been kings and queens.

“Permit me to congratulate you on a crassly incapable jury,” he said to the coroner. “And you, gentlemen, on a piece of hasty iniquity that I pray you may never forget till your dying day.”

But his face was gray with despair as he went out before they could answer him.

CHAPTER XXX.

A CLOUD OF BLOOD.

“Who’s to tell her?” Sir Thomas Annesley, Mr. Jacobs at his heels, came flying into Levallion’s own den, where something told him Houghton would be. But there was another man beside Houghton, and the boy drew back at the sight of him, just as the man started forward.

“Why are you here? Haven’t you done mischief enough?” The young face was dreadful with its pinched nostrils and red eyes. “If you’d never come here, she’d never have come to this!”

“It’s true enough,” said Adrian Gordon grimly, as Houghton would have hushed the lad. “But, before God, Tommy, I believe my being here had nothing to do with it! I think you’ve got to look deeper than that for Levallion’s death, and outside! It seems to me that my only share in the business is to have made your sister a convenient scapegoat. And God knows that’s black enough.”

Tommy Annesley hid his face in his hands, and the tears oozed through his fingers.

“Don’t, lad, don’t!” said Houghton pitifully. “A coroner’s inquest means very little. Please God, we’ll find out who did it, long before the trial.”

“That’s just it,” hoarsely. “The trial! She’s got to stand up there innocent, and have the—every one”—desperately—“think her guilty. Can’t you see, Houghton, that every soul in the house has cleared themselves but her?”

“Every soul outside hasn’t, though,” Gordon said slowly. “And any jury but a set of prejudiced fools would have seen it.” He gently pushed away Jacobs, who was slobbering at his knee.

“Do you mean you know any one who was likely to have done it—who hated Levallion?” said Houghton bluntly.

“There were plenty,” answered Gordon, as Lacy had before him. “Who knows who that woman was who was hanging about? Or the man Tommy thought was I? And what became of those letters Lady Levallion thought were in Levallion’s pocket? They’re a small thing, perhaps, but suppose I hadn’t come down? Who was going to know that card of mine asking her to meet me wasn’t written that very morning? Whoever took those letters meant it to seem so,” emphatically.

“No one could have. Levallion—the body”—stammering—“was never left alone till the coroner came.”

“It was!” Tommy lifted his tear-stained face. “Didn’t you know? When the coroner came there wasn’t a soul in the room. You’d gone to Ravenel, the others had cleared off to the smoking-room. It was I took Aston in there, and the room was empty. Any one in the house might have gone in there. The hall was full of people, but there are three other doors to the drawing-room.”

“And any one out of it,” Gordon added obstinately. “Look here, Tommy, how could you think it was I Jacobs flew at that night in the wood? See him!” for Jacobs had lain down with his head on the speaker’s boot.

“It was the Norfolk jacket and the knickerbockers and the height,” wretchedly. “The other men were in the drawing-room—none of the servants were so tall—except Carrousel—and he has a beard! This man had only a mustache. I saw the line of his chin when he stood up and yelled.”

“As I should have been likely to yell on account of Jacobs!” scornfully. “Why on earth didn’t you tell some one what you saw, Tommy?”

“I’d have only said it was you! I did try to tell Levallion, but the second I spoke about the woman he shut me up. Lacy was there; Levallion never talked before servants. Oh!” he broke off wildly, “what’s the good of talking? Some one must go and tell Ravenel. Will they take her—to jail—till the assizes?” A hard sob broke his words.

“I don’t know,” Houghton muttered. “Perhaps bail”—but he knew quite well there was no bail for murder. He got up, for the boy was right. Some one must tell Lady Levallion.

“Damn that housemaid!” he broke out fiercely, standing with his hand on the door.

“Look here,” said Gordon quickly, “wait a moment. Don’t say anything like that outside; don’t say a word to frighten any of the servants.”

“Why?” Houghton looked at him without too much favor. He had certainly had nothing to do with the crime, but his stay in the house had every day added one to the letters that spelled “murderess” after Lady Levallion’s name.

“Because they’ve all given their evidence; they’re quite comfortable about none of them being implicated. They’ll talk among themselves and compare notes, and they may find out something. I sha’n’t allow one of them to leave.”

Houghton realized suddenly that it was the new Lord Levallion who stood before him.

“I forgot,” he said involuntarily, “you are master here now.”

“And I’d rather be a one-armed sandwich-man!” returned Adrian Gordon, with a bitter glance at the injured arm that had kept him in Levallion’s house. And the memory of that day brought back something; the unknown woman who had come to see if he were dead. There was only one woman in the world who could hope, however falsely, to gain by his dying.

“Hester Murray!” he thought sharply. “But of all women on earth she would be the least likely to be here. Levallion wouldn’t have had it.” And yet the thought clung obstinately.

“I’ll find out,” he said aloud, and Tommy looked up where he sat wan and exhausted.

“What?” he demanded. “I don’t see how any one can find out anything. We know all anybody knows.”

“We know all some one chooses us to know,” hardly. “We’re not beaten yet. Try and remember what that woman looked like whom Levallion told you was a kitchen-maid.”

“How do I know?” wretchedly. “I only saw her twice; both times it was dark. She had a cloak on with a hood, and was holding up a train. She may live right under our noses.”

“All the same, she’s our only chance.”

He shivered, and stirred the fire. For if he were wrong and that cloaked woman not Hester Murray, the chance was small. Beat his brains as he would, he could think of no one else who might profit by the death of Lord Levallion.

The clock struck six, and, like a blow, the sound struck on his heart, making him forget everything but the girl up-stairs. Houghton must be with her now; must be telling her what the jury had said. Houghton, an absolute stranger—while the man who should have been her husband dared not go near her; the man who should have sheltered her from all the world could do nothing but sit helpless while some one else spoke the very bitterest shame on earth in her ears.

“Nel, my Nel!” And if Adrian Gordon was silent, his spirits groaned within him.

Sylvia Annesley and her schemes had come between them once; then Levallion; and now, to the eyes of the world, a bar of blood they could not pass.

“Blood between us; love, my love!” the man said silently, behind his shut teeth. “Not while I’m alive or there’s a God above us. Somehow, somewhere, I mean to find the truth that’s going to set you clear—and clean! If I dare not go to you I can work for you; and if I can’t comfort you”—unconsciously he raised his right hand as some men do when they take an oath—“I’ll save you, if I have to take you out of Newgate!”

He raised his eyes and saw Houghton had come back.

“Well?” he said thickly.

“Very ill.” Houghton cast himself into a chair as if he could do no more. “She knew! That fool of a housemaid ran up screaming and told her, begging her to forgive her—if they hanged her! The French maid took the crazy fool by the ears and put her out. But——”

He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

“What’s she doing—Ravenel?” Tommy was on his feet, pale as Levallion up-stairs.

“Nothing! Just sitting there like death. Go to her and see if you can make her cry. I couldn’t make her even seem to hear me.”

As the door closed behind the boy, Houghton turned to Adrian.

“It was to say good-by I sent him,” he said drearily. “The warrant has come to arrest her.”

“She sha’n’t go!” cried Gordon blackly; but he knew he was talking nonsense.

“There’s no choice! To-morrow you may—if you move heaven and earth and the stars in their course”—bitterly—“be able to bail her out again.”

He turned to the window because there were tears in his eyes, and so did not see that every trace of humanity had been wiped out of Adrian Gordon’s countenance, as in a voice the like of which Doctor Houghton had never heard, he called down the wrath of God on Levallion’s secret murderer.

CHAPTER XXXI.

A BAD MOVE.

Two days afterward the great gates of Levallion Castle were opened wide to let out the funeral of the man who had been poisoned in his own house. Behind the hearse, before the long rows of country neighbors who came because they must and the flocking poor who came because the dead man had been good to them, walked the new Lord Levallion as chief mourner—and people stared as they saw Sir Thomas Annesley walking at his side. Sir Thomas, whose sister was a murderess, and lying in jail awaiting her committal for trial at the assizes.

“I wonder the boy can hold up,” said Lord Chayter to his companion. “I honestly believe she didn’t do it, though!” But when asked who did, he was silent.

Long and speechlessly the new Lord Levallion stood by his cousin’s grave. If there were men who would have spoken to him they dared not do it, so hard and hostile was his face. He turned without seeming to see his neighbors or the parson at his elbow; and to the surprise of every one drove off in the opposite direction from Levallion Castle.

He was not needed there, Levallion’s lawyer was in charge, and would remain so till it pleased Adrian Gordon to come back. There was no will to read, nothing to keep the heir from taking up his immediate residence. Except that his wife’s settlements and jointure were secured to her. Lord Levallion had arranged nothing. That consolation legacy to Adrian had never been made—or needed.

But all that was the last thing in Adrian’s head as he drove to the station from that ghastliest thing on earth, the funeral of a murdered man.

In the last two days he had ransacked the village, but of a Mrs. Murray no one had ever heard. The landlord of the raw new bungalows had gone away; the caretaker gave a description of Miss Brown, the defaulting tenant, which did not tally in any respect with Hester Murray, except that Miss Brown had yellow hair.

Bad as Hester might be, he had never known her to drink; and the village girl who had waited on the tenant of the bungalow swore that two days out of three her mistress would drink herself into a heavy sleep. She said, also, that Miss Brown never left the house except to go into the garden; that at night, from her cottage near-by—for she had never slept in the house—she had always seen the drawing-room lit up till all hours. And it was clear her story was true, for none of the village people had ever laid eyes on the levanting tenant during all the three months she had lived in the bungalow.

“That disposes of Hester,” Adrian said to himself. “She could never have lived cooped up like that. She’d have scoured the country for exercise.”

Levallion’s lawyer, too, poohpoohed the idea, as he furnished Mrs. Murray’s present address in London.

“She could not have been here, or his lordship would have mentioned it in his instructions to me. I was to pay quarterly to her account in the Starr Street branch of Lloyd’s Bank, five hundred a year, so long as she observed his lordship’s conditions of never going within a hundred miles of any of his country houses, or approaching him or his wife in any way, personally or by letters. I received those instructions one morning, and the next had a letter from Mrs. Murray herself, from a London address and posted in London. I think you may set aside all thought of her having been down here. Lord Levallion would have made no terms with her in that case, I am convinced. Three days afterward she drew her money and I made it my business to ascertain her whereabouts. She and her boy were at the address she had written from—Starr Street, Paddington.”

And to Starr Street Adrian was going, in hopes that if Hester Murray and the woman Tommy had seen were one and the same, he could terrify it out of her. For he owed her a long score.

It was pouring rain and pitch-dark when he found her number in the shabby street, a strange dwelling for a woman who had had the best house in Eaton Place. If he had any thought that she would not see him, he was mistaken; for he had barely entered the sordid lodging-house sitting-room when she came in, small, pretty, dainty as usual, but with something so unaccustomed in her dress that he started.

“Adrian!” she said prettily. “This is kind of you,” and she pretended not to see that he made no motion to take her outstretched hand. She sat down, not sure what had brought him, his own business or another’s. In spite of herself, her heart thumped.

“I didn’t come to be kind,” he said coolly. “But what’s the matter with you? Is Murray dead?” For she was dressed in new widow’s mourning, incongruously expensive for 15 Starr Street.

“No,” she answered quietly. “Levallion! And I—loved him.”

Some emotion she could not control convulsed her face.

“Your truthfulness with him showed it!” brutally. “But I fail to see why you wear widow’s weeds.”

“Because, in my own eyes, I am his widow,” she said. “You know that! Have you come here to insult me when I am heart-broken—or why?”

And to his astounding eyes there were the ravages of fearful grief in her face. But he was in no mood for pity.

“How dared you tell Lady Levallion, before her marriage,” he said—and it was not what she had expected—“that ‘Mrs. Gordon’ was my wife?”

“Because Sylvia Annesley made me, threatened me. And I did it in ignorance. If I had known what I was doing, do you think I would have stirred a finger to help Levallion to marry—to marry!” bitterly.

“I suppose not. Well, it’s some small comfort to think you ruined yourself! Were you trying to undo your work by passing yourself off as Miss Brown, at Levallion?”

But the sudden question never jarred her; she had been ready for it, since, for all she knew, Levallion might have told him. Her wide eyes opened innocently as she stared at him, and all the while it was sweeping over her acute brain that he was speaking by guesswork.

“I don’t know what you mean!” she cried, in her clear, high voice. “I know nothing about any Miss Brown.”

“Will you come down there and tell the caretaker you don’t?” quietly.

“Yes,” said Hester Murray, just as quietly; “if you can make me understand what you mean. Caretaker of what? and what has he to do with me? I have not been at Levallion Castle for three years, and you know it.”

“You’ve been living within a mile of it all summer!”

Pale as a sheet, she stood up in front of him.

“Are you mad?” she said. “Would I—I that he discarded, shamed, ruined, go near him and his new—wife? Whoever your Miss Brown was, she was not I! I’ve been ill, poor, starving, nearly dying, till Levallion heard of it and sent me money.”

“Have you been here all summer, then?” unconvinced.

He terrified her till she could scarcely answer him, and if she did not satisfy him she was ruined. She shook her head.

“I’ve been in France, Boulogne,” she said. “In a pension; you can write and ask them.” And thanked Heaven she dared to play the desperate card, though only yesterday she had loathed the means that put it into her hand.

“Day before yesterday—the last few days?” doggedly.

“I’ve been here. Oh, Adrian! Why are you asking me such questions? If I had been at Levallion, could I have stayed away from—him?”

Her low, broken voice, her puzzled misery, were perfect; and yet the man disbelieved in her because he knew her to be a liar.

“Do you expect me to believe it was not you who lived at Levallion, in that bungalow behind the village, all summer?” he said. “Because I think it was.”

“It was not I. And if it had been, it is none of your affair.”

Her change of tone startled him. He did not realize he had made a mistake when he said “think,” instead of “know.”

“Here,” she said, and she wrote an address on a bit of paper. “Write to Boulogne and ask. And now tell me what your Miss Brown has been doing that you should think I was she?”

Her face was haggard as she waited for the answer, yet something in it warned Gordon that to answer her would be sheer madness.

“Hester,” he said quietly, “has it occurred to you that it is I now who am Lord Levallion? What do you expect me to do about your allowance?”

Something cunning flashed into her eyes, and was gone.

“I have not asked you for money,” she returned. “And—I don’t think I will.”

“If you want it, you had better stay here till you hear from me. Do you understand?”

“Unless you hear from me—first,” she said slowly. And he could not understand the mixture of triumph and fright that was in her face.

“What do you mean? You’re powerless,” he cried sharply.

“Yes.” And for his life he did not know whether it was an assent or a question. He caught back the threat that was on his lips and went out.

In the street he called himself every sort of fool. As if it had been written on the black, rainy sky, he saw that he had betrayed his suspicion of her and she had cleared herself and then defied him. He had accomplished absolutely nothing of what he meant to do.

“She means mischief,” he said to the depths of his umbrella. “She’s going to do something.”

But just what Mrs. Murray had in her power never entered his brain.

CHAPTER XXXII.

A TRIVIAL INCIDENT.

Lady Levallion had been committed for trial at the assizes, and, as Houghton had foreseen, was refused bail.

In the county jail at Valehampton she must stay alone, comfortless—a girl of nineteen; must be a month away from liberty and free air before her trial. Of after that Houghton dared not think. He worked wonders for her comfort, though, and instead of a cell she had a room, plain and bare, but still a room. Yet it seemed prisonlike enough to Sir Thomas Annesley, when at last he had leave to go and see her.

Door after door was unlocked and locked behind him; corridor after corridor sickened him with its cold smell of carbolic acid, till at last he stood in the small room that was properly part of the jail infirmary, and heard its iron door click behind his heels.

“Tommy!” she cried, incredulous, rapturous, though she had known he was coming.

But the boy could not answer; could only cling to her, trying to choke back his pitiful sobbing against her shoulder. For he had seen her face, and knew a little, just a little, of what her days and nights must have been.

“Don’t cry, darling!” she whispered, as though it had been he and not she that was in peril of life. “Oh, Tommy, I thought I would die for want of you!”

“They wouldn’t let me come.” He lifted his head. “Who’s that?” he cried sharply. For a woman was sewing by the window.

“The matron,” softly. “Did you think they’d let you see me alone?”

The woman looked up.

“Don’t mind me, sir!” she cried, her hard face very gentle. “I’ll not heed anything you say.”

For Houghton, by good luck, was the prison doctor, and she believed in him as in the four Gospels.

“She’s been very good to me,” Ravenel said gratefully, and the matron smiled, but her eyes were wet. For, if Lady Levallion were innocent ten times over, she could not prove it. And the matron’s only daughter who died would have been just the age now of this girl, who presently would be tried for murder. She moved to the farthest limit of the room as the brother and sister sat down on the bed.

“Are you well, Tommy?” Ravenel whispered. “You look so thin!”

“Never mind me; I’m all right.” He grabbed at her hand. “I can only stay half an hour. Tell me, can’t you think of anything I don’t know?”

“Nothing,” deliberately. For once having perjured herself because she had seen a flying glimpse of a man she thought was Adrian, there was nothing to do but stick by it. If she had been certain he was in London, she could have told the truth; but yet it would have helped her very little in face of those two bottles.

“You’ve seen your lawyer?”

She nodded. There had been little enough in that clever man’s face to reassure her.

“Don’t fret,” she said slowly. “There are three weeks before I—my trial.”

“And so far we haven’t found out one thing,” he said, and hid his face again.

“I’ve thought of something, though it can’t help me,” she began, smoothing the boy’s rough hair. “The Umbrella, Tommy! She didn’t send for me to tell me about that old story of Sylvia. She sent for me to warn me about Levallion. I feel it, and he did, too; else why did he say, before he died: ‘We should have gone’?”

“But the Umbrella’s dead. We’ll never know.”

“No! But if she knew something, some one else may. It’s sure to come out.”

“But if it doesn’t?” he gasped.

A dreadful shudder took her. To die, with a rope around her neck, in a prison-yard!

“Pray it will!” she cried. “Oh, Tommy, I know you’d help me if you could! But if you can’t, pretend it’s all right. It’s the only thing you can do for me. I—I’ve got to be brave!”

The boy sat up, but he did not look at her.

“Look here,” he said; “what do you think about Gordon?”

“He didn’t do it!” quickly; for all her pains, joyfully.

“No! I don’t mean that. But if he wants to help you, why doesn’t he come back to Levallion Castle and watch those servants? He’s vanished, clean gone. Went to London the day of the funeral, and nobody knows where he is.”

“He couldn’t help me,” loyally. “Those servants know no more than they said.” But her heart sank in her. Was it possible that he did not care? And yet it had not been so much for Adrian’s sake as for Levallion’s that she had lied at the inquest. No one should be able to say that one of the dead man’s own blood had murdered him because he had loved his wife.

“Perhaps not! But Gordon ought to be there,” gruffly.

“Are you there?” she asked.

“Where can I go?” miserably. “I’ve no money. If I had I couldn’t leave you.”

“Adrian will look after you.” She hesitated, for she had a dim idea that if they hanged her the crown would take her jointure.

“I wouldn’t take his money. It was all his!” bitterly.

“It was all Sylvia.” For the first time she had color in her face. “Oh, don’t hark back to it, Tommy! Levallion was kind to us; and some one killed him for it.”

The door swung back heavily.

“Time’s up, sir,” said the warden.

It did not seem five minutes, but it was nearer forty than thirty.

“I’ll come,” said Sir Thomas Annesley, and he looked ten years older. “Ravenel, I nearly forgot. The duchess wrote to me. She’s coming here, to Valehampton, to be near you. She’ll come here as often as they’ll let her.”

“I’m glad,” simply. “But I think I only want you.” (And one other, whose hand she would never touch again in life!)

She sat down, tearless. One breath, of all the world she could have hidden her face against; one strong shoulder would have known her tears. But between Adrian Gordon and her was a deep gulf set: a gulf of blood that cried aloud.

But Tommy Annesley was blind with tears as he drove the long ten miles between Valehampton and Levallion Castle. It was bitter work to stay there eating Adrian’s bread; but he could not go away.

“Perhaps the duchess will take me with her,” he thought, “till——” But even to himself he could not finish. When the trial was over it was not likely that Tommy Annesley would have overmuch care for what happened. He would get away, he and Jacobs, from every soul who had known him—would work, somehow, for his living. A lump rose in his throat as he walked into the broad hall of Levallion Castle, all soft firelight and welcome, and thought of its mistress sitting on her pallet bed in Valehampton Jail.

Tea was waiting, but he could not swallow it. He flew out into the desolate, twilit garden, and rambled aimlessly, he hardly saw where. Jacobs, for once, was not with him; all alone, his hands in his pockets, his slow feet silent on the frozen grass, Sir Thomas walked mechanically, racking his brain to no purpose over that mysterious man and woman the detectives had been unable to trace.

He might have racked his brain still harder if he had known the reason of the silence that reigned concerning them. In Adrian’s theory about the absconding tenant of the bungalow, no one believed at all. Arlington’s man had been almost openly unbelieving about dragging a strange woman into the case, and the prosecution merely smiled at the idea of there being any mystery whatever, thanks to that hasty evidence of Sir Thomas Annesley’s. It was all very well for him to believe he had made a mistake; no one else did. In the eyes of the world, those two people who drank champagne in a wood had been Captain Gordon and Lady Levallion, since the only man who could have sworn to her whereabouts was dead!

“If I only could think of something!” the boy mused desperately, and stopped short at a queer sound.

He had wandered into the dark kitchen-garden, behind a row of deserted potting sheds; and from them came a sound exactly like the beating of carpets. It was no concern of Tommy’s, though the hour was a queer one, and he was moving on when a pitiful moaning like a dog being beaten to death made him jump. His thoughts flew to the absent Jacobs, and the cook who had a grudge against him.

Silent, with flying feet, Tommy ran to the back of the shed, full of fury. But as he paused by the latticed, glassless window at the back of it, he knew it was no dog which was concerned in the carpet-beating, but a boy.

“Don’t! don’t!” he was crying. “I won’t go away. I’ll stay with you. I’ll do whatever you say!”

The sound of blows ceased.

“That is a sensible, amiable boy!” said a voice, and it was the chef’s. “And you will say to the world that you love me—that there was never any one like me, eh?”

The boy groaned.

“Yes!”

Sir Thomas heard the whistle of a stick uplifted.

“Oh, yes! Don’t hit me.”

“It is for your good that I break the bones in your skin,” returned Carrousel. “We shall hear no more of this running away?”

“No,” in exhausted sobs. “I’ll stay. I’ll do whatever you tell me. I——”

Sir Thomas bounced round the corner of the shed.

“What the devil’s this?” he said fiercely, and a lighted match flickered in his hand.

There was Carrousel, his face like a devil’s, grasping a heavy stick, and on the mud floor the boot-boy, quivering with pain. The match went out.

“How dare you beat the boy like that?” cried Tommy. “I’ll have you up for assault.”

“He disobeyed me, refused to do his work.”

In the dark Carrousel’s boot grazed the boy’s ribs. “Did you not, eh?”

“Yes.” The answer was little better than a moan.

“I don’t see what a cook has to do with blacking boots!” angrily. “And if he disobeyed you a dozen times, you’ve no right to beat him like this.”

“He runs my errands,” said Carrousel sullenly. “He would not do his work; he played, idled.”

“You get out of this and let him alone,” authoritatively. “And if I catch you at this again I’ll have you arrested. Go now, sharp! My dog’ll be here in a minute,” significantly.

“You threaten me—intimidate?” In the dark Carrousel’s face was not pretty. But like lightning he changed his tone.

“I regret if you think the punishment too severe. The boy—earned it!” He spoke like oil, and in the dark stooped and whispered two words in the boot-boy’s ear.

“Clear out!” Tommy stamped his foot, unconscious of that whisper. “Get back to your pots and pans, or I’ll have you driven there. Jacobs! Hi, Jacobs!” he yelled.

But Monsieur Carrousel was gone.

Tommy stooped over the boot-boy.

“Why did you let him beat you like that?” he said. “Why didn’t you yell?”

But he got no answer. Another match flickered in the shed. Towers, the boot-boy, was lying on his face, shaking with sobs.

“See here,” said Tommy, “don’t! Here’s half a crown for you”—his last coin—“if you couldn’t fight that beast why didn’t you complain if he ill-treated you? Has he done it before?”

No answer.

“Well,” disgustedly, “if you won’t tell, I shall! I’ll have Carrousel hauled up.”

Towers said something; caught at Tommy in the dark, as if to stop him.

“Don’t!” he gasped. “Don’t sir! He’d kill me.”

“Rot! He couldn’t. What’s the matter with him? Has he got anything against you—why are you afraid of him?”

“I am not afraid. He is kind to me. I will go with him if he leaves this place.”

Tommy drew a long breath. The short sentences had come out in the singsong whine of the village school, exactly as if they had been learned by rote.

“Then you must be a fool!” he observed candidly. “Do you mean you don’t want me to complain of the beast?”

Towers said no, still in that unnatural voice.

“Go back to the house and wash your face!” the other boy, who was but four years older, advised. “And if he beats you again, you come to me, and I’ll settle him.”

Towers’ teeth chattered.

“I made him angry,” he said, shivering. “I won’t do it again. Don’t say anything, sir; oh, please!”

“All right,” disgustedly. “If you like being pounded, it’s no concern of mine!” and, being cold, he assisted the boot-boy to his feet and departed.

“Carrousel did look a devil!” he thought. “But the boy seems half-witted. Yet——”

He stopped short in the dark.

“Cooky looked as if he would kill him!” he gasped. “I wonder if—but it couldn’t be. But if I could think it, I—I’d make him swing.”

He ran to the house as hard as he could go. For the first time he had “thought of something.”

“Mr. Arlington,” he cried, bursting in on the lawyer where he sat toiling over bundles of Levallion’s neglected and unopened letters in the hope of finding some clue to some one who had a grudge against him. “Do you know Captain Gordon’s address?” For reasons of his own he said nothing about that trivial incident in the garden.

“No!” slowly. “Lord Levallion’s, you mean? I’ve never heard one word from him.”

The boy’s flushed face paled.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

LEVALLION’S HEIR.

Adrian Gordon had ample reason for giving no address. He had wanted to sink like a stone in London, and he had done it.

Moving slowly away in the rain and darkness from that worse than useless visit to Hester Murray—which, now that his blood was cool, he saw had only served to warn her of his thoughts, and had not intimidated her in the least—a sudden thought came over him also. A mad one, perhaps, but irresistible. If Hester had not been able to profit by the live Levallion, it seemed out of question she should by the dead one. Yet, perfect actress as she was, he felt that the woman was triumphant, in spite of the marks of deadly grief on her face.

“I believe it was she, in spite of that pension at Boulogne!” he said to himself. “As for the man Tommy saw with her, if it were Hester he saw, I don’t think he counts. Goodness knows what her little amusements may have been at night, if she were cooped up all day, as that girl said Miss Brown was!”

He looked round the wet street. It was not two hundred yards from Paddington station. He could get a train at any hour for Levallion Castle if he needed to.

“I’ll try it, anyhow!” he thought, and, not being as shrewd as Levallion, it never occurred to him that the very nearness of Paddington station, where it was so easy to come and go from Levallion, had brought Hester Murray to Starr Street.

In the dull, rainy gaslight the new Lord Levallion—who had winced when some one called him by his title—retraced his steps, crossed the street. There, in number fourteen, diagonally opposite fifteen, was a transparent red-glass sign—“Lodgings.” And lodging-letting was Starr Street’s means of existence, as a stroll down it showed him.

He rang at number fourteen, and, when he came away after a short colloquy with a frowsy woman, he went no farther than the great thoroughfare round the corner, where a ready-made clothing shop swallowed him up. Ten minutes later a man with a new portmanteau, containing the toilet things he had not thought necessary to bring for a half-hour’s visit to London, and a cheap suit of dittoes, returned to fourteen Starr Street. The neglected door opened, closed on him. The red sign of lodgings still hung in the ground-floor window, because there was still a spare room in the house, and Hester Murray saw it as she went to bed, saw it without thinking of it, as she had seen it every night since she came.

“Fool!” she thought. “But he always was.” Yet her lips were white, even as she remembered she had had the best of her discomfited visitor. For five minutes that she would never forget till her dying day, she had thought he knew something, and was come to tell her so. But as she looked at him she knew he was talking by guesswork. And she was able to combat more than guesswork.

“Well, he’s gone, thank goodness!” she said, aloud—and if Hester Murray thanked goodness there was no one to see the awful insolence of it. “I don’t suppose he’s been reading the papers lately! And even if he had he might not have thought anything.”

She shaded her candle with her hand, and went into the next room. A boy lay there in bed, a handsome child of ten, with something in his sleeping face that made her quiver and turn ghastly in the candle-light.

“God, how like he is!” she muttered. “I didn’t—I didn’t do it. If the worst came to the worst I could swear that.” She swallowed something in her throat. “I was treated like a dog,” she gasped. “I was driven. But I can swear I never did it. Oh, I mustn’t think of it! I’d break down. I’ve got to fight—for Adrian.”

For that sleeping child’s name was Adrian, too. But the very thought of what she was going to fight seemed to paralyze her, the danger of it, the—— She put down the candle, knelt with passion beside the child.

“I’ll do it for you!” she said deliberately. And put away from her the thought that if she had been a driven, desperate woman a week ago, she was more so now by a hundredfold, and with a harder taskmaster behind her. When she got up her face was steady.

“It’s lucky I’d got back when he came!” she thought, harking back to Adrian Gordon. “Otherwise there might have been questions to the landlady. But all she knew was that for two or three nights I dined out, and came home in a hansom at half-past twelve. Even that she might not know, because of my latch-key. I’d better go to bed. I must look decent to-morrow. I wish I hadn’t had to let him write to Boulogne—but there—I’m safe through it.” And it was odd she did not remember that five minutes before she had assured herself that she was guiltless, and safe in any case.

The neighbor she knew nothing of had certainly not been reading the papers, and if he had, might very well have overlooked the small print, unimportant paragraph about a man named Murray having been run over in the street, while the worse for drinking, and taken to Guy’s Hospital. But from Guy’s Hospital Mrs. Murray had not long returned when he paid his foolish visit to her. It was long after visiting-hours, but Hester was a pretty woman still. The house surgeon had seen her, and told her that there was small chance for the man she asked for.

“He may linger one day, perhaps two,” he said. “But in all probability he’ll never be conscious, and he can’t recover. Was he,” marveling, “a relation?”

“Oh, no!” said the woman in the faultless widow’s weeds prettily. “Only a—a sort of protégé. He had come down in the world.”

The surgeon thought that was a mild way of describing the sodden, dying wretch up-stairs.

The woman who had lived with poor Bob Murray for years drove away with a lightened spirit. That which she had to do was robbed of half its peril since he was dying, was practically dead. If he had been alive and well, it would have had to be done just the same, if she cared to live in this world at all; but the doing of it might have been all but impossible. Now her safety lay almost in her hand. She slept that night.

Mr. Atkinson—it was the name of the ready-made clothing shop, and had seemed less like an alias than Smith or Brown—the new lodger at number fourteen, informed his landlady that he was an invalid. His drawn face confirmed him, and his occupation of sitting all day by the window and never going out was accounted for.

Morning and evening he read the papers. The rest of the day he never took his eyes off Mrs. Murray’s house—and all he got for his pains was to see her go out and in quietly, sometimes alone, sometimes with that boy, whose face was so like another face. She never had a visitor, man or woman, and certainly if Miss Brown had been described as being given to drink, Mrs. Murray was not. Pale, dainty, mournful, she came and went; and if he had had a purpose in watching her he thought it a mad dream as the days flew by. A whole week and he saw nothing; a night when he slipped out to his own rooms, in Charles Street, and came back with a letter from Boulogne, that he had not dared sign Atkinson. And the letter gave him no shred of hope that Hester had lied to him. It was in a man’s hand, short and businesslike.

“Madam Murray, the friend after whom he asked, had certainly spent the summer at the Pension Bocaze, which she had left, indeed, not ten days ago. The writer was unable to supply her present address.”

It was signed Jean-Paul Berthier. And on inquiry it was no pleasure to Adrian Gordon to find that Jean-Paul Berthier and the pension were well, and reputably enough, known in Boulogne.

“Hester is out of it,” he said to himself. Yet he lingered another week in his sordid lodgings, among smells of bad cooking. It was madness, perhaps time wasted, when there was but a fortnight now to Valehampton Assizes, where the woman he loved would be tried for her life. Yet haggard-eyed, worn to a shadow, Adrian Gordon still sat peering through his half-closed shutters; still searched the papers for he knew not what. Perhaps a tramp dying in a workhouse, a swell mobman arrested and turning queen’s evidence. It began to enter his head that he might do that equally well at Levallion Castle; began to rend his soul from his body to stay away from Ravenel. But he knew, perhaps, it would be madness to go to see her, considering the part he must bear in the circumstantial evidence that lied and yet was true; for he stayed on.

And one wet, ghastly evening he flung down the Star, and then caught it up again. With blazing eyes he read a long article.

“A curious thing has come to light in connection with the late Lord Levallion, whose tragic and mysterious death lately horrified all Valeshire. It seems that the heir, Captain Gordon, of the —— Hussars, who has so far taken no steps toward assuming the title, will have difficulty in making good his claim to it.

“A claimant has arisen in London, a lady formerly well and honorably known as Mrs. Murray, of Eaton Place, who curiously enough declares that she is the only person having any right to the title of Countess of Levallion, and that her son, formerly known as Adrian Gordon Murray, is the only child of the dead peer.

“The story is a sad, and also an involved one. It seems that Mrs. Murray, to give her the name by which the best society in London knew her, was married at the age of seventeen to a man of bad reputation, named John Davidge. He treated her cruelly, and then deserted her in Nice after two years of wretchedness. She had no children, and, being bitterly poor, became dame du comptoir in a cheap restaurant, where Mr. Murray, her supposed husband, saw and fell madly in love with her. She had some reason to think Davidge dead, and decided that in any case he had no claim on her. She married Murray, he being under the impression she was a single woman, which her age and looks made likely. For a year the two lived on the Continent, apparently in perfect amity, till—and here comes the gist of the story—Mrs. Murray was obliged to go suddenly to England to see about a small legacy that had been left her.

“Between Paris and London she made the acquaintance of the late Lord Levallion, and from her own story seems to have fallen passionately in love with him, utterly forgetful of Mr. Murray, whom she had left at Pau, suffering from a bad attack of influenza. At all events, she never mentioned his existence to Lord Levallion, but gave him her true name of Davidge. The legacy which was left to her in that name bore her out, as none of her relatives had ever heard of her second marriage. And Davidge, Lord Levallion had seen stabbed in a scandalous quarrel in a house in Paris. De Mortuis nil nisi bonum, notwithstanding, it may be said that the late peer was catholic in his haunts and his acquaintances.

“At all events, in 1889, the marriage of Hester Davidge and Lord Levallion took place at the registrar’s office in Islington, but the bride, with excellent reasons, refused to have it made public, and went abroad with him under the name of Mrs. Gordon, by which surname he also called himself. Needless to say the bride was anxious to avoid France and Mr. Murray, although assured he could have no claim on her. And she also never allowed Lord Levallion to introduce or mention her to any friends whom he encountered, giving as an excuse that she was in delicate health and fanciful.

“In 1890 her son was born, at Vevay, where he was christened and registered as Adrian Gordon, Lord Valehampton, Levallion’s second title, and described as the only son of Adrian Gordon, Lord Levallion, and his wife. And at Vevay the bubble burst. Murray, by some trick of fate, came face to face with the pair; claimed and denounced his wife, and, to her surprise, had discovered that she had been not only his wife, but Davidge’s.

“Lord Levallion was furiously angry. There is no doubt that he would have thrown her back on Murray’s hands if it had been possible. But at first it was not. Davidge had been undoubtedly alive at the time of Mrs. Gordon’s supposed marriage with Murray, and as undoubtedly dead when she secretly became Lady Levallion. But Murray, and witnesses far more reputable, swore that Davidge had not died, but recovered; was alive in New York at that present moment.

“Lord Levallion seems to have been utterly mortified at his position, for his shrewdness, pride, and acumen were well known. But, in spite of his just anger, it seems that he was still infatuated with his supposed wife, who was heart-broken at the wreck of her life and the illegitimacy of her boy. Those, at least, are the only grounds on which his subsequent and utterly unjustifiable conduct can be explained. He calmly relinquished his pseudo bride to Murray, whose right, if no better, was at least a prior one, and returned to England. Mrs. Murray, to give her the name by which she has since been known, persuaded Murray to forgive and take her back again. She also swore that her son was his child, which was possible, and informed Murray that Levallion had forced her to behave as she had. Also that her legacy, instead of hundreds of pounds, had been thousands, as she was residuary legatee of an aunt’s fortune.

“Murray, who seems to have been a weak and kindly man, and already a slave to the alcohol he had taken to in his abject misery at her desertion, took her back, with apparently no thought for the absent Davidge. They went to London, took a house in Eaton Place, and gradually entered society. Mrs. Murray’s legacy was apparently an ample one, for she lived in luxury, Murray never suspecting that Lord Levallion’s bank-account supplied the funds, or that Lord Levallion himself was a constant and utterly clandestine visitor.

“No hint of his connection with Mrs. Murray ever leaked out; he never was seen with her, or entering her house, the fact being that he never came in daylight, and that Murray at night was usually dead drunk. The servants knew nothing of his visits, as he used a small garden door leading directly into Mrs. Murray’s boudoir. And so things went for years till he had reason to be angry with Mrs. Murray on several counts—one her extravagance and imprudence, another her friendship with a man who openly boasted of her favors, and last the open hostility of Murray, who, one day on meeting Lord Levallion in the street, abused him with drunken eloquence.

“The late peer satisfied himself that Mrs. Murray was being no truer in the present than she had been in the past, and quietly threw her over. Her new lover had no money, and, being in great straits, she went to Captain Gordon—the present heir to the earldom—whom she knew slightly, and gave him an evidently erroneous idea of her position in regard to his cousin, with such success that he believed her and lent her money. Whether he found out about her from Levallion, it is impossible to say. Certainly he refused her any further assistance afterward, but it is equally certain that for some months he believed her to be the rightful Countess of Levallion and her son the future earl.

“By this time Mrs. Murray was determined to keep her footing in society. She dismissed her new lover, and appealed to Levallion, who was adamant. He held that she had no claim on him, but gave her a lump sum of money yielding a yearly income sufficient to keep up her house in Eaton Place.

“Three months after their final rupture came news like a thunderbolt. Lord Levallion had become engaged to be married to the only daughter of the late Sir Thomas Annesley, the same unfortunate lady who, justly or unjustly, now awaits her trial for his murder. Mrs. Murray was powerless, never having been his wife, as she thought. But no later than a fortnight ago fate’s kaleidoscope shifted. It turned out by a curious chain of events that the late Lord Levallion was right about the death of Davidge. It was he and no other who was killed in a scandalous brawl in Paris, but his death was hidden by a namesake, a cousin, Maurice Davidge, who quietly changed identities with the dead man, who was in receipt of an allowance from their family; buried himself, so to speak, and as John Davidge went to America, when quite casually the thing leaked out. Mrs. Murray, be she good or bad, is probably Lady Levallion, for Murray’s wife she never was. He had left her for months, having somehow discovered about Levallion, when the quondam John Davidge spoke out.

“Our readers will find the opening proceedings of the case against the present heirs of Lord Levallion on our first page.”

The reader dropped the paper. This was what had been up Hester Murray’s sleeve!

“She can have the whole show for all I care!” he said, after a moment of wonder that any woman could be so shamelessly outspoken, even for money.

“She must know no one will accept her after all that story,” he thought, though—except that Davidge was dead—he had known most of it.

His face grew very hopeless. This case of Hester’s disposed of all wish on her part for Levallion’s death. She would far rather have forced herself on him, and shamed him; it seemed to Gordon that his death had taken away the point of the woman’s revenge.

“No, she’s out of it,” he said. “It could not have been her whom Tommy saw.”

From sheer habit he stared once more at her house—and started to his feet in the dark, forlorn room.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

“FALSE AS A PACK OF CARDS.”

Mrs. Murray and her story were a thunderbolt in society. It chanced that the only person who did not hear of it was Lady Annesley, whom fate had afflicted with a sharp attack of neuralgia in the eyes—real this time—and her doctor consigned to a rest-cure at Horrogate, where newspapers and the outside world did not exist.

The duchess sent for Tommy at Valehampton, and aired her views on the character of Mrs. Murray.

But the boy cared very little. The conversation turned soon enough to the topmost thing in both minds—Ravenel in jail, and the precious days that were flying by and bringing out nothing to help her.

“I’ll help her if I have to choke the home secretary,” the duchess cried, tearful and regardless. “Oh, Tommy, it breaks my heart to see her! She’s never cried, never broken down, they tell me. But I know she’s past all hoping. I think she’s just waiting to die.”

Sir Thomas opened his mouth and shut it again.

After all, he had nothing to tell the duchess: his thought that night in the garden had come to nothing. He had played secret police on the boot-boy in vain; had questioned him uselessly. Wide-eyed, frightened, almost idiotic, Towers had stared at him; what answers he did make were not what Tommy Annesley wanted.

“Will she talk to you?” he said.

The duchess could only nod. All that pitiful, childish story of Adrian Gordon’s letters and ring had Lady Levallion told her—and even the duchess could see that it would make Levallion’s death look black enough—to a jury.

“Captain Gordon has never been near her. I suppose he dare not,” she said heavily, as she wiped her eyes. “Where is he?”

“Nobody knows,” and Tommy could have killed the man who, instead of moving heaven and earth to set Ravenel free, had seen fit to vanish and leave her to her fate. The whole world, except the duchess and her lawyers, was doing that. Surely Gordon could not mean to do nothing at all!

“I must get home,” he said, and got up to go. Not all the duchess could say would keep him away from Levallion Castle. The clue was there, if it were anywhere on God’s earth. Night after night, while the house was asleep, the boy examined every inch of it, and looked and wondered and hoped in vain. If there had been any one in tweed clothes on the other side of Levallion’s door when Mr. Jacobs banged it—and was forced for his pains to run back through a passage and Lady Levallion’s suite of rooms before he could get out into the corridor again—that man would not have dared to go into any of the guests’ rooms, where the dog might keep him besieged. Nor would he have had time to gain the kitchen, where Jacobs had rushed. The only place he could have got to would be the housekeeper’s room, which was up two steps as you went to the kitchen. And that was out of the question, because the housekeeper had been in there, and Carrousel, too. No man bouncing into a quiet room to get away from a dog could do it without disturbing its occupants. The housekeeper had not heard a sound. And the theory of Carrousel having a hand in the poisoning did not hold water. A cook, dressed in white, could not tear tweed clothes on the latch of a door; nor if he had would have had time to change them.

Mr. Allington looked up as they were at dinner, a lovely pair in a desolate house. The new development anent Mrs. Murray had nearly driven the good man frantic, for he had little doubt that her story was true. Most of it was, to his own knowledge. And, as for Lady Levallion, he had never for one moment imagined her guilty. Perhaps Tommy’s watch on the servants was not the only one in that house that so far had been fruitless.

“Can you eat nothing, either?” he said precisely. “It seems to me our dinner is not so good as usual.”

“Carrousel is out, sir,” the butler put in respectfully. “The steward gave him leave to go at luncheon-time. He will be back to-night.”

“Ah!” said Allington, too much annoyed to utter. If any servant left the house he had been able, so far, to ascertain just where he or she went. This was unbearable! “Has he friends in the neighborhood?”

“He went to take Towers, the boot-boy, to a new place in London, sir! Towers was frightened to go alone.”

Sir Thomas nearly leaped off his chair. Not for one moment did he ever imagine Carrousel would be back to-night or any other night.

“Tommy!” said Allington quietly, and his eyes flashed warning, “let me advise you, at least, to drink your claret.” He knew nothing about the boot-boy, but he knew that Sir Thomas’ mind was running in the same channel as his own.

“I’ll have some beef,” said Tommy to the butler, waving away a proffered dish. It was quite right to keep up appearances, but every minute might be precious. And then it came over him with a flat, deadly sinking that he was imagining nonsense; because a cook chose to beat a boy and take a day’s outing.

Strung up, tense, he felt as if every trivial word might mean something to-night. As he cut up his beef he grew suddenly rigid in his chair. A footman was handing Allington a telegram, the pinky envelope seemed to swim on the silver tray to the boy’s excited eyes.

Was this something—at last—from the detectives?

Allington, with an impassive countenance, crumpled the sheet and put it in his pocket.

“The Duchess of Avonmore would like to see you the first thing in the morning,” he said.

“What for——” Tommy stopped himself. “Why didn’t she wire me, I wonder?”

“That I don’t know,” said Allington. “If you don’t want any more of an inferior dinner, suppose we adjourn. It seems to me,” turning to the butler, “that the same sort of meal was served two days ago. Kindly give my compliments to the steward, and say I do not wish it to occur again.”

“Yes, sir. But Carrousel went out without leave last time. He is rather above himself, you know, sir,” the butler explained hastily.

Allington made no answer. But as soon as he and Tommy reached the morning-room he shut the door, and his face was that of a different man.

“Read that,” he said. “Tell me what you think of it.”

Tommy smoothed out the crumpled telegram and saw the duchess’ message was fiction.

“Wire to Atkinson, 14 Starr Street, Paddington,” he read, “who, if any, of the servants has been in town during the week.

A. GORDON.”

“What does it mean?” He shook like a leaf.

“I hope it means a clue. Why did you jump so about the boot-boy and the cook? I hear he takes a great interest in him.”

Sir Thomas agreed with hearsay, but his tale showed the interest Carrousel took was peculiar.

“I believe Carrousel did the poisoning,” he said, below his breath. “I think the boot-boy caught him at it! And we’ve lost them. I don’t think we’ll see either of them again.”

“Carrousel had a good alibi. It isn’t possible,” Allington returned. “Yet I don’t like this business of the boy. What sort of a place do you suppose——” thoughtfully.

“No place,” Tommy cut in short. “He’s going to put that boy out of the way. He knows something. Does this thing,” tapping the telegram, “mean Gordon’s in Starr Street? What would he be there for? And what made him think any of the servants were in London?”

“That I don’t know. But I might have guessed he was in Starr Street,” absently. “I’m afraid he’s wasting time. There’s no hope there.”

“So are we,” sharply. “Aren’t you going to answer that wire?”

“Yes! But I don’t want the servants to know there is an answer. Will you go out the back way, and send one?”

“What’ll I say?” breathless. For it seemed for the first time as if some one were doing something.

“Say, ‘The artist. Day before yesterday and to-day. Answer.’ Sign your name.”

He handed Sir Thomas some money and a stray cap from a table. He had never seemed so human before. But as Tommy disappeared through the French window the lawyer, closing the shutters behind him, gave a hopeless sigh.

Captain Gordon was in Starr Street because of Mrs. Murray—as if a woman with so much at stake would be so mad as to entangle herself in the death of the man whose widow she wished to prove herself.

“I don’t know what he means about the servants,” he thought. “If he’s trying to mix up one of them with Mrs. Murray, he’s in a mare’s nest. But if Monsieur Carrousel does not return I’ll get a warrant out for him, on the pretext of that boy.”

It was three miles to the telegraph-office; he allowed two hours for Tommy to come and go; but when three had gone, and four, he began to wonder if in this house of horror there was still more to come. The night was dark as a wolf’s mouth outside. After one glance without Mr. Allington opened the door into the deserted hall. The house was absolutely silent, for it was after twelve, and the servants had gone to bed.

The lawyer slipped off his boots, and vanished down the passage to the kitchen. When he returned there was a strange look on his face, though until to-night what he had discovered would have meant absolutely nothing to him. As he stood once more in the morning-room a light tap came on the window. With instinctive, reasonless caution, he extinguished the light before he opened the wooden shutters and let Sir Thomas in.

“What kept you?” he said.

“Hush!” said Tommy. “Carrousel’s going by outside.”

In the dark Allington, the imperturbable, started.

“He’s come back, then!” he whispered. “He’s cleverer than I thought—or innocent.”

“Why shouldn’t he be innocent?” cried Tommy hysterically. “Light a candle; it’s so beastly dark here. I waited for an answer, and I saw Carrousel get out of the train.”

“Was the boy with him?”

“It doesn’t matter whether he was or wasn’t. Read that,” as the candle burned blue and then yellow he flung a telegram to Allington, and hid his weary face on his arms. “We’re all wrong.”

“Not my man at all,” Allington read, and the badly written lines sickened him with disappointment. “I was mistaken. Am doing no good here. Will be down to-morrow to consult. Unless you know something, am worse than when I started.

A. G.”

Allington’s discovery of the evening dwindled away to nothing again. He had no heart to speak of it since Carrousel was evidently not concerned in it.

“Don’t despair till we find out what this means,” he said slowly. But in his soul he knew that they had been led away by a will-o’-the-wisp, made of suspicion, coincidence, and the ill treatment of a boot-boy. Their supposed clue was false as a pack of cards!

CHAPTER XXXV.

GOOD-BY.

But it was not to Levallion Castle that Adrian Gordon came in the crisp blue and gold of the autumn evening.

Ravenel, seated on her bed, with her sluggish blood barely moving in her veins, leaped to her feet as her door opened.

“You!” she cried, and if for an instant her face was transfigured, the next she put out her trembling hands as if to warn him to stay where he was. “How did you get in?”

“As men do who storm a city wall,” he might have answered truly; but he only said: “Quite easily,” and let his eyes look their fill on the face of the only woman in the world.

The matron after one shrewd glance turned her back on them. But it was trouble wasted; neither of them thought of her. Her eyes were on him as his on her. And the dead, ugly pallor of her face, that had been like a rose, the black circles round her dull eyes, the thin transparency of her hands, made him catch his breath for agony of pity; but she never saw how worn he was because she was looking in his eyes that she had never hoped to see again.

“Seventeen days of it,” he thought, “and she looks like this! How will she look after months—years?” For they would never dare to hang her, to break that slender neck with a rope in a prison yard. Yet he knew after one look at her that if she were found guilty, even of manslaughter, it meant death for her! Death in a prison cell, alone.

The man’s heart-break choked him.

Six feet of bare floor lay between them, that was all; yet shame and the grave could part them no more utterly.

“Nel,” he said, for the minutes were flying, “I had to come. You’re not angry?”

“No,” she whispered. And if for a minute she had thought he brought her good news, she knew now he had none. Gordon turned and saw the matron. Before he could speak she deliberately put her fingers in her ears. Ten juries might ask her what they said, and she could tell them nothing. The look in the woman’s eyes sent Adrian to Ravenel’s side.

“Nel,” he whispered, “tell me, for God’s sake! who you saw in that room, and why you lied at the inquest? Did you think it was I?”

“I know it wasn’t, now. I might always have known, but I couldn’t think—afterward.”

“But you did see some one?”

“I said not,” quietly. “It wouldn’t do me any good now to let them know I lied.”

“If I had done it twenty times I wouldn’t have had you hold your tongue to save me.” He was hoarse with pain. “How could you think that I, who’d gone to London, was in Levallion’s house?”

“I didn’t think.” She met his eyes with hers, dull from nights of agony. “I took down the bottle; looked up, and thought I saw you going out the door! I was frightened. I felt as if I had seen a ghost! When Jacobs growled and bristled I ran. And then—the stuff killed him.” Horror twisting her pale lips. “How could I tell? How was I to know you had not come back, for some reason? I—I never for one second thought you killed him.”

“My own heart,” said the man, with a breath like a sob, “don’t defend yourself to me. I know you never thought that. But if you won’t tell about the figure you saw, I will. Don’t you know some one must?”

“You’d do no good,” gently. “Only make me a liar. And even now, Adrian, I couldn’t swear the figure was real and not my fancy. I’d been trying all that day to put you out of my mind.”

“But you said the bottle was warm!”

“Quite warm,” she shuddered, “like blood. But that was what frightened me—afterward. I remembered what you’d said about poisoning him—and yet I wouldn’t, wouldn’t believe it!”

“Some one had been carrying it in a hot hand,” he cried. “The same person who put those bottles in your room. Did you think I would have done that?” bitterly.

“I knew you wouldn’t, but you must remember that I knew nothing about those bottles till my evidence was finished,” simply.

“There’s a God, they say!” he said, between his teeth. “If there is, He won’t let the guilty escape. Nel, promise me something. Trust me, even if things come to the worst. There’ll be help somewhere!” very low.

“Not for me,” quietly. “You’ve been trying all this time and found out nothing. I see it in your face.”

“I thought of Mrs. Murray,” he said painfully, “and I’m afraid I’m wrong. She had nothing to gain and revenge to lose. The talk would have been worse than death to him.”

A quick look of pain came to her face.

“I know,” she muttered. “The duchess told me.”

He answered with that utter honesty she had loved in him.

“Nel, you would not believe what Hester says about Levallion. He never went to that house in Eaton Place, except once, when they thought the boy was dying. He gave her money, but she lies when she says he kept on going there. You knew him better than that.”

“I never believed it,” she answered quietly, loyal to the dead, as she had been to the living.

“Now you know why I could not answer you about ‘Mrs. Gordon,’” he whispered, thinking that assuredly no wickeder woman than Hester Murray trod the earth. “It was she herself!”

“Never mind her,” with sudden passion she caught his arm. “Let her be! Adrian, do you think I’ll ever see you again, face to face, like this? For I sha’n’t! Talk of yourself, talk of something I may remember when”—sharply—“till I die.”

“I’ll see you hundreds of times, please God. Day in and day out,” but his eyes were not on hers.

“You won’t, you can’t!” The self-control that had held her since that dreadful night gone now. “Adrian!” she cried, wild, terrified, broken, “they’ll hang me. I can’t prove I did not do it. Help me, comfort me, make me brave.”

If ten matrons had been looking on he would have caught her to him.

“Never,” he said, low, in her ear. “Not while I can speak and see.” But what he meant never dawned on her.

“Put that thought from you. I swear you can.” For with that rag—and his tweed suit could easily be torn—there was one way open still.

“If they let me go to-morrow, the world would think we did it,” she gasped. “There’s blood between us. We’d be as far apart as if I died.”

“If I never see you on this side the grave,” the man cried passionately, “do you think I’ll ever be really parted from you? What are a few years—when some time we’ll wake and find it’s the Resurrection Day? Love, don’t grieve!”

For as he spoke she remembered how once it was she who had meant to creep to his side when the dead came out of their graves, and now God had made that the only hope left.

“Listen,” he said, “I’ll have to go in a minute. I came to tell you something. I let you think I’d found out nothing; I’ve found out one way. There’ll be no death for you, my sweetheart, no prison. I can’t tell you what I know, but it will set you free.”

“No, no, no!” Tears blinded her. She caught him to her madly. “Not that, never that.”

“Not that.” He hushed her like a child; and if ever a lie was pardoned, his was. “Be at peace; not that. Oh! what did we do that we should end like this?” he broke out fiercely, more to himself than to her.

“My heart, we’ll wake some day in paradise,” she said, very low, for his passion steadied her. “And perhaps it won’t be long.”

He stooped and kissed her as a man whose minutes are numbered; held her close in agony that hurt her and him.

“Be brave,” he muttered, for he was broken utterly. “Remember you’re safe. Eat what they give you,” and the homely, kindly detail was dreadful in its tender care. “Think of Tommy and of me, who’ll be happy—and God knows how happy—when you’re free.”

Somehow he put her away from him as the warden knocked at the door.

But outside in the free air he shut his teeth and prayed he had not lied to her. For suppose what he had in his mind was not enough to set her clear! It was not hope that had brought him to Valehampton Jail. If there were none at Levallion Castle—and there could be none——

“I pray God my shoulders are broad enough,” he thought, turning away.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

A MOUSE-HOLE.

“Well,” said Allington grimly, “you ruined a fine theory for me last night with your wire. I thought for a solid hour that I could put my fingers on the man who killed Levallion.”

The two were strolling up and down the open lawn at Levallion Castle. Perhaps Mr. Allington made a guess as to what had deferred Adrian Gordon’s arrival till three in the afternoon, but he said nothing. The face of the new Lord Levallion, who in a few more days would be plain Adrian Gordon once more, did not encourage comment.

“You did mean you thought it could be the cook?” he cried, standing still in the autumn sunshine.

“I did. But”—he flicked the ash from his cigar significantly—“it all went like that.”

“What put it into your head at all?” drearily.

“A boot-boy. The only servant who was not called at the inquest.” And he told Sir Thomas’ tale of the beating, and the subsequent tender care of Monsieur Carrousel in finding his protégé a new place.

“That set me thinking,” he continued. “I went down to the housekeeper’s room last night when the house was quiet, and I found it led into the still-room.”

“I don’t see much in that,” interrupting him. “We all know that. It’s to keep the still-room under her eye. That’s all. There’s no second door from the still-room.”

“Isn’t there?” said Allington quietly. “Did it never strike any one that a portion of those shelves in that room covers a door, that opens, shelves and all, into the ‘boothole’ under the kitchen stairs. I confess last night that with that discovery, and the carting off of the boot-boy, I felt jubilant. But it was all rubbish. The housekeeper had a letter from the boy I thought the cook had made away with, to say he liked his new place which Monsieur Carrousel had found for him. Something Square it was dated, and postmarked Paddington.”

“It’s all one what it was postmarked,” Gordon returned dully. “It wasn’t Carrousel I saw last night; and I agree with you that the boot-boy business was all bona fide enough. A clever Frenchman might pound a stupid boy to a jelly from exasperation, and then turn round and be kind to him.”

“Who did you see last night?” curiously. “I suppose you’ve been playing detective on Mrs. Murray, eh?”

Adrian nodded.

“I don’t know why,” he said, “for she was in Boulogne all summer. Couldn’t have been down here at all. But I took lodgings opposite and lay doggo to watch her. Much I got! No one went into her house except her lawyers in that case of hers,” as indifferently as if it concerned him not at all and did not spell ruin, “till last night, when I saw a man go up her steps. Something about him startled me, his back looked familiar; I don’t know why, but I could have sworn I’d seen him down here. Yet I knew he was none of the house-party. He went in, and I ran out and wired to you. But before your answer came I knew I’d made an ass of myself. I’d just got back to my door when I saw the fellow come out, and it was no one I’d ever seen in my life. I saw his face quite plainly as he lit a cigar. If I’d seen it like that in the first place I’d never have wired at all. He was just a pal of Hester’s.”

Allington nodded. He was as disappointed as a dog that has discovered an empty rat-hole.

“What do you think of doing now?” he said. “The detectives are quite hopeless of finding Sir Thomas’ mysterious man and woman, I may tell you. That woman who levanted from the bungalow was their first thought, but she has apparently fallen off the earth. As for the man”—snapping his fingers—“after pouncing on twenty innocent young farmers, they have given him up. Unless——” He stopped awkwardly. Somehow he could not say to Adrian Gordon that he had yet to prove he was not himself that man. Not that Allington thought so, but there was no doubt the police did.

“Unless he turns up, directly under their noses,” said Adrian coolly. But Allington could make no guess at what he meant.

“What do you think of doing?” he repeated.

“Go back to town, and——” he hesitated. “Look here, Allington, you don’t think this business of Hester Murray’s looks queer bang on top of Levallion’s death, do you?”

“No,” unwillingly. “She’d be afraid to try it—in that case. In any case, you say you know she was in Boulogne.”

“I suppose I do. She gave me an address of a pension there, and I wrote. It was all straight enough. Hello! here’s Tommy!” with annoyance. He had not wanted to see Tommy. The boy’s eyes were too clear, even a lie untold might be written in Gordon’s face, he thought vexedly.

“Hello! where’ve you been?” he said uncomfortably, and then stopped short.

“My God, Tommy! what is it?” he cried, the dreadful look on the boy’s face meaning only one thing to him. Ravenel was guilty, and her brother had found it out!

“Don’t speak to me!” said the boy hoarsely; “let me think. I’ve been—and I thought it might mean something, but—it can’t!”

Wherever he had been he had been running, and his face was white and red in streaks. Allington pulled him down on a garden bench.

“Get your breath,” he said, but he was afraid, too.

At the two pale faces the boy suddenly laughed out hysterically.

“I’ve made a fool of myself,” he said. “I thought I’d found something. Look here. I went over to the farm where—you know the Umbrella died?” incoherently.

“She didn’t know anything!” cried Allington. “I turned the farmer’s wife inside out. I suppose you mean by the Umbrella the woman who wrote those letters to Lady Levallion that can’t be found?”

“I don’t know what she knew,” said Tommy sharply. “And we never will. I went out toward the station to see if Gordon had come down by the two-twenty, and he hadn’t. Coming home I met Mrs. Ward, the farmer’s wife, and she asked me what she was to do with the Umbrella’s old bonnet or something, but she really stopped me to know if any of us would pay for the Umbrella’s board. It seems she stayed a week there, and Ravenel hadn’t sent her enough money to pay for that and her funeral. I don’t know! Anyhow, I strolled up with old Mother Ward to see just what the Umbrella had left in the way of clothes, and to view the undertaker’s bill for myself. For old Ward’s a beast. There were some old rags of clothes with nothing in the pockets, and I said you’d pay the undertaker,” turning to Allington. “I was staring round the place and I saw a piece of paper, just an edge, sticking out between the floor and the wall. I hooked it out, and there was a mouse-hole behind it; the mice had dragged the thing in there.

“Old Mother Ward gave a yell. Said the Umbrella had held that thing in her hand till she died, and she’d wondered what had become of it. I thought—oh! I don’t know what I thought,” miserably; “but it isn’t any good. Here’s the thing, and it doesn’t mean anything.”

“It’s a torn telegram,” said Allington, peering over Gordon’s shoulder as he snatched the paper. “What’s that on the back of it?”

“Nothing,” said Tommy, “only 1 pound, or something.”

Adrian Gordon, like a man in a dream, stared at the dirty mouse-eaten thing he held. It might be meaningless enough to Tommy and Allington, but to him.

“By ——!” he said, below his breath, “Hester!”

“What do you mean?” cried Allington, startled.

“Look!” grimly, his eyes as hard as Levallion’s had ever been.

And Allington made out the tattered telegram.

“Wire descript— Bocage. Imme——” the address was eaten away, there was no signature.

“I don’t see what you mean!” he exclaimed.

Gordon pulled from his pocket that letter from Pension Bocage concerning Mrs. Murray.

“Now do you understand?” he cried. “She was in Boulogne all summer—according to that. Yet the man who wrote it wired to her to describe herself. The meaning’s clear enough. ‘Wire description to Bocage immediately,’ that’s how the telegram ran. It was Hester Murray Tommy saw that night—and she dropped it.”

“But how could the woman who died come by it?” said Allington doubtingly.

Tommy jumped up.

“You never knew her!” he cried. “She was always creeping and crawling round. You bet she saw that man and woman the night I did, and that was what she wanted to tell Ravenel. Oh, if she hadn’t died!” he caught his breath. “She had sharp ears, the Umbrella. She may have heard every word they said. And now we’ll never know.”

“Now, on the contrary, we’ve the only clue we’ve ever had,” Gordon returned. “You’re a fool, Tommy!” staring at the reverse of the telegram, “with your ‘1 pound!’ It’s ‘I found’ written on the back of it, and something else I can’t make out. But even without it, we’ve enough for—Hester Murray,” savagely.

Sir Thomas dived into his pockets.

“Whoever the woman was,” he cried, hunting vigorously, “I’ve got something belonging to her. You didn’t know that when Jacobs went for the man that night he tore the woman’s cloak, did you? And—oh! here it is!” gladly. “I’ve had it ever since.”

He laid in Allington’s hand a scrap of black satin, with a torn bit of chinchilla hanging to it.

Adrian stared at him.

“Why, in Heaven’s name!” he said blankly, “didn’t you show that at the inquest?”

“Because I’m not a fool,” returned Sir Thomas.

“The room was full of men. How did I know any of ’em hadn’t been drinking champagne in the moonlight with a lady, and would go off and tell her she’d been seen looking in windows. Besides, then, mind you, I thought it was you I saw on the rock, and I didn’t care who it was with you, because I’d proved it wasn’t my sister.”

Adrian winced.

“I can’t say much for your eyesight!” he cried, with sarcasm. “Last night Allington says you were quite ready to think the man was Carrousel.”

The words cut.

“I never said it was Carrousel I saw on the rock that night,” said Tommy, suddenly very white and quiet. “I never thought it. He’s got a beard. But I’d tell you this much: If you’ll find the woman who owns that cloak, and give me time—I’ll find the man!”

“Time’s just what we haven’t got. And I don’t believe you’d know the man if you fell over him,” unbelievingly.

“I mightn’t,” said Tommy composedly. “But—Jacobs would.”

And neither man believed him.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

A GRAY-LINED CLOAK.

“I’m going to win!” said Hester Murray to herself breathlessly. “Oh, I’m going to win!”

For her case had been taken up by the cleverest barrister in London, and, as he showed it to her, faultlessly dovetailed together, there was not a flaw in it. Maurice Davidge, even, who, for his own reasons, had posed this ten years back as John Davidge, was in London, and in self-defense had chosen to stand his chance for false impersonation and misappropriation of money rather than take John Davidge’s sins on his shoulders.

For John Davidge’s father had had excellent cause to pension off his son. A long-gone-by agrarian riot and murder in Ireland had been John Davidge’s work, and by a queer chain of circumstances had come home to him now.

Maurice, to save his neck, which he had ignorantly ventured in London, was glad enough to have Hester Murray corroborate his tale. And, indeed, there was no doubt about his identity. Witness after witness cropped up to establish that, and the death and burial of the true John Davidge, who had lived long enough to make Hester’s marriage to Murray null and void, and died just in time to legalize her union with Levallion.

But it was queer that, as she looked at her lawyer’s triumphant, confident letter, a shiver took her; the shiver old women call footsteps on your grave. She got up and drank some brandy, nearly neat. At the bungalow she had got into the way of keeping her heart up with spirits, but she would break that off now. Yet she took another glass before her shivering-fit would pass.

“It was that dream!” she said to herself. “It unstrung me. I wish I knew what it meant. But dreams”—the brandy was warming her now—“are rubbish! Only thoughts, after all.”

Yet that dream had made her wake up, crying out till Adrian—that Adrian who had Levallion’s blood in him—came to her from the next room.

“What’s the matter?” he cried, a bonny figure in the half-light, with his ruffled head and his tumbled nightgown.

“I dreamed I was on a swing!” She caught him to her.

“That wasn’t anything,” climbing into her bed.

“No, of course not.” But she did not tell the child her whole dream. There was she, Hester Murray, sitting on a swing that hung high over the heads of a great crowd of people. In front of her, so that as she swung, she must touch it, was a flower-covered platform. On it she saw herself—yes, her very self—in widow’s weeds, holding her boy by the hand, among a group of people who were crying: “Long live Lord Levallion!” cheering for the new heir.

The swing began to move forward, and something made her look over her shoulder. Behind her, precisely as far away as the flower-decked platform, so that as she swung back she must touch him, stood the dead Levallion, in his grave-clothes. He smiled, that smile that had cut her many a time, and pointed. At his right hand was the gallows, and a hangman with a black mask.

The swing flew through the air, touched the platform. The dreamer tried to jump to it, and found she was tied by a cord. Back, back went the swing toward the dead man, whose outstretched hand would catch and hold it fast. Back—with a shriek of torture Hester Murray woke, and trembled at her child’s touch.

“I’m a fool!” she thought, now. “It was nightmare. I had nothing to do with it. I never was in Levallion’s house.”

But apprehension had her by the throat. If she had dared she would almost have thrown up her claim and her child’s. But to dare that was out of her power this three weeks past.

“I must go out. The air may steady me. I’m nervous.” If it was not too late she would go to the hospital, for Bob Murray, by some miracle, was lingering still. Quite gratuitously his quondam wife wished he would die. Not that it would really matter to her case; she would be rid of him effectually when she was proved to be the Countess of Levallion, but if he died quietly, he would not be able to air some small details that shed no glory on her life in Eaton Place. He might deny Levallion’s going there till he was black in the face, no one would believe him. And still she wished feverishly that he was dead.

But she was too late at the hospital, or too something. The hall porter informed her that the house surgeon was busy at an operation, and—having vainly expected a tip at her previous visits—could get her no information on the case she inquired about, except that the man was alive.

Mrs. Murray walked slowly toward Regent Street, that the lights and the crowd might cheer her. At Berry’s she went in and had dinner, with reckless extravagance. There was nothing to go home for to-night, and it would pass the time.

It had been five o’clock when she started; it was nearer ten than nine when she got back to Starr Street, her causeless apprehension utterly gone, and her small, dainty face quite gay.

“A gentleman is waiting to see you, madam!” The landlady was in the entry as Mrs. Murray’s latch-key let her in. There was no secret about her being the Mrs. Murray whose case had electrified London, and the future Countess of Levallion had everything she chose to ask for in the squalid lodgings.

“What gentleman?” The door half-closed, the latch-key half-way to her pocket, Hester stood.

“I couldn’t say. I think he was here yesterday.”

“Oh, yes!” with a little relieved laugh. “My lawyer.” And she went into the sitting-room with her oddly boyish step suitably adjusted to smoothness. The door slipped from her hand and banged.

A tall man, clean-shaven, except for a heavy dark mustache, was pacing irritably up and down the room. His plain blue serge was exquisitely cut, but oddly narrow in the chest, as if it had been made for some other man.

“How dare you come here?” she said, her clear voice low with fury. “It’s enough to ruin me.”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“You talk nonsense. Have I no sense? If I run any risk it is because you were out. Did I not say,” angrily, “stay in, stay in, stay in?” His uplifted hand seemed to threaten her, for she cowered under it. “For you, there is no risk at all.”

“You said last night you could not come again. That there was risk!” As she looked at him her dream came back to her, though he had not been in it, and her voice came harsh and sudden.

“What brings you, and where have you been?”

His hand fell on her slight shoulder.

“Last night was last night!” he said. “It’s none of your business where I’ve been, but I don’t mind telling you. Down at Levallion.”

“Well?” she said, as if it were no news to her.

“If I hadn’t gone it would not have been well—for you,” he said. “Though I don’t know. Did you do”—curiously—“what I told you to?”

“I couldn’t,” carelessly. “I’ve had no chance.”

“What!” savagely.

“I couldn’t do it in daylight!” she cried. “I don’t see how I can do it at all. There’s always some one looking at me. If that’s what you mean, you were a fool to come here! The thing is safer here than anywhere; it doesn’t matter in any case.”

“Get it,” ordered the man, and his face had grown ten years older. “Since you can’t make yourself safe, I must. Go!”

“I won’t do anything in the dark,” she said. “How do I know what you want it for—other people may trust you, I don’t.”

His hands opened and shut, as if for one second it was hard work to keep them off her, though he loved her in his way.

“You can trust me—better than yourself,” he said, close to her ear. “Listen! I went down to Levallion. I told you I should not, but I did. And there in broad daylight, with a field-glass, I see Captain Gordon appear—that black little beast, Sir Thomas; the lawyer. I have no field-glass for my ears, I cannot make them like my eyes. But——”

“They’d nothing of yours?” she gasped.

“No,” softly, but his nails were hurting her shoulder. “But they had of yours. Had you no sense—did you not know that accursed dog tore your cloak that night in the wood?”

“I never looked at it!” she said wildly.

“Look now, then; for they had a piece of it in their hands. May the devil burn them for not showing it at the inquest! I’d have—and now you’ve got it still! Even though I told you to take no chances, to get rid of it if you had to burn this house down.”

“They can’t think of me,” hardily. “I was in Boulogne.”

“How do I know whom they think of?” with sudden fury. “They have gone back for some reason to the woman they could not trace. I hear from people that all this time Captain Gordon has been in London. What brought him back to-day to look at that black-and-gray rag? If I had not gone down, the police might have fitted it to your cloak.”

“How dared you come, with Gordon there?” she broke in furiously. “You should have watched him. He——”

“He is there, and not here—that is why I came.” And as if her slowness, her distrust, maddened him, he shook her viciously. “Get the cloak!” he cried, “and I’ll save you yet. The police may be on you to-morrow. You will only have me and my field-glass to thank if they do not find it.”

“If they do, I didn’t do—it,” she said, and then ran, for his eyes were full of murder.

“Take it!” she gasped, coming back again, throwing down a black satin cloak, lined with chinchilla. “I wish I’d never seen you!”

“I dare say you do—Lady Levallion!” he said sardonically. “Hester Murray told another story. Good night, and thank me you dare to sleep.”

But when he was gone she had no thought of sleep. For two days she had loved the man who had just gone out; and now she hated him, because she knew she would never get rid of him till she died. She ran to the window to see where he had gone; stared out; dropped the half-raised blind and staggered, more than started back to the middle of the room, as if the quiet street had been the pit of hell.

“The dream!” she thought wildly. “But I’ve time!” Something took her at the throat. The man held everything in his hands, her money, her position, her—— But it was not being Countess of Levallion that was in her thoughts as she ran from the room, but life—bare life—that garbled lie could take away from her.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

ARRESTED.

“Hold on,” said a quick voice, in the dark, and Adrian Gordon stopped short; “I’m coming, too.”

For after a comfortable dinner in Monsieur Carrousel’s best manner he had strolled out, ostensibly to take a walk, really to go as hard as he could to the station and catch the first train for Starr Street.

“There’s no sense in your coming,” he said sharply, and Sir Thomas returned no answer. “And you can’t bring Jacobs. He’ll be a nuisance.”

“I’m coming, all the same,” obstinately; “and I can’t leave Jacobs behind. Carrousel might pour boiling water on him or something. Don’t hurry so! You want to catch the express, not the slow train that goes first. Oh, Gordon!” wretchedly, “don’t you see I must be doing something? You can’t leave me behind to hatch out rot about a cook and a boot-boy.”

“Come on, then,” weakening; and in silence the two trudged through the country lanes on their way to London, detectives, Hester Murray.

“I don’t know why you’re creeping away like this,” said Tommy suddenly, as they neared the country station; “but that’s another reason I came. I’ve a mileage ticket. We can get in without any one seeing us.” And they did, with Jacobs smuggled under the seat.

“There’s the slow train now!” he said, after they had been some ten minutes out of the station. “It stops here to pick up some carriages and gets in five minutes after we do.” They flashed past the rows of lighted windows as he spoke.

“Glad we did not strike it,” said Adrian, for the sake of saying something, for five minutes more or less would make a difference in the night’s work. But they lost it, all the same, for at Paddington a short man in shooting-clothes hailed Gordon loudly from a waiting-room.

“My dear chap!” he cried effusively, “where have you been?”

“How are you?” said Adrian hurriedly. “I’ve been—you heard about Levallion?”

“I forgot,” the man returned awkwardly. “But I wanted to see you. Come here a second,” and he drew the reluctant Adrian into the cloak-room.

“Hang him!” said Tommy, dragging Jacobs after them by his chain. “Now we’ll be all night.”

For he knew well enough who the man was. A certain distinguished general who could not be shaken off till he had said his say.

Sir Thomas stared and fretted at the cloak-room window. Not that he had any business in Starr Street, but it was a comfort to be even following a shadow. All at once he ducked down, rushed across the room to Adrian. “Come on,” he said, in a savage whisper, for he had seen what he never hoped to see on earth. Out of an incoming train had stepped that very man whom he had seen on that rock in the moonlight, whom Jacobs had frightened into unseemly skips and yells. Tall, dark-mustached, leisurely, with a curiously square line of shaven cheek and chin, the man had paused against a lamp-post, as Tommy had seen him against the moon.

“Come on!” he cried, oblivious of the stout general. “I’ve seen him.”

“Who?” blankly.

“How do I know?” white to the lips. “The man we want. Come on.”

But he had no need to urge it. Adrian was out of the cloak-room as fast as he could go. The general, being a sensible man in the main, said nothing. Merely stepped to the door and beheld the vanishing figures of Captain Gordon, a boy, and a dog, running down the empty platform. For, whoever the man had been, he was gone.

At the street corner the two stared every way in the dull gaslight. There were plenty of foot-passengers, and among them the man was lost. Mr. Jacobs stood waving his long white tail, his benevolent white-and-brindle face beaming. Suddenly he put his nose down to the ground and sniffed; then he tugged at his chain.

“Let him go,” said Adrian, for as the dog sniffed the ground his whole look had changed. His ears flattened to his head, his back bristling, he was nearly dragging Tommy off his feet.

“It’s some one the dog has known before,” said Adrian, as they hurried through the streets. “Where did you get him?”

“Found him on the road with a broken rib.”

In and out through the traffic, down by-streets, Jacobs ran. And by a way Adrian had not known existed brought up in Starr Street. He had thought it ten minutes’ walk to the station; by Jacobs’ way it was not five. As the dog would have rushed to Hester Murray’s door and barked the street down, Adrian caught him back.

“Wait,” he muttered. “Come over opposite.”

Tommy picked up the struggling dog and the three, unnoticed, mounted “Mr. Atkinson’s” stairs. There on the blind opposite they saw a shadow, dwarfed, ridiculous, but still the shadow of a man.

“Is that Mrs. Murray’s room?” said Tommy, and Gordon nodded.

“Wait,” he said; “she isn’t there.”

For the man had come to the window, and as he fumbled with the blind it snapped out of his hand and flew up. The next second he dragged it down again, but Tommy had seen him.

“It’s the man I saw on the rock!” he cried, trembling.

“And it’s my man of last night,” grimly. “Some town friend of Hester’s who’d been in the country on an errand she dared not do. So much for you and your cook, Tommy!”

“Aren’t you going to do anything?” impatiently.

Adrian gave a short laugh. Hester Murray, in her trailing black, was going up her own steps.

“Now I am!” he said. “I was waiting for her. You stay here, and if she comes out see where she goes. I’m going to take a cab and drive like blazes for Allington’s detective—who pooh-poohed the idea of her—and a search-warrant. If that cloak’s in her house, I think we have your man and woman.”

For it had suddenly come over him that at the time of Levallion’s death Mrs. Murray had not known about Maurice Davidge, or that she could have any claim on Levallion. Living here, so near the station, it would have been simple enough for her to go down by the seven-o’clock train and back by the midnight. Her alibi would be secure; her landlady would only think she had dined out. She need not get out at Levallion’s station, even; two miles farther on there was a siding where every train stopped for water. Through the fields from there it would not be half a mile to the castle. She knew the house well enough to pass out and in unseen.

Tommy, craning out of the window, saw him vanish down the street. And then his heart leaped. The man was coming out of the house opposite with a bundle under his arm. As the door opened the boy’s head disappeared just in time. He made for the door and got tangled up with Jacobs; picked himself up and ran into the street, forgetting all about Mrs. Murray. The man was just disappearing round the corner in the very opposite direction from the one Adrian had taken. But there was no time to wait for reenforcements. He was certain that bundle was the cloak that Adrian wanted. Helter-skelter, boy and dog tore along. Lost the man, saw him again as he crossed the Paddington Road with a bundle under his arm, ran into a man with an umbrella who wasted profanity on them, and pulled up. The man had vanished. Tommy pressed Jacobs’ nose to the pavement.

“Hi, fetch him, good dog!” he muttered, knowing quite well he was asking almost an impossibility of the dog in a place where so many people walked. But Jacobs whined, ran back a little, sniffed, and was off, Tommy running beside him.

Across the Paddington Road, into dark by-streets, to the vile slums by St. Mary’s Hospital, the dog led him. Into an open door and up-stairs in a filthy, greasy tenement-house; up and up to the very garret. The place was pitch-dark, sickening; the stairs riddled with rat-holes. Jacobs stopped pulling at his chain and gave a low growl. In the quiet it sounded loud enough to wake the dead.

Tommy clutched his jaws frantically.

“Quiet!” he said, through his teeth. On his hands and knees he crawled till he could crawl no farther. A reeking, moldy wall enclosed the landing, and the very silence of death was round him.

He knew perfectly that it was in houses like this that men were murdered, but he never moved to grope his way to the stairs again. The dog panted in his arms, stiffening fiercely. Suddenly there came a footstep, in his very ear where he crouched against the wall. A man was moving softly on the other side of the partition, and before he could think a door opened back on him, almost crushing him, and if it had been forward it would have taken more than Jacobs to save Tommy Annesley. A man came out, without any bundle, stood while he closed and locked the door. A candle was burning inside, and the light of it shone on him as he deliberately pushed the door to. The next instant, in the pitch-dark, Jacobs sprang, silent as death, and well-nigh as strong.

Down the rickety stairs the two flew, like some horrible dream. Twice Jacobs lost his hold, and got it again. In any other house the people would have swarmed out of every room, but in Bethnal Court lived human wolves, in by day and out by night. With a wild spring the man reached the open door into the court, slipped with a crash on the slimy stones outside; Tommy, tearing down, flew head over heels over him; Jacobs—but the boy knew no more.

And Adrian Gordon stood at that minute in Starr Street, knowing not which way to turn. Tommy and Jacobs were gone, Heaven knew where—and Hester Murray’s rooms held no one. She was gone, and he knew she would never come back again. Gone in the clothes she wore, taking her child with her, thinking only of bare life. Warned, somehow, for if she had ever owned that cloak she had taken it with her.

“Better give it up, sir,” said the detective—whom he had lost everything by waiting to get; “they’ve given you the slip.”

Gordon stared at him as if he did not see him.

“We’ve got to find the boy,” he said. “There was a man in there; he must have followed him.”

But though all night long the two walked the streets, haunted police-stations, asked questions, they found not a single trace of Tommy and Mr. Jacobs.

At sunrise Gordon stood alone on a street corner, for the much-tried detective had struck. He had lost Tommy, had lost Hester and probably that cloak whose useless shred he held in his hands; had probably let slip in his stupidity the only chance he had ever had of saving Ravenel. He shivered in the morning air. For there was a girl in Valehampton Jail who had borne enough. How was she to bear this?

A policeman in plain clothes tapped his shoulder; another, as by a miracle, sprang up in front of him.

He was arrested as accessory before the fact to the murder of Lord Levallion.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

MR. JACOBS.

A sound of running feet, a shrill whistle, was what Sir Thomas Annesley dreamed of where he lay on the greasy cobblestones after his somersault; and then a strong hand on his collar that was real, and jerked him into consciousness. A policeman was bending over him, and had Jacobs by his chain.

“Hi, sir!” he cried, “do you know your dog’s nearly killed a man?”

Tommy stared at him, and saw no one but the policeman, the quivering Jacobs. After everything had the man got away?

“You’ve let him go!” he exclaimed, and between his fall and anger turned sick. “Why didn’t you come before? I never saw one policeman all the way here.”

It is said that every man has his price; it is certain he has his weakness. The policeman’s happened to be bull-terriers. A flying glimpse of this one and his master tearing along streets where a well-dressed boy seldom came and a well-bred dog only too often, had sent him after them, though he had not seen they were following any one. In Bethnal Court he came on them. The dog standing over a man who lay on his face, the boy a crumpled heap on the stones.

Policeman Garrety, being a dog-fancier first and an officer afterward, took the chain that trailed behind Jacobs.

The dog never even growled, but came quietly to him as he was ordered.

“That’s queer,” the man said to himself. “There ain’t no ‘vicious-dog’ business here. That young sprig must have set him on!” He roused Sir Thomas with a less gentle hand than he had laid on Mr. Jacobs. And the boy’s first words were angrily, unconsciously authoritative.

“Why on earth couldn’t you keep him? Here’s everything wasted,” he cried. “Go and look for him, quick.”

The man laughed.

“I haven’t far to go,” he said. “You’re a bit knocked out still. There’s the man,” with a backward jerk of his head. “But what brought you and your dog down here? It wasn’t accident, for I saw you coming here. Don’t you know you haven’t no right to come to such places? If you hadn’t had that dog, and I hadn’t noticed you, you’d not likely have come out alive. Did French Pete set on you, or what?”

“Did what?” said Tommy. He had turned long ago and seen a dark figure lying on the stones just as it had fallen. He staggered over to it, dizzy and sick.

“He isn’t dead, is he?” he said sharply, not taking in a word of what the policeman was saying. “I don’t want him to die; I want him alive.”

The policeman looked at the man on the stones. Six feet in his stockings, girthed like a pony, and this slim-legged kid was coolly remarking that he “wanted him alive.”

“He’s that, right enough,” he observed. “It’s French Pete, and he’s only knocked out. You’d better tell me what it all means, sir! I’ve whistled for another man, and the ambulance to take him away,” significantly. For if he owned a valuable bull-terrier he would not run the risk of having him destroyed as dangerous on account of carrion like the man on the ground.

“It’s who?” said Tommy.

“French Pete!” sharply. If the boy was fool enough to stay, it was his own fault if he lost the dog. Mr. Garrety, for all his uniform, pined to lay hands on him himself.

“Let me see his face,” cried Tommy thickly, and as the man turned the unconscious head in the light of a pocket lantern, Sir Thomas gurgled unintelligibly in his throat.

It was the man he had seen in the wood, the man he had followed from Mrs. Murray’s—and ever since the policeman had called him by a strange name he had been mad with fear that Jacobs had pinned some other man. But this was he. Looked at closely, he was dark-haired, square-chinned, and blue with constant shaving; oddly like a gentleman in the pallor of his faint.

The policeman, on his knees, went through French Pete’s pockets with accustomed fingers.

“Look!” he said, and held up something. “That’s the sort of man he is! Now, what in the world had you to do with him?”

The boy stared, snatched at the dusky object that lay in an immaculate handkerchief, held it to the face on Policeman Garrety’s arm.

“It’s him!” he screamed.

For the mystery lay before him of who had worn Adrian Gordon’s clothes.

He turned wildly on the astounded policeman.

“Go up-stairs,” he cried; “up to the very top. He left a parcel up there; that’s why I followed him. It’s a——” but he stopped. It was only guesswork about that parcel. But something else came to him—the intuition of why this man had come here at all.

“I think you’ll find more up there than a parcel,” he said quite quietly, and he poured out the whole story that had been irrelevant scraps an hour ago, and now dovetailed into a neat whole. All except what was in the parcel, for in his hurry he forgot it. But he said enough to send Garrety up-stairs on the run.

“You stay here,” the man said as he went. “Here’s my whistle. You blow it if he stirs. But he won’t; he landed on his head,” and he was gone as Tommy caught the whistle.

The house was empty now, but in another hour the inmates would be strolling back, and one policeman in Bethnal Court would be extremely likely to get his head broken.

Tommy sat in a cold sweat on the greasy stones. His head was swimming, and it seemed to him as if the prostrate man before him was moving. He got up, staggered, tried to blow the whistle, and fell in a dead faint. His triumph was slipping through his fingers.

A woman sauntered into the yard and nearly walked over him. Jacobs growled, and then yelled. With wild barks and whines he danced round her, slobbered over her dirty hands, and she screamed. The next instant she had the dog round the neck, dragged him to the gaslight at the entrance of the court, and after one look fell to hugging him.

“Jack! it’s Jack!” she cried. “My Jack, that I’ve never seen since that devil half-killed him and left him on the road. Oh, my dog, my dog!” and the tears that had long since dried up in her miserable eyes streamed down now.

Long ago, when Moll Price had been “Pretty Molly” in her village, she had been given a bull-terrier puppy. When she ran away with a man who said he was a gentleman, and turned out to be a devil, she had taken the dog. And the man she loved had beaten her and her dog; had dragged them over half of England, living by their wits, poor, driven to tramp the roads, till one day he had struck her once too often, and the half-grown terrier bit him. Many and many a time in her dreams had Moll Price seen the brutal kick that broke the dog’s ribs, the blow on the head that stunned him; many a time felt the strong hand that hurried her away, powerless, leaving her only friend dead on a country road.

She had been half-drunk when she entered the yard; she was sober as she remembered she had stumbled over a man; a fierce hope rose in her as he ran back to the place.

After three years of freedom her master had found her out, had come to her with a heavy hand and a story she knew was a lie. Could that be he that lay upon the stones, and had Jack had his revenge at last? For she knew the blood the dog had shed, blood that never forgot or forgave.

She fumbled in her pocket, found a match, lit it.

“It’s him!” she cried, with fierce rejoicing, “and I hope he’s dead.”

She looked at the senseless boy beside him in his gentleman’s clothes, at the dog that ran from her to him and licked his face.

“There’s been queer work here!” she thought soberly, for French Pete’s torn clothes told their tale. “But they sha’n’t find out and kill Jack. They’re cruel hard on dogs in London, and he wasn’t muzzled. They’d take him for that alone.”

She was a strong woman; she lifted the boy easily enough, called the dog in a whisper, and went into the house. But not far. A footstep, too well-shod to belong to any of the inmates, caught her ears. She laid the boy flat under the stairs, crawled in beside him with the dog in her arms. After what seemed an hour, the heavy footsteps clumped down over her head and went out. Even then she dared not move. It would take all she knew to get this boy up to her room without having to be quick.

Outside in the court Policeman Garrety stood dumfounded. Boy and dog had vanished, but that he had half-expected, and whatever he had found up-stairs it was not what he had been told was there. But French Pete, who had lain like a log, was gone, too.

He stumped away beside the useless ambulance, and was only sure he had not dreamed the whole thing because of a parcel he held under his arm.

CHAPTER XL.

AT THE HINGES OF DEATH.

“Adrian and I! I and Adrian!”

Lady Levallion had reason to look like a dead woman as she stood in court, and looked once—but once—round the sea of hostile and curious faces. Not till her own lawyers had begged for an adjournment on account of the absence of one of their principal witnesses—and been refused—did she know that Tommy was missing, and the grip of despair caught her as she heard it. Not on her own account, for Tommy had little enough to say that would help her, but for sheer terror that the boy was hurt or killed somewhere in London.

When they had told her that she was not to stand alone in the dock, but Adrian as well, she had never said a word, had never glanced at him all the time in court, but now, when the prosecution had finished, she looked at his face and saw there what she knew. Unless there was a miracle from the skies they two would be found guilty.

“Adrian and I,” she kept repeating to herself, and her cold hands grew wet.

For the prosecution had swept away any and every chance for them.

The housekeeper, against her will, had been forced to confess what was quite true, that Lady Levallion had often come to the still-room and learned to make distilled waters. The coroner swore that such a water made from laurel-leaves had killed Lord Levallion, and every servant in the house at the time of the murder had proved they had nothing to do with it.

And slowly, with silky questions, the prosecution showed their reasons for arresting Captain Gordon as her accomplice. His supposed alibi in London on the night of the murder did not hold water. He had dined with a man at a restaurant, it was true, but between that and the card-party at his own rooms there had been three hours unaccounted for. And those three hours could easily have taken him to Levallion Castle and back. And the very absence of Sir Thomas Annesley was made into the certainty that the boy was staying away on purpose, lest he should have to repeat his evidence of seeing Captain Gordon in a wood in those very tweed clothes of which a piece had been found in Levallion’s room. No one could prove Captain Gordon had not been in the wood, and the theory of a stranger in his clothes was shown to be absurd. His tailor, beyond the fact that Captain Gordon owed him fifty pounds, could say nothing as to what he had made for him. The only entry in his books were uniforms and “tweeds, fifteen guineas.” Nothing else. Adrian remembered that he had never had a bill for the clothes, and on saying that fifteen guineas could not possibly represent one suit alone, was shown that it easily could.

As for any tale of a strange woman being seen hanging about Levallion Castle, it was openly laughed at. Lord Chayter, who swore to the face at the window, had to confess that Levallion had assured him he was mistaken. And in the absence of Sir Thomas Annesley there was no one to prove that woman in the wood had not been Lady Levallion herself. She had certainly left the drawing-room.

The terms on which the prisoners were left no room for doubt; indeed, they had openly discussed the death of Lord Levallion—one of them had made no bones about speaking of poison. And the winding up of the matter was this: In the wood at night the two had arranged matters. Captain Gordon had come down from London unknown to any one but Lady Levallion, had poisoned with laurel water given him by her a bottle of Eau de Vie Magique which he had brought with him—for such another bottle had been found in his London rooms—and had been frightened by Sir Thomas’ dog into going away without these two incriminating bottles found in Lady Levallion’s bedroom. The prosecution did not mean to say that the guilty pair had foreseen that night would give them their opportunity—merely that on being put into their hands they had made use of it. Probably Captain Gordon had come merely to see his cousin’s wife clandestinely, but that the two had been overcome by temptation could not be doubted.

No one but Lady Levallion could have placed those bottles in her bedroom, as no servant had been away from the others during the evening, and no one of the guests but Lady Gwendolen Brook—who had cleared herself by being able to relate the exact words of a quarrel between Lord and Lady Levallion in the lower hall, a quarrel of which Lacy also was cognizant.

Surely no intelligent juror could doubt which way the evidence tended. As for bringing in an innocent woman like Mrs. Murray, the prosecution had nothing but contempt for so far-fetched a story. If Sir Thomas Annesley had a piece of the cloak which Captain Gordon, on no evidence whatever, supposed to be Mrs. Murray’s, why was he not in court to produce it? It seemed that he had excellent reason to stay away.

And to all this Ravenel’s lawyer had nothing to reply, except that letter from the Pension Bocage and that mouse-eaten telegram. He spun them out as long as he could, and to no earthly purpose. Ravenel, in the dock, never looked up, but only prayed he would be done—make an end, and let her get back to prison out of the range of those countless eyes that lost not one line in her anguished face.

But Adrian Gordon—and the court wondered at his shameless bearing—stood staring at his own lawyer, who would not look at him.

There was a stir in the court, but Gordon’s face was turned from the door. Only Monsieur Carrousel, standing, an idle and pitiful spectator, who might be cross-questioned by the defense on a subject of which he knew nothing, suddenly changed color and moved loungingly to the door. But the packed room would not make way for him.

“My lord,” said Ravenel’s lawyer suddenly, as if something for which he had been waiting had happened, “we can now produce our missing witnesses!” And Adrian thought the man had gone suddenly crazy, for he called Pierre Carrousel.

And Carrousel, after one glance behind him, came with a light laugh. Yet the first question astonished him, for it was about Towers, the boot-boy.

“I took him to his place,” he said jauntily; “there I left him. The housekeeper heard from him the next morning. I know no more.”

“In that case,” returned Ravenel’s counsel, “you can step down. I will call Mary Price.”

Carrousel turned livid, tried to leave the room, and found his way unaccountably blocked by a strange policeman.

And all the while Adrian Gordon stared, as if the world had suddenly gone mad.

“Do you know any one in this court-room?” The question made the new witness, a woman in soiled finery, look at him contemptuously.

“I know him!” she cried, and she pointed, not at Adrian Gordon, as the crowd expected, but at Lord Levallion’s innocent cook. “That’s what I come for. My name is Mary Price, and I lived with him for three years, till he deserted me. My father kept a public house in Southsea, and I was barmaid. I ran away with this man, who said his name was Archer. He ill-treated me, took me to a London slum, and lived on what I earned.”

Carrousel interrupted coolly. He had had time to glance round the court, and saw no newcomer but Mary Price. The missing links in the defense were missing still.

“I never saw this woman in my life!” he cried. “She is a liar! My name never was Archer—never! She cannot know me.”

The woman gave him a deadly glance.

“I never said your name was Archer,” she said coolly; “only that you told me it was. And if I don’t know you, why—there’s some one else who will! Am I to go on, sir?” to the lawyer, who nodded.

“What his real name is, I don’t know,” she said, “but the people where we lived in London called him French Pete. He’d got tired of me, and I hated him, for he’d killed my dog that I’d brought from home, made me leave him for dead on a country road—we were tramping to London then. After he left me I saw nothing of him for a year; then I met him in the street dressed like a gentleman. He gave me money, and found out where I lived. I was pretty low, and I was afraid of him besides.

“Just a week ago he came to my room and brought a boy. Said he’d been cruelly treated in his place, and would I look after him. He’d pay me. And I did. But the boy seemed so queer that I was afraid to leave him alone—stupidlike and terrified. When I went out I’d put him in a loft there was over my room. The ceiling was all cracked and stained, and no one would see the trap. I put him there because from what he talked of in his sleep I knew Archer meant him no good. The boy knew something. And, for fear Archer would get in while I was out and do away with him and say it was me, I used to keep him hid away most of the time. He was up there when Garrety broke in my room that night and got the paper parcel.”

Not a soul knew what she meant. The prosecution had never heard of Policeman Garrety, any more than had Adrian Gordon, and the former was ill-advised enough to say so.

“That’s him there!” said Miss Price, “and perhaps it’d be better for him to speak before I go on.” Which was allowed, after some dispute, and at the policeman’s evidence Carrousel stood like a creature demented.

“Certainly I know that man,” he said simply, “I’ve known him for years as French Pete, the best cook in London when he chose to work. But I know him better without his beard,” and before Carrousel could move he had leaned backward to a brother policeman, who coolly tweaked the chestnut beard from the cook’s face.

A confused murmur ran round the court, and Adrian Gordon stood more confounded than Carrousel. Tommy had been right—it was that man, and no other, he had seen going into Hester Murray’s house.

“It was like that I see him lying stunned like in Bethnal Court near a week ago,” pursued the policeman calmly, and it was Allington’s turn to start, for he had never dreamed that Carrousel had ever left Levallion Castle since the night he knew of, “and there was a dog standing over him and a boy beside him. And when I emptied his pockets and held his false beard to his face the boy calls out Carrousel, and says if I went up-stairs I’d find another boy that he had detected, and a parcel he’d just left there. There was no boy, and I come down, and there wasn’t a soul in the court—French Pete, nor the boy, nor the dog! But I’d got the parcel right enough, and here it is.” He produced before the whole court a black satin cloak lined with chinchilla.

And cross-examination failed to get anything more out of him except that not until yesterday had he known that the cloak he had left at Scotland Yard was wanted in this trial.

“I ain’t no detective,” he said quietly, “I never leave my beat. And yesterday it took me to Bethnal Court, and there I found out. The girl will tell you that it was I kicked her door down for her no later than yesterday afternoon. I don’t know nothing of what went between.”

“I do,” said Molly Price, and she swallowed in her throat as at a memory that hurt her. “That night Garrety tells of I come into Bethnal Court on my way home. I live there. And as I was going into the house I fell over something. I saw ’twas Archer, or French Pete, or whatever he chose to call himself, and I thought he was dead. And then a dog—my dog that I thought he killed long ago,” tears blinding her—“jumped at me! He knew me after all those years, just as he’d known Archer. I know there’d been bad work by the look of Archer’s clothes, and I was afraid for my Jack if they found him. I looked at the boy that was lying on the ground in a faint, and I felt kindly toward him because Jack seemed to love him—and I said to myself he shouldn’t get into no trouble either. So I took them up to my room—after waiting awhile, because I heard some one up there, and if I’d known all I do now I’d have come out that second—and there they’ve been ever since. First Towers was like to die, but Sir Thomas worked over him night and day.”

“Towers!” Adrian Gordon’s face grew like that of a man who sees a hope dawning, very faint and far, but still hope. Ravenel never looked up. She knew nothing about the boot-boy.

“And then?” came a question.

“Well, it wasn’t till yesterday that we got Towers to talk, and then we’d never nearly got here at all,” grimly. “Sir Thomas had no money, but I’d sixpence, and when he was going out to wire to you that he’d found out Towers, why, we couldn’t get out! Archer’d put some dodge on my door so he could open it from outside, and it had got out of order. We couldn’t get the door open, and kicking was no good, for it opened inside. Nobody heard us yelling, for there was a row in the house down-stairs. And that really let us out, for Garrety was there professionally”—calmly—“and he heard me shouting ‘Help!’ and come and knocked the door in. So here we comes this morning. It wouldn’t have been any use to let strangers and police know we was there before, for Towers was frightened, and wouldn’t talk. But he isn’t now.” And Towers, white and weak from what had nearly wrecked his brain, stood up before the court.

Carrousel glared at him. But the eyes he had once obeyed dumbly had lost their power. The boot-boy quivered, but he spoke:

“I was the boot-boy,” he began timidly. “I did the cook’s errands. He told me——”

“He lies!” yelled Carrousel, shaking his fist. “I beat and beat him because he was a liar, and lazy.”

“You have not heard the lie yet,” said the judge coldly. “Another word, and you leave.”

“He can’t hurt me, can he?” cried Towers pitifully. “Sir Thomas said he couldn’t.”

“He can’t touch you. Go on,” said the lawyer kindly.

“He told me to pick some laurel-leaves, bunches of them. He said they were to decorate the table. But I heard some one in the still-room while I was cleaning boots, and I looked in. He was chopping them up and making something. He didn’t know there was a door in the boot-hole till I creaked it and he saw me. Then Sir Thomas’ dog was poisoned, and I said to the cook that perhaps he’d got at what he was making. For everybody knows laurel-water is poison.”

A thrill ran through the court as he described the preparation of that devilish decoction of prussic acid that every one thought Lady Levallion had made. But Towers did not see.

“He beat me,” he said simply, “and said if I said one word he’d say it was me. And two of the kitchen-maids had seen me with the laurel leaves, only they didn’t know they was poison. And I thought I might be wrong, for the dog got well. I’d forgotten it, when one night late the footman brought the dirty boots, and I sat down in the boot-hole to clean them. I saw the cook’s white jacket and apron in there behind the door, and I picked them up because I thought he’d beat me if I got blacking on them. I had them in my hand when the boot-hole door opened and in he come. He closed the door behind him quick and soft, and I heard a dog go by, and he stood there fetching his breath. He had on a tweed suit with a bit tore out of the trousers. He never said a word—just grabbed his jacket and apron that I was holding, and put them on. Then he puts his fingers on my eyes and forehead just as he’d done once before, the day he beat me about the laurel-water.

“‘You don’t know nothing,’ he says, and he slips just as quiet as nothing through that door into the still-room. I began to feel as if I hadn’t seen him, and yet I knew I had. But whenever anybody asked me anything I couldn’t seem to answer them. I just had to say, ‘I don’t know nothing.’ But after that I wouldn’t let him touch my face. I’d lie down and hide it, and let him beat me nearly to death. Once Sir Thomas caught him at it. He’d nearly got me that time. It sounds crazy,” apologetically, “but it seemed to me it was his hands on my face that made me say what he told me. I knew all the time it was him changed the bottles and put one in her ladyship’s room, for I see him put the laurel-water into a little blue bottle the day he made it, and ’twas that they found in her ladyship’s room. But I couldn’t tell—and then he took me to London because he said they was saying I killed his lordship, and he wanted to save me. He’d stopped beating me and got kind. But when he left me at a lady’s house he told me not to stay there, as it was there they’d look for me. I ran out the kitchen door, and that’s all I know”—wearily—“till I sort of woke up and saw Sir Thomas and a woman. I didn’t hardly know I was myself till I saw those trousers the cook give me.”

“What trousers?” said the prosecuting attorney, and the next second was sorry he had spoken.

“The torn ones he was dressed up in, that he’d stolen from Captain Gordon,” said the witness stolidly. “He told me Captain Gordon had give them to him, but I knew he took them, because I saw him coming out of his room with them, and I knowed he’d no call to be there. When there was that fuss about them he made me put them on in the posting-shed and wear them up to London. I’ve got ’em on now”—simply—“and I found these two letters down the leg,” producing the Umbrella’s useless, well-meant warnings.

“Why did you write from London that you were happy?” said the prosecution sharply.

“Me?” said Towers. “Lord, sir, I can’t write.”

In a dead silence the Umbrella’s letters were read out, the letters that proved it had been past and not present meetings for Lady Levallion and Adrian Gordon. And then, with damning proof against Carrousel and against the missing Hester Murray, it was shown that Towers’ supposed epistle and the letter from the pension in Boulogne were both in the same writing. And the telegram found in the mouse-hole fitted in with both—for if Adrian’s detectives had not found Hester Murray they had found that she had never been in Boulogne at all, and that the Pension Bocage was kept by Carrousel’s sister. Adrian’s letter of inquiry had been forwarded to him, and his answer posted in Boulogne. Sir Thomas Annesley swore positively that the clean-shaven Carrousel was the man he had seen in the wood and taken for Gordon. He had known him in Paddington Station before he followed him to Bethnal Court.

The counsel for the Crown observed somewhat hastily that, even supposing Lord Levallion’s chef had been guilty of his death, there was no possible reason for supposing Mrs. Murray to have been the woman seen with him in the wood by Sir Thomas Annesley. No one had identified her, or the cloak as her property. To bring in her name was not only guesswork, but malicious slander—and Tommy interrupted by saying he had seen Carrousel take the cloak from her house.

In the wrangle that ensued Houghton caught the duchess’ arm.

“Who’s that woman?” he whispered. “Isn’t it she?”

The duchess followed his eyes.

There stood Lady Annesley, emerged from her Harrogate retirement, perfectly dressed, and calm as a lake.

Ravenel looked up with a sick shudder and met the pale eyes of the woman without whom she would have been Adrian’s wife. What brought Sylvia here? Sylvia!

“My lord,” said Lady Annesley, addressing the judge, and scorning the jury, “I have just heard it said that Hester Murray is an innocent woman. I have brought something in her own handwriting which may throw a light on that, and first, if you will allow me, I will tell you how I came by it. I was not well; I saw no papers until last week, and then I read of the apprehension of my stepdaughter for the murder of her husband, and that other case in which Mrs. Murray claimed the title of Lady Levallion.

“I was not on good terms with my stepdaughter”—and the court, knowing why, believed her—“neither she nor any one else had written to me of the dreadful death of Lord Levallion. But, good terms or not”—and Sylvia’s cleverness had not left her—“I was certain it was impossible for her to have committed such a crime. It occurred to me that there was one woman who, with Levallion in his grave, could do what she would not have dared while he lived. I went from Harrogate to London; to the address given as Mrs. Murray’s in the papers, and she was not there. That made me certain she had reason to disappear, and I had reason”—slowly—“to guess where she had gone. She had a son, whom she chooses to call the present Lord Levallion, and I knew that the boy had spent most of his childhood with an old nurse in a wild part of Wales. I went there, on the chance. I waited till night; I looked in the window, and there in the old woman’s kitchen sat two women and a boy. I may tell you that I had a hold on Hester Murray. I went in and—did not use it! This gentleman will tell you what happened.”

She waved her hand to a man, and the court stared as they saw the ablest detective in England come forward.

“You see, my story does not stand alone.”

Mr. David’s story was short enough, perhaps, only Lady Annesley did not see that it was pitiful.

“I went to Wales,” he said quietly, “Lady Annesley’s story to me having confirmed something already told me by Captain Gordon. We found Mrs. Murray in a farmhouse. She had not been well for some time, her hurried flight, her trouble, and a chill had brought on pneumonia. When we reached her she was sitting by the fire, a dying woman, who should have been in her bed. Lady Annesley has told you she had a hold on her. I may tell you there was no need for it. Mrs. Murray knew she was dying, had written a letter already to clear herself from any share in the death of Lord Levallion that might accrue to her. In fact, she turned queen’s evidence before she died.”

There was not a sound as he read that strange, self-excusing letter, which told how she and no other had been living in the bungalow all summer. How Lord Levallion had shaken her off, and how she had formed the acquaintance in her evening hauntings of Levallion Castle, of a tall, dark man named Carrousel.

“He fell in love with me,” Hester Murray’s hand had written, in the terror of that death which neither judge nor jury had brought on her; “he used to come and see me, and bring me things—Levallion’s flowers, fruit—anything he could lay hands on. And I found out easily enough that he hated Levallion. One wet night I came home. I had been looking in the windows at Levallion Castle. I was watching Lady Levallion and Captain Gordon, and Levallion caught me. He was so angry I thought he would kill me. I was beside myself, distraught, and in my house Carrousel was waiting for me. I told him all my story—that I knew then. For it was not till Levallion was dead that I heard about John Davidge.

“And Carrousel said it was a very simple business to pay Levallion out in his own coin. All I need do, he said, was to go away to London and let Levallion know it. I could take a lodging near the station, and come up and down every night unobserved if I got off at the siding. It did not matter, he said, how circumspect Lady Levallion and Captain Gordon chose to be, if he and I could play their parts, and two nights after I met him in the wood dressed in Adrian Gordon’s clothes. When first he came up behind me I screamed, for I thought it was Gordon himself. He showed me a telegram from his sister in Boulogne; he was to describe me, and she would say I had been there all summer. He had champagne; we drank to the health of the new Lord Levallion, my son; to Captain Gordon and Lady Levallion, who would put the Levallion I hated out of the world; and I thought he meant it. Before God, I did not know what was in Carrousel’s head till it was done, and he came to me and told me that my cloak might bring me into it,” and perhaps when she wrote it she believed it.

In the first hush that followed Carrousel leaned forward.

“She says I killed him,” he said quietly. “Perhaps I did. But the woman who wrote that letter put it in my mind. She knew nothing, she says”—and the venom in his face was unspeakable—“she knew she told me that she was the true Lady Levallion, who had been wronged and betrayed; that if I avenged her she would marry me! She laughed when I said in the wood that night how I could avenge her. Laughed then—and afterward, when I told her it was done, and how—put her fingers in her ears, and said she had no hand in it. A man has just said she is dead, and it is well for her. For if she were alive I could tell you what would hang her as well as it will execute me.”

For a long moment no one spoke. Then a sharp question was asked Lady Annesley by the prosecution regarding the hold she had said she had over Mrs. Murray.

“A very simple one,” she answered, “but I can prove it. She claimed she was Countess of Levallion, because, as was perfectly true, she had been married to Lord Levallion after the death of John Davidge. What she did not know was that she was never Davidge’s wife at all. He married me, two years before he ever saw Mrs. Murray, and after his death I became the wife of Sir Thomas Annesley. Mrs. Murray’s only legal marriage was with Murray himself, who is now recovering from an operation in Guy’s Hospital. And here is my marriage-certificate, which proves what I say.”

A thunderbolt could not have made more sensation. Every one knew her name had been Davidge, but no one had connected her in any way with Hester Murray.

She stepped down as coolly as she had come up.

The judge, after a stupefied pause, addressed the jury, but they did not even leave their box.

Lady Levallion and Captain Gordon stood acquitted, without a stain, and Carrousel, Archer, or whatever his true name might be, was committed for trial on the counts of conspiracy and murder.

Through two long and awful days Ravenel had never winced, had stood, like a stone image that breathed and spoke, before a hundred hostile, curious faces. But now that she was free she covered her eyes with that ringless left hand that the whole court had marveled at.

It is no light thing to move away from the hinges of death and see another take your place there. But in all the room not another soul had pity for Carrousel.

CHAPTER XLI.

“I LOVED YOU BEST.”

Lady Annesley, having worked much evil, had wiped it out. Yet her stepdaughter never saw her after that day in court. A few lies, a scrap of india-rubber, had cost two men’s lives, and a woman’s good name.

Levallion “had been kind,” had died indirectly because he chose to marry her. Ravenel turned from the dock and went away with Tommy and the duchess, knowing that in a way the dead man had been dear to her, neither as lover nor husband, but as a friend whose love had passed knowledge.

And Adrian Gordon let her go; let time pass till Tommy was in the service and Mr. Jacobs fighting with all the dogs in Aldershot. And one day in May could wait no more.

By the lake at Avonmore she was sitting when, at the sound of his step on the gravel, she looked up and saw him.

“Adrian!” she said, forgetting that for this many a day he had been Lord Levallion. But she got no further, for the look in his eyes that were on her face.

“May I come and speak to you?” he asked quite simply, as a child does, but his mouth had the same look as his eyes. “You’ve traveled a long way without me, Nel. Won’t you—come home?”

And she knew what he meant. There was only one home in the world for her, in Adrian Gordon’s arms. Perhaps she had no pride, for without a word she went there.

In the May sun he looked at her, as in one May two years past. There was no change—but there was! He had never dreamed she was so beautiful. But as he would have kissed her she pushed him away.

“It isn’t fair to you!” she cried. “People will say things if you marry me.”

“We won’t hear them,” he returned, and in so much the manner of the dead and gone Levallion that she cried out.

“You never half-knew him, Adrian! He was good to me.”

“My sweetheart,” he said, with a queer understanding of her loyalty to the dead.

“He was a better man than you,” she cried, and her eyes filled with tears. “But, oh, Adrian, I loved you best.”

THE END.

No. 1175 of the NEW EAGLE SERIES is “They Met by Chance,” by Ida Reade Allen. This story contains so much charm and beauty that it will surely intrigue you.

Only One Best

The best paper-covered books are S. & S. NOVELS; consequently they are imitated.

When you ask for an S. & S. NOVEL, be sure that you get an S. & S. NOVEL, and save yourself disappointment.

We have 1500 different titles to offer you, most of them copyrights.

A complete catalog may be secured from your dealer or we will send one free upon request.

Street & Smith Corporation

79 SEVENTH AVENUE

NEW YORK CITY

Transcriber’s Notes:

Originally serialized in Street & Smith’s New York Weekly from Apr. 21, 1900 to Aug. 11, 1900 under the title The Girl of His Heart; or, Levallion’s Heir.

Some chapter titles have been changed in this edition from the original serial; for example, chapter VI was originally called “THE TENDER MERCIES OF THE WICKED.” In the original, chapter XXIV had no title and began with the poetic quotation: “My blood is chill; his blood is cold; His death is full, and mine begun.”

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

This sentence was garbled in the book edition and has been restored here from the original serial appearance: “After three years of freedom her master had found her out, had come to her with a heavy hand and a story she knew was a lie.”

Table of contents has been added and placed into the public domain by the transcriber.

Inconsistent hyphenation (e.g. upstairs vs. up-stairs) is preserved from the original text.

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

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™ electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property (trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the United States and you are located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™ works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when you share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™ trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™ License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project Gutenberg™ License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works provided that:

- • You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”

- • You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ works.

- • You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of receipt of the work.

- • You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™

Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search facility: www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™, including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.

Table of Contents

The Girl He Loved OR, WHERE LOVE ABIDES

THE GIRL HE LOVED.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIV.

CHAPTER XV.

CHAPTER XVI.

CHAPTER XVII.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CHAPTER XIX.

CHAPTER XX.

CHAPTER XXI.

CHAPTER XXII.

CHAPTER XXIII.

CHAPTER XXIV.

CHAPTER XXV.

CHAPTER XXVI.

CHAPTER XXVII.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

CHAPTER XXIX.

CHAPTER XXX.

CHAPTER XXXI.

CHAPTER XXXII.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

CHAPTER XXXV.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

CHAPTER XL.

CHAPTER XLI.

Only One Best

Transcriber’s Notes:

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE