The Mysteries of Heron Dyke. Vol. II. (3 Vols.)

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(Oxford University)

THE MYSTERIES OF HERON DYKE.

A Novel of Incident.

By the Author of
"In the Dead of Night," "Brought to Light," etc.

IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.

LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON,
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.
1880.
[All Rights Reserved.]

THE
MYSTERIES OF HERON DYKE.

CHAPTER I.

WINTER AT HERON DYKE.

The mellow autumn months darkened and died slowly into winter. The wild winds that are born in the bitter north blew in stronger and fiercer gusts, and the majestic monotone of the sea grew louder and more triumphant as the huge tides broke in white-lipped wrath against the shuddering sands. There came tidings of fishing boats that never found their way back home, of great ships in the offing that made signals of distress, of dead bodies washed up here and there along the shore. The Easterby lifeboat was ever ready to brave the fiercest seas; while miles away across the seething waters, at once a signal of warning and of hope, the ruddy beacon of Easterby lighthouse shone clear and steady through the darkest night: it was like the eye of Faith shining across the troubled waters of Life.

At Heron Dyke, to all outward seeming, the winter months brought little or no change in the monotony of life within its four grey walls. And yet there were some changes; all of which, unimportant as they might seem if taken singly, had a distinct bearing on events to come. The two housemaids, Martha and Ann, to whom Aaron Stone had given warning in his anger at what he called their folly, were not forgiven. They left the Hall at the expiration of the month's notice, giving place to two strong young women who came all the way from London; and who, never having been in the country before, were supposed to be superior to the ordinary run of superstitious fancies, which so powerfully affect the rural mind. Aaron took care that Martha and Ann should be clear of the house before Phemie and Eliza arrived at it: there should be no collusion with the new-comers if he could prevent it.

All went well at first. Phemie and Eliza felt dull, but were sufficiently comfortable. They had plenty to eat, and little to do. Not having been told that the Hall was supposed to be haunted, to them the north wing was the same as any other part of the house, and they neither saw nor heard anything to frighten them. The deaf and stolid cook kept herself, as usual, to herself, and said nothing. Indeed, it may be concluded that she had nothing to say. Had a whole army of apparitions placed themselves in a row before her at the "witching hour o' night," it would not have affected her; she utterly despised them, and the belief that could put faith in them.

"We shall be bothered with no more cock-and-bull stories about grisly ghosts now," thought he.

But, though the new maids were safe enough from hearing gossip inside the house, they were not out of it. Aaron, however good his will might be, could not keep them within for ever: they must go to church, they must go into the town; they claimed, although strangers in the place, a half-holiday now and then. And the first half-holiday that Phemie had, something came of it.

The girl made the best of her way to Nullington. Small though the town was, it had its shops; and shops have a wonderful fascination for the female heart. Into one and into another went Phemie, making acquaintance with this vendor of wares and with that. Mysterious things were talked of; and when she got back to the Hall at night, she had a rare budget of strange news to tell Eliza.

The Hall was haunted. At least, the north wing of it was. A young woman. Miss Winter's maid, had mysteriously disappeared in it one night last winter, and had never been heard of since. The two previous housemaids had been nearly terrified out of their wits afterwards. They had heard doors clash after dark that were never shut by mortal hands; they had heard a voice that sobbed and sighed along the passages at midnight; and they had been once awakened by a strange tapping at their bedroom door, as if some one were seeking to come in. More dreadful than all, they had seen the deathlike face of the missing girl staring down at them over the balusters of the gallery in the great entrance-hall: and it was for being frightened at this, for speaking of it, they were turned away!--which was shamefully unjust. All this disquieting news, with the observations made on it, had Mistress Phemie contrived to pick up in the course of one afternoon's shopping, and to bring home to Eliza.

The two servants had now plenty to talk about in the privacy of their own room, and talk they did; but they were wise enough at present to keep their own counsel, and to wait with a sort of dread expectancy for what time might bring forth. Would they hear strange sobbings and sighings in the night? would a ghostly face stare suddenly out upon them from behind some dark corner when they least expected it? The dull depths of these girls' minds were stirred as they had never been stirred before. They half hoped and wholly dreaded the happening of something--they knew not what.

Meanwhile they began to go timorously about the house, to shun the north wing most carefully after dark, and to keep together after candles were lighted. Old Aaron, silently watching, was not slow to mark these signs and tokens, though he took no outward notice. While his wife Dorothy, watching also in her superstitious fear, drew in her mind the conclusion that the girls were being disturbed as the other two girls had been.

It fell out one afternoon, about three weeks after Phemie had brought her strange tidings from Nullington, that Eliza was sent to the town on an errand by her mistress, Mrs. Stone: for, to all intents and purposes, Dorothy Stone acted as the women-servants' mistress, whether Miss Winter might be in the house, or whether she was out of it. Eliza was later in starting than she ought to have been, and she was longer doing her errands--for she took the opportunity to make purchases on her own account--and it was dusk before she turned back to Heron Dyke. It was a pleasant evening, cold but dry, with the stars coming out one after another, as she went quickly along the quiet country road, thinking of her mother and sisters far away. She turned into the park by the lodge on the Easterby road, stopping for a couple of minutes' gossip with Mrs. Tilney, the gardener's wife. How pleasant and homelike the little lodge looked, Eliza thought, full of ruddy firelight, for Hannah Tilney would not light the lamp till her husband should arrive. The elder girl was making toast for her father's tea, the younger one was hushing her doll to sleep, while Mrs. Tilney herself was setting out the tea-cups, and the kettle was singing on the hob--all awaiting the return of the good husband and father.

Bidding the lodge goodnight, Eliza went on her way. It was quite dark by this time, and although the hour was early she did not much like her lonely walk through the park. She was not used to the country, and the solitude frightened her a little; fancy whispering that a tramp might be lurking behind every tree. She pictured to herself the light and bustle of London streets, and was sorry she had left them. Leaving the carriage-drive to the right when she got within two or three hundred yards of the Hall, she turned into a shrubbery that led to the servants' entrance. It did seem very lonely here, and she hurried on, glancing timidly from right to left, her heart beating a little faster than ordinary.

Suddenly a low scream burst from her lips. A dark figure, emerging from behind a clump of evergreens, stood full in her path, and placed its hand on her arm. Eliza stood still; she had no other choice; and trembled as she had never trembled before. It was a woman: she could see that much now.

"Won't you please let me speak with you?" cried a gentle voice, which somehow served to reassure Eliza.

"My patience!" cried she, anger bubbling up in the reaction of feeling, "how came you to frighten me like that? I was thinking of--of--all kinds of startling things. What do you want?"

"You are one of the new maids at the Hall," rejoined the figure, in low, beseeching accents, "and I have been trying for weeks to get to speak to you."

"Susan Keen," repeated the servant, not remembering at the moment why the name should seem familiar to her. "Well, I don't know you, if you are."

"My sister lived at the Hall, Miss Winter's maid, and she disappeared in her bedroom one night last winter," went on poor Susan, with a kind of sob. "It was full of mystery. Even Mr. Kettle says that."

"Oh yes, to be sure," cordially replied Eliza, her sympathies aroused now. "Poor Katherine Keen! Yes. What _did_ become of her?"

"I want you to help me to find some traces of her--my poor lost sister," continued Susan--"some clue to the mystery of her fate----"

"You are inside the house, I am outside," replied Susan, with a sob. "Your chances are greater than mine. Oh, won't you help me? At any moment, when least expected, some link might show itself; the merest accident, as mother says, might put us on the right track. Have you no pity for her?"

"I've a great deal of pity for her; I never heard so strange and pitiful a tale in all my life," was the reply. "Phemie was told all about it when she went into Nullington. But, you know, she may not be dead."

"She is dead," shivered Susan. "Oh, believe that. I am as sure of it as that we two are standing here. At first I didn't believe she was dead; I couldn't: but now that the months have gone on, and on, I feel that there's no hope. If she were alive she would not fail to let us know it to ease our sorrow--all this while! Katherine was more loving and thoughtful than you can tell."

"It's said she had no sweetheart: or else----" Eliza was beginning. But the other went on, never hearing.

"If she were not dead, she would not come to me so often in my dreams--and she's always dead in them. And, look here," added the girl, in awed tones, drawing a step nearer, and gently pressing against Eliza's arm: "I wish some one could tell me why her hair is always wet when she appears. I can see water dripping from the ends of it."

"Sometimes she calls me as if from a distance, and then I awake," resumed Susan. "She wants me to find her--I know that; but I never can, though I am looking for her continually."

"And I've fancied that you might help me. I've come about here at night, wanting to see you, and ask you, for ever so long. You can watch, and look, and listen when you are going about your work in the house, and perhaps you will come upon her, or some trace of her."

"I never heard of such a belief," cried Eliza. "What it is that's thought--leastways, as it has been told to me and my fellow-servant, Phemie--is, that it is her spirit that is in the house, and haunts it."

"Something wrong was done to her; she was killed in some way; and I'd sooner think it was by a woman than a man," went on Susan, dreamily. "It all happened in the north wing. And then they carried her away for concealment to one of the dark unused rooms in it, and left her there, shut up--perhaps for ever. That's how it must have been."

"Dear me!" gasped Eliza, hardly knowing, in her dismay, whether this was theory or fact.

"And so if you could watch, and come upon any clue, and would kindly bring it to us, me and mother, we'd be ever grateful. Perhaps you know our inn--the 'Leaning Gate'--as you go from here to Nullington."

"Stay a moment," said Eliza, a thought striking her: "does your mother think all this that you've been telling me?--does she want me to watch?"

"Mother does not know I've come to you, or that I've ever had thought of coming, else she might have stopped me," answered the girl candidly, for poor Susan Keen was truth itself. "But she knows Katherine must be in the house, dead or alive; she says that. Good-evening, and thank you, and I'm sorry I startled you."

She walked away at a swift pace. Eliza looked after her for a moment, and then ran home shivering, not daring to glance to the right or to the left.

When the last fine days of autumn were over and the cold weather was fairly set in, Squire Denison had ceased to drive out in his brougham, and was seen no more beyond the suite of rooms that were set apart for his personal use. Early in November, his lawyer, Mr. Daventry, was sent for, and received certain final instructions respecting his will.

About the same time a fresh inmate came to Heron Dyke, and took up her abode there for the time being. The person in question was a certain Mrs. Dexter, a professional nurse, who had been sent for from London by Dr. Jago's express desire. She was a plain-looking middle-aged woman, whose manners and address were superior to her station in life. A woman of few words, she seldom spoke except when some one put a question to her. She went quietly and deftly about her duties, and employed all her spare time in reading. A sitting-room was allotted her next Mr. Denison's, and she never mixed with the servants. No one at the Hall, unless it was Hubert Stone, knew that Mrs. Dexter was an elder sister of Dr. Jago's wife. It might be that the treatment pursued by that undoubtedly clever practitioner, and which at present seemed to succeed, was of too hazardous a nature to be entrusted to, or witnessed by, an ordinary nurse.

Then came another movement. Within a few days of Mrs. Dexter's arrival at the Hall, the carpenter, Shalders, was sent for from Nullington. Receiving his orders, he proceeded to put up two doors covered with green baize, one in each of the corridors leading to Mr. Denison's rooms. The household wondered much; the neighbourhood talked; for Shalders had a tongue, and did not keep the measure a secret. It was to ensure himself more quiet that the Squire had had it done, said Shalders. Day and night these doors were kept locked. Four people only, each of whom had a pass-key, were allowed to penetrate beyond them: Dr. Jago, Mrs. Dexter, Aaron Stone, and Hubert. Anything that took place on the other side of those mysterious doors was as little known to the rest of the inmates of the Hall as if they had been a hundred miles away. In Nullington, people could not cease wondering about these baize-covered doors, and were generally of opinion that Squire Denison was growing more crazy every day.

Ella never failed to write to her uncle once a week, and once a week the Squire dictated to Hubert a few lines of reply. In these notes he always told her his health was improving; that he grew better and stronger. For weeks after he had ceased to leave his own rooms, he wrote to Ella--in his unselfishness, let us suppose--about his drives out, and how the fresh crisp winter air seemed to give him strength. Ella expressed a strong desire to be back at home by New Year's Day; but the Squire's answer to her request, while kind, was yet so peremptory in tone that she was afraid to mention the subject again. He told her she was not to make herself uneasy about him, and that, now she was abroad, she had better enjoy herself, and see everything that was worth seeing: when he wanted her back at the Hall he would not fail to send for her, but till that time she had better continue on her travels. If the body of the letter seemed hard to Ella, there was no lack of loving messages at its end.

"You are always in my thoughts," he wrote. "I see your face in the firelight; I hear the rustle of your dress behind my chair; half a dozen times a day I could swear that I heard you singing in the next room. When you come back to me in spring, my darling, I will never let you go away again."

To Ella his letters would read almost like a contradiction. He could write thus, evidently pining for her, and yet would not allow her to return. She comforted herself with the reassurance that he must be better. Not the faintest hint was given to her in any one of the letters that Mrs. Dexter, a sick-nurse, had taken up her abode at Heron Dyke.

Hubert Stone received several private notes from Ella, asking for full and special information respecting the state of her uncle's health. The writer of them little thought how they were treasured up and covered with kisses. To each of them Hubert wrote a few guarded lines of reply, confirming the general tenour of Mr. Denison's own letters. Miss Winter, he said, had no cause for uneasiness: Mr. Denison was certainly stronger than he had been for two years past. A few old friends of the Squire called at the Hall occasionally and inquired respecting his health. Now and again he would see one or other of them for a few minutes, and talk away as if nothing were the matter with him.

But after the middle of December no visitors of any kind were admitted. They were told that the Squire was much as usual, but that his medical man, Dr. Jago, enjoined perfect quiet as indispensable to him. When Dr. Spreckley heard this, he differed completely.

"I always told Mr. Denison that he ought to see more company than he did," said Spreckley. "He wanted rousing more out of himself. The sight of a fresh face and a little lively conversation never failed to do him good."

It was a marvel to Dr. Spreckley that the Squire still lived. He wondered much what treatment was being pursued, not believing that any treatment known to him could keep him in life; he marvelled at other things.

"Hang it all!" cried the Doctor one day to himself. "I can't see daylight in it. Shut up in his rooms from people's sight; green-baize doors put up to keep out the household! what does it mean? Are they treating him to a course of slow poisons? Upon my word, if it were not that the object is to keep the Squire in life, I should think there was a conspiracy to send him out of it, and that they don't want to be watched at their work. But it is a strange thing that he yet lives."

That was, to Dr. Spreckley, the strangest thing of all. Morning after morning, as he arose, did he expect to hear the news of the Squire's death; but winter wore on, and the old year died out, and still the tidings came not. Dr. Spreckley marvelled more and more; but he said nothing to anybody.

CHAPTER II.

DR. DOWNE'S SNUFF-BOX.

That winter in Norfolk was an exceptionally severe one. Lady Cleeve, whose health had been waning for some time past, felt the cold more severely than she had ever done before, and was rarely out of her own home. Trusting her son so thoroughly, the twelve hundred pounds had now been transferred to him, as promised, and stood in his name in the books of Nullington Bank. And to Philip life seemed to have become well worth living. The fact that he could draw cheques now on his own account--ay, and find them duly honoured--was a new and delightful item in his experience. His sunny, debonair face might be seen everywhere with a smile upon it: he had a kind look for this neighbour, meeting him in the street: a pleasant word for that one. He carried fascination with him; and, whatever might be his faults, it was impossible to help liking Philip Cleeve.

"A thousand pounds will be quite enough for Tiplady," he decided, after some mental debate, carried on at intervals. "If the old fellow lets me join him at all, he'll take me for that: money's nothing to him."

This, you perceive, would leave Mr. Philip two hundred pounds to play with: a very desirable acquisition. But the partnership question remained as yet in abeyance. Mr. Tiplady was very much engaged with some troublesome private affairs of his own at this period, was often from home; and for the time being seemed to have forgotten his talk with Lady Cleeve about the partnership.

Philip was particularly careful not to refresh his memory. His mother felt anxious now and then that no progress was being made: she spoke to Philip about it, only to have her fears pooh-poohed, and be put off in that young gentleman's laughing, easy-going style.

"A month or two more or less cannot make any possible difference, mother," he said one day. "Besides, I don't think it would be wise to bother Tiplady just now. It will be time enough to speak when he has got through his law-suit with Jarvis."

It did not take Philip Cleeve very long to make a considerable hole in the two hundred pounds: set aside in his own mind as a margin to be used for whatever contingencies might arise. In the first place, his IOU to Freddy Bootle for his losses at cards in October had to be redeemed, Freddy having lent him the money to square up: although it might have stood over for an indefinite period as far as Freddy was concerned. This of itself ran away with a considerable sum. Then Philip discovered that he had been in the habit of dressing less well than was desirable, and so replenished his wardrobe throughout. After that, chancing to be one day at the jeweller's, he took a fancy to a gold hunting-watch and a couple of expensive rings. The latter articles he would draw off and slip into his pocket when going into his mother's presence; while of the existence of the watch she knew nothing. Not for a great deal would he have had Lady Cleeve suspect that he had touched a penny of the twelve hundred pounds. Yes, he was not without faults, this Master Philip.

For some little time past, he had taken to be more from home than usual, in the evening, and to return to it later. Lady Cleeve did not grumble; she but thought he was at the Vicarage, or at the house of some other friend. He was more often at The Lilacs than she was at all aware of. Not that she would have objected: she rather liked Captain Lennox; and she knew nothing of the high play carried on there, or of the unearthly hours that it sometimes pleased Mr. Philip to come in.

It was not play, though, that made Philip's chief attraction at The Lilacs. It was Mrs. Ducie. His pleasant evenings were those when cards were not brought out, when the time was filled with conversation and music. On such occasions Philip left at the sober hour of eleven o'clock, and had nothing to reproach himself with next morning; unless it were, perhaps, that when in the fascinating company of Mrs. Ducie, he almost forgot the existence of Maria Kettle.

Yet it was impossible to say that Margaret Ducie gave him any special encouragement, or led him on in any way. She was probably aware of his admiration for her, but there was nothing that savoured of the coquette in her mode of treating him. She was gracious and easy and pleasant, and that was all that could be said: and she drew an impalpable line between them which Philip felt that it would not be wise on his part to attempt to overpass. Meanwhile life was rendered none the less pleasant, in that he could now and then pass a few sunny hours in her society.

Early in December, Mrs. Ducie went up to London to stay with some friends, purposing to be away a month or two; and after her departure Philip did not find himself at The Lilacs quite so often. One day, however, he chanced to meet Captain Lennox in the street, who gave him a cordial invitation for the evening, to meet some other men who would be there.

"I expect Camberley and Lawlor and Furness," said Captain Lennox. "You don't know Furness, I think? Married a wife with four thousand a year, lucky dog! Come up in time for dinner."

Of course Philip accepted. Indeed, it was a rare thing for him to decline an invitation of any kind. Company pleased him, gaiety made his heart glad.

Play, that evening, began early and finished late. The stakes were higher than usual; the champagne was plentiful. The clock struck five as Philip stood at his own door, fumbling for his latch-key. He had one of his splitting headaches, and his pockets were lighter by seventy pounds than they had been eight hours previously. Seventy pounds!

All that day he lay in bed ill, and was waited upon by his mother, who had no suspicion as to the real state of affairs, or that he had been abroad late. Her own poor health obliging her to retire early, rarely later than ten, she supposed Philip came in at eleven, or thereabouts. His headache went off towards dusk, but the feeling of utter wretchedness that possessed him was still left. He was a prey to self-remorse, not perhaps for the first time in his life, but it had never stung him so bitterly as now. In the evening, when he had dressed himself, he unlocked his desk and took out his bank-book. He had not looked at it lately. After deducting, from the balance shown there, the amount lost by him at cards the previous evening, together with two or three other cheques which he had lately paid away, he found that there now remained to his credit at the bank the sum of nine hundred and thirty-five pounds. In something less than three months he had contrived to get through two hundred and sixty-five pounds of his mother's gift--of the gift which had cost her long years of patient pinching and hoarding to scrape together. At the same rate how long would it take him to squander the whole of it? As he asked himself this question he shut up his bank-book with a groan, and felt the hot tears of shame and mortification rush into his eyes.

He was still sitting thus when a letter was brought him. It proved to be a note of invitation from Maria Kettle, written in the Vicar's name, asking Philip to dinner on the 12th of January, her father's birthday. A similar note had come for Lady Cleeve. The Vicar always kept his birthday as a little festival, at which a dozen or more of his oldest friends were welcome. The sight of Maria's writing touched and affected Philip as it might not have done at another time. His heart to-night was full of vague longings and vain regrets, and perhaps equally vain resolves. He would give up going to The Lilacs, he would never touch a card again, he would cease to seek the society of Margaret Ducie--and, he would ask Maria to promise to be his wife. At this very Vicarage dinner, opportunity being afforded, he would ask her.

He was very quiet and subdued in manner during the next few days, spending all his leisure time at home. Some two years previously he had taken a fancy to teach himself German, but had grown tired of it in a couple of months, as he had grown tired of so many other hobbies in his time. He now hunted out his books again, and began to brush up his half-forgotten knowledge. His mother was delighted at the new industry: it gave her so much more of him at home.

The evening of the twelfth arrived, and Lady Cleeve and Philip drove over to the Vicarage in a fly. The brougham of fat, good natured Dr. Downes was just turning from the door after setting down its master. Lady Cleeve went into a room to take off her warm coverings, and Philip waited for her in the little hall.

"I should have fancied this house would be too quiet for you," returned Philip. "There will be no Camberley--no high play here."

Captain Lennox stroked his fair moustache, and looked at Philip with an amused smile.

"My good sir, do you suppose I must live ever in a racket? Mr. Kettle was good enough to invite me, and I had pleasure in accepting. As to Camberley--his play goes a little further at times than I care for."

A pretty flush mounted to Maria's cheek as she met Philip; his laughing hazel eyes seemed to have a meaning in them, the pressure of his hand was more emphatic than usual. They had not seen much of each other lately. No direct words of love had yet passed between them, but there was a sort of tacit understanding on both sides that one day they would in all probability become man and wife; needing no assurance in set phrases that they would be true to each other and wait till circumstances should be propitious. Of late, however, Philip's visits to the Vicarage had been few and far between. Rumours had reached Maria of evenings spent in the billiard-room of the Rose and Crown, and of his frequent presence at The Lilacs. When Maria thought of Margaret Ducie's attractions, her heart grew sad.

The dinner guests numbered a dozen--all pleasant people. One or two handsome girls were there, but Philip had eyes for Maria only.

"How nice she looks!" he thought; "how pure, how candid! What is it that constitutes her nameless charm? It cannot be her beauty."

No, for Maria had not very much of that. It was the goodness that shone from every line of her countenance.

Dinner over, the Vicar and a few of his guests retired to his study for a sober hand at whist, leaving the drawing-room free for music and conversation: and so the evening passed on.

Ten o'clock struck, and Philip's momentous words to Maria were still unspoken. At last the watched-for opportunity came. In her search for some particular piece of music, Maria went downstairs to what she still called her schoolroom, and Philip followed. A single jet of gas was lighted, and she was stooping over an old canterbury when he put his arm round her waist. She had not heard his footsteps, and rose up startled.

"Do not repulse me, Maria," he whispered, a strange earnestness in his generally laughing eyes. "I am here to tell you how truly and tenderly I love you. I am here to ask you to be my wife."

"Oh, Philip!" was all that poor Maria could reiterate in that first moment of surprise.

"You must have known all along that I loved you, and I ought perhaps to have spoken before," he continued. "But I cannot be silent longer. Tell me, my dearest, that you will be mine--my own sweet wife for ever!"

Maria's face was covered with blushes. Her eyes met Philip's in one brief loving glance, but no word did she speak. He drew her to him and kissed her tenderly twice. His arms were round her, her head rested on his shoulder, when there came a sound of footsteps outside the door. An instant later, Philip was alone. How brief a time had sufficed to seal the fate of two persons for weal or woe!

Philip felt intensely happy now that the ordeal was over--although he had never anticipated a refusal from Maria. No more gambling, no more dangerous visits to The Lilacs, or evenings in the billiard-room; life would be full of other and sweeter interests now. His mother would rejoice in his good fortune, and all would be _couleur de rose_ in time to come.

'Twas a pity that an unwelcome thought should intrude to mar the brightness. Somehow Philip began to think of the money he had drawn from the bank.

"What a fool I was to break into the thousand pounds!" he exclaimed, his mood changing to bitterness. "I might have confined myself to the extra two hundred. That would not have so much mattered, while the thousand was enough for Tiplady. But to have lessened _that_ by--how much is it--sixty or seventy pounds! If I could but replace it! If we had but gold-fields over here as they have yonder," nodding his head in some vague direction, "where a man may dig up to-day what will last him to-morrow. No such luck for me. _I_ can't pick any up."

A bustle in the hall--and Philip left the room. Lady Cleeve was passing out to her fly, which waited for her, escorted to it by good Dr. Downes. She had already stayed beyond her time: Philip would walk home later. He helped to place his mother in it, wished her goodnight, and returned to the rooms with the old Doctor.

At eleven o'clock the party broke up: late hours were not in fashion at the Vicarage. As Philip wished Maria goodnight, he whispered that he should be with her on the morrow: and the warm pressure of his hand and the love-light that sat in his eyes were more eloquent than any words.

Dr. Downes was fumbling with the sleeves and buttons of his overcoat in the hall: his own man generally did these things for him.

Philip thought he would, and got into the roomy old brougham, and chatted soberly with the old physician on the way. He got out of it when they came to the side-turning that led to the Doctor's house, said goodnight, and strode onwards.

Dr. Downes took snuff. A bad habit, perhaps, and one less general now than in the years gone by. He took it out of a gold box, one of great value, presented to him by a grateful patient, Lord Lytham: and this box, being rather proud of it, the old Doctor was fond of exhibiting in company. The first thing he did, arrived at his own fireside, his coat and comforter off, was to put his hand in his pocket for his snuff-box.

Had the Doctor found himself not to be there, he could hardly have felt more surprise. That he had not dropped it in the carriage, he knew, for he had never at all unbuttoned his overcoat: still he sent out and had it searched; and made assurance doubly sure.

"When did you have it last, sir?" asked Granby, his faithful servant of many years.

"A few minutes before I left the Vicarage," said Dr. Downes, after pausing to think. "The Vicar took a pinch with me; we were standing before the fire; and I distinctly recollect putting the box back into my pocket. After that, I shook hands with one or two people, and came away."

"Suppose I send Mark to the Vicarage, sir?" suggested Granby. "He'd run there in no time: they'll not be gone to bed."

"It is sure not to be there," said the Doctor testily, as Granby came back from despatching the boy. "How could it leave my pocket after I had put it there?"

"Perhaps it did, sir--when you were getting on your coat to come away. Who knows? You are not clever at putting on that coat, sir--if you'll forgive my saying so--and turn and twist about like anything over it."

"Young Cleeve helped me. And the coat's tight and awkward. I suppose--I suppose," added Dr. Downes, slowly and thoughtfully, "that Cleeve did not take the snuff-box to play me a trick?"

"Well, sir, I should not think he would play such a trick as that, though he is a gay and careless young spark."

"I'm sure he is, sir," amended Granby. "He's more than that, too--a regular young spendthrift: and it's a pity to have to say it of Lady Cleeve's son. Half his time he is at the Rose and Crown playing billiards, and the t'other half he is playing cards for high stakes at Captain Lennox's, with my Lord Camberley and other rich folk."

"Why, sir, all the town knows it. Leastways about the time he spends in the billiard-room. And Captain Lennox's man happens to be an old acquaintance of mine, so we often have a chat together. It's James Knight, sir, who once lived with Sir Gunton Cleeve, and perhaps you may remember him."

"But--billiards, and cards, and high stakes--how does young Cleeve find the money for it all?" debated the Doctor.

"Ay, sir, that's the puzzle of it. Lady Cleeve can't give it him. Anyway, he has it, and sits at the Captain's card-table with a heap of gold and silver piled up before him."

Dr. Downes fell into a rather unpleasant reverie. He knew nothing of the money that Lady Cleeve had placed to her son's account in the bank, and he wondered where Philip's means could come from.

"Camberley and Lennox, and those rich fellows, may stake ten-pound notes if they choose to be so idiotic," cogitated the Doctor. "But such recklessness in Philip means ruin. What possesses the lad? Takes after his father, I'm afraid: _he_ rushed into folly in his young days. But he pulled himself up in time."

Mark came back from the Vicarage, bringing no news of the gold snuff-box. The Vicar, much concerned, searched in the hall himself; he spoke of the pinch he had taken from the box, and he saw Dr. Downes return the box to his pocket. Dr. Downes sat looking uneasily into the dying embers of his fire as he revolved the news.

"Is it possible," he presently asked himself, "is it possible that Philip can have _stolen_ the box? Stolen it to make money of for his cards and billiards?"

CHAPTER III.

"PATCHWORK."

The Reverend Francis Kettle and his daughter Maria sat down to their breakfast-table somewhat later than usual: the dinner-party of the previous evening had made the servants busy. The thoughts of each were preoccupied: the Vicar's with the strange loss of Dr. Downes' gold snuff-box, of which he spoke from time to time; Maria's with the proposal of marriage made to her by Philip Cleeve: the most momentous proposal a young girl can receive. Presently Mr. Kettle found leisure to take up a letter, which had been lying by his plate unopened.

"Of course. And with herself, too," added the Vicar, as he read the short letter. "She wants you to go to her, Maria."

Mrs. Page was the one rich relation of the Kettle family: first cousin to the late Mrs. Kettle. She lived in Leamington, in a handsome house of her own, and with a good establishment; and she might have been as happy there as any wealthy and popular widow lady ever was yet. But, though good at heart, Mrs. Page was intensely capricious and exacting; she lived in almost perpetual hot water with her servants, and changed them every two or three months. This week, for instance, she would be rich in domestics, not lacking one in any capacity; the next week the whole lot would depart in a body, turned away, or turning themselves away, and Mrs. Page be reduced to a couple of charwomen. But her goodness of heart was undeniable; and many a Christmas Day had Mr. Kettle received from her a fifty-pound note, to be distributed by himself and Maria amongst their poor.

Every now and then she would send a peremptory summons for Maria; and the Vicar never allowed it to be disobeyed.

"She is getting old now, Maria, she is nearly the only relative left of your poor mother's, and I cannot permit you to neglect her," he would say. But he did not choose to append to this another reason, which, perhaps, weighed greatly with himself, and add, "She is rich, and will probably remember you in her will if you do not offend her."

"The servants all went off the day before yesterday, Maria; and she says that she is feeling very ill, and she wants you to go to her as soon as convenient," said Mr. Kettle, passing the letter to his daughter.

"Oh, hang the parish!" put in the Vicar impulsively, and then coughed down his words. "The parish cannot expect to have you always, child."

"It is a hard winter, papa, as to work; many of the men are out of it entirely, as you know; and that entails poverty and sickness on the wives and children. I have not told you how very many are sick."

"Some of the ladies will see to them. You cannot be neglecting your own duties always for their sakes."

"Once I get to Leamington, papa, there is no knowing when I may be allowed to return. Mrs. Page kept me six months once; I well remember that."

"You are taking a lesson from Ella Winter's book," said the Vicar. "She did not want to leave home in the autumn; but it was all the better for her that she should. Her case, however, was different from yours, and I do not say she was wrong in wishing to remain with her uncle, so old and sick. I am not old, and I am not sick."

But Maria thought her father was sick, though not of course with the mortal sickness of the Squire; ay, and that, if not old, he was yet ageing. His health certainly seemed breaking a little, his eyesight was failing him; now and then his memory misled him. He displayed less interest than ever he had done in parish work, leaving nearly everything to the curate, Mr. Plympton, and Maria. His liking for old port was growing upon him and he would sit all the evening with the bottle at his elbow, and was roused with difficulty when bedtime came. Altogether Maria would a vast deal rather not leave home; but she saw she should have to do it. Perhaps, in her heart, she shrank also from being away from Philip.

"I'm sure, papa, I can't think how things in the parish will get on without me," she said, as she laid down the letter. "Think what a state they were in when we returned in the summer."

"Get on?" said he. "Why, bless me, shan't I and Plympton be here? As to the state they fell into during our stay abroad, was not I away myself? One would think, Maria, you were parson and clerk and everything."

Maria smiled her sweet smile. She knew her father set little store by her work in the parish, not in fact seeing the half she did, and she was glad it should be so.

"And I should not, child, let you neglect Mrs. Page in her need--your mother's own cousin--for all the parishes in the diocese. So you can write to her this morning, or I will write if you are busy, and fix a day to go to her."

Barely had they finished breakfast when Dr. Downes came in. The loss of his snuff-box grieved and annoyed him. Not so much for its value, not so much that it was the gift of a long-esteemed friend and patron, but for the uncertainty and suspicion attending the loss. That the box must have been cleverly filched out of his pocket he felt entirely convinced of; it could not have got out of itself. All night long, between his snatches of sleep, had he been pondering the matter in his mind; and he had come to the uneasy conclusion that Philip Cleeve had taken it--either to play him a foolish trick, or to convert the box into money for his own use. But this latter doubt the Doctor would keep to himself and guard carefully. Mr. Kettle met the Doctor with open hand. It was not the Vicar's way to put himself out over things; but he was very considerably put out by this loss.

"I met that young blade, Philip Cleeve, in walking over here," observed the Doctor, as they were all three once more examining minutely every corner of the little hall--for, in a loss of this kind, we are apt to search a suspected spot over and over again. "I took the liberty of asking him whether he had purloined the box in joke when he was helping me on with my great-coat last night. It must have been then, as I take it, that it left my pocket."

Maria was rather struck with the Doctor's tone; unpleasantly so: it bore a resentful ring. "Philip would not play such a joke as that, Dr. Downes," she rejoined. "What did he say?"

"He said nothing at first; only stared at me, and asked me what I meant. So I told him what I meant: that my gold snuff-box had left my pocket last night in a mysterious and unaccountable manner, and I had been hoping that he had, perhaps, taken it, to play me a trick. He blushed red with that silly blush of his, assured me that he would not play so unjustifiable a trick on me, or on anyone else, and walked off, saying he had to catch a train. So there I was, as wise as before.--And the box is not here; and it seems not to be anywhere."

"Shall you have it cried?" asked Mr. Kettle, as they returned to the breakfast-room.

"Why, yes, I shall. Not that I expect any good will come of it. Rely upon it, that box has not been dropped in the road; it could not have been. It has been stolen; and the thief will send it up to London with speedy despatch, and make money of it. My only hope was, and that a slight one, that Philip Cleeve had got it for a lark."

"But why Philip Cleeve?" said the Vicar, hardly understanding. "Why not any other young fellow?"

"Because Philip Cleeve put my coat on for me, here, in your hall; that is, helped me to put it on. I am sure the box was in my pocket then; it must have been; and when I unbuttoned the coat at home, the box was gone."

"I did not touch the box in the carriage: I never unbuttoned my overcoat, I tell you. Philip Cleeve knows that too: he went with me as far as Market Row."

"It really does look as though Philip Cleeve had taken it--for a jest," spoke the Vicar.

"Not quite so honourable, perhaps, as folks think him," quickly rejoined Dr. Downes. "Not that I say he did or would do this. Philip Cleeve has his faults, I fear; he must take care they don't get ahead of him, or they may land him in shoals and quicksands. And a certain young lady of my acquaintance had better not listen to his whispering until he has proved himself worthy to be listened to," added he, as the Vicar passed temporarily into the next room, "and--and has got some better prospect of a home in view than he has at present. Take an old man's advice for once, my dear."

The stout old Doctor had turned to Maria, and was stroking her hair fondly. In his apparently jesting tone there ran an earnest warning; and Maria blushed deeply as she listened to it.

If the past night had been an uneasy one to Dr. Downes, it had also been one to Maria Kettle. Not from the same cause. Divest herself of a doubtful feeling with regard to Philip she could not. That he had not stability, that he was led away by any folly that crossed his path, and that--as Dr. Downes had but now put it--he had at present little prospect of making himself a home--a home to which he could take a wife--Maria was only too conscious of. _She_ had a vast amount of common, sober sense; and in that respect was a very contrast to Philip.

Maria herself would have waited for Philip for ever and a day, and never lost hope; but she, after this sleepless night was passed, had very nearly concluded that there ought to be no engagement between them; that it might be better for Philip's own sake he should not be hampered. It was rather singular that these words should have been spoken by Dr. Downes so soon afterwards as if to confirm her in her resolution.

In the afternoon, between three and four o'clock, when the Vicar had gone up to Heron Dyke, Philip made his appearance at the Vicarage. He had been sent away on business for the office early in the day, and had but now got back. Maria met him with a pretty blush, and held out her hand, as the servant closed the door; but Philip drew her to him and kissed her, sat down by her side on the sofa, and stole his arm round her waist. Maria gently put it away.

"In what way?" asked Philip, possessing himself of her hand, as it seemed he was not to have her waist.

"Oh--you know. In what you said and I--I listened to. I think we must wait a little, Philip: another year or so. It will be best."

"Until our prospects shall be a little more assured. Forgive me, Philip, but I mean it; I am quite serious. In a year's time from this, if you so will it, we can speak of it again."

"There had better not be. Neither of us at present has any chance of carrying it out."

"Oh," commented Philip, who was getting angry. "Perhaps you will point out what you do mean, Maria. I can see no meaning in it."

The tears rose to Maria's eyes. "Philip dear, don't be vexed with me: I speak for your sake more than for my own. At present you have no home to take a wife to, no expectation of making one----"

"But I have," interrupted Philip. "Old Tiplady intends to take me into partnership."

"Well--I hope he will: but still that lies in the future. Your mother, I feel sure, would not like to see you hamper yourself with a wife until you are quite justified in doing it. And then, on my side--how can I marry? It is scarcely possible for me to leave papa. And all the parish duties that I have made mine; the visiting and the schools----" Maria broke down with a sob.

"That young fop, Plympton, ought to take these duties," returned Philip, with a touch of petulance. "What's he good for? Garden-parties, and croquet, and flirting with the ladies. That's what he thinks of, rather than of looking after the poor wretches who live and die in the back lanes and alleys of the town."

"I think I am; old in experience. And so, Philip," sighed Maria, returning to the point, "let it be understood that there shall be no actual engagement between us. I shall be the same to you that I have been; the same always; and when things look brighter for you and for me----"

His ill-humour had passed away like mist in the sunshine, and he sealed the bargain with a kiss.

"Be assured of one thing, my darling," he whispered: "we shall not have to wait long if it depends on me. I will spare no pains, no exertion to get on, to offer you a home that all the world might approve, and to be in every respect what you would have me be."

Maria told him then of the probability that she should have to go to Leamington for an indefinite period, should have to depart in the course of a very few days. Philip did not receive the news graciously, and relieved his mind by calling Mrs. Page selfish.

"I can't stay longer," he said, getting up. "That precious office claims me; old Best does not know I am back yet.----Here's a visitor for you in my stead, Maria," he broke off, as they heard some one being admitted.

It was Captain Lennox: who was calling to inquire about the health of the Vicar and Maria after the previous evening's dissipation. Philip was going, and they all three stood together in the drawing-room for a minute or two.

"By the way, talking of last night, what is this tale about old Dr. Downes losing his gold snuff-box?" asked Captain Lennox. "The people at the library told me they had heard it cried, as I came by just now."

"So he has lost it," said Philip. "That is, he thinks he has. I dare say he has put it in some place or other himself, and will find it before the day's over."

"No; not till he got home. And he had the impudence to ask me this morning whether I had _taken_ it, because I helped to button his coat," added Philip.

"Taken it for a lark. As if I would do such a thing! It's true I buttoned his coat for him, but I never saw or felt the box."

"It seems that old Downes, just before he left, had his box out, handing it about for people to take pinches out of it. The Vicar took a pinch."

"I saw that," interrupted Captain Lennox. "They were standing by the fire. Two or three of us were round them. Old Miss Parraway was, for one, I remember; I was talking with her."

"Well," rather ungraciously went on Philip, impatient at the interruption, "the Doctor took his leave close upon that. I took mine, and I found him in the hall here, awkwardly fumbling with his overcoat. I helped him to get it on, and he gave me a lift in his brougham as far as my way went."

"And when he got home he missed the box," added Maria, concluding the story, as Philip stopped. "It is a sad loss--and so very strange where the box can be, and how it can have gone."

"Yes, it is strange--but I did not thank him for asking me whether I had taken it; there was a tone in his voice which seemed to imply a suspicion that I had--and not as a joke."

Philip, who had been turning to the door after his last speech, wheeled round to face the Captain.

"Here, you need not be so hasty, old fellow," laughed Captain Lennox, following Philip out. "You are as cranky as can be to-day. Of course you did not steal the box, Cleeve; and of course I am not likely to think it. If I did, I should say so to your face," added the Captain, his light laugh deepening. "But--I say--do you know what this put me in mind of?"

Philip had the outer door open, when at this moment the Vicar turned in at the entrance-gate. He shook hands cordially with them both.

"I have been up to Heron Dyke," spoke he; "and have met with the usual luck--non-admittance to the Squire. I must say I think they might let him see me."

"It seems to me, sir, that they let him see nobody; for my part, I have grown tired of calling," said the Captain. "Still, in your favour, his spiritual adviser, an exception might well be made."

"I ventured to say as much to surly old Aaron this afternoon," returned Mr. Kettle "He refused at first point-blank, saying it was one of his master's bad days, and he was sure he would not see me. I persevered; bidding him take a message for me to the Squire; so he showed me into one of the dull old rooms--all the blinds down--while he took it in."

"And were you admitted, sir?" interposed impatient Philip, interested in the story, yet anxious to be gone.

"No, I was not, Philip. Aaron came back in a few minutes, bringing me the Squire's message of refusal. He would have liked to see me very much; very much; but he was in truth too poorly for it to-day; it was one of his weak days, and Jago had absolutely forbidden him to speak even to the attendants--and he sent his affectionate regards to me. So I came away: having made a fruitless errand, as usual."

"If Jago's grand curative treatment consists in shutting up the Squire from the sight of all his friends, the less he boasts of it the better," cried Philip, as he marched away. "Tiplady remarked to me the other day that he thought there must be something very queer going on up there," concluded he, turning round at the gate to say it.

Maria Kettle departed for Leamington, and the time passed on. Philip Cleeve attended well to his duties, seeming anxious to make up for past escapades. So far as The Lilacs went, no temptations assailed him, for the place was empty, Captain Lennox having joined his sister in London. No tidings could be heard of the gold snuff-box. Dr. Downes had had it cried and advertised: but without result. It might be that he had his own opinion about the loss; or it might be that he had not. During a little private conversation with Lady Cleeve, touching her state of health, she chanced to mention that she hoped Philip's future was pretty well assured. Mr. Tiplady meant to take him into partnership, and she had herself placed twelve hundred pounds to Philip's account at the bank.

"That's where the young scapegrace has drawn his money from, then, for his cards and his dice, and what not," quoth the Doctor to himself. "I hope with all my heart I was mistaken--but where the dickens can the box have gone to?"

The Doctor was fain to give the box up as a bad job. He told all his friends that he should never find it again, and the less said about it the better.

In February Philip had a pleasant change. Mr. Tiplady despatched him to Norwich, to superintend certain improvements in one of its public buildings. Philip, before starting, spoke a word to the architect of the anticipated partnership; but Mr. Tiplady cut him short with a single sentence. "Time enough to talk of that, young sir."

When Philip returned from Norwich, after his few weeks' stay there, during which he had done his best and had given unlimited satisfaction, he heard that Captain Lennox and Mrs. Ducie were at The Lilacs--and to Philip the town seemed to look all the brighter for their presence.

In spite of his former good resolution, he went over to call on Mrs. Ducie, went twice, neither of the times finding her at home. About this time Philip was surprised and gratified by receiving a note of invitation from Lord Camberley to attend a concert and ball at Camberley Park. Philip took the note to his mother. "My dear boy, you must go by all means," said Lady Cleeve. "This is an invitation which may lead to--to pleasant things. I am glad to find that they have not forgotten you are the son of Sir Gunton Cleeve. You have as good blood in your veins as anyone who will be there. What a pity, for your sake, dear, that we cannot live in the style we ought--to which you were born."

So Philip went to the concert and ball. Lord Camberley vouchsafed him a couple of fingers and "how d'ye do," and introduced him to his aunt, the Hon. Mrs. Featherstone. Philip sat through the concert without speaking to anybody. He was glad when it came to an end, and then he made his way to the ball-room. There he met several people with whom he was, more or less, acquainted. Presently his eye caught that of Mrs. Ducie, who was sitting somewhat apart from the general crush. She beckoned him to her side, and held out her hand with a frank smile.

"What a truant you are. What have you been doing with yourself all this long time?" as she made room for him to sit beside her.

Philip told her, his laughing eyes bending in admiration on her face, that he had been staying for some weeks at Norwich, and that he had twice called at The Lilacs since his return, but had not found her at home. She listened in her pretty, engaging, attentive manner.

"I shall not dance to-night. Lord Camberley came up to ask me, but I said no: I told him I had sprained my foot. I do not much like Lord Camberley," she added, confidentially--and Philip felt wonderfully flattered at the confidence. "He often talks at random--and he is so fond of playing for high stakes at cards. I told Ferdinand the other day that I should object, were I in his place; but, as he said, it does not often happen. Ferdinand, with his income, can afford a loss occasionally; but everybody is not so fortunate."

It seemed to Philip that she looked at him with a kindly meaning as she spoke. Could it be that she felt an especial interest in him? A blush, bright and ingenuous as a schoolgirl's, rose to his face.

He sat by Mrs. Ducie a great part of the evening, and took her down to supper. Captain Lennox came up several times, and they both invited him for the following Friday evening.

When Friday evening came, and Philip found himself again at The Lilacs, and knocked at the well-remembered door, it seemed to him as if the intervening weeks and all that had happened to him since his last visit were nothing more substantial than a dream.

Two or three gentlemen were at the cottage this evening whom he had not met before, but to whom he was now introduced. After a light and elegantly served supper came cards and champagne. To-night, however, Philip did not play. He read poetry to Mrs. Ducie in a little boudoir that opened out of the drawing-room. So were woven again the bonds which at one time he believed were broken for ever. There was a strange, subtle fascination about this woman which held him almost as it were against his will. She was gracious and frank towards him, but that was all. She was gracious and frank to every gentleman who visited at the cottage. There was nothing in her manner towards Philip which would allow of his flattering himself that he was a greater favourite than anyone else whom he met there: though at moments it did seem as if she had a special interest in him. He certainly did not love her--his heart was given to Maria--but Margaret Ducie held him by an invisible chain which he was too weak to break.

That Friday evening was but the precursor of many other evenings at The Lilacs: for all the old glamour had come back over Philip. Maria was away, and the cottage was a very pleasant place. Sometimes he played cards, sometimes he did not; sometimes he won a little money, not unfrequently he lost what for him was a considerable sum. Now and then it almost seemed as if Mrs. Ducie, compassionating his youth and inexperience, drew him away of set purpose from the card-table. Be that as it may, when April came in, and Philip looked into the state of his banking account, he found to his dismay that in the course of the past few weeks he had lost upwards of a hundred pounds. How could he redeem it?

"Now's your time if you want to make a cool hundred or two," said Lennox to him a day or two later.

"Eh?" queried Philip, who knew little more about racing and sporting matters than he did of the mysteries of Eleusis.

"Back Patchwork," reiterated the Captain, with emphasis. "I am quite aware that he is not a general favourite: the odds were ten to one against him last night: there's Trumpeter and Clansman, and one or two other horses that stand before him in public estimation. But take no notice of that. Camberley and I have got the tip, no matter how, and you may rely upon it that we know pretty well what we are about. Both of us are going to lay heavily on the horse, and if you have a few spare sovereigns you can't do better than follow our example."

The Captain spoke of an early Spring Meeting at Newmarket; and this particular race in it was exciting some interest at Nullington, for reasons which need not be detailed here. Philip, desperately anxious to replenish his diminished coffers, took the bait, though in a cautious manner, and betted twenty pounds on Patchwork. If the horse won, and Philip gained the odds, he would pocket two hundred pounds.

He grew anxious. Everybody said that either Trumpeter or Clansman would win; Patchwork was scoffed at as an outsider. Philip began to think of his twenty pounds as so much good money thrown away.

At length the day of the race arrived, and Philip awaited the result with a feverish anxiety to which his young life had hitherto been a stranger. It is true, if he lost, twenty pounds would not ruin him; but, if he won, two hundred would set him up.

At length the looked-for news reached Nullington by telegram, and a slip of paper was pasted to the window of the Rose and Crown, on which was written in large characters:--Patchwork 1.--Clansman 2.--Trumpeter 3.

Philip Cleeve fell back out of the crowd gathered there, with a great gasp of relief.

Three days later Captain Lennox placed in his hands two hundred pounds in crisp Bank of England notes.

"If you had only taken my advice," he said, "and ventured fifty pounds instead of twenty, what a much richer man you would have been to-day!"

CHAPTER IV.

THE TWENTY-FOURTH OF APRIL.

The twenty-fourth of April was here, and with it Gilbert Denison's seventieth birthday.

The long winter had come to an end at last. It was a lovely spring morning, fresh and sweet. The air was full of the melody of birds; faint delicious odours stole in and out among the garden-paths; a warm sun shone over all. But we must for the moment leave Heron Dyke.

In the breakfast-room at Nunham Priors, a charming house among the Sussex Hills, sat Gilbert Denison--that Gilbert Denison who was cousin to the Master of Heron Dyke, and between whom there had been such a long and bitter feud--and Frank, his only son.

Gilbert Denison of Nunham Priors bore little likeness to him of Heron Dyke. He was a lean, finical old gentleman, a little younger than his cousin, wearing a brown wig and a long, buttoned-up, bottle-green coat that reached nearly to his heels. His whimsical but good-natured face was full of lines and puckers and creases, and he had an odd quaint way of screwing up his lips while waiting for an answer to a question that many a low comedian might have envied. Living much by himself, his establishment was a small one; his wife was dead, his son Frank chose to be often away from home, and the old man had no love of show or ostentation. He liked his gardens and hothouses to be well looked after, and everything around him to be cosy and comfortable, but beyond that he cared little. He kept one old-fashioned carriage in which he drove to and from the station on the occasions of his frequent journeys to town. An hour's ride by railway took him to Charing Cross, and after that it was but a short walk to one or another of the great auction-rooms where so large a portion of his leisure time was passed: for Mr. Denison was a great bibliophile and noted collector of curiosities. Nothing came amiss to him that was recommended by its rarity. From the skull of a Carib chief to an etching by Rembrandt, from an illuminated missal to a suppressed number of _La Lanterne_, or a bit of Roman pavement dug up in the City, his tastes were omnivorous enough for all. Nunham Priors itself was a very museum of curios. Some half-dozen or more of its rooms were entirely filled with a miscellaneous assortment of articles purchased by him from time to time at different auctions. Next to the acquisition of a bargain, Mr. Denison's greatest pleasure was in dusting his treasures and re-arranging them in different ways, or in displaying them and descanting on their rare qualities to some appreciative visitor.

"And what better way than this could I have found of investing my surplus income?" he would sometimes say to his son. "Nearly all you see I picked up as bargains, and in twenty years they will sell for a hundred per cent, more than I gave for them. No fear here of broken banks or shares at zero."

The breakfast this morning was the first meal father and son had partaken of together for some months. Mr. Frank had lingered unconscionably long away on his rovings, and the old gentleman was testy over it.

"I do wish, Frank, you would leave off gallivanting about the world," said he, as he cracked an egg. "It is high time you settled down. Why don't you marry?"

The words sent Frank into a laugh. There was not much likelihood of his marrying yet, he answered.

"Tush! you know what I mean," retorted the old gentleman. "You ought to be looking out for a wife. What do you suppose I was thinking the other day, Frank? that it might be a good thing if you and that young lady at Heron Dyke made a match of it. It would heal the family feud, and--and bring all the money on both sides into one bag."

Frank looked at his father in some surprise. "The young lady at Heron Dyke?" repeated he.

"Why, yes," said the old gentleman, testily. "That half-cousin of yours, Miss Ella Winter."

Frank shook his head. "My respected kinsman would not like to catch me prowling about his preserves at Heron Dyke."

"The young men nowadays are nothing better than a set of molly-coddles," grumbled Mr. Denison with a tinge of contempt. "When I was a young spark--but where's the use of talking?" he abruptly broke off; and Frank laughed again.

"I am not likely to forget it, father. It is the twenty-fourth of April: and Squire Denison of Heron Dyke is now seventy years old."

"I have reason to know that he was given up months ago by his medical attendant, and that he has never once crossed his own threshold since last December. I have reason to know, moreover, that there is something very inexplicable going on inside the Hall: and, remembering what sort of man my cousin Gilbert is, I feel sure that he would stick at nothing to keep me and mine out of the estate."

"Oh, I put Charles Plackett on the matter a couple of years ago; not but that he knew for himself what a wily fellow my cousin Gilbert was; and Plackett has been following the scent ever since. He has employed an agent at Nullington, one Nixon, to keep his eyes open on Heron Dyke; and Nixon has done it, so far as outside vigilance goes, for he cannot get inside; and has sent up his reports to Charles Plackett from time to time. Perhaps you'd like to hear what he says?"

Charles Plackett--of the firm of Plackett, Plackett and Rex--was the family solicitor. Mr. Denison had the breakfast things taken away, and then produced a case of papers.

"They date from a good while back," he observed; "but I will just read you two or three extracts from the past few months."

Frank rose and shut the door. And Mr. Denison, rubbing his spectacles, put them on, and began.

"'October 14th. Dr. Jago was suddenly sent for by the Squire, _vice_ Dr. Spreckley, superseded. As Dr. S. has been the Squire's medical attendant for twenty years, there must be some very special reason for so sudden a change.

"'October 22nd. Dr. Jago goes daily to the Hall. Have got an inkling at last of the reason of Dr. Spreckley's sudden dismissal. Dr. S. himself very cautious and reticent: does not say much about it to anybody. Dr. Jago, over his hot grog of an evening in the smoking-room of the Pied Bull, sometimes lets his tongue wag a bit. The man is naturally something of a braggart. From what I can make out, Dr. S. was incautious enough to tell the Squire that he could not live through the winter. Thereupon the other man was sent for. He calls S. an old woman, and says openly that the Squire will live till next midsummer, if not longer. Something rather queer about that, seeing that Dr. S. has had twenty times the experience that he has had.

"'October 29th. Mrs. Carlyon has been staying at the Hall for the last few days. She and Miss Winter left by rail yesterday morning with a lot of luggage. The servants report that they are going abroad for several months. This does not look as if the Squire felt himself to be in any immediate danger. If he did think so he would hardly let his niece leave him for so long. The neighbourhood, however, teems with silly reports--that the Hall is haunted by a ghost, and Miss Winter could not bear to stay in it during the dark days of winter.

"'November 8th. Met the Squire to-day as he was being driven out in his brougham. Had not seen him for two months. Could not help noticing the change in him since that time--a great change. He looks woefully ill and haggard; not fit to be out of his bed.

"'November 12th. Shalders the carpenter has been employed up at the Hall for the last few days. He told me all about it after a couple of glasses of toddy, in answer to my cautious questioning--not that he has been told to keep silence. He has been shutting in the Squire's rooms from the rest of the house with two baize-covered doors. No one can reach Mr. Denison now except through those doors. The doors in question can only be opened by a patent key, of which key Shalders has supplied four duplicates. Why should the Squire wish to isolate himself thus? Shalders is as much at a loss to guess the meaning of it as I am. They say at the Hall it is to insure quiet to the Squire: but he could be insured that without two protecting doors.

"'November 28th. A piece of good fortune to-day. I tracked a young woman, a discharged housemaid from the Hall, to the railway station, and had a long confab with her while she was waiting for a train. It seems that the Squire is really shut up behind the green baize doors--whether with or without his consent, who shall say?--and that only four persons are allowed to have access to him. They are, Dr. Jago, Aaron Stone and his grandson Hubert, and a certain Mrs. Dexter, a middle-aged nurse from London, hired by Dr. Jago, of whose presence there I confess that I was previously unaware. The doors are always kept locked--no other inmate of the Hall ever sees or hears anything of the Squire, unless it be on those rare occasions when he drives out for an hour. Very mysterious, to say the least of it. The girl had got that rubbish into her head about the house being haunted, and would have liked to talk of nothing else--and she looked disposed to be offended because I laughed at it.

"'December 19th. The Squire has only been outside the baize doors twice during the last month, and then only for half an hour's drive in the park.

"'January 1st. The Squire has never been seen outside the house since early in December.

"'January 7th. Dr. Jago goes up to the Hall every morning. He told a friend of mine the other day that Mr. Denison was no worse than usual, and that he was only kept indoors by the cold winds.

"'February 3rd. Nothing seen of the Squire since my last report, and yet we have had a fortnight of beautiful open weather for the time of year. Jago daily visits the Hall as usual. I've made acquaintance with one Hannah Tilney, the gardener's wife at the lodge. Creeping in there one fine morning, my hand to my side, I begged to be allowed to sit for five minutes, telling her a thumping story about a weak heart. She is a decent woman, but fond of gossip, as they all are, and she had a queer thing to talk of. She said that ever since early in December the shutters of Mr. Denison's sitting-room had been closed and barred at dusk, although it was a well-known fact that all his life the Squire hated to sit in a room of which the shutters were closed or the blinds pulled down. I do not see much in this myself: old people's fancies change: but the woman seemed to think it very strange, a matter for speculation, and said that she and her husband could not understand it at all. Speculation of what, you will ask, and in truth I can't say: but an air of mystery seems to overhang the doings in the Hall.

"'March 1st. No news of the Squire. He is pretty well, it is said, but he has not been seen out of doors since the 17th of December. Nothing fresh at all to report, except that I have ascertained that every week there passes through Nullington Post Office a letter from abroad addressed to Mr. Denison in a lady's handwriting. Is this letter from Miss Winter? If so, can she be aware how matters are going on at Heron Dyke?

"'April 8th. Nothing fresh. Jago daily at the Hall. The Squire still invisible to the outer world. No visitors have been admitted for a long while.'"

Mr. Denison, having come to the last extract he deemed it needful to read, shut up his case, and looked at his son.

"Like the agent Nixon, I must say that I do not see much in all this myself," observed Frank.

"Don't you!" retorted his father. "I do, then. To me it looks remarkably unaccountable. There is a mystery about it that I can't fathom, and Charles Plackett has my instructions to go down to Heron Dyke."

"To see my cousin Gilbert, and satisfy himself by ocular demonstration that he is still alive, and--and mentally sane. You look surprised, Frank; let me tell you what perhaps you never knew before--that there is a clause in old Uncle Gilbert's will which empowers me to take the step in question."

"A great deal that he did was curious. But, for my part, I think some prevision was upon him that such a clause might be needed. I tell you, Frank," concluded the old gentleman, "that I am strangely curious myself, just now, as to what may be doing at Heron Dyke."

On this warm and sunny morning of the twenty-fourth of April, the bells of Nullington parish church rang forth a merry peal. They continued to do so at intervals throughout the day. The Vicar of Nullington, who had given the orders, was rejoiced to think that his old friend, Squire Denison, had lived to reach, what might be called, the crowning day of his life.

Throughout the length and breadth of Nullington the stagnation of every-day life seemed stirred by a ripple of excitement. People came to their doors to listen to the bells, groups in earnest conversation might be seen at the corner of almost every street, neighbour looked in upon neighbour, customers lingered longer than usual in the shops, bar-parlours held their knots of eager gossipers. Not an inhabitant of the little town but knew that this was the twenty-fourth of April, and if the Master of Heron Dyke should live to hear the clocks strike noon, houses and land and all that pertained thereto would become his own irrevocable property, and the great battle of his life would end in his remaining the victor.

Mr. Denison was a man who had never laid himself out for personal popularity, and of late years he had been very little seen abroad. Still the neighbourhood felt that he was one of them. For forty years he had made his home at Heron Dyke, not spending half his time in London or in foreign countries, as so many other great people did, and they would have been sorry to see his place usurped by a strange branch of the family of whom nobody knew anything, except that the head of it was said to be a half-demented gentleman who had much more of the furniture broker about him than the county magnate. Should Squire Denison live through to-day, all he might die possessed of would go to his niece Miss Winter, a young lady beloved by all, rich and poor, and one quite worthy to be the Hall's mistress.

There was one inhabitant of Nullington, however, who did not feel quite so elated as the rest. He was too much puzzled for that. It was Dr. Spreckley. He stood at his window in the morning sun, listening to the cheery bells. Mr. Denison had lived to see his coveted birthday, and the bells were ringing for it; but Dr. Spreckley felt as if he were in a fog, and should never distinguish anything clearly in medical practice again. Knowing Mr. Denison's constitution so thoroughly, and the malady he had been long suffering from, he did not see how it was _possible_ for him to be still alive.

Night and day of late had the good physician brooded over the mystery. For to him it seemed a mystery; but a mystery beyond his comprehension. So far as his own skill and experience went, and that of eminent authorities in London to whom he wrote minutely of the case, it had seemed to him not only improbable but impossible that Gilbert Denison could have lasted to see Christmas. Yet here he was alive, and, as reported from Heron Dyke, fairly well, on the twenty-fourth of April!

Dr. Spreckley was yet at his window when his successful rival practitioner, Dr. Jago, came driving past in his gig, a high-stepping mare in the shafts, which he had recently bought. He was on his way to Heron Dyke, and he was going this morning half an hour earlier than usual. In honour of the occasion, he had dressed himself in a new suit of black, with a white cravat and a fashionable overcoat. He glanced up at the window as he passed, and Dr. Spreckley felt sure that there was a smile of insolent triumph on his face which he now did not conceal. As Spreckley turned away, his heart was very bitter within him.

The Heron Dyke post-bag this morning bore a letter addressed to the Squire, dated from Florence. Ella Winter had written and posted it so that it should reach him on the twenty-fourth. After numerous congratulations and loving wishes came these words: "I cannot tell you how greatly I have longed to be at home for your birthday. But it was not to be. Now, however, that my six months' extradition are at an end, cannot you name a time for my return to Heron Dyke? We have been slowly making our way homeward, as you are aware, lingering here and there, and continually hoping to receive a summons that we were wanted back in the old nest at home. But even my aunt has grown tired at last of these perpetual journeyings from place to place, and at the present moment would, I verily believe, gladly exchange all the churches and picture galleries of Florence for the dear delights of an afternoon's shopping in Regent Street; and to her house in Bayswater we are returning. Do then, my dear uncle, in your next letter, name the day when you will expect to see me once again under the old roof-tree; and be assured that neither wind nor weather will keep me from your side an hour beyond it."

An answer to this letter was sent from Heron Dyke the following day, which reached Miss Winter in due course.

It has been said that Mr. Denison's letters to Ella were written for him by Hubert Stone from Mr. Denison's dictation, but each of them bore at the foot the Squire's own peculiar and crabbed signature, which anyone would have found it difficult even passably to imitate, and the present letter was no exception to this rule. In it occurred these passages: "I begin to be as anxious to see your young face again as you are to be back at home. But, as I have said all along--patience, patience. Enjoy yourself while you can, and, now that you _are_ abroad, see all that you can. Strive to enrich your mind in every possible way, and to lay up stores of pleasant memories for days to come. You will not soon get away again from the sound of the sea when once you are back, I promise you. I am as well and hearty as I was two years ago, so that you need not be troubled on the score of my health. That Jago is a wonderful fellow. A fortnight with your aunt at Bayswater would be a pleasant finish to your travels; it would please Mrs. Carlyon to have you with her for a time, and we must not be ungracious to her, lassie. Let us put it, then, that I shall look to see my pretty one back at Heron Dyke on the first of June, not to part again for a long, long time."

Hubert Stone had also donned a new suit of gentlemanly attire this morning, and even old Aaron wore his best clothes and a particularly well-starched cravat. The Squire's long-wished-for birthday must be observed appropriately. The maids were gladdened by new gowns and muslin aprons trimmed with ribbons, Dorothy Stone by a cap of rich old lace. Dorothy, however, did not seem to find much pleasure in the day; she sat by the fire in her room, complaining of neuralgia, with a frightened expression of face, and a dazed look in her eyes.

The grand old entrance-doors were flung open to-day. A cheerful fire burnt in the hall, where no fire had been known to burn for years. A Turkey carpet covered the middle of the floor, on which stood a carved table of black oak: on the table was an antique silver salver for the reception of callers' cards. Tubs containing orange-trees and shrubs from the conservatory stood in each corner of the hall.

Nothing, however, could put Aaron into a good temper when he chose to be in a bad one. He wandered about like a restless ghost, peering into this place and that, scolding the maids, grumbling at his nephew, and eyeing Dr. Jago askance as though he were some malign wizard.

Shortly after noon the carriage of the first caller drove up--that of the Vicar, the Reverend Francis Kettle. His daughter would have been with him but that she was from home. He was received in the hall by Dr. Jago and Hubert Stone. A few words passed, and then Mr. Kettle expressed his strong desire to see once more, once more to shake by the hand, his dear old friend the Squire. Dr. Jago was blandly sorry, but refused. The fact was, he said, that the Squire had passed a very restless and uneasy night, having hardly slept at all. An hour ago he had fallen into a refreshing sleep, which it was to be hoped would last for several hours, and be of great benefit to him. Still, if the Vicar pressed it, Mr. Denison should be awakened, and----

"Not for worlds," interrupted the Vicar, hastily. "I would not have him awakened on any account. You will not fail to offer him my congratulations, and to say how greatly I hope to see him. Perhaps another day he may be able to receive a short visit from an old friend."

"No doubt he will be," returned Dr. Jago, quite warmly. "He had been saving himself up for to-day, you must understand, sir, intending to see just one or two esteemed friends; and--and now this wretched past night has marred it."

Other carriages drove up in quick succession after the Vicar's departure, till nearly every person of consideration in the neighbourhood had either called or left cards. To all inquiries the same reply was given: Mr. Denison had hoped to receive a friend or two to-day, but he had passed a restless and uneasy night, and had lately fallen into a deep and refreshing sleep, which it would be undesirable to disturb.

One caller, especially full of regret at not being able to see the Squire, was Lady Maria Skeffington. Maria Kettle was her goddaughter, and had been named after her. She was a withered-up maiden of sixty-five. Lady Maria gazed round the entrance-hall with a sigh, and recalled the time when she had felt so sure that she should one day be mistress of Heron Dyke. Some forty years previously Mr. Denison had danced with her several times at the county balls, and had paid her other little attentions when they met; and she, following the fashion of young maidens, had taken it for granted that he meant to ask her to be his wife. But the longed-for declaration never came, and hope gradually died out of her heart. Still, as Lady Maria often told herself, she had never been so near matrimony before or after, and she yet cherished a half-tender recollection of the handsome young Squire. They had remained good friends: and to-day, a white-haired old woman, Lady Maria felt an intense longing in her heart to see him once again before he should go hence. When told that it might not be, she dropped her veil and went back to her carriage, crying softly to herself.

About five o'clock a message reached the Hall from Mr. Toomes, the leader of the Nullington string band. Mr. Toomes wished to know whether the band might be permitted to pay their respects to the Squire on his birthday, by playing a few select pieces at the Hall during the evening.

Old Aaron took the message into the Squire's room with an ill grace; he would have liked to refuse had he dared; and he came back in a few minutes with the Squire's gracious answer--he would be very much pleased to receive the band at half-past eight.

The band came at the appointed hour: two violins, a violoncello, a harp, and a couple of clarinets, the musicians being all small tradesmen of the town. They were met at the postern which opened into the private garden by Hubert Stone, who now wore a fashionable overcoat, and was smoking a cigar. Hubert marshalled the players on to the sward directly opposite to, but a few yards away from, the windows of Mr. Denison's sitting-room. The Squire was but weak, he said, and it was desirable not to have the sounds too near. John Tilney, the gardener, and his wife crept in behind the musicians, and stood a little in the background. Had Mr. Hubert Stone noticed the movement, he might have ordered them away, for he had a great notion of keeping servants in their places.

The shutters of Mr. Denison's sitting-room had not been closed this evening. A bright wood-fire was burning on the hearth, and two lighted wax candles stood on a table in the middle of the room. The tall gaunt figure of the Squire as he sat in his great leathern chair, muffled up in his long dressing-robe, was plainly visible to the group on the lawn. His head looked partially shrunken between his shoulders as he sat leaning forward a little, staring intently into the fire, his bony hands clasped over the knob of the massive cane which for a long time past he had made use of to help him from room to room. The firelight flickered on the diamonds in his ring; it made the hollows of his wasted cheeks seem deeper still, and brought into prominent relief the contrast between his black velvet skull-cap and the long white locks which straggled from under it. He sat there, the solitary living figure in a picture that otherwise was instinct with gloom, and that was not wanting in a sort of weird solemnity of its own.

At a signal from their leader, the band struck up the old English air, "Welcome to thy Native Vale." As the first note struck his ear, the Squire lifted his head quickly, changed the position of his stick, and put on the air of a man who listens intently.

The first piece at an end, there ensued a minute's pause, and then the band struck up again. This in turn was followed by two other pieces. When the last strains of the fourth air had died away, the Squire was seen to rise slowly and painfully to his feet. With the help of his cane, and drawing the folds of his dressing-gown around him, he tottered feebly forward till he came near the window. Standing there, and changing his cane to the left hand, he gravely bent his head to the (to him) invisible onlookers in the garden, and waved his right hand two or three times in token of thanks and greeting. Turning then, he tottered back to his chair.

Three hearty cheers were raised for the old Squire; and the musicians filed out of the private garden, Hubert locking the door of it. A plentiful meal was set out for them in the smaller servants' hall, to which they did not fail to do ample justice.

Old Aaron, grumpy as usual, did not choose to preside at it, though his grandson had told him in the hearing of the household, earlier in the evening, that it was what he ought to do. Barely did he condescend to show himself at all, for this visit of the musicians had not met with his approval. He came stalking through the room while they were at supper, looking at them in his surly way, and muttering to himself about "ruin" and "extravagance," and "dying in the workhouse." But the ale was strong, and the company did not mind. They knew old Aaron before, and they burst into a laugh as he shut the door behind him.

CHAPTER V.

MR. CHARLES PLACKETT CALLS UPON THE SQUIRE.

By the afternoon post on the twenty-fifth of April, a letter was delivered at Heron Dyke for Mr. Denison. It was written by the firm of Plackett, Plackett and Rex; and it informed the Squire in courteous terms--that is, in as courteous terms as lawyers can bring themselves to use--that, in accordance with the wishes of their esteemed client, Mr. Denison of Nunham Priors, Mr. Charles Plackett would present himself at the Hall at eleven o'clock on the morning of the twenty-sixth instant, with the view to satisfying himself (as a mere matter of form) that the Master of Heron Dyke had lived over his seventieth birthday. If it were not convenient to Mr. Denison of Heron Dyke to give a personal interview to Mr. Plackett at that hour, he would be good enough to name a later hour in the same day. The letter said nothing of that clause in the will of the late Gilbert Denison which gave the younger cousin power to command such an interview, for of that clause Squire Denison must himself be perfectly aware.

Whether this letter put out the Squire, or not, did not appear; but it very considerably put out Aaron Stone. Aaron had not recovered his temper of the day before; the congratulatory visits to his master had annoyed him, more especially that one crowning visit of the musicians in the evening. The intimation of this additional visit from the London lawyer pretty nearly wound up Aaron.

Hubert, who opened all letters in the Squire's room, came forth presently, letter in hand, leaving Dr. Jago behind him. That astute physician, while never omitting his daily visit to Heron Dyke, made it at uncertain hours, earlier or later, according to his own convenience. Old Aaron and his wife were seated at tea in their parlour; one of the maids, Eliza, having been called in to make a fresh piece of toast. She knelt before the fire with the small toasting-fork.

"The Squire says you may read this," said Hubert, entering, and putting the letter in his grandfather's hands. "The people must be received, of course."

Aaron shuffled on his spectacles, and went to the window for the better light, holding the letter close to the panes. When he had mastered the contents, he burst into a perfect storm of fury. Mrs. Stone started in her chair; Eliza looked round; Hubert only laughed.

"A set of spies and sneaks!" he called out, bringing down his hand upon the table with such emphasis that the cups and saucers rattled. "They shall never set their prying feet inside this house; I'll bar the door first, I can tell 'em that. Lawyers indeed! No, no."

"Now, grandfather, why do you go on at this foolish rate?" remonstrated Hubert. "The lawyers will not damage you. Anyway, the Squire means to see them--he has no choice."

"No, none. And if you'll go to his room presently, maybe he will tell you why. Why should he not see them--if he is well enough?" added Hubert.

Hubert laughed again; these violent outbreaks of temper afforded him only amusement. Aaron sat down, his hands trembling, to finish his tea. Eliza had the slice of toast on the table then, and was buttering it.

"Look here, grandfather," said Hubert. "The Squire chooses to admit this lawyer from London, and you cannot set up your will against his; but if you have so great an objection to the visit, why not be away while it takes place. For this week past you have been talking of going into Nullington to buy some hay and clover; go in to-morrow morning and buy it then."

Aaron, who had a great notion of keeping his grandson in order, stared wrathfully at this.

"And who is going to listen to the advice of a young jackanapes like you?" he demanded--which caused Eliza, still buttering the toast, to hide a laugh. "The world's coming to a pretty pass, young man, when such as you must command your elders and betters!"

"Nay, I don't seek to command; you'd not let me if I did," returned Hubert. "And if I advise, it is only for the general tranquillity. The Squire intends to receive these lawyers--I dare say there will be two of them--and it won't do for you to make a disturbance when they come. You seem to forget how weak and ill the master is; how often Jago has told you that freedom from worry is his best chance. Therefore I say, go off to Nullington after breakfast, grandfather, and let the visit take place in your absence."

"It's a shame!" he burst forth again; "a cruel shame. Here's all the work of the birthday got over, and now this bother springs up! Hasn't the master got to be kept quiet, I'd ask you? Who can answer for it that this interview with a pack of rascally lawyers won't--won't----"

"Do him harm, you were about to say," put in Hubert quickly, at the sudden stoppage. "Well, we can guard against that. Jago must, of course, be present to take care of his pulse. You go off in the morning to Nullington, and leave the house to peace and quietness," concluded Hubert, as he took up the letter, and turned to quit the room.

"Be you not going to sit down and have your tea, Hubert dear?" called out the old lady, who had not dared to interfere before.

"What are you laughing at?" asked the Doctor, noting the more than smile on the young man's lips.

"At old granddad. You never saw him in such a tantrum. Left to himself, he'd be for pitching water on the head of this lawyer when he comes to the door; ay, and upon my word, I'm not sure but he would do even more than that. Finely he went on, to the edification of one of the house-wenches. I advised him to betake himself to Nullington in the morning to buy his corn and clover."

Apparently Aaron saw the expediency of taking his grandson's advice, for in the morning he made himself ready for the visit to Nullington. Hubert chanced to pass through the kitchen when the old man was having his gaiters buttoned by Phemie, Eliza standing by.

"What do I want with the dog-cart?" contended the old man, in an irate tone. "Do you think I've not got strength enough left in me to walk into Nullington?--There, there, girl, that will do," he added, "giving a stamp or two to his umbrella, as Phemie came to the last button.

"As you please," said Hubert, who never allowed himself to be put out of temper by the old man. "And if you chance to call at the saddler's, tell him I find the new stirrups a great success."

His umbrella in one hand, his thick walking-stick in the other, Aaron set out. Hubert put on his hat, and walked with him through the shrubbery at the back of the house. The clocks were striking ten. The clouds were gathering, as if for rain.

At eleven o'clock Charles Plackett and his managing clerk, Mr. Foxey, drove up to Heron Dyke, and stopped at the main entrance. They were admitted by one of the housemaids, and found Hubert Stone waiting to receive them. Mr. Charles Plackett was a short rubicund man of fifty-five, with a quick eye, a ready smile, and a chirruping voice. He had far more the look of a gentleman-farmer than of a busy London lawyer. Young Mr. Foxey was a placid-faced individual in spectacles and a suit of unimpeachable black.

"Yes, I am Charles Plackett; and this is my managing clerk, Mr. Foxey. I have the pleasure of speaking to----"

"My name is Hubert Stone. I am Mr. Denison's secretary, and have the general control of all his business affairs."

"I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Stone. I presume you are aware of the purport of my visit--the cause which brings me here?"

"I am perfectly aware of it," replied Hubert. "Mr. Denison has no secrets from me."

"None whatever. He is quite ready to receive you. But before going to his room, it would be as well if you exchanged a few words with his medical attendant, who is waiting to see you."

"As you please about that," responded Charles Plackett. "My interview with Mr. Denison need not necessarily last more than a very few minutes."

Chairs were placed for the visitors in the large drawing-room, and they sat down. Hubert touched a hand-bell, and Dr. Jago entered. As Hubert introduced him, he drew up a chair by the side of the lawyer.

"I am sorry to say that my patient is in a very low way this morning," began the Doctor. "I must therefore press most earnestly upon you the necessity of making your visit as brief a one as possible."

"I have already remarked that I shall only require to see Mr. Denison for a few minutes," replied Mr. Plackett, stiffly. There was something about this little black-bearded, foreign-looking doctor which impressed him unfavourably.

"You will pardon me for intimating that I only speak in the interests of my patient," responded Jago, in his blandest accents. "Anything that excites Mr. Denison is a source of danger to him in his present condition. He is, and has been for some time now, so very weak, that his lasting so long has somewhat surprised his friends; and he is so very----"

"Very much surprised them indeed, I fancy," interrupted the lawyer: and Dr. Jago took a glance at him with his keen eyes.

"And so very self-willed, I was about to add," went on the Doctor, with a smile. "It is a difficult matter to manage him at times."

"If Squire Denison is ready to receive us, sir, it seems to me that the sooner we get the interview over, the better."

"I am quite of your opinion, sir," returned the Doctor, his tones as bland as the lawyer's were curt. "Mr. Denison is quite ready and waiting. I believe you have met Mr. Denison before?" added Dr. Jago, as they were quitting the room.

"We have met twice," responded Mr. Charles Plackett. "It was in London, about five or six years ago."

"So long ago as that!" exclaimed Hubert Stone. "Dear me! You will find him greatly altered, sir."

"I expect that. But I should know him, however much he may be changed," pursued the lawyer. "Is Mr. Denison able to sit up?"

The Squire's bedroom was next to his sitting-room. As they passed through the green baize doors, both thrown wide open to-day, Charles Plackett noticed them.

"Pardon me. Visitors are pretty frequent, and it annoys the Squire to hear them when he cannot receive them. His ears are quick."

Dr. Jago halted at the bedroom door as he spoke. "Wait just an instant," he whispered; "I'll go in and see that he has not dropped asleep."

So they waited outside, the two visitors and Hubert. "It is quite right," said Dr. Jago, reappearing. "He is awake and ready to see you."

Opening wide the door he stepped back; Mr. Plackett and his clerk entered. Hubert went in last and closed the door gently.

The weather this morning was heavy and overcast--very different from the bright morning of the twenty-fourth--and what light might otherwise have found its way into the room was still further toned down by the heavy curtains which festooned the two windows, and by the blinds which were drawn only half-way up. Still there was ample light to see the heavy, old-fashioned, four-post bedstead, and the haggard-faced man that lay upon it, supported by some half-dozen pillows. His grey duffel dressing-robe was thrown loosely over his shoulders, his black velvet skull cap was on his head, and his long grey locks, as they straggled from under it, looked as if they needed some woman's hand to comb them gently out. His cane lay on the coverlet within reach, so as to enable him to strike a small gong with it, which stood close by, when he wanted to summon his nurse from the next room. Finally, his cat's-eye ring gleamed on the second finger of his left hand, as it had gleamed there for forty years. In the grate a small fire was burning, while on a table close to the bed stood bottles containing medicines and cordials of various kinds.

Mr. Charles Plackett walked up to the foot of the bed, and took a long steady gaze at the sick man.--"Good-morning, Mr. Denison," he said. "I suppose you know the object that has brought me here to-day?"

"Aye, I know, I know," said the Squire wearily, in a low voice that had lost something of its harsh strident tones, and had acquired instead the hollowness that comes with protracted illness. "And now that you have seen me, much good may the sight do you!" he added, with a touch of his old grim irony. "Not that I intend any discourtesy to you, sir, so much as to them that have sent you."

Mr. Plackett was not usually at a loss for words, but he evidently felt the awkwardness of his position this morning. He coughed softly behind his hand, and looked round at Dr. Jago, who responded by drawing up a couple of chairs and motioning the visitors into them.

"I had the pleasure of meeting you once or twice in London some years ago, Mr. Denison," spoke the lawyer, by way of a lame beginning.

"It may have been a pleasure to you, though I doubt it," retorted the Squire. "I can't say that it was much of a pleasure to me, knowing whom you represented. Come, now."

Mr. Plackett gave vent to a dry little chuckle. It was a way he had in business when anything particularly disagreeable had been said to him. "Well, well, it is perhaps the wisest plan to let bygones be bygones," he said, "though, if I remember rightly, you had the better of me at those interviews.--Your cousin, Mr. Denison, of Nunham Priors----"

"Titly-tutly, man alive!" broke in the Squire. "If you came here to talk to me about that viper--I say that viper, d'ye hear?--the sooner you pack yourself off the better.--You have seen me, and you have talked with me--what more do you want?"

The sick man, with his white face and gleaming eyes, looked so fierce, and his tone was one of such extreme exasperation, that Mr. Foxey involuntarily pushed back his chair in momentary alarm.

"Believe me, Squire, I had no intention of starting a topic that would be in the slightest degree offensive to you," said Mr. Plackett, in his most conciliatory tone.

The sick man turned away impatiently, and pointed to a cup on the table that contained beef-tea.--Jago stepped forward and put the cup into his fingers. He lifted it to his lips, tasted a little of the tea, and next moment dashed the cup and its contents violently into the grate. "Cold--cold!" he cried with savage energy. "You are all alike," staring at Jago. "You are all in a league to hurry me into the churchyard!" And with that he sank back exhausted on his pillows, and began to catch his breath in quick gasps.

Mr. Foxey was so startled that his spectacles fell to the ground. Charles Plackett rose and pushed back his chair: he, too, was alarmed. Jago, taken aback like the rest, as might be seen from his countenance, motioned the visitors from the room. "Indeed, indeed, I won't answer for the consequences if you stay," he earnestly whispered. Hubert Stone was holding the door open.

Hubert reconducted them to the drawing-room, and ordered in biscuits and sherry, which Eliza brought. Presently Dr. Jago joined them.

"He is coming round again," said the Doctor. "All his life, as I hear, Squire Denison has been subject to these little gusts of temper: but----"

The Doctor smiled faintly. "They are what we are most afraid of, I was about to say; and they are fearfully exhausting to him in his present condition."

"Rather an uncomfortable kind of man to live with," said Mr. Plackett, with a shrug.

"He certainly is a little trying at times," assented Hubert, with an emphatic nod. "But then, we are used to him."

"I suppose the Squire's niece, Miss Winter, looks carefully after his comforts?" observed the lawyer.

"Miss Winter is on the Continent: she has not been at home since last October," answered Hubert, with a brighter sparkle in his dark eyes.

"Indeed!" returned Mr. Plackett, in as surprised a tone as though it were news to him. "Rather strange, is it not, that Miss Winter should stay away from him--in his present precarious condition?"

"The Squire appeared to be well when Miss Winter left England; and--and he will not have her recalled. I believe she is expected shortly."

"I dare say she would," interposed Dr. Jago; "but we think--_I_ think--she is just as well away. It is so very essential to keep him free from excitement. We have a most excellent nurse--and he has every possible care and attention. That I can assure you."

"Oh, I don't doubt that," returned the lawyer, as he put down his glass, and rose to depart with his clerk. The Doctor wished them good-morning there; Hubert Stone attended them to the outer door, and saw them drive away.

"There's something about that Dr. Jago which I don't like," remarked Mr. Plackett to his companion as they bowled along through the park. "I've been used to studying character for a number of years, and that fellow seems to me to be double-faced. Did you notice what a dark, sinister smile he had?--nothing English or open about it." And Mr. Foxey assented, for he had not at all relished the events of the visit.

"Fine property this, and no mistake," continued the lawyer, glancing from side to side as he drove along rapidly. "I was in hopes that _our_ Mr. Denison would have succeeded to it. A good thing that he is a philosopher: he don't mind it much."

"With our client's income I think that even I could afford to be a philosopher," said the clerk, drily.

"Aye, but there's an old proverb: 'Much would have more.' However, our side has lost the day, and it's no use crying over spilt milk. I cannot understand how it is that Miss Winter can be away at a time like this," he went on after a pause. "In fact, coupling what I've seen and heard to-day with that fellow Nixon's reports, I may go so far as to observe that there's something about the whole business which puzzles me, and which I don't half like."

"But you have nothing tangible on which to ground your suspicions, have you, sir?"

"No, that's the dickens of it!" acknowledged Mr. Charles Plackett. "It is something tangible that I want. At present I am fighting with shadows."

Aaron Stone appeared to have recovered his temper in Nullington, for when he got back, in the course of the afternoon, he was in quite a blithe humour. Marching straight into the large kitchen, with his stick and umbrella, he called the two maids about him to unbutton his gaiters, and both stooped down to the task.

"I saw them scoundrels o' lawyers a-driving through the town in their gig!" he cried, though he rarely condescended to address the girls, unless it was to scold. "Two of 'em sat in it. Nice rascals they looked--and a fine pace they went at!"

Encouraged by this affability, Phemie responded in kind--telling him that the Squire had gone into such a passion while talking to the lawyers as to dash his beef-tea into the grate, cup and all--Hubert having mentioned this little episode to the gardener in the hearing of the servants; and the news so tickled old Aaron that he chuckled for half an hour.

"I'd ha' done it myself--I'd ha' done it myself," he reiterated. "The Squire has got some proper spirit left in him yet."

CHAPTER VI.

SUDDEN TIDINGS.

Mrs. Carlyon and Miss Winter reached Paris, on their way home, on the 18th of May. There was no especial need for them to hurry. They had received a letter from Mr. Denison--written, as usual, by Hubert Stone, but signed with the Squire's inimitable autograph--a few days previously, in which the 1st of June was named as the date when Ella would be looked for at Heron Dyke; and it was further intimated that the Squire would like to see Mrs. Carlyon at the same time. Under these circumstances, Mrs. Carlyon decided that a week could not be more pleasantly spent than in Paris, after which they could still afford two or three days in London before going down to Norfolk.

On the morning of the 20th the ladies went out shopping, and when they got back to their hotel, Ella found a telegram awaiting her. It was from Hubert Stone:

"I deeply regret to inform you that Mr. Denison died very suddenly last evening, about midnight. Please telegraph back any arrangements you may wish to have carried out; also say when you may be expected at the Hall."

To Ella the shock was sudden and terrible. Having lost both father and mother when she was very young, all the affection of her heart, which would have been theirs, had they lived, was lavished on her uncle. It was as though she had been orphaned at one blow. Her anguish was made more bitter by the fact of her not having been with her uncle at the last. Why had he sent her away when he was so ill? Why had he so persistently refused to allow her to return earlier? And now she should never see him more!

Mrs. Carlyon took all needful travelling and business arrangements on herself, and left Ella to nurse her grief undisturbed. They found themselves in London within twenty-four hours of the receipt of the telegram. Here they were compelled to stay all night, and after ordering their mourning, they started next day for Norfolk--leaving Higson behind, who had latterly been far from well. "A little rest will do her good," said Mrs. Carlyon. The close carriage, attended by Hubert Stone, met them at the station on their arrival, and they were at once driven to the Hall.

A short while given to her natural grief and emotion, and Ella summoned Aaron Stone to her presence in one of the smaller sitting-rooms. The blinds were down; the room looked dark and dreary.

Aaron came in, creeping and trembling, his head down. He was a crusty man, but faithful, and his master had been very dear to him. Ella felt for his grief. She advanced a few steps impulsively, and took one of his rugged hands into her soft palms.

"Oh, Aaron, old friend--you were his friend, and you are my friend--if you could have sent me word!" she sobbed. "If I could but have seen him once more before he was lost to me for ever!"

"There was no time to do anything--there wasn't really, Miss Ella," whispered the old man, his gnarled features working convulsively. "Nobody knew, nobody thought, what was going to happen, all suddenly, in the night."

"Sit down, Aaron," drawing a chair near her, "and tell me all that there is to be told. Oh for one look from his kind eyes!--for one word from those lips that will never speak to me again!"

It was an easy-chair she had given to Aaron; he sat in it, gazing at the fire, his chin resting on his hand. The weather was very chilly still, though June was near; and the large old Hall never seemed hot even in the sultry days of summer.

"It seems to me very strange, Aaron," began Ella, for the old man did not attempt to speak, "that there should be no signs observable, no apparent intimations that Uncle Gilbert was so near his end. What has the Doctor--Jago--to say about it?"

"I never saw a man more dumbfounded than Dr. Jago was," replied Aaron. "Says he, looking down at the poor Squire, 'I made sure that he would last for months yet'--maybe, you see, Miss Ella, he thought his treatment had put a new lease of life into him."

The old man glanced suspiciously up for a moment, and then dropped his eyes again, "As if I could tell what it was in particular, Miss Ella! I'm no doctor. Jago can tell--if he will. It seemed to do the master good; to put a deal of strength into him."

"That he did. No medical man could be more attentive than he has been. He never once missed a day, week-days or Sundays."

"Ay. He was here that day at mid-day, ma'am; and the Squire died at midnight in the evening."

"None at all; none. I met him as he came out of the room that very morning. 'And how do we find ourselves to-day, Doctor?' says I. 'Pretty much as usual,' says he. 'If anything, a bit brighter and more lively. He's doing very nicely, indeed, only you must not encourage him to talk too much; mind that. He is just as fond of a bit of gossip as ever he was.' With that, Dr. Jago bids me good-morning, and goes off, whistling softly to himself. No, no," muttered the old man, "he saw no signs of danger."

"It means that, I take it. Paralysis of the heart, Miss Ella. Hubert said syncope--but he is not a doctor. There was no suffering; none. He went off as quietly as one sinks to sleep."

"I can't help wishing that my uncle had never sent for Dr. Jago," mused Ella. "I had far more confidence in Dr. Spreckley, who had studied his constitution for years."

"The Squire used to say," cried Aaron, "that he should never have been alive so long, if it hadn't been for Dr. Jago."

"It may be so. Who now can tell? But I was deeply grieved when Dr. Spreckley ceased to attend him. I thought--some instinct seemed to warn me--that it might not be for the best."

Aaron made no reply, and they sat a little while in silence. Then Ella spoke--in a softer tone.

"Did Uncle Gilbert often talk about me, Aaron? Did I seem to be much in his thoughts?"

"I don't think a day ever passed but what he mentioned you, Miss Ella," warmly replied the old man. "When he used to sit in his easy-chair, staring hard into the fire, I've said to myself many a time, 'He's thinking of one that is far away.'"

"Oh! that he had but sent for me!--How was it, Aaron, that he did not let me come home in time for his birthday? Could not _you_ have suggested to him that I ought to be here?"

The old man coughed uneasily. "I did speak to him about it, Miss Ella. I told him that you would be fretting your heart out at being so long away. But there! you know the kind of man he was--taking his own will and listening to nobody."

"It has seemed to me at times as though--as though you were all in a conspiracy to keep me away," returned Ella, dreamily. "I have said so to Mrs. Carlyon."

"You--and Dr. Jago--and your nephew," replied Ella, fearlessly. "I was sent away by my uncle for the winter--for the dark days. They have long been over, yet still I was not allowed to return. Aaron, I cannot understand it."

"Maybe he wanted to grow still better before you saw him," cried the old man, shuffling in his chair. "He was always headstrong; you know that, Miss Ella; he wouldn't be driven by living creature. If one tried to make him turn one way, he'd turn the other. No chance, Miss Ella, if he didn't want you to come home, that we could make him send for you."

"I did," answered the old man promptly. "He had been as cheerful as could be all day; less mopy than usual. At six o'clock he said he'd go to bed, feeling tired; and did go. At nine o'clock I took in his beef-tea, and stood by while he drank it; after that, I made up the fire. Then he talked with me for ten minutes or so about one thing and another. He hoped we were going to have a fine hot summer: hot weather always suited him best. Then he said that his lassie--meaning you, Miss Ella--would be on her way home by this time, and how glad he should be to see your bonnie face again. Next, he said that he had been thinking of having the garden done up, and should get some pretty furniture from London put in your rooms, and that he would have more company at the Hall, and try to make the old place a bit more cheerful for you."

"As if I was not always the happiest when he and I were by ourselves!" said Ella, hardly able to speak for her tears.

"Then I gave him a glass of port wine," resumed Aaron--"you won't have forgotten that he liked a glass the last thing at bedtime--and he took it up to the last. After that, I lighted the one wax candle that he always kept burning all night. He would have the candle put so that as he laid in bed he could see the likeness of that beautiful young lady, which has hung over his bedroom chimney-piece as long as I can remember: who she was, he never told me. Then he held out his hand to me, as he always did at night of late--except maybe at any odd time when he was a bit put out. 'Goodnight, old friend,' he said; 'I shan't want anything more till morning.' They were the last words anyone heard him speak."

"I had just got out of the room, and was shutting the door behind me," continued Aaron, "when I thought I heard a queer sort of noise. I couldn't make out whether it was a groan or a cry, or what it was. However, I went back into the room. The Squire seemed lying just as I had left him, but he didn't speak. Not feeling satisfied, I took up the candle and looked at his face. There I saw something that made my heart quake as it had never quaked before. I called Hubert; and five minutes later his horse was in the dog-cart, and he was off to fetch the Doctor. It wasn't long before Dr. Jago was here, but the moment he clapped eyes on the Squire he saw there was no hope. My poor dear master couldn't speak, but we seemed to see in his eyes that he knew us. By-and-by he appeared to go to sleep. We could only watch by his bedside: and he died just as the clocks were striking twelve."

"There was one queer thing, Miss Ella, that happened that same night," resumed the old man, in a lowered voice. "We got to bed between two and three o'clock. I was the last to leave the room, locking the door behind me. I was the first person to enter the room in the morning; and--what do you think I found there?"

"I found the picture of that beautiful young lady lying face downwards upon the hearth. The nail that had held it for so many years had given way in the night, and there it lay. I have not hung it up again. You, Miss Ella, can do as you like about that. What I say to myself at odd times is this--Why should it fall down the very night the master died?"

Ella Winter felt that she could hear no more just now, and rose from her seat. "I want to see him, Aaron; I will go now. You go on first and bring me word whether anyone is in the room."

"You want to see him!" repeated Aaron, faintly and timidly, as a strangely troubled look took possession of his eyes.

"Yes, of course I do. I will go in now. If my sad eyes could not look upon his face living, they----"

"Oh! my dear Miss Ella," interrupted the old man, "no one's eyes will ever rest on his face again."

Ella stared at him. "What do you mean?" she asked, in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper.

"Oh! cannot you guess? They brought his last coffin yesterday, and--and--I needn't tell you the rest."

"No--no--it cannot be!" cried Ella. "He died on Monday night, and this is only Thursday. By whose orders was this cruel thing done?"

"He said it was better so: he said it must be so. Indeed, it was obliged to be."

Ella sank back on a sofa, and hid her face behind her hands. It seemed to her that she was baffled at all points. And Aaron took the opportunity to steal noiselessly from the room, as if he had been doing something wrong in it, muttering as he went:

The funeral was fixed for the following Monday, Hubert Stone making all the arrangements, under the directions of Mrs. Carlyon, who wished to spare Ella as much as possible. Mrs. Carlyon was greatly taken with Hubert, of whom she had not seen much on her previous visits to Heron Dyke. "What an extremely handsome young man he is," she remarked to herself more than once. "So gentlemanly, too, in manners and appearance. Who would ever take him to be the grandson of a servant?"

Hubert's manner towards Mrs. Carlyon was full of deference, which was far from being disagreeable to that lady. But what in Hubert was put down to respectful sympathy might, in the case of a more commonplace and less good-looking man, have been looked upon as an impertinence from one in his position. Clever woman of the world though Mrs. Carlyon was, she had not the slightest suspicion of the flame that was scorching the heart of Hubert Stone, and making his days and nights at once a delight and a torment to him.

One of Ella's first inquiries on reaching the Hall was, by whose wish and for what purpose the green-baize doors had been put up which shut in her uncle's rooms from the rest of the house. It was to Hubert the question was put. All he could tell her was that the doors had been put up by the Squire's own express desire; merely to satisfy some whim he had taken on the score of being kept quiet. Ella, who knew how odd and whimsical her uncle had been in many ways, accepted the explanation.

Was it due to an oversight, or because the circumstance was not deemed worth mentioning, that Miss Winter and her aunt were not made aware of the presence of any nurse in the house during the last few months of Mr. Denison's illness? The name of Nurse Dexter was certainly never mentioned to them, nor was Ella yet aware of the existence of any such person. Within a dozen hours of the Squire's demise, Mrs. Dexter had packed up her trunks and was gone. She could be of no further use at the Hall, she remarked to one of the maids, as she tied on her neat black bonnet, and, as her services were urgently wanted elsewhere, she thought that the sooner she got away the better.

Monday morning came. At nine o'clock Ella went to her uncle's room, and stayed there for an hour, alone with all that was left on earth of one whom she had so dearly loved. After that she went to her own room, and was seen no more by anyone but her aunt till after the last sad rites were over. Maria Kettle was still from home. She was the one friend whom Ella missed in her affliction.

Mr. Daventry, the family lawyer, arrived early at the Hall. With him he brought the Squire's last will and testament. Sir Peter Dockwray and Colonel Townson, the executors, together with a few other old personal friends of Mr. Denison whom it is needless to specify by name, arrived later on. The procession was joined in the park by some thirty or forty carriages belonging to the gentry of the neighbourhood, a few, but only a few, of which were empty. Dr. Jago, as a matter of course, was there, in a brougham hired for the occasion. A special invitation had been sent to Dr. Spreckley, whom Ella could not help regarding in the light of a wronged man. He was touched by a proof of regard so unexpected, but his pride would not let him accept it. He watched the procession from behind the lace curtains of a friend's window with feelings that were half regretful and half bitter.

The service was read by the Vicar, the Rev. Francis Kettle. In the church, and afterwards round the grave, in addition to those who had followed the body, was assembled a crowd of quite two hundred people. "He's gone at last, poor old man," was the general comment of these outsiders, "but he lived long enough to get the better of those who would have robbed him of his property."

Everyone there knew the stake for which he had played, and everyone was glad that he had won it.

And so to their last resting-place, with all due honour and respect, were committed the mortal remains of Gilbert Denison, late master of Heron Dyke.

Ella would fain have foregone the, to her, painful ordeal of having to listen to the reading of her uncle's will after the return from the funeral, but Mrs. Carlyon and Mr. Daventry both told her that she ought to be present. And so the company assembled in the great drawing-room, with a few of the upper servants.

"We are short of one person," remarked Mr. Daventry, as he glanced round the room.

"Dr. Spreckley. We will give him five minutes' grace. If he is not here then, we must proceed without him."

No one could have been more surprised than Dr. Spreckley was when, upon returning home, after watching the funeral, a note was put into his hands, requesting his presence at Heron Dyke to attend the reading of Mr. Denison's will. What could his presence be wanted for? he asked himself again and again. He had refused to attend the funeral, yet now he was asked to attend the reading of the will! He could not make it out at all: but he went.

"Here comes the straggler," said Mr. Daventry, as Dr. Spreckley was ushered into the room.

Ella rose and shook hands with him warmly, and Hubert placed a chair for him. Then Mr. Daventry settled his spectacles on his nose, and spread open the will.

The will itself was dated some three years previously, but had been added to and altered by various codicils from time to time.

The last codicil was dated November 10th of the previous year, and was witnessed by Mr. Daventry's clerk, and by Phemie Hargrave, at that time housemaid at the Hall. A brief summary of the various items comprised in the will and its codicils is all that need be given here.

To his kinswoman, Gertrude Carlyon, as a token of affection and esteem, and in recognition of her kindness to his niece, Ella Winter, the testator bequeathed the sum of two thousand guineas.

To his old friend and medical attendant, Dr. Spreckley, as a token of sincere liking and esteem, was bequeathed the sum of five hundred guineas. This legacy was included in a codicil which bore date after Dr. Spreckley had ceased to be the Squire's medical attendant.

To his old, tried, and faithful servant, Aaron Stone, the testator bequeathed an immediate legacy of two hundred guineas, together with an annuity of two hundred pounds per annum for life, the annuity to be continued to his wife for her life, should Aaron die first.

To Hubert Stone, for services faithfully rendered, was bequeathed the sum of seven hundred guineas. In this case the sum originally named in the will was three hundred guineas, but had been increased to seven hundred in the last codicil.

To Edward Conroy, "a young fellow whom I like, I can't tell why," the sum of one hundred guineas. A smaller legacy to the coachman, and to one or two others of the dependents, completed this part of the will.

Ella started at the name of Conroy; in spite of herself her cheeks flushed rosy red. She turned her face away to hide its colour.

"I don't know this young fellow," observed Mr. Daventry, alluding to Conroy. "Neither himself nor his address."

The reading was soon over. Everything, save what was taken up by these legacies, was bequeathed to Ella Winter--houses, lands, money, all unconditionally--in a few brief loving terms which set the girl's tears flowing afresh. In the last lines of the will was expressed a wish of the testator--it was not made an absolute condition--that in case of his niece, Ella Winter, ever getting married, her husband should change his name to Denison--in order, as it was expressed, that "the old name might not be forgotten in the land."

Mr. Daventry folded up the will, and took off his spectacles. The visitors began to disperse, some partaking of refreshment, which was laid out in another room, some declining it; and at length the old house and its inmates were left to themselves, Mr. Daventry alone remaining. General matters of business had to be spoken of; the afternoon waned, and Ella asked him to dine with them.

The old lawyer accepted the offer, but left as soon as the meal was over. It had been served in a cosy panelled room, not far from the entrance-hall. It was a more cheerful room than many of the larger ones, and Ella and Mrs. Carlyon had sat mostly in it these few days since their return.

They sat together now, in the pleasant May twilight, talking in undertones of many things past and to come. By-and-by one of the housemaids brought in candles, and Mrs. Carlyon, who was a great reader, went in search of a certain book which she knew to be somewhere in her bedroom, without being exactly sure where. Some last faint traces of twilight still lingered in the sky, and she went up without a light.

Crossing the entrance-hall, Mrs. Carlyon ascended the great staircase, and traversed the gallery until she reached the corridor into which the door of her room opened. In searching for the book she threw down a tray from her dressing-table, containing sundry small articles; and she wished she had brought a light as she stooped to feel for them and pick them up. It was accomplished at last, and the book was found; but all this had taken some little time, and the dusk had deepened in the corridors, and the gallery as Mrs. Carlyon went out. In fact, coming from the light afforded by the windows of her room, they looked quite dark.

"Let me see--this is the way, I think," said Mrs. Carlyon to herself, hesitating as to the turning she ought to take in the gallery; and finally she took the wrong one.

Three or four minutes later she rushed into the sitting-room with a white face and startled eyes, and sank into a chair, thoroughly overcome.

Ella rose up in alarm. "Good gracious, aunt," she cried, "what is the matter? Has anything happened?"

"Oh, child, I--I think I must be very foolish--but I have just had a terrible fright."

"That's the strangest part of it; that I don't know what--or who," spoke Mrs. Carlyon, after a pause and an effort to collect herself. "I went up for my book, you know, Ella, and I was rather long finding it; and when I got into the corridors and gallery again it was dark, and I missed my way, I suppose. At all events, instead of coming to the staircase as I expected, I presently found myself in a part of the house quite strange to me--at least, it seemed so in the dusk----"

"I don't know; it may have been. Seeing a window, through which a little dim light came in, I halted at it to consider what was to be done, and how I should best find my way down. While thus standing a something black--I cannot tell you what it was--brushed swiftly and silently past me, and disappeared in the deeper darkness beyond."

"Something black!" repeated Ella, feeling an awe she could scarcely account for.

"Ay. The figure--it was human, I conclude, but whether male or female I can scarcely tell, though I think the latter, because the skirts of the garment it wore touched my gown in passing--the figure, I say, just showed itself to me, and was gone."

"None whatever. I was so startled that, for a few moments, I could not stir or think. Then I rushed along the corridors, haphazard, and came straight upon a staircase. Instinct comes to our aid in these moments of perplexity more often than we think," broke off Mrs. Carlyon.

"Aunt, it must have been one of the servant-girls," spoke Ella, finding relief in the idea.

"No, no, no," emphatically pronounced Mrs. Carlyon. "Not so, child. I ran down the staircase, not knowing or caring whither it might lead me," she continued, "and along the passage at its foot, and found myself close to the large kitchen. Aaron sat smoking his pipe over the fire; within the open door of another room I saw the two maids seated at work by candlelight, old Dorothy inspecting its progress through her spectacles. How I managed not to run into them with my fear, I can hardly tell; but I controlled it, and came on to you. Now you know all, Ella."

Miss Winter felt both puzzled and annoyed. She knew not what to think. Had it been a servant who told the story, she would have said at once that the girl had been the victim of her own foolish fancies; but in the case of a woman like Mrs. Carlyon no such belief was possible. Who and what could it have been? Had it anything to do with the strange disappearance of Katherine Keen--and with the superstitious reports that arose afterwards?

"No, indeed," quickly assented Mrs. Carlyon. "But you won't find me going upstairs alone, at dusk again. All the wealth of the Indies would not tempt me to live through a winter in this dreadful old house."

CHAPTER VII.

THE MISTRESS OF HERON DYKE

Although many of the county families and leading people of the neighbourhood were away in London or abroad when Miss Winter took possession of her inheritance, a goodly number still remained who were not long in making their way to Heron Dyke to pay their respects to its mistress. More carriages passed through the lodge-gates during the first few weeks after Squire Denison's death than had been seen there for a dozen years before. Everybody was anxious to court the heiress; some, who did not know her previously, to make her acquaintance. Ella had not bargained to have her privacy thus speedily invaded by a mob of fine people; but Mrs. Carlyon told her with a smile that she was now one of the magnates of the county, and that having accepted the position she must take the responsibilities with it.

"You can make your escape whenever you please, by coming to me in London, you know, Ella," she said: and said it rather frequently.

The world seemed to take it for granted that Miss Winter would marry. As yet there was no rumour of her being engaged, but as there were several eligible men, bachelors, in the neighbourhood, speculators were much exercised in their minds as to the chances of this, that, or the other one becoming the favoured individual. They all fervently hoped that Mrs. Carlyon would not drag her niece away to London, as she seemed to wish to do, or else there would be no knowing what might become of her. It would be dreadful for such a prize to fall to the lot of a stranger.

Ella bore quietly on her way, never dreaming of the social machinations of which she was the central figure. At present she scarcely went anywhere; her loss was too recent; and she thought she might be spared a little time before plunging into the vortex of that social power, called Society.

Meanwhile the grand old house began to put on a different appearance. Whether Ella would have entered on desirable improvements so soon, cannot be told, but Mrs. Carlyon urged it. Painters and paperhangers took possession. Rooms were unlocked and thrown open to the daylight that had been shut up for years. Not the north wing. Some feeling, of which she did not speak, caused Ella to leave that untouched. New furniture, sober in look and in keeping with the old mansion, but very handsome withal, was ordered down from London. Inside and out, the Hall was renovated and put in thorough repair. The green baize doors, that had caused so much speculation, were taken away. The garden-paths were regravelled, and new flower-beds laid out. John Tilney was more busy than he had ever been before, although he had two men under him now. Two or three servants were added to those indoors, much to the indignation of Aaron Stone, and also of his wife, Dorothy, who could only think with and be led by her husband. They would have preferred that the old state of things should go on for ever; Aaron, in his mind, resenting it as a personal insult that they did not.

"It's all along o' that Mrs. Carline!" he grumbled to his wife. "Miss Ella, bless her, would never have made changes of her own accord. I don't like it, mark you, and I wish she was gone."

"Miss Ella would be but lonely without her aunt just now," Dorothy ventured to answer deprecatingly.

"Waste and extravagance!--them's the words," burst out Aaron. "More servants here indoors; more on 'em out; and a spick-and-span new carriage from London. The old Squire's hair would stand on end if he could put his head out of his coffin and take a quiet look round."

But if Aaron did not like "Mrs. Carline"--as he chose to call her in domestic privacy--neither did she like him; and it was the old man's hair that might have stood on end, instead of the Squire's, had he heard the advice that lady one day gave her niece. There was something about Aaron himself that Mrs. Carlyon had always disliked, and his sour temper and general crustiness of manner did not tend to soften her impression.

"My dear Ella, I suppose you will now pension off old Aaron Stone and his wife?"

"I have not thought of doing anything of the kind. I have never thought about it at all."

"It is time you did. They are growing old and infirm; they belong to the past. Quite anomalies, they seem, in a modern establishment."

"No one could be a more faithful servant than Aaron was to my uncle. They were together for nearly fifty years. I could not think of parting from him, Aunt Gertrude," added Ella, with a heightened colour.

"As you please, of course, child. He is a most cross-grained old man; everybody must admit that. He lords it over the other servants as if he were master of the house. They cannot like it: and it is hardly the thing, I think, for you to oblige them to put up with it. It might have been all very right in your uncle's time; but that is over."

"It is Aaron's manner only that is in fault, Aunt Gertrude; we are all used to that, and nobody minds it. He bears a heart of gold under that rugged exterior."

"No, I do not, Ella. That he was a truly faithful servant to your uncle I admit--all praise to him for it!--but whether he is as faithful to others, I cannot say. There is a curious secretiveness of manner about him now that I don't like, and don't pretend to account for. However, we will leave all that and go to another phase of the question. Has it never struck you, my dear, that the old couple may wish to retire from service, and would think it only proper and kind on your part to suggest it to them? They may be hoping and waiting for you to make such a proposal--of course, accompanied by a promise of your countenance for their remaining days."

"You have put the case in a new light, certainly, aunt," she said, "one that I confess I never glanced at. I do not believe Aaron has any wish to leave me, any thought of it; or Dorothy either: all the same, it is a point that must be inquired into."

Ella lost no time. That same day, upon Aaron's coming into the room where she sat alone, she bade him wait--she had something to say to him. Very considerately she spoke: nevertheless, it seemed to strike the old man dumb. His hands shook. His lips quavered.

"You don't want to get rid of me sure-ly, Miss Ella!" he cried when she had finished. "It can't be. I know I'm old; and old folks be not counted of much use, nowadays; but--but the Squire would never have driven me away from the old home. I'll go to the workhouse to-morrow, if you wish it, ma'am--and no place else will I go to if I leave here--and I'll never come out of it again. No, never, till they bring me out feet foremost."

Ella felt quite sorry for him; sorry for having spoken. She began to speak of what she had meant to do, but he interrupted her:

"I'll be nobody's pensioner; not even yours, Miss Winter. Many a time I've told the Squire I'd not be his. While I'm able to work I will work; and I mean to work on for you, ma'am, my strength permitting it. Time enough for me to leave you when that's gone--but I hope it's my life that will go first. I was faithful to my master, Miss Ella, and I'll be faithful to my mistress."

"Do you suppose I do not know that you are, my good old Aaron! But you should not talk of the workhouse. The Squire left you an annuity; he left you also some money. I shall add to it----"

"No, ma'am. Do you suppose I wanted the bit o' money his will gave to me? Not I. I have settled it on the boy--Hubert--every penny of it: as well as the few pounds I and my wife have saved. As to the annuity, I won't touch it."

Ella smiled, and did not contradict him. And so the question of the old servant's going was set at rest. But Aaron was not himself for days afterwards.

Hubert Stone's services were retained, at any rate for the present. He had had the management of the farm property and other matters for so long, that Miss Winter could not well have done without him. Neither had she any wish to dismiss him; he was an efficient steward, and she of course had no suspicion of his attachment to herself. She put him on a different footing, assigning to him a handsome salary, and decreeing that he should live away from the Hall, though a room in it would still be occupied by him as an office for his account-books and papers. It was supposed that he would take suitable apartments at Nullington; he might have had the best there; or perhaps set up a pretty home for himself with a man and maid to wait on him. Hubert did neither. To the intense surprise of the community he made an arrangement with John Tilney to enter on his spare bedroom and sitting-room--for the lodge was a commodious dwelling--and took up his abode there, Mrs. Tilney waiting on him as on any other gentleman.

Hubert had to see his young mistress almost daily about one matter of business or another, but he was careful to maintain towards her a suitable reserve. Nothing could be better than his manner. It would never do to betray the smallest sign of the volcano of passion that was surging within him.

Very little had been said between Ella and her aunt respecting the fright the latter got on the night of the Squire's funeral. The topic was an unpleasant one; and they ignored it by mutual consent. The only person spoken to about it was Dr. Spreckley: and it may be said that that arose from inadvertence.

A week or two subsequent to the Squire's death, one of the maids, Eliza, took a sore throat; it threatened to be a bad one, and Miss Winter sent for the good old doctor. Dr. Jago's attendance at the Hall had ceased with the Squire's death. Dr. Spreckley got the message late in the day, and it was evening when he started for Heron Dyke, glad and proud enough to be once more summoned there in his medical capacity.

Leaving his gig in the yard, he entered the house by the side-door, ignoring ceremony as of old, and went at once to Miss Winter. She and Mrs. Carlyon had just finished dinner, and were sitting at dessert. Hearing what was the matter the Doctor went off to see Eliza, promising to return to them and report.

"It is rather severe," said he, when he came back, "but there's nothing dangerous about it. I'll come up again in the morning."

He drew a chair to the fire; the evening was damp and chilly, and a fire had been lighted for dinner. Ella and Mrs. Carlyon turned from the table to sit with him, and they talked of this and that as he sipped the wine.

"As you are here, Dr. Spreckley, I think I will ask you to give me a little medicine; an alterative, or something of that kind," observed Mrs. Carlyon presently, in a pause of the conversation.

"My liver is out of order, I fancy. I had a severe bilious attack after that fright, and I am not right yet."

"I really see no reason why we should not tell you," she resumed, after a minute's consideration. "In fact, I have observed to Ella once or twice that it might be better if we did mention it to some discreet friend. Not that anything can be done."

And Mrs. Carlyon forthwith related the whole story of her fright in the dusky corridor. Dr. Spreckley listened attentively.

"What it was I know not, Doctor: whether man or woman, ghost or goblin. A silent shadowy form glided past me, imparting to me the most intense terror, and vanishing almost as soon as it had passed."

"No. Every inmate of the house was in the kitchen, or about it, as I have told you. I saw them all when I ran down. Whoever or whatever it was, it was not a servant."

"No, no, no. Hubert Stone would not have been gliding about the corridors in that silent, stealthy manner. Hubert Stone was not at home that evening; he was spending it with Dr. Jago."

"True," nodded the Doctor. He remembered that Hubert had gone out with Jago after the reading of the will, the same mourning coach conveying them to the latter's residence.

"I do not know," answered Mrs. Carlyon. "Ella thinks it was. I took the wrong turning in the dark and lost myself, and goodness knows where I got to."

"It must have been the north wing," interposed Ella. "The stairs my aunt ran down lead direct from it."

"Ah," said the Doctor, "that north wing has managed to get up a weird name for itself, and the minute any of you get into it, your common sense leaves you. I am not speaking of you, ma'am," he added to Mrs. Carlyon, "but of the house in general;" and, dropping the subject, he proceeded to question her about her ailments.

"One of the wenches got up there; 'twas nothing else," thought the Doctor, as he left the ladies and went away. "Were I Miss Winter, I'd have that wing turned inside out."

Walking round to the stable-yard, his way led him past the kitchen windows. It was growing dusk then, but the fire lighted up the room. He saw Dorothy Stone bending over the fire, stirring something in a saucepan. Dr. Spreckley walked straight into the kitchen.

"Law, sir! Wine! I be making Eliza a drop o' thin arrowroot; she thought she could sup a spoonful or two. She has had nothing all day, poor thing! and you said she was to be kept up."

"Keep her up by all means. Put a little brandy in the arrowroot. Look here, Mrs. Stone: you remember the evening of the Squire's funeral?"

The question startled Mrs. Stone more than his entrance had done. She clapped the saucepan upon the top of the oven, stepped backwards, and looked at Dr. Spreckley.

"Was anyone of the servants up in the north wing that evening at dusk, walking about the passages there?"

"Now do be sensible!" cried the Doctor, testily. "I ask you a simple question: can't you answer it? Was either of the girls--say Eliza, or that other one--what's her name?--Phemie--was either of them in the north wing that evening, prancing about it?--What in the world are you twittering at?"

"I can't hear that wing spoke of without going into a twitter," said Dorothy, with a half sob. "As to the girls being up there--no, sir, you may rely on that. Not one of them would go up there at dusk to save her life: nor alone by daylight either. Was anything seen there that night, sir, or heard?"

"Never you mind that now: if there was, it's over and done with. Then, so far as you know, none of the household went up?"

"Well, good-evening, Mrs. Stone; there's nothing to be afraid of. Take a drop of brandy yourself," he kindly added.

"There's more to be afraid of in this house than the world knows of, Dr. Spreckley--and has been for some time past. It's an uncanny place--though I dare not say as much before my husband. As to that north wing"--she broke off with a shiver. "The other housemaids left because of what they saw and heard there: and these are getting as frightened as they were."

Down sat Dorothy as the surgeon went out, and flung her apron over her face in a kind of despair. Naturally superstitious, the events in the Hall had but rendered her more so. She lived a life of fear and trembling, believing that if by ill-luck the ghost--Katherine Keen's--appeared to herself some unlucky night, she should die of it. How greatly these questions of Dr. Spreckley had augmented her terrified discomfort, she would not have liked to confess.

Mrs. Carlyon did not feel much more comfortable than Dorothy in the lonely old house on the Norfolk coast. Ever since the night of the Squire's funeral she had wished to get away from it to a more cheerful place; but she could not yet attempt to leave Ella.

It was when the bright summer weather began to give place to a suspicion of autumn, that Mrs. Carlyon found she must really go; matters in London at her own home needed her. She told Ella that she could not leave her alone, and proposed a chaperon. Ella, who had independent opinions of her own, demurred: she was quite old enough to take care of herself, and quite capable of doing it. But her aunt was inflexible; the proprieties and usages of society must on no account be ignored. Ella perforce yielded, and a suitable lady was sought for.

It was just at this time that Mr. Conroy once more made his appearance at Heron Dyke. After the reading of the Squire's will, Mr. Daventry, the Nullington lawyer, had despatched a letter to the office of the "Illustrated Globe," apprising Mr. Conroy of the legacy bequeathed him. For some cause or other the young man had not been able to attend to it until now. He came to Nullington, saw Mr. Daventry, and thence walked to Heron Dyke to pay his respects to its mistress.

It was well that Mrs. Carlyon chanced to be looking out of the window when the servant announced Conroy's name. Had she seen Ella's face at that moment, it is probable that a certain vague suspicion, which some time ago had taken root in her mind, would have been turned into a certainty. As it happened, she saw nothing.

Conroy stayed but an hour with them; the ladies were engaged out for the latter part of the day. They invited him to spend the morrow at the Hall.

He came accordingly, in time for luncheon. Afterwards the carriage was brought round, and they started to visit the ruins of a certain famous castle some dozen miles away. Hubert Stone, looking from his office window, himself unseen, watched them set out. A raging fever of jealousy and unrest was burning in his veins. This Conroy was the one man whom he feared and hated; and yet, if he had been asked to state his reasons for feeling thus towards him, he would have found it difficult to do so. He could only have said that he had dreaded and disliked him from the first. It was Hubert's white face and jealous eyes that Conroy had seen peering from behind the yews into the Squire's sitting-room that first evening he spent at the Hall. It was Hubert himself, peering in, whom the Squire had more than once taken for a spy. Jealousy often lends insight to love, pricking it on to finer issues than it would ever attain to without such stimulus, and this it was that had enabled Hubert Stone to divine that these two people loved each other almost before they were themselves conscious of it. Yes, he hated and feared Edward Conroy. No sooner had the carriage started to-day than he put away his books and papers and wandered out into the park, a moody and miserable man. He strolled about for some hours, neither knowing nor caring whither. At length the sound of a distant clock, striking five, warned him that the party from the Hall might be expected back before long. He knew by which road they would return, and he made his way to an overhanging bank, screened by trees and a thick hedge, close to which they must pass. He wanted to see them again, although he knew well that the sight would only add to his wretchedness.

At length the landau appeared in sight. Hubert parted the boughs carefully and peered through his leafy screen. Miss Winter and Mrs. Carlyon sat together, with Conroy on the opposite seat. Hubert's eyes devoured them. Conroy was leaning forward and talking to Ella, on whose face rested a brightness and animation such as Hubert had not seen there since her uncle's death. A minute later, and a turn of the road hid them from view. Hubert paced about in his rage, and at length walked back to the Hall, a still more miserable man than he had left it. His heart was a prey to the direst thoughts. Love, hatred, jealousy, and despair swayed him by turns, one mood alternating swiftly with another. Had it been a moonless midnight instead of an August evening, and had Edward Conroy and he met by chance in some lonely spot, one of the two would never have left that spot alive.

Lights blazed from the windows of one of the smaller drawing-rooms now generally made use of, which had been re-furnished. It was yet empty, dinner not being over. Two gentlemen had been invited to meet Mr. Conroy--the Vicar and Philip Cleeve.

Into this lighted drawing-room went Hubert: he knew not why. He felt like a man who was being urged forward by some unseen power towards a goal of which as yet he was but dimly conscious, but from which no exercise of his own will could turn his footsteps aside.

Lost in a reverie, he did not hear the ladies approach until it was too late to escape. On the impulse of the moment he hid himself behind the folds of the heavy velvet curtains that shrouded the deep embrasures of the windows. The guests soon followed them. Mrs. Carlyon and the Vicar settled down to a game of backgammon, Philip amused himself with a book of photographs and a magnifying glass, and Ella, at Conroy's request, sat down at the piano, he hovering round her the while and turning over her music.

From his hiding-place Hubert could see nothing, but nearly all the conversation, especially that which took place at the piano, was audible to him, and this latter was all that he cared to hear. At times Conroy was so close to him that by stretching out his hand he could have touched him. He stood there as immovable as if cut in stone, with white face and passion-charged eyes, listening to the soft words of his rival, and to the still softer accents that responded to them. Yet the words themselves were commonplace enough; it was the hidden something in their tone that lent them their sweet significance. If Hubert Stone had expected to overhear any lover-like confidences, in which people who are trembling on the verge of the great confession are sometimes wont to indulge, he was mistaken.

"Mrs. Carlyon tells me that you have promised to spend a week or two in London with her a little later on," said Conroy.

"Mrs. Carlyon has been so good as to give me a general invitation to call upon her. I hope I shall see you during your stay."

All Ella's heart leapt into her face at these words. She turned away her head under the pretence of looking at the others.

"It is quite a treat to watch the Vicar play backgammon: he seems to give his whole mind to the game," she said, and then she turned to Conroy again. "You have the fortune to be a great favourite with my aunt, Mr. Conroy," she went on. "I am sure she will be very pleased to see you in town, and--so shall I. If you will look in the canterbury, and find me that piece by Schubert which you said you liked so much when you were here last, I will play it for you again this evening."

The piece was played, and then they fell to talking again. Conroy asked Ella whether she really meant to inhabit the Hall during the winter.

"Yes; why not?" was the answer. "I love the old place. It is my home, and that means everything."

"Very true, Miss Winter--I should think as you do. May I ask," added Conroy, speaking on the impulse of the moment, and without due thought, "whether any light has been thrown on the fate of that missing girl, who--who was so mysteriously lost here?"

"None whatever," answered Ella sadly, the gladness dying out of her eyes. "A mystery it is, and a mystery it seems likely to remain. I need scarcely say that it is a great trouble to me. The worst is, the poor sister, Susan, who is not very bright in intellect, is still beset by the hallucination, for I can term it nothing else, that on moonlight nights her sister may sometimes be seen gazing out of her bedroom window; and she comes up to, as she fancies, look at her. Nothing can shake her fixed belief that Katherine, either alive or dead, is still hidden somewhere in the Hall."

"It is strange how the girl's mind should have become so thoroughly imbued with such an idea."

Ella could not repress a shudder. Might there not, after all, be some foundation for poor Susan's wild fancies? Whose hands had covered up the looking-glass in Katherine's bedroom? Whence had come and whither had vanished that figure which the two housemaids had seen gazing down upon them from the gallery? How account by any reasonable theory for the fright undergone by Mrs. Carlyon? It was a mystery that weighed upon Ella day and night; a burden from which her mind could never entirely free itself. Many people under like circumstances would have shut up the old house and made a home elsewhere, but to Ella it seemed that if the fate of the missing girl were ever to be cleared up it must be cleared up on the spot; and on the spot she determined to remain.

Something was said about a picture in the adjoining room--Philip Cleeve declaring that one of the photographs resembled it. The three younger members of the party went into the room to solve the question, leaving Mrs. Carlyon and the Vicar at their game. Hubert Stone saw his chance; he made a bold stroke, emerged from his hiding-place, silently crossed the room, and quitted it.

"Who was what?" asked Mrs. Carlyon, who sat with her back to the windows and saw nothing.

"Some tall young fellow crossed the room from the window. How did he come in? It looked like Hubert Stone. Yes; I am sure it was he."

"Oh, then he had probably come in to ask some question or other of his mistress; and seeing visitors here, went out again," decided Mrs. Carlyon with composure. "A well-mannered young man, very, that; might be taken by anyone for a gentleman."

The next departure was that of Mrs. Carlyon. But not before a chaperon had been fixed upon for the young mistress of Heron Dyke.

Their choice fell upon a Mrs. Toynbee; who was engaged, and arrived at the Hall. She was a slender, sedate-looking lady of fifty, the widow of a certain Major Toynbee. Her credentials were unexceptionable, and her terms high. Ella did not much like her; but, as she said to herself, we can't have everything just as we like it in this life. She was kind and gracious to Mrs. Toynbee, as she was to everyone, and that lady soon made herself at home.

Meanwhile Mr. Hubert Stone was having, as the schoolboys say, rather a bad time of it. That Conroy was in love with Miss Winter and she with him, seemed to him clear as the light of day. Could he frustrate this love? he would ask himself as he paced restlessly the solitary glades of the park. He knew something which was unknown to them: a great secret, which neither of them so much as dreamt of. Could he make use of this knowledge, dangerous though it might be, to part them? He believed he might. Anyway, it was a thing to be thought of.

CHAPTER VIII.

WHAT DOROTHY SAW IN THE SHRUBBERY

Ella Winter felt dull after her aunt's departure; the Hall seemed more lonely than ever. Although that estimable lady, Mrs. Toynbee, might do very well to fill the position of chaperon and housekeeper-in-chief, she could never be anything more to Miss Winter. Now it was that she missed the presence of Maria Kettle: who was still at Leamington with Mrs. Page. She heard from Maria often, but that was not like seeing her. One thing Ella could do, and did; she took an active interest in the welfare of Maria's school, and of the poor old people at whose cottages Maria was so frequent a visitor when at home. Ella did more than that, she instructed Philip Cleeve to draw up plans of a new wing for the school which she determined to build at her own expense, and as a welcome surprise for Maria when she should return.

Ella's thoughts often dwelt upon that promised visit to London which she was to pay Mrs. Carlyon. Previously to Conroy's visit to the Hall she had not looked forward to the visit with any particular pleasure. _Now_ she counted the number of days that intervened before she should start, and so see Conroy again. Though the time was not quite fixed, each morning when she awoke she said to herself, with a little shiver of happiness, "Another day nearer." Conroy had never spoken one word of love to her, yet in her heart lay a dim, blissful consciousness that she was dearer to him than all the world beside.

One day there came an invitation for herself and Mrs. Toynbee to dine at Homedale. Lady Cleeve did not choose that Philip should be dining here, there, and everywhere, and make no return for it. So she invited a few friends, taking the opportunity of Freddy Bootle's being at Nullington, that he might make one. Captain Lennox and his sister were included. Lady Cleeve knew little or nothing of them, but she knew how hospitable they were to Philip: and the Vicar of course was one of the party. Old Dr. Downes was laid up with the gout, and Mr. Tiplady was away: but Dr. Spreckley was there. It was a pleasant, informal gathering, and all felt at ease.

It was only necessary to bring Freddy Bootle into the presence of Ella for his old flame of love to leap suddenly into life again. This evening he could do little beyond sigh and look miserable, and polish his eyeglass perpetually. His usual flow of harmless small talk was as dried up as a mountain stream at midsummer.

"She's too completely lovely," he whispered to Philip more than once; while to Lennox he turned and said, "I've such a longing to-night to be able to write verses. Never had the feeling before. Only they would be awful rubbish, you know"--which very probably they would have been.

Lady Cleeve took quite a liking for Mrs. Ducie: who indeed charmed all without conscious effort. She was a great favourite with the Vicar, and after dinner he sat by her side for an hour. Philip's eyes were turned towards her very frequently, but his attentions to her were not more marked than those he paid to any other of his mother's guests.

"A pity poor old Downes could not be here!" remarked Captain Lennox to Miss Winter, in the course of the evening. "That gout is sure to attack one at an unseasonable time."

Ella smiled at the last sentence, as she made room for the Captain on the sofa. "I hope Dr. Downes is not breaking," she said, "but he has not looked well lately."

"Oh, he is all right: it was only this fit of gout coming on. The last time I saw him he broke into a lamentation over the loss of his gold snuff-box: it's not often he speaks of it. That was a curious thing, by the way."

"Very," assented Ella. "I was away at the time, but I heard about it on my return. It put me in mind of the loss of my aunt's jewels."

"Why, that's what it put me in mind of; very forcibly, too," returned Captain Lennox. "I said so to Philip Cleeve."

Both of them turned their eyes on Philip as the Captain spoke. To Ella it seemed that Philip was strangely restless and excited to-night. His eyes sparkled and his face looked flushed. "Foolish boy! he has been drinking too much wine," was her thought; and Mr. Bootle was evidently of the same opinion.

But they were mistaken. Philip had been in the same restless and excited mood yesterday, and would be again to-morrow. Captain Lennox was probably the only person present who could have guessed at the real cause of it.

"I wonder," resumed Ella, "whether the Doctor will ever find his snuff-box again?"

"Ah, that's doubtful," said the Captain, gravely shaking his head. "Not if it was taken by an ordinary thief."

"If a common thief stole the box, it would probably be melted down as soon afterwards as might be. If--if anybody else took it, he would no doubt sell it for what he could get for it; and the box, in that case, may some day or other turn up again."

A smile crossed the Captain's lips at the question, as he looked down at Miss Winter.

"To make money of it, of course," he said, dropping his voice. "A gentleman hard-up has done as much before, and may do as much again."

Ella looked at the speaker: his tone was peculiar, and she thought he meant it to be. But he moved away, and said no more.

The party broke up early, remembering Lady Cleeve's delicate health. Miss Winter offered a seat in her carriage to the Vicar, for whom a fly was waiting. He preferred the carriage, and dismissed the fly. After his return home, he nodded a little while in his study over his cosey bit of fire; but he felt dead sleepy, and soon went up to bed.

The Reverend Francis Kettle had a methodical habit of emptying his pockets before he began to undress, and laying out their contents on a low chest of drawers that stood by his bedside. This he proceeded to do as usual. His card-case, his pencil-case, his gold toothpick, and his bunch of keys were all put down in due order, but when he came to feel for the most important item of all, his purse, or small money-case, made of Russian leather, it was nowhere to be found. In something of a quandary the Vicar took his candle and went downstairs. Could he have left it on his study-table in a fit of absent-mindedness, or had it fallen out of his pocket while he dropped into that half-doze in his easy-chair?

Very little time sufficed to convince him that the case was nowhere in the study, and he went back upstairs more nonplussed than ever. The loss of its contents would not ruin him: it had contained a few sovereigns and some silver: all the same, he was much put about by its unaccountable disappearance. He had given the flyman a shilling for himself on getting out at Lady Cleeve's, and that was the last time he had had occasion to open the case. However, it was certainly gone now; and he had as certainly not lost it through any carelessness.

"What in the world is coming to us all?" cried he, testily. "This is a second edition of Downes's snuff-box. Have we in truth got a black sheep among us? If so, who is he?"

And it is to be hoped that these repeated losses will not weary the reader. Events can but be related as they occurred.

The Vicar's roomy, easy-fitting clothes and capacious pockets would present few difficulties to any clever member of the light-fingered craft. But, then, he had not been where any light-fingered gentry could possibly be supposed to be. He had been in the society of his friends and neighbours: there had not been a single individual at Homedale that evening whom he did not know. It was a most unaccountable affair, and the Vicar's sleep that night was by no means so sound as usual.

We must go for a short space of time to Heron Dyke, preceding Miss Winter and her companion's return to it that evening. The reader does not forget that one of the maids had been attacked with sore throat. Dr. Spreckley soon cured her; but since then a few other cases had appeared in the neighbourhood of the Hall from time to time. Not sufficient to constitute an epidemic; though some of the cases were rather grave, and one individual had died.

On this evening, quite late, Hannah Tilney, the gardener's wife at the lodge, came up to the Hall. It was past nine o'clock. Her errand was to ask Mrs. Stone for a small pot of blackcurrant jelly. And Dorothy Stone was very much put about when she heard that this jelly was intended for her grandson, Hubert.

"He has got one of them sore throats come on," said Hannah. "It began yesterday, I know, though he said naught about it, but it's rare and bad to-day; and not a morsel has he ate."

"He said naught about it here to-day," crustily interposed old Aaron, echoing some of her words. "He was up here at his books as usual. It can't be very bad: you women be so easily frightened."

"Well, sir, I know it is bad," persisted Hannah. "He won't take anything for it, but I thought if I put a bit o' jelly by his bedside he might suck a spoonful or two in the night. It eases the throat wonderful, do blackcurrant jelly. And if he should be took worse, I've not a soul in the house that could run to Nullington for Dr. Jago, John being at Norwich!"

"Don't hurry away for a minute," cried Dorothy, as Mrs. Tilney was going off with the jelly. "Aaron," she added in a timid sort of way, "I should like to go down to the lodge and see him. He may be real bad: and he's one that would never complain if he was dying."

"And who's to sit up for you?" demanded Aaron. "I shan't. It's a'most ten o'clock now."

"Nobody need sit up," returned Dorothy, trying to be brave, her fears all alert for her beloved grandson. "I'll take the key of the side-door, and let myself in. Please mind you don't bolt and bar it."

She put on her bonnet and shawl, took the key, and departed with Mrs. Tilney. When they reached the lodge, Hubert was not there. He must have gone out during Hannah Tilney's absence. The children were long ago abed and asleep.

"He goes out a deal at night," Hannah remarked, "and walks about the park. My husband sees him pacing away there as swift as a windmill. We think he does it by way of exercise, sitting so much over his accounts in the day."

"But he oughtn't to go out when he has got a sore throat," said Dorothy, untying her bonnet as she sat down in the kitchen to wait. "He was always venturesome."

Meanwhile Miss Winter and Mrs. Toynbee returned home, and were admitted by Aaron. He said nothing about his wife's being out.

"You can all go to bed," Miss Winter said to him. "We shall want nothing more to-night."

And accordingly the household did go, Aaron included. Miss Winter's maid had retired early in the evening. She had a very bad cold, and was ordered by her mistress not to sit up.

Taking off their fleecy wraps, the two ladies drew up to the fire in the sitting-room, and prepared for a cosey half-hour's chat. Neither felt sleepy, or in the least inclined for bed. Falling into an animated discussion of present matters and future plans, the time passed swiftly and unheedingly.

More swiftly than it did for Dorothy at the lodge. Hubert did not come in: the hands of the clock, ticking over the kitchen mantelpiece, drew gradually very near to midnight.

"He's never as late as this--unless he is at Dr. Jago's, and has to walk home from Nullington. And I'll tell you what, ma'am," added Hannah, briskly, the idea occurring to her, "I'd not wonder but that's where he is gone to-night: and the Doctor, seeing his throat's bad, won't let him come away again till the morning."

"Maybe it is so," considered Dorothy. "Anyway, I dare not stay any longer. If my husband's sitting up, though he said he shouldn't, he'll be fine and cross."

Tying her bonnet and drawing her shawl round her, Dorothy Stone set off on her lonely walk. She would rather have walked twenty miles in broad daylight than that short course at midnight. All sorts of fears and ghostly fancies were in her mind. It was not a dark night, the stars being well out. Hurrying along with her face down, she had nearly gained the shrubbery, when the great stable clock struck out the hour--twelve.

That increased her superstitious fears: and why or wherefore she knew not, but the night seemed to turn icy cold. She looked back, as by some subtle instinct, wondering whether anything was following her. All around seemed as silent as the grave.

Suddenly, as she looked, she thought she saw something stirring at a distance behind. Something black, which had not been there a moment ago, and seemed as if it must have risen out of the ground. Fascinated, she peered out at it, unable to withdraw her gaze, her face turning white and cold, her heart standing still.

She saw what appeared to be a black hearse, drawn by four headless horses and driven by a headless coachman. It was coming towards her pretty swiftly. But that she drew aside amidst the grass, it would have driven over her. More dead than alive, Dorothy gazed out at it as it passed noiselessly, without sound of any kind, and she watched it till it vanished in the distance. It seemed to drive straight against the wall at the end, where the road took a turn, to go right into the wall and so disappear.

"The Lord be good to me!" she aspirated. "It wanted but this. I've never seen the sight myself, though I have heard tell of it by those who have."

It must be here explained that a belief in the apparition of a black coach, or hearse, with four headless horses and a headless driver, is common to many parts of Norfolk, and is not confined to any one locality. It is supposed to foreshadow the death of some near friend or relative of the individual who is so unlucky as to see it.

The striking of the midnight hour disturbed Miss Winter and Mrs. Toynbee. Neither had any idea it was so late. Starting up, Mrs. Toynbee lighted the bed-candles.

"You go on," said Ella, as she wished Mrs. Toynbee goodnight. "I want to gather up my work first: I forgot to take it upstairs this afternoon."

It took her a minute or two to do this. As she was crossing the hall, candle and other things in hand, she was startled by hearing a noise in the household regions. It sounded like the back-door being unlocked. Yes! and now it was burst open with a bang, and a voice that was certainly old Dorothy's gave vent to a fearful cry. Believing that everybody was in bed, Miss Winter felt considerable surprise. Dropping the odds and ends of work, she ran with her candle and found Dorothy gasping in a chair before the embers of the kitchen fire.

"But that I sprang aside from its path, Miss Ella, it would have gone right over me," she reiterated, her teeth chattering; "it made as if it wanted to. Straight, straight on it came, turning neither to the right nor the left. Oh, it was an awful sight!"

In spite of herself, Ella could not repress a shudder. The story of the apparition of the black coach and its headless horses was not unknown to her.

"And now, Miss Ella, there'll be a death in the house before long," shivered the woman. "It is a safe and sure warning of it--and oh, which of us is it to be?"

To attempt to combat this, would have been a hopeless task: Dorothy had believed in it as long as she had believed in anything. Miss Winter contented herself with soothing her in the best way she could, and, when the old woman had in some measure recovered from her fright, in obtaining a promise from her not to speak to anyone of what she had seen that night.

CHAPTER IX.

ON BOARD THE "SEAMEW."

With September the lovely weather suddenly broke up, and a few days later there was a great storm along the eastern seaboard. One morning news came to Heron Dyke that during the night a brig of some three hundred tons burden, the _Seamew_, bound from Dantzic to London, had struck on the Creffel Bank, and lay there a helpless wreck. Two of the crew had been washed overboard; the rest, including the master, were rescued by the Easterby lifeboat. The Creffel Bank was known as one of the most dangerous spots on that part of the coast, and many a gallant craft had gone to pieces on its shifting and treacherous shoals.

Miss Winter at once sent Hubert Stone into the village with instructions to aid the shipwrecked men in whatever way might seem best. All of them, except the captain, expressed a desire to be forwarded to London, and were accordingly packed off by rail, their fares being paid by Hubert. As the brig did not at once break up, when the storm abated several boats went out to her, and in the course of a couple of days succeeded in landing that portion of her cargo which remained unspoiled, and most of her loose fittings; but the little _Seamew_ herself was so deeply imbedded in the sand that it was impossible to get her off, and the next gale would doubtless break her up entirely.

One sunny afternoon, Ella took her sketchbook to the sands, and was dutifully accompanied by Mrs. Toynbee with a novel. But Ella was not long in discovering that she was in no mood for sketching, that she was rather in a mood which inclined to day-dreaming, and to vague golden visions of some far-off future. Could it be that the recent visit of Edward Conroy had anything to do with these idle fancies?

At length she shut up her book with a little gesture of impatience, and strolled slowly down to the farther shore. Mrs. Toynbee sighed and followed meekly. Her seat had been a comfortable one, and she was in the middle of an interesting chapter; but duty is duty, however unpleasant it may be.

The tide was beginning to ebb, and, as the two ladies paced the sands a little above high-water mark, they presently saw a boat propelled by a single rower making for the shore. The rower was Hubert Stone, and the boat belonged to him. He was fond of the water, and often went out for hours at a time, alone or accompanied by some friend. Ella stood and watched the boat coming in. It seemed to be making for the spot where she stood. Hubert's strong and regular strokes propelled it swiftly through the water, and in a little while it shot gently up the sands. Putting down his oars, the young man stood up and raised his straw hat to Miss Winter. How handsome he looked as he stood there in the afternoon sunshine, with his coat thrown carelessly across his arm!

"Very pleasant indeed. There is quite a refreshing breeze when you get a little way out. What do you say, Miss Ella, to letting me pull you and Mrs. Toynbee as far as the _Seamew_ and back?"

"Oh, that would be very charming, I think," said the latter lady: and they did not observe that she spoke half ironically.

"George Petherton is there now," said Hubert. "If the weather holds up fine, they hope to be able to save some more of the cargo; meanwhile George remains there in charge."

She knew George Petherton well. He was one of the oldest and steadiest boatmen round Easterby.

Without more ado, Ella stepped lightly into the boat and sat down. Hubert held out his hand to Mrs. Toynbee. But, at the last moment, that lady's heart failed her; in fact her bravery had been but put on. Involuntarily she drew back a step or two.

But the boat was a very small one, and looked dreadfully unsafe, she thought. Then the wreck was more than two miles away, and what was it that Mr. Stone had just said about there being a pleasant breeze when you got away from shore? How could any breeze be pleasant at sea?

"I--I don't feel very well, and I think, my dear, I must ask you to excuse me," she said to Ella, with a little quaver of the voice.

"You are not afraid, are you?" asked Ella, with a smile. "The breeze when we get out will do you good."

"Really, my dear, I should feel pleased if you would excuse me," she said. "I am not at all myself this afternoon: and I am apt to be so very ill upon the water. Do excuse me--and I will wait for you here."

"Well, I should like to go," responded Ella. "I should like to see the wreck, and I shall not be long away. You can watch me skimming over the water."

"I will," assented Mrs. Toynbee, with an air of relief. "I wish you _bon voyage_, and a safe return."

Hubert waited for no more. He pushed the boat into deeper water, then got in and took up his oars. He wanted no Mrs. Toynbee in it, not he, and was glad matters had turned out so. That lady stood on the sands waving her handkerchief till they were quite a quarter of a mile away from shore, and then sat down to continue her novel.

But--it may as well be at once mentioned--the expedition took longer than Mrs. Toynbee had expected. She grew tired of waiting, felt rather chilly, for she had but a thin gauze shawl on, and she got up at length and went back to the Hall.

Hubert Stone rowed on with strong steady strokes, feeling like a man who cannot be sure whether he is dreaming or awake. Could it be true, he asked himself, that he and his sweet mistress were alone together--alone on the waste of waters where no living soul could come between them? Together, yes; but in reality as far as the poles asunder. Still, to be so near her, to have her as it were all to himself, though only for one short hour, was both a pleasure and a pain unspeakable. If they could but have gone on thus for ever, sailing away into infinity, and never touching land again, unless it were some desert island untrodden by any footsteps save their own! Wild, foolish longings! In an hour their little voyage would be at an end, and never again, in all human probability, would Ella and he be in a boat together; never alone, as they were to-day. He needed no prophet to tell him that. Never again!

By-and-by Ella roused herself from her reverie: for she too had fallen into one. They were nearing the wreck. It lay low on its sandy bed, slightly heeled over to starboard. There was little more of it left than the bare hull. Masts and bowsprit had been unshipped and carried away.

"How quiet and deserted it looks!" she exclaimed. "I don't see George Petherton."

"We shall have a splendid sunset," remarked Hubert, as he rested for a moment on his oars, and taking no notice of her words. "See there, Miss Winter!"

A few more minutes brought them close to the wreck. Ella was looking at it steadfastly.

"He is probably below deck, smoking his pipe, or trying to fish up some more of the cargo. George is not the sort of man to care for sunset-effects." Hubert said this with a short, hard laugh, which Ella, preoccupied, took little notice of. It was well perhaps that she did not see the expression of his face. It had changed strangely during the last few minutes. His mouth was hard-set, and in his eyes there sat a look which might have been set down as compounded of despair, burning passion, and desperate resolve.

Hubert shipped his oars, and made a trumpet of his hands to sing out. "Hillo there! Petherton--Petherton, I say, where are you?" But there came no answer; there was no sign of life whatever on board the wreck.

"Not likely," returned Hubert. "He is shut in below, smoking his pipe, and cannot hear: perhaps has dropped asleep. I will go and arouse him. But let me help you on board first, Miss Winter.--Hark! yes, George is there, safe enough. I hear him."

He brought the boat up under the lee of the wreck, made her fast with a rope, sprang lightly on the _Seamew's_ deck, and turned to assist Miss Winter.

But Ella held back. "Go and tell him to come and help you to get me up," she said laughingly.

Hubert disappeared down the cabin stairs. He did not come back immediately. Left alone in the boat, Ella began to feel anxious, vaguely uneasy. Could she but have divined his treachery! He knew perfectly well that George Petherton was not on board, that he had gone ashore at mid-day.

Hubert made his way aft into a little room, not much bigger than a rabbit-hutch, but which was in reality the captain's cabin. Here he found a keg of hollands, still about one-third full; near it was a horn drinking-cup. Twice in quick succession he filled the cup with neat spirits and drank it off. He was very pale, and there lay still that same strange lurid light in his eyes.

After drinking the spirits, he stood rigid as a statue, his hands clenched, his eyes fixed on the ground. "His or mine--his or mine?" he muttered under his breath. "Not his--not his! Death before that."

Once again he filled the cup and drank its contents. Then he pressed his hand to his heart for a moment, as though to still some wild commotion there; and then, as if afraid to hesitate any longer, he made his way quickly back on deck.

Ella was watching anxiously for him. The moment she saw his white set face, she became filled with alarm. "What is amiss?" she cried, her fears flying to the boatman. "Is Petherton ill? Has anything happened to him?"

"Yes," shortly replied Hubert; "not much. You had better come on board, Miss Winter."

Ella did not hesitate another moment. She had known George Petherton all her life, and liked him greatly. A thought came over her that the man might have fallen and hurt himself amidst the damaged cordage and rigging.

"Put one foot there and the other here, and give me your hand," said Hubert. Miss Winter, active and fearless, did as she was bidden. Next moment she was standing on the deck.

Thinking only of the poor old boatman, Ella went slowly down the little staircase, and was presently lost to view. When Hubert could no longer see her, he gave a great gasp, and, sinking on one knee, he laid his head against the bulwarks of the brig. "What have I done? What have I done?" he cried. "It is too late now to turn back. Too late!"

He rose slowly when he heard the young lady's returning footsteps. She came up looking about her.

"I can't find George Petherton," she said. "He is not below. I thought you told me----"

"Oh, are you blind?--cannot you guess?" he burst forth, unfolding his arms and drawing a step nearer to her.

Ella, on her part, stepped back: she was becoming frightened at the matter altogether, and at the fierce, dreadful look in his eyes.

"I brought you here, knowing we should be alone and beyond the reach of men, to tell you a secret, Miss Winter. I brought you here because I love you," he added, flinging himself on his knees before her; "because I cannot live another day without telling you! I have you to myself here, and none can interfere."

"Get up instantly," she indignantly cried, with all the bravery she could command. "Never let me hear another word of this folly. Help me into the boat again: I will return to the shore." Her heart was beating very fast and all the colour had left her lips, but there was a fine fire of anger in her eyes.

"Folly! yes, that is the word for it," answered Hubert, as he rose to his feet. "Not until you have listened to the whole tale of folly do you leave this spot."

"Indeed, but I would: I do. Being in the mood, I would dare much more than that," boasted Hubert. The spirit he had taken was beginning to take effect upon him. "Oh, my sweet mistress!" he resumed, his manner changing to softness, "why do you scorn me thus? How was it possible for me daily to see you and not love you? Do you think I have willingly brought this misery on myself? You have blighted my life, but what of that?--it has been one long worship of you. I have loved you ever since the days when we used to gather blackberries in the lanes with your nurse, and dig for pretty shells in the sand."

"Why did not Fate make me your equal instead of your servant? Surely the force of my love would have drawn yours in return. I have hands to work for you, I have a brain to plan for you, I have love that would never grow cold. I am not without manners or education; but, despite all these things, the world does not count me--a gentleman. I am but a son of the soil, and I must not dare to look up to any lady with the eyes of love."

His tone, full of anguish--almost of despair, was respectful now. Despite Ella's indignation, she felt some compassion for him.

"You must forget all this," she said, with gentle gravity: "and I will try to forget that you have spoken as you have to-day. You have an honourable career before you if you choose to follow it, and you may rely upon my doing all that is in my power to further your interests. But never must you address me in this strain again; recollect that. And now I shall be glad if you will row me ashore."

What a revelation his words had been to her! A thousand little tokens, never noticed before, flashed across her memory.

"Forget all this! never speak of it again!" he exclaimed with renewed bitterness. "What easy words to say! There is one thing I should like to remind you of, Miss Ella; it may lessen my seeming presumption. My mother was a lady born; but she left friends, station, everything, to follow my father's humble fortunes. Other gentlewomen there are, who have sacrificed all for love, and deemed the world well lost."

This persistence annoyed Ella while it frightened her. She had never seen the expression on his face that it wore this afternoon, and she shuddered while she looked. Surely this could not be the Hubert Stone she had known for so many years! It was the spirit of some demon which had got possession of him and was looking out of his eyes. She had seen that other kind of spirit below, and rightly deemed that he had been making free with it. It might not answer to be too severe with him.

"Will you not let me go? I am tired," she said, pleasantly. "You are not like yourself, Hubert. I hardly know you this afternoon."

"Faith, I hardly know myself," he answered, with a strange, jarring laugh. "It is all your fault: you have ruined me, body and soul."

Ella cast an imploring glance towards the distant shore. She was growing desperately frightened. Again his mood changed to tenderness.

"Oh, my sweet mistress, is there no hope for me?" he wailed. "Is there none, none? No man else could love you as I love; no heart could be as faithful as mine would be."

"Hubert Stone, enough of this," cried Ella, her fears merged in her indignation. "Once and for all, understand that you could never be anything to me in the way you speak of. If you have the slightest spark of honour, you will not persecute me further."

There was scorn in her voice and indignation in her eyes, but never had he seen her look more beautiful than at that moment.

"I wish the lightning of your eyes could strike me dead at your feet," he exclaimed. "It would be better both for you and me. I know it is useless to ask for that which it is not in your power to give. Your secret is known to me, Miss Winter, well hidden though it be. You love another, and you believe that he loves you in return."

She opened her lips to answer, but closed them again. A lovely colour flushed the alabaster of her cheeks.

Close to the bulwarks she had drawn now, and could get no farther away. He stepped nearer, and laid one finger lightly on her arm.

"I heard all that passed between you and him the other evening," he said, staring straight into her eyes.

"Between you and that man--that Mr. Conroy--your lover. I heard his low-voiced questions and all your soft replies. You gave no scorn or contempt to him: yet am I not as good as he, and do I not love you a thousand times better?"

"Let me pass, sir, this moment! How dare you insult me thus!" she cried, brought to bay. "If I could but strike him to the ground!" was her unspoken thought.

"You shall go when I am ready to let you go, and not one minute before," answered Hubert. "You love this man: I know it from the way you speak to him, from the way you look at him. And he loves you--apparently. But--I beg you listen to me, Miss Winter. I have something I must say. That man is wise in his generation. He waited until your uncle was dead, and Heron Dyke yours, and then--not before, mark you--he comes with his low, honeyed words to steal away your heart. But now--are you listening?"

"Dare to wed that man," he went on, "and, on the day you do so, the secret I have kept for your sake shall be a secret no longer. The world shall ring with it."

"It would be a grand thing for this adventurer, this journalist--this newspaper hack, to become the master of Heron Dyke, would it not? _He_ thinks so. But that he shall never be."

"Unfortunately, I know too well. Should he marry you, he will not find you the heiress he expects. He will find too late that his wife has no more title to the estates of Heron Dyke than I have; that what she holds, she holds by _fraud_. By fraud alone."

"By fraud!" Anxious though she was to get away, Hubert's words startled her. "What do you mean?"

"I mean this, Miss Winter. A dozen words from me, and Heron Dyke would know you as its mistress no more."

"Then speak those words," said Ella, bravely. "It is your bounden duty to do so. I have no wish to keep what belongs to another."

Her tone was clear and decided. She believed there was something in this: that he meant what he said.

"Why should I speak them--and injure you? No. Give up this man, who cares only for your money, and my lips shall be sealed for ever."

He crossed to where the boat that had brought them was tied to the wreck. He unfastened the rope that held it, and let it drop into the water. Then he took up a broken spar and pushed the boat away. The tide was still on the ebb, and the boat floated slowly out to sea.

"No, I will not murder you," he answered, quietly. "But since the Fates have willed that we shall not live together, we can at least die together."

Ella sank back faint and dizzy. Could it be that the only link between themselves and the shore was really broken? There was no other boat near, and two miles of water intervened between the wreck and the land. It was terrible to think of the doom to which this madman had possibly condemned her.

Madman! Was it not likely that he was one in reality? It flashed across Ella's mind that, long years before, she had heard that Hubert Stone's mother had died insane. Had he inherited the awful malady, and had this day's agitation brought it suddenly out? In terrible fear she glanced across at him.

He was standing on the opposite side of the deck, lighting a cigar. His hat was off, and the breeze ruffled his black, silky hair. Could anything but madness account for his actions this afternoon? Ella shuddered and hid her eyes, and tried to think. The pulses of life beat strongly within her. It was hard to realise that the end--and such an end--was so near.

Presently Hubert came a little nearer. He was puffing quietly at his cigar. All traces of his previous excitement had disappeared.

"The barometer has been going down all day," he observed, "and the wind is beginning to rise. It will blow a gale during the night, the wreck will break up, and when daylight comes, the _Seamew_ will have disappeared for ever."

"A few days hence," he resumed slowly, "two bodies will be washed ashore--those of a man and a woman; and the woman will be so closely locked in the arms of the man that people will not be able to separate them. They will be buried together, and she who would not be his bride in life shall be his bride for ever in the grave."

"That shall never be," said Ella to herself, with a shudder. But she spoke no word aloud.

"Meanwhile, Miss Winter, you have nothing to fear. We have still some hours before us."

By this time the boat looked a mere speck in the distance. Sunset splendours flooded the western sky. In mid heaven, borne swiftly away by some upper current, were ragged shreds and fragments of cloud, looking like crimson fleeces that had been roughly torn asunder; but in the north and north-east an ominous-looking bank of sullen sky was climbing out of the sea, and creeping slowly up towards the zenith. There was not much wind, but what there was blew in fitful puffs that went as suddenly as they came, hurrying away to whisper elsewhere of the coming storm. The tide had begun to turn, and was bringing with it a heavier swell. Now and then the timbers of the ship creaked and strained; it was as though the brave old brig knew that its end was near, and could not repress its groans. In another hour darkness would reign over land and sea.

Hubert went on smoking in silence, lighting a second cigar when the first one was finished, and--what could Ella say? Even if she were to appeal to him to save her life, and he listened to her appeal, it would be useless. The boat was gone beyond recovery, and with it their last chance of reaching the shore. A few short hours, and then would come the bitter end; one brief struggle, and that coil of joys, sorrows, and perplexities which we call Life would have snapped like a broken dream, and the unknown awful dawn of Eternity would be shining in her eyes.

She was sitting crouched up against the bulwarks, her face hidden in her hands. Never had the wheels of thought moved more swiftly, she had so many things to think of, and so little time to give to them! She thought of Mrs. Toynbee sitting placidly reading her novel in the drawing-room at Heron Dyke--for that she had gone home ere this, Ella did not doubt--looking at her watch occasionally, and wondering what had become of the runaway, but otherwise quietly enjoying herself.

Next her thoughts flew off to Edward Conroy. Where was he at that moment, and what was he doing? Oh! if he only knew the bitter strait she was in! Ella no longer attempted to disguise from herself the fact that she loved him. Would she ever see him again on earth? A blinding rush of tears filled her eyes, and for a little while she felt as if the bitterness of death were already upon her. But before long she grew calmer, silently praying that help and strength might be given her; and she did not pray in vain.

"Are you not cold, Miss Ella?" asked Hubert, by-and-by. "Is there nothing I can do for you?"

"I would give my heart's blood for you," he cried passionately. "But you shall never be the wife of that man. I have sworn it, and I will keep my oath. We will die together."

Striding off, he gave a look round at the weather, and went below. Probably in search of more hollands.

Ella rose to her feet as he disappeared. She felt cramped and chilled, and everything seemed to swim before her. She strained her eyes across the darkling waters, and, while she was looking, the lamps of Easterby lighthouse flashed suddenly out. The sight made her heart beat more quickly. With help so near, it was hard to realise that there was no help for her. The great bank of cloud was still creeping slowly up, and the wind was beginning to pipe more shrilly. What was that madman doing below? If he would but stay there, and not come on deck again!

But--while she was looking and listening--a strange, wild idea, born of despair, flashed across her mind as suddenly and clearly as the rays from the lighthouse lamps had flashed across her sight. For a moment she stood with her fingers pressed to her temples, asking herself whether she should do this thing or not. Yes! In it lay her only hope of rescue. The staircase which Hubert had gone down could be shut up in bad weather, by means of a hinged door, which at present stood wide open. It was the work of a moment for Ella to shut this door and shoot the bolt into the staple. Her enemy was a prisoner.

Broken boxes and other wreckage lumbered the deck. There was also a small tub containing a quantity of tar. Ella quickly made a pile of these boxes, and poured the tar over them. Then she tore a number of leaves out of her sketchbook and put them under the boxes. Hubert's fusee-box lay close by, where he had left it. After some little difficulty, she succeeded in setting light to the paper, the tar caught fire, and in a little while a bright sheet of flame was leaping toward the sky.

This was effected just as Hubert found out that he was imprisoned. He shook the door and flung himself against it with all his strength. To no purpose. He found a heavy piece of wood, and began battering the door with all his might. The blows filled Ella's soul with affright. Surely, surely, she said to herself, her signal would be seen from shore, and help would come--sent by God. But--would it come in time? would it come before that caged madman succeeded in breaking loose? She was partly crouching, partly kneeling, a little way off the fire.

Suddenly, the faint sound of what seemed a far-off shout fell upon her straining ears. Even while she asked herself whether it was only fancy, it grew more distinct. Help must be approaching. The revelation was too much for her. Hubert's blows grew fainter in her ears, and she fell on the deck bereft of sense and feeling.

CHAPTER X.

RESCUER AND RESCUED

It seemed to be a perilous situation: lying on the brig there, alone and insensible, without certainty of rescue. But help had come: and when Miss Winter opened her eyes to consciousness, the first sight she awoke to was the face of Edward Conroy, bent tenderly over her. Kneeling on one knee, he was chafing her hands gently; and at a little distance stood two of the Easterby boatmen.

"You are better now?" said Mr. Conroy. "Yes, I am better now," Ella replied mechanically. Her mind just yet only recognised one fact, that Conroy was by her side. He assisted her to rise. When she stood up and looked round, all the events of the afternoon flashed across her mind in a moment. What happy accident had brought Conroy, of all people in the world, to her rescue? But it was not a time to ask questions: that could be done afterwards.

"The sooner we get ashore the better," said Conroy. "Are you well enough to venture?"

"Quite well enough," answered Ella, with a rush of tears. "A little while ago I thought I should never set foot on shore again."

"But what became of the boat that brought you to the wreck?--and what has become of Mr. Stone?"

"The rope that held the boat became unfastened, and the tide carried it away," she slowly answered, after a long pause.

But Hubert Stone, she mentally asked herself--what could have become of him: was he below still? Conroy repeated the question. He had heard from Mrs. Toynbee that it was Stone who had rowed Ella to the wreck.

"He--he went into the cabin," said Ella, shrinking from speaking too openly. "He went down first of all to look for George Petherton, and found he was not on board. He was below when I fainted."

"We'll soon see after him. You can be getting into the boat again," he added to the men.

The cabin door had been broken open: by Stone, of course. Conroy only supposed it had been done in the wreck, and descended the stairs. Presently he returned.

"But he must be on board," said Ella, who did not wish to leave him to his fate, although he had behaved so ill to her. "He had no means of getting away. The little boat was gone."

"Hubert Stone is one of the best swimmers we have, sir. The young lady knows it. He must ha' swum after the boat."

"Look here," interposed the other man: "as we were nearing the brig here, I saw something moving through the water a goodish distance off; but whether it was a man, or what it was, I couldn't make out."

"It must have been Stone that you saw," said Mr. Conroy. "In any case, he is not here. He must have gone to get help for you," he added to Ella: "a brave fellow!--though he had the tide all in his favour."

That it was Stone the man had seen there could be little doubt of. Conroy helped Ella into the boat, and the men rowed away.

It was almost dusk now. The great black bank of cloud was still climbing slowly up from the sea, and had shut out half the sky. The wind had risen considerably during the last half-hour, and the tide was rolling in in huge sullen masses of blue-green water, with here and there a white-topped wave.

"We shall have plenty of dirty weather before morning," remarked one boatman to the other.

Ella and Conroy sat in the stern of the boat. He had wrapped his ulster round her to protect her from the wind. Also, he had taken possession of one of her hands, and she made no attempt to withdraw it. When he had her heart already, why should she refuse him possession of her hand?

Ella shut her eyes and tried to realise her happiness. Oh, the difference that one short half-hour had made! She could hardly believe this, the sitting there, to be more than a blissful dream.

"What strange chance was it that brought you here to-day?" she said to him at last. "Did you drop down from the sky? How else did you come?"

"I came by a very slow train that was an hour longer on the road than it might have been," answered Conroy. "My employers ordered me abroad yesterday. Not very far this time. Only to Spain."

"I may be away three months, or I may be away six. It was impossible for me to start until I had seen you again."

There was something in his tone, as he spoke these words, that thrilled Ella's heart, and made her cheeks flush rosy-red. She was glad that it was too dark for him to see her face.

"I walked from the station direct to the Hall," resumed Conroy, after a pause. "Mrs. Toynbee told me where you had gone. She was beginning to be a little uneasy at your long stay on board. Not much so, only in her placid way. 'Miss Winter's movements cannot always be calculated beforehand,' she said to me."

Conroy spoke in imitation of Mrs. Toynbee's mincing way of speaking. Ella laughed.

"I believe she sets me down in her own mind as the most erratic and eccentric young woman it has ever been her fortune to live with."

"What a pity you are not more commonplace. She would like you so very much better," said Conroy. "However, though Mrs. Toynbee might be satisfied to account for your absence after her easy fashion, it did not satisfy me. I walked down to the village, and inquired among the boatmen whether any of them had seen you return. Several of them had seen you go out to the wreck, but no one had seen you come back, and they could not think what was keeping you. Then I hesitated no longer. I hired a boat, and got these two worthy fellows to accompany me. When we were about half a mile from shore we saw a bright tongue of flame leap suddenly up on the wreck: we knew that you must be in distress, and the men redoubled their efforts at the oars. The rest you know."

"I had given up all hope of rescue," said Ella. "It must have been the special hand of Providence that brought you down to-day!"

"All the same, it was excessively careless of Hubert Stone not to make sure that the boat was fast; unpardonably so. In his place I should never forgive myself."

Ella made no response. Conroy judged from her silence that the matter had too thoroughly frightened her to be a pleasant topic of conversation: so he did not again allude to it. Stone had no doubt done his best to remedy his neglect by swimming off to get succour, and so for the present nothing more was said.

What a thankful heart was Ella's when she stepped out of the boat on to the sandy beach! She had been mercifully snatched from what at one time seemed certain death, and she was profoundly grateful to Him "whose mercy endureth for ever."

The villagers had seen the signal on the wreck, and men, women, and children hurried down to the shore. They crowded round Ella when she stepped out of the boat, and greeted her and Conroy with heartfelt cheers. Then Ella broke down. Her tears came hot and fast, and for a little while she could not say a word to any of them. A fly was soon obtained from the inn, and she was driven to the Hall. As they neared it, she looked at Conroy, who sat opposite to her.

"Please not to say anything to Mrs. Toynbee about what has occurred," she said, "or that you had to fetch me from the wreck. She will hear it to-morrow, of course; but really I feel that I could not bear questioning to-night."

And most adroitly did Conroy parry Mrs. Toynbee's remarks. The row on the sea had been longer than Miss Winter had expected, he said, and she was very tired.

Little sleep did Ella get that night. However tired she might be, her mind was intensely awake and excited; and the cold grey dawn was stealing into her room before she closed her eyes in forgetfulness. All through the night the wind blew in great gusts round the old house, the rain smote like whips on window and casement, and the thunderous beat of the sea on the low, sandy beach grew louder and more loud as the dark hours slowly dragged themselves away. It was a great storm: and one inmate of the Hall at any rate, apart from Miss Winter, had her rest broken by it.

This was a stranger, named Betsy Tucker, who had entered the Hall as an additional servant a week or two before, the place having been procured for her by Mrs. Keen. The mother of this young woman had once lived at Nullington; she had recently died, and the daughter wrote to Mrs. Keen, who had been a companion of her mother in early life, to ask if she could find her a good situation; upon which the landlady spoke for her to Miss Winter, hearing that a third housemaid was needed at the Hall.

The girl, who knew nothing of the superstitious reports rife at Heron Dyke, slept in a room by herself. On this night she could not get to sleep for the noise of the wind; suddenly, during its pauses, she heard, or thought she heard, footsteps pacing the corridor outside her door. Much startled, the girl held her breath, and became convinced she was not mistaken: she heard them distinctly. They came and went several times, once or twice they were accompanied by a low moan. Betsy lay working herself into a fever.

She could bear this in the dark no longer; so she struck a match and lighted her candle. Then, as she was sitting up in bed listening to the footsteps, she heard them stop close to her door, and saw the handle of the door move; some one was turning it from the outside. For the moment she forgot that she had locked it; she screamed aloud; and, throwing her arms out of bed in her terror, upset the candle, and was left in darkness.

"You may be sure there was no more sleep for me all night," said Betsy, when relating this to her fellow-servants the following morning. "But now--who could have been there? I heard the steps, and I heard the moans, and I saw the handle of the door turn: it's as true as that I am here to tell you."

Such was the story she whispered. Her awe-struck listeners thought of Katherine Keen, but not one of them mentioned the name. Betsy slept alone, and they would not frighten her unnecessarily.

Early in the day came tidings that the _Seamew_ was no longer to be seen. As predicted, the brig had gone to pieces during the gale. Ella shuddered when the news was told her: could it be that Hubert Stone was still on board? Several planks and some broken spars were washed ashore in the course of the following tide.

The moment Ella had awakened that morning, the warning spoken by Hubert rang in her ears: "What you hold, you hold by fraud: a dozen words from me, and Heron Dyke would know you as its mistress no more." Surely, she reasoned, they could be the words of no other than a madman!

Nevertheless, they haunted her. What--she could not help asking herself--what if they were true?--what then?--was there any hidden secret--any fraud connected with her succession to the property? She could not think it possible. Still, do what she might, she did not get them out of her mind. Last night, in the joy of her deliverance from a cruel death, and under the glad influence of Conroy's presence, she had thought but little of them; but this morning, when her mind was fresh and clear, they were branded on her memory as if with a red-hot iron.

Nothing was seen of Hubert at the Hall that day, and Miss Winter made no inquiry respecting him. She thought it not unlikely, after what had passed between them, that he would have the grace to absent himself for a little time. Conroy had spoken of the keg of spirits and the horn drinking-cup he saw below--in fact, she had seen them herself; she felt little doubt that Hubert had imbibed some, which in a degree might account for his ill-behaviour, and that he was now ashamed of himself. It would be impossible to retain him as steward at the Hall, but Miss Winter could recommend him elsewhere. Meanwhile she did not intend to speak of what had passed, but to bury it in oblivion. It was not a pleasant thing in any way, either to speak or to think of.

Mr. Conroy was at Heron Dyke betimes on the morning after the visit to the wreck. He was anxious to hear that Ella had suffered in no way from her adventure: at least, that was what he told Mrs. Toynbee, for Miss Winter was not yet downstairs when he reached the Hall; but there may have been some other motive in his mind of which he did not choose to speak. What a glad light leapt into Ella's eyes when she walked into the room and saw who was there! Conroy's earnest face brightened as if with a sudden burst of sunshine, while he took her hand for a moment and inquired after her health. Truth to tell, Ella had a slight headache this morning, but not for worlds would she have owned to it. They sat and talked about the gale and other matters, but never alluded to the adventure on the wreck, Mrs. Toynbee interposing one of her little commonplaces now and again; and so the time wore on till luncheon.

"Won't you go out for a short walk with me, Miss Winter?" asked Conroy, as they rose from the meal. "You have no idea how delightful the park is after last night's rain."

"Delightful!" exclaimed Mrs. Toynbee. "Why, the footpaths must be in a complete puddle."

"So they are, madam. But, none the less, I maintain that the park this morning is delightful."

"And there's still enough wind to almost carry you away; and the rain may recommence at any moment! persisted the lady.

"Nay, I think it just the day to be out," said Ella, with a blush and a smile; "and I have thick boots, you know, Mrs. Toynbee. A little wind, a little sunshine, and the possibility of a shower: what more could any reasonable creature wish for? Mr. Conroy, I shall be ready in three minutes."

The paths in the park were certainly very sloppy, and the wind when they faced it almost took away their breath; but what cared those two for such trifles? they but served to enhance the charms of their walk. Conroy took a turning that led to the shore. "Not that way, please," said Ella, with a slight shudder. She did not care to look upon the sea again at present; so they turned their faces another way, finding a dry and sheltered walk, where they were free from the impertinences of the wind, by the edge of the plantation of young larches which covered a piece of rising ground to the left of the Hall. Here they paced backwards and forwards for upwards of an hour.

The rain last night had washed the atmosphere so that even the most distant objects looked sharp and clearly defined. Away over the sea, the sun streamed down through a rift in the grey, low-hanging clouds, that widened out one minute till a glimpse of blue sky could be seen beyond it, and the next contracted its fleecy walls again till nothing was left save a thin shaft of blinding light that smote the water like a golden spear. Faint resinous odours were wafted fitfully from the plantation; in the hollows of the footpaths tiny pools of rain-water shivered in the cool September wind.

Ella seemed in a peculiarly happy mood. Why she should be so she could not have explained even to herself, for had not Conroy told her that he was about to go away for an indefinite length of time, and was not the echo of Hubert Stone's mysterious words ringing in her memory? But so it was. She could no more account for her gladness than a child can for its fondness for play. Had she any faintest premonition, had her heart secretly warned her that a momentous instant was at hand? Be that as it may, Ella found fifty different things to talk about, and seemed nervously anxious not to let the conversation flag for a moment. She had all sorts of questions to ask about Spain, the country and the people, as though she had never read a book about it in her life. She hoped that Conroy would not run into any unnecessary danger, and now and then at intervals he must send her a little sketch of some place that he had visited, just to prove to her that he was still alive. She had often had an idea that she should like to learn Spanish, and had been told that it was nearly as musical as Italian. She would buy a grammar and dictionary at once; it would be a capital occupation for the long evenings of the coming winter; and when Mr. Conroy should return in spring she should doubtless be able to greet him in the choicest Castilian.

Suddenly Ella paused in her talk to stand still. The clock over the Hall stables was striking the hour. "I did not suppose it was so late," she exclaimed. "I should have thought that the old clock was an hour fast, but that I know how painfully accurate it always is. We had better return. After what happened yesterday, Mrs. Toynbee may be sending the bellman round the village to cry me as lost."

"Give me ten minutes more, and then we will go," said the young man. "Who can tell when we shall see each other again?"

Ella tacitly assented, and they took a turn or two in silence. All her high spirits seemed suddenly to have deserted her.

"Before leaving you I have a few words to say to you: it was to say them that I have come all the way from London,"--and Conroy took one of her hands in his as he spoke thus, even as he had taken it last evening in the boat. Ella's heart gave a great bound, she drew in her breath with a half sigh and trembled from head to foot.

"Ella--may I dare to call you so?--I could not go away without telling you how I love you, without telling you that I have loved you from the moment I first set eyes on you that evening last year at Mrs. Carlyon's, and that I can never cease to love you while I live! I could not go away--Ella, I _could_ not--without asking you whether I may come and claim you as my wife when I return."

He held both her hands by this time, and was gazing down fondly into her face. She had turned very pale when he first began to speak, but by the time he had done two blush-roses burned in her cheeks. Tremors of love, and joy, and happiness unspeakable thrilled her heart. She was standing with downcast eyes, and she stood thus for a little while after he had ceased speaking. Her breath came and went quickly, the tears were rising. Another moment and she had lifted her glance to his. Her lips were quivering with emotion, but from her eyes, love--love not to be mistaken for anything else--looked out at Conroy through a mist of tears. Not one word did she say; there was no necessity to say it. That one look told Conroy all he cared to know. He folded her in his arms, he pressed his lips to hers, he whispered words in her ears sacred to her alone.

As they were walking slowly back arm in arm through the park, Conroy broke the thrilling silence. "Do you know, cara mia, what the world will call me? It will brand me as a fortune-hunter, and say that I should never have sought you for my wife had you not been the mistress of Heron Dyke."

The words sent a shock through her, like a dart. Was she the mistress of Heron Dyke? She was not, if there were truth in what Hubert Stone had declared to her. Her lover's constancy might be put to the test before long in a way he little dreamed of now. "You can afford to smile at anything the world may choose to say," she answered. "So can I so long as I have vanity enough to think that you care for me for myself alone."

"But that I had the fear of your broad acres before my eyes I should have spoken to you long ere this," he answered. "Had your uncle been a poor man, or you not his heiress, I should have asked you at his hands last autumn."

How sweet the words sounded to her--how true was their ring!--and after what that other man had said!

"Suppose that when you return from Spain, you should find that I am no longer mistress of Heron Dyke!" she cried impulsively. "Suppose you should find that, by some mischance or other, I am poor instead of rich? What would you say then to your intended wife?"

"I should say, 'What seems to you a loss has made me one of the happiest fellows alive.' I should say, 'Let us marry at once, however humble our home may be.' I should say, 'I am glad that your riches have taken to themselves wings; it is only fit and proper that a man should work for his wife.' I don't think," he added, "that I could love you more than I do now, but somehow you might perhaps seem closer to me if you came to me as the beggar-maid went to King Cophetua."

Ella sighed. It was happiness to hear him talk thus; and yet his words brought to her a sting of pain. How glad she would be to endow him with every worldly good--and who seemed so fit to be the master of Heron Dyke? And yet, perhaps--who could say?--he might love her all the better if she went to him in a cotton gown, with a simple flower in her hair.

"But what makes you talk as if Heron Dyke and you were about to part company?" he presently asked.

"Perhaps we may be: I cannot tell," she answered, a cloud as of trouble passing over her face.

"Pardon me, Ella, but I do not see how anything of that kind could come to pass. Your uncle was too shrewd a man not to take every proper precaution in a matter so gravely important."

Ella did not answer for a few moments, and when she spoke it was with hesitation. "Might there not be such a thing as a flaw in the title?"

Conroy started slightly. "In his title, do you mean? I cannot think of anything more improbable. Have you any reason for suggesting this?"

"Here we are at home," said Ella hurriedly, for they had reached it. "I cannot tell you anything more, and you must please not ask me to. In any case, whatever happens, I trust that I shall be enabled to do my duty."

"That I am sure you will always do," responded Conroy, warmly. "Remember," he added in a low tone, "that in good fortune or evil fortune my love for you can never change."

They were standing under the porch, not yet having rung. She looked up with a shy sweet smile as he spoke. The opportunity was too tempting to be resisted; he might not have another one for ever so long. He was an audacious man in many ways, and before Ella was aware, his arms were round her and his lips pressed to hers.

CHAPTER XI.

NOTHING VENTURE, NOTHING WIN

Maria Kettle returned from Leamington in mourning. Mrs. Page was dead, and had left Maria two thousand pounds. "Better than nothing of course," grumbled the Vicar; "but she might just as well have made it three or four thousand while she was about it." He had always thought she would. Maria was truly glad to get back home again, and she told nobody about her little fortune. She and Ella met like sisters who had been long parted. What a number of things they had to say to each other, yet each shrank from speaking of that which lay closest to their hearts. Maria said nothing about her semi-engagement to Philip Cleeve, while Ella did not mention Edward Conroy. It seemed such a little while ago since they were mutually affirming that they would never marry--or at least not for many years to come; and yet, after all their grand resolutions, when put to the test, they had proved no stronger minded than the rest of their sex. Each felt slightly ashamed to think of all this; yet, strange to say, neither of them would have exchanged her present bondage for that past freedom. But a great blow was about to fall on Maria.

The more the Reverend Mr. Kettle puzzled over the loss of his purse, the more inclined he was to connect Philip Cleeve with it in some way. He did not absolutely say to himself that Philip had taken the purse, but it was strange how the young man's image always came into his mind in connection with the loss. It may be that he owed this feeling to Dr. Downes.

He and Dr. Downes, being fellow-sufferers, for the Doctor had never heard more of his gold snuff-box, had got into the habit of talking with one another. Talking begets talking, and perhaps the old Doctor said more than he had meant to say. Anyway, one day the Vicar heard for the first time about Philip's frequent visits to the billiard-room of the Rose and Crown, and about the high play with Lord Camberley and others that went on at The Lilacs.

"What a young idiot he must be!" exclaimed the indignant Vicar: and Dr. Downes nodded assent.

"And if there's anything between Cleeve and your daughter, as I fancy there is," added the old man, "I should put my veto on it--at least for the present. Master Philip has fallen into bad ways, that's quite evident; and even if these ugly suspicions about him should turn out to have no foundation in fact, he ought to alter very much before he is fit to marry so nice a girl as Maria."

The Vicar ruffled his white hair with his fingers, and could not help admitting that the Doctor's view was the right one. There had been a sort of tacit agreement between himself and Lady Cleeve that one day the two young people should marry, provided they cared sufficiently for each other: and--and he believed they did care. It grieved him to see his old friend's son going so far astray; but his duty to his daughter was paramount, and other considerations must give way to it.

After Maria's return from Leamington, the Vicar spoke to her, entering upon the subject abruptly.

"But something has passed between you, has it not? He has said something to you, eh?"

"Philip certainly spoke to me before I went to Leamington; but, papa, there is not an engagement."

"Should he speak to you again you must give him no encouragement; none whatever. Understand that, Maria."

The Vicar told her why. Of the billiards at the Rose and Crown, and the high play at The Lilacs. "There were other things," he added, "which he should not speak of--meaning, of course, the Doctor's gold snuff-box, and his own purse.

"It seems to me that he must be becoming a practised gambler, Maria," wound up Mr. Kettle, "playing as he does with rich men like Camberley and Lennox. They can afford it; Philip can't. Putting all that aside, he is not progressing in his profession; so what likelihood is there of his making a home to take a wife to?"

"Mr. Tiplady has some intention of taking him into partnership; Philip told me so."

"We are not misjudging him. Don't I tell you there are other reasons why you should have nothing more to do with Philip?--matters which I do not choose to speak of openly."

"It seems rather hard, papa, that I should be asked to condemn Philip without knowing what he has done."

"Good gracious, Maria! have I not given you reasons enough? Could he become your husband without a radical alteration in his mode of life? As for the other matters I hinted at, the less said about them, at present, the better. I hope with all my heart that things may not turn out so bad as they seem."

"Then all Philip's promises to me before I went away have proved of no avail," mourned Maria to herself. "He still goes to The Lilacs, he still frequents the billiard-room. Why has he not more strength of mind? And what are those mysterious hints which papa threw out of something still worse? Oh, Philip, Philip!"

That there must be some weighty cause, apart from what she knew, to make her easy and tolerant father speak so severely, Maria felt assured of. She never thought to rebel at the mandate; but it seemed to her that Philip grew all the dearer to her heart.

She had a speedy proof that the Vicar was very much in earnest. He gave orders in the household that whenever Mr. Cleeve called he was not to be admitted. Philip did call; again and again; and at last he understood that the door was closed to him. It made Philip very angry, and he set himself to waylay Maria out of doors.

One morning he met her suddenly in a pretty, green lane just outside the town, and had accosted her before Maria well knew he was there.

"Good-morning, Maria," he said, stopping her and holding out his hand. What could she do but put out hers in return?

"I was sorry to hear about Mrs. Page's death; it must have been a mournful time for you. You have been back a week, have you not?"

"And I have called at the Vicarage nearly every day, only to be denied to you. Mr. Kettle is not to be seen, and Miss Kettle is not to be seen, are the answers I get. Of course I can only conclude that I am no longer welcome. Now, Maria, what is the meaning of it?"

Maria was thoroughly distressed. She knew not what to say. How dear he was to her! How his very voice thrilled her as he spoke! If there was anger in his eyes there was love as well, and her own eyes fell before his ardent gaze.

"Papa thought it best that you should not come to the Vicarage for a little while," she murmured--and the words seemed nearly to choke her.

"Papa has heard--has heard things," stammered Maria. "He says you are frequently to be seen at the billiard-table; he has heard that you are addicted to high play with men like Lord Camberley and Captain Lennox. And--and he says they may be able to afford it, but you cannot--which, of course, is true. Oh, Philip! have you forgotten the promises you made to me before I went to Leamington?"

Philip changed colour, and bit his lip. He began tracing some hieroglyphic on the gravel with his cane.

"Papa asked me whether there was any engagement between us," continued Maria. "I told him that there was not, but that you had spoken to me before I went away. He then said that everything between us must be broken off, at least for the present; you best know why, yourself, Philip."

"That I have been weak and foolish, Maria, no one knows better than myself," he candidly answered. "But I don't think I have deserved to be treated quite so harshly."

It was on the tip of Maria's tongue to say, "Papa seems to have something against you more than I have mentioned, though he would not tell me what:" but after a moment's thought she stopped herself.

"Papa is not in the habit of treating anyone with undue harshness," she remarked aloud.

"I think he is harsh to me. Why, Maria--but perhaps I had better see your father himself, and have this matter out with him," he broke off in his usual impulsive style.

Maria shook her head: she knew that his seeing her father would bring forth nothing--except unpleasantness.

"It would be of no use, Philip," she answered, sadly. "Papa would only say to you what I have said--putting it perhaps in stronger terms."

Philip went into a passion. "What right has Mr. Kettle to set himself up as a censor of my morals and conduct?" asked he, with a heightened colour.

"No right at all, I suppose, in one sense of the word, nor does he profess to do so," was Maria's grave reply. "But one thing he has a right to do: to think of me and of my welfare. Don't you see that, Philip?"

Philip fumed and frowned, and slashed at an unoffending nettle with his cane. They had been walking slowly onward in this unfrequented lane, where they were free to talk without observation.

"Am I to consider our engagement at an end?" demanded Philip, after a few moments' silence.

"There has been no engagement, as you are well aware," returned Maria in a low voice.

"_You_ know quite well what I mean. Am I to look upon it that all is at an end between us?"

A moment's pause; then in a very low voice: "I think as papa thinks. You know I _must_, Philip."

"That I have been thoughtless and foolish, I have already admitted to you, Maria; but I verily believe that matters would never have gone so far with me had there been an engagement between us. I should then have had something definite to look forward to--some hopeful end to work for. As it was, what you said to me at our last interview seemed to take the heart out of me: it did, Maria. You would not even let me write to you. I seemed to lose my anchorage altogether."

"I have not forgotten them. The truth is, Maria," he burst out passionately, "you are the only person in the world who can save me from myself. When I am with you I am strong; when I am away from you I am as unstable as water. Were you my wife, you could mould me as you would: were you even my promised wife, I should be a very different man."

Maria had no words at command, but she gave him a glance out of her tearful eyes which conveyed a world of love and tenderness.

"I will make no more promises," continued Philip, with a bitter laugh. "In my case they only recoil on my own head. I will abide by your father's behest for the present, and keep at a distance. But only for the present, mind. I shall still look upon you as my future wife. Nobody can deny me that much."

Maria sighed. She felt that he was not meeting this trouble quite right, on the whole.

"Wait a little while, Maria, and you shall see what you shall see. I hope to be able to prove both to you and your father that--but, no, I said that I would make no more promises," he abruptly broke off again, "and I will not."

They were at the end of the lane. Before them was a gate, with a stile, leading into some fields and high grounds that overlooked the town. Maria stopped. "I must go back. I have come too far already," she said. Philip took both her hands and gazed fondly into her eyes. Then, before she was aware of his intention, or had time to offer any resistance, his arms were round her, she was pressed to his heart, and one burning kiss was left upon her lips. Next moment, without a word, he was gone, vaulting lightly over the stile and away into the meadows beyond. With hot cheeks and a beating heart, Maria retraced her steps to the town.

"What was it that she would see by waiting a little while?" she presently began to ask herself. Philip had spoken with significant meaning.

The two hundred pounds won by Philip Cleeve on Patchwork, at the Newmarket Spring Meeting, had to a great extent recouped him for his gambling losses. But some months had passed away since then, and his capital had again been dipped into pretty deeply. For one thing, he was less frugal in his habits than of old. His mother's allowance no longer sufficed to find him in clothes and pocket-money. His tailor's and bootmaker's bills were twice as heavy as they used to be, and of late there was no more fashionably dressed young man in Nullington than Philip Cleeve. At one time he had been content to play billiards for sixpence a game, but nothing less than half-a-crown a game would do for him now. He went to The Lilacs once a week, sometimes oftener, and although he no longer joined the card-table so frequently as in those earlier days, preferring to talk with Mrs. Ducie or turn over her music, yet he could not keep aloof from play altogether, and it was no unfrequent thing for him to find himself minus ten or fifteen sovereigns when he reached home. In short, by the beginning of September his capital had again shown a very serious deficit. More than once Captain Lennox said to him: "What a pity it is that you did not lay every sovereign you could scrape together on Patchwork. You will never have such a chance again." And Philip agreed with the Captain that it was a pity.

One day at The Lilacs, a little while previously to this present time, Philip found a printed paper on the table, which, for want of something better to do, he took up and glanced over. It proved to be a prospectus of the Hermandad Silver Mining Company, Colorado. Philip was surprised to see the name of his host, Captain Lennox, among the list of directors. "Why, Lennox," he said, "I was not aware that you went in for anything of this kind."

"It helps to kill time and gives me an excuse for running up to town now and then," answered Lennox. "Besides, these things bring one in contact with a lot of men who may prove useful some day or other."

"My dear fellow, as yet it is in its babyhood: it has only been launched a few weeks. That it will prove a very prosperous thing, I never for one moment doubted; otherwise I should not have allowed my name to appear to it, nor should I have invested in it so much of my spare capital."

"A long way in this era of telegraphy? Pooh! There's no such thing as distance nowadays. Besides, the board has its own expert out there--a very clever young mining engineer--and his reports may be thoroughly relied upon. We know pretty well what we are about."

Philip was of opinion that the Captain knew pretty well what he was about in most of the concerns of life. "I suppose that every now and then one of these silver mines really does turn out to be a gold mine in one sense of the phrase," he observed.

"Now and then!" said Lennox, with a lifting of his eyebrows, "All I know is that there are two mines within a little distance of ours which are paying their lucky proprietors between thirty and forty per cent., and I know of no reason why the Hermandad should be poorer than its neighbours. All we want is more capital for its proper working; and that we are now about to raise. There will be no difficulty in doing _that!_"

Mrs. Ducie came in, and nothing more was said. But Philip's dreams that night were all about the Hermandad mine; and it ran far more in his thoughts next day at the office than did his duties.

Two days later Philip saw Lennox again. "By-the-bye, about those Hermandad shares?" he said. "What are they each? I don't see them quoted in the Money Article."

Captain Lennox smiled. "No, you don't see them in the market--at least so far as the general public is concerned; they are too choice a commodity to be there. We--I and my co-directors--intend to keep them for ourselves and our friends."

"Twenty pounds each. Five pounds payable on allotment, and another five pounds in two months' time."

"There will be no further calls: the first and second will amply suffice for all expenses. Our profits will begin almost from the very day the machinery gets into working order."

Metaphorically speaking, Philip's mouth was watering. Thirty per cent.! The words had rung like sweet music in his memory ever since he heard them. "I suppose that even if an outsider were desirous of investing a little spare cash in your precious shares, there would be no chance of his being able to do so?" he said.

"Um--well--I dare say there are still a few left. Are you speaking for yourself?"

"I've got that two hundred by me that I won on Patchwork," answered Philip. "I might venture to speculate with that."

"To be sure you might," nodded Lennox. "I am going up to town the day after to-morrow: if you like, I will see what I can do for you. Just as you please, you know, Cleeve: I have no interest in your decision one way or the other."

"I am aware of that. It is very good of you. Let me see: twenty shares at five pounds a share would be a hundred pounds. That would leave me the other hundred to pay the second call with."

"You are indeed a timid speculator," he said. "In these matters my motto is, 'Nothing venture, nothing win.' In your place I should invest the two hundred pounds right off. But of course you know your own business best."

Philip coloured and stammered. "You are certain that there is no likelihood of a third call being made, Lennox?"

"As certain as I am of anything in this uncertain world," was the answer. "And then, you have always the option of getting out of your bargain by selling."

He did think of it, and the thought dazzled him. The end of it was that he put a cheque for two hundred pounds in Lennox's hands half an hour before that gentleman started for London.

An anxious and feverish time for Philip was that which followed. His sunny, easy-going disposition led him to look on the bright side of most things, but there were times and seasons, generally during the lonely hours of darkness, when he thought with a dread sinking of the heart of what he had done. The second call would go a long way towards exhausting his remaining capital, and should the mine, after all, turn out a failure, he would be a ruined man.

But more often his thoughts flowed in a brighter channel. The Hermandad shares would go up--up; as he had heard of other mining shares going up. At the proper moment he would sell out and realise his capital. Then with a swelling heart he would go to the Vicar and say to him: "I have come to ask your daughter's hand in marriage. I am about to become Tiplady's partner, and I have a home to take my wife to, equal to the one she is leaving." What a sweet revenge it would be after all Mr. Kettle's harshness!

CHAPTER XII.

HUBERT STONE'S RETURN

Mr. Conroy departed for London immediately after that momentous walk with Ella Winter, which would never be forgotten by either of them. There was a last pressure of the hands, a last look into each other's eyes, and he was gone. She wished their engagement not to be spoken of at present, and he willingly complied.

The days wore on. When three had passed, and there came no tidings of Hubert Stone, old Aaron grew somewhat perplexed. What could he mean by absenting himself? That so good a swimmer and strong a man, as Hubert was, had failed to reach the shore, no one who knew him entertained any fear. Where was he, then?

On the fourth day Aaron presented himself before his mistress, who was alone in her own sitting-room.

"No news yet of that scapegrace lad, ma'am!" he said, a quaver of trouble in his voice. "He must have swum off to get succour for you, Miss Ella, as it was his duty to do; but Heaven alone knows where he's got to."

Ella smiled. She believed Hubert to be perfectly safe and quite able to take care of himself, but she wished to set the old retainer's doubts at rest.

"Be at ease, Aaron. After a feat like that your nephew would naturally need some recreation; I dare say he has gone away for a few days' holiday. We shall see him back again shortly."

"What I can't get out of my head is this: that he might have been left on board. And oh, my dear young mistress, that night the wreck went to pieces in the gale!"

"He was not left on board, Aaron; rely upon that: and one of the boatmen, you know, saw him swimming towards the shore. It must have been he; nobody else was out. Believe me," impressively added Miss Winter, "there is not, so far as I believe, the slightest cause for alarm. Hubert is gone away, perhaps on business, combining that at least with pleasure, and you will soon have him at home again. Such is my opinion, and I have good grounds for it."

"Not but what the careless young jackanapes ought to have told me before he went, Miss Ella!" he urged.

But as more days passed on and Hubert neither came nor sent, other people as well as Aaron began to wonder; and the question, What could have become of him? made the chief topic of the neighbourhood. That he had undertaken this bout of swimming to obtain succour for Miss Winter, none disputed, and Ella did not undeceive them. The real facts, there could be little doubt, were these. Upon Hubert's forcing the closed door and finding Miss Winter senseless on the deck, he must at the same time have seen the little boat coming to her rescue. Fearful that her first words might be to denounce him, and probably feeling heartily ashamed of himself, he must have plunged into the sea to swim ashore, not choosing to stay and face the result.

But on what part of the shore had he landed, and where could he be staying? What, in fact, had become of him? Aaron and his wife grew strangely uneasy: if anything were detaining him, business or pleasure, surely he would write, they said to one another.

"He has not got so much as a clean shirt with him--or a collar," lamented Dorothy. "What _can_ he do without them?"

"Oh, drat the shirts and collars!" retorted Aaron, not less crusty and contradictory than usual. "As if he couldn't buy himself things o' that sort!"

There came a relief to their fears. Dr. Jago, hearing that the old people were becoming seriously alarmed, avowed that Hubert Stone had got safely to land that night, after his swimming-feat, and had made his way at once to his house. Here he had put on dry clothes, some things of the young man's happening to be at the Doctor's, had borrowed a little money of him, and had gone away again, saying he had business at a distance.

"And why couldn't you have told this afore, sir?" grumbled Aaron, when he had heard Dr. Jago's narrative.

"Because Hubert asked me not to mention it until he was back again," replied the little Doctor. "But I thought it might be better to do so now, as he stays away so long and you seem to be getting into a fever over it."

"No; I do not. He is all right, depend upon it, Aaron; he'll be turning up one of these fine days."

Miss Winter was nearly as anxious as Aaron for the return of Hubert. She had determined to question him further upon that strange assertion he had made--that she had no right to Heron Dyke--and to insist upon a full and explicit answer. A thought crossed her mind sometimes that possibly Hubert might be fearing this very questioning, and was staying away in consequence.

And the time again rolled on. Three weeks came and went, and Hubert Stone remained to them all as one dead.

"He does not return, Miss Ella," cried Aaron to his mistress one morning; and there was a worn, pitiful look on his face that she had never seen before. "Dorothy's fretting frightfully: she will have it, something dreadful has happened to him, and that we shall never set eyes on him again."

Involuntarily there came into Ella's memory what Dorothy had told her about the dread apparition seen by her that midnight in the shrubbery. She herself had no faith in such superstitious fancies, but she could quite understand the hold they would have over the mind of a woman like Dorothy Stone.

"It is strange," she replied, "I grant that; and, as you say, he might have written. Still, had any harm befallen him you would surely have heard of it from one source or another. I have felt no fear since I heard the report of Dr. Jago."

"We can only go on hoping for the best. Young men have sometimes strange fancies for roving, and they do not always think of those to whom their absence or silence may cause grief."

"He's gone to London, mayhap, that wild place, and won't come back till he's parted with his last shilling," suggested Aaron, anxious to snatch a morsel of comfort anyhow. "I'd once a fling of that sort myself, ma'am, when I was a young fellow, only I got no further than Norwich. They thought I had drowned myself; and father, he had Wippenham Pond dragged for me."

"Let us hope that Hubert's freak may prove no worse than yours," said Ella, cheeringly. "Wait a moment; don't go; I want to speak to you."

Failing Hubert, Miss Winter had made up her mind to question Aaron as to whether he knew anything or not, for her suspense was becoming intolerable.

"Aaron," she began very gravely, "when your grandson Hubert was on board the wreck with me that afternoon, now three weeks ago, he told me something which made a very great impression upon me at the time, and which I cannot forget since. It is in my mind every hour of the day--a source of annoyance. As he does not return, I must question you."

"What he said was this: 'A dozen words from me, and Heron Dyke would know you as its mistress no more. What you hold, you hold by fraud.' Now, Aaron Stone, I ask you, as my uncle's old and faithful servant, to tell me what meaning was hidden in your grandson's words, when he spoke to me thus."

Aaron's face was turning livid; he stood a picture of abject terror. Twice he essayed to speak, and twice no sound came from his dry lips. Miss Winter noted the emotion.

"What he knows--if there is anything to know--I think you must know; and I ask you, Aaron, what he meant."

"I know no more than the dead what he meant," gasped the old man in a husky whisper. "He must have been mad--mad!"

"No, he was not mad, I think. He spoke those words as a truthful man speaks. It seemed to me then, it seems to me still, that there was truth in them: though I don't know how much."

"Miss Ella," cried the old man eagerly, "you know what has been said--that a keg o' spirits was on board below. Hubert must have got to it."

That this was to a certain extent true, she believed; but not that he had taken sufficient to induce him to invent such a thing.

"His mother died in an asylum, poor thing," resumed Aaron, catching up his labouring breath; "and at times--only at times, you know, ma'am--I have not been able to rightly make him out, and I've fancied that he might have a touch of her complaint, and wasn't altogether his own master. It must have been so that afternoon."

Aaron's hands trembled like those of a man afflicted with palsy, and the muscles of his face twitched convulsively as he spoke. His mistress could scarcely find in her heart to question him further.

"And yet it was a very strange assertion for Hubert to make," she said, speaking gently. "He stated distinctly that I held Heron Dyke by fraud. Now, were such the case, Aaron, you, as my uncle's confidential servant, must surely be aware of it. Hubert would not know what you do not, especially of a grave secret."

"That he'd not," affirmed the old man. "I knew more of the Squire's secrets, Miss Ella, than any man living. Were he alive this moment he'd tell you so."

"Look here now, Miss Ella, there _couldn't be_. The Squire's will was drawn up by Lawyer Daventry, and signed by himself in the presence of witnesses. Everything but a few legacies was to come to you, as he had meant it to all his life. Fraud, ma'am! if he had left it away from you one might talk of fraud; not as it is. No, no! That wretched lad--and won't I give it him!--was in one of his wild fits when he said such words, not rightly accountable."

Could Miss Winter say more? She asked Aaron no further questions, but let him go. Still, in her own mind she could not feel satisfied. What brought that look of terror into Aaron's face when she repeated to him Hubert's words? Why had he trembled to that strange excess? and why had his emotion been so great?

And the more Miss Winter strove to assure herself that there was no cause to fear things were not honest and straightforward, the less she thought them so, and she resolved to speak to her uncle's lawyer, Mr. Daventry. Walking into Nullington, she found him at his office, and saw him alone.

"I have come to seek your advice on what seems to me a very important matter," she began, when she was seated. "I could not rest without coming to you."

"I need hardly say, my dear Miss Winter, that I am entirely at your service," he replied.

"It has been intimated to me that fraud of some kind has been at work in connection with my inheritance of Heron Dyke," she continued, having previously determined to avoid if possible the mention of Hubert's name. "I am precluded from telling you in what way this information reached me; but it was declared to me, in unmistakable terms, that I had no more right to the property than you have."

Lawyer Daventry's eyebrows went up in utter surprise. He drew his chair a little closer to that of Miss Winter, and began to bite his quill pen meditatively, as he waited to hear more.

"You, Mr. Daventry, had the management of all my uncle's most important affairs. You drew up his will; you were, I believe, present when he signed it; and you, I am sure, would not lend yourself to deceit of any kind; tell me then what, in your opinion, this information can mean."

"My opinion, Miss Winter, is that there is not an iota of truth in it. The chances are that it will turn out to be nothing more than an attempt to extort money."

"It will certainly not prove to be that," replied Ella, decisively. "On that point I can speak with confidence."

"I would rather not; at least, at present. It was--I think I may say," she added somewhat hesitatingly--"an old friend."

"Pardon me," she rejoined, "but that is not the question. Let us assume, if you like, that the motive is not altogether unknown to me. What then? We are still no nearer what I want to know: whether it is possible that there can be any truth in the allegation."

"Pardon me again, but the point is this," she interposed. "Is there anything within your knowledge of my uncle's affairs which would lead you to believe that the slightest possibility of fraud, in connection with my inheritance of his property, can exist?"

"No. It does not appear to me that the slightest possibility can exist of anything of the kind," continued Mr. Daventry. "I drew up your uncle's will in accordance with his instructions and his well-known wishes, and the will was duly signed and witnessed. Had he died before his seventieth birthday, the will would have been worthless, so far as the estate went, which would have lapsed to the other Gilbert Denison. Your uncle's savings you would still inherit, but not Heron Dyke. On the other hand, if he lived over his birthday, the property would be yours beyond possibility of dispute."

"And, as you can testify, he did live over it," returned Ella, feeling relieved.

Mr. Daventry smiled. "My dear young lady, I could not testify to anything of the kind. We lawyers are cautious men. As I did not see your uncle subsequently to his birthday, I could not testify to it."

"But others saw him! Others know that he lived over it!" cried Ella with a kind of gasp.

"When did you see him last?--how long before his death? Perhaps you don't remember?"

"I remember perfectly well. It was on the 24th of November, the day he signed his will. I went to the Hall by appointment, with one of my clerks, and I was struck by the change I saw in the Squire. To me he looked like a dying man."

"No, I did not. I went up to call once or twice, but did not get to see him. That doctor, Jago, would admit nobody; and the last time the Squire sent out a curt message to the effect that when he wanted me he would send for me. On the 28th of April, early in the morning, a peremptory message came for me----"

"A moment yet, please. I did not see him: I had gone to London the day before, and was not back. This answer was despatched to the Squire. He would not wait; Webb must go if I could not, came back the mandate; and by ten o'clock in the morning, Webb was at the Hall. He is my managing clerk, as you are aware, himself a qualified solicitor. He knew nothing much of the Squire's business, not having then long joined me."

"Oh, of course. The Squire was in bed; frightfully feeble, as it seemed to Webb. He wanted his will read over to him, and a short codicil added--which was done, and signed.

"Webb had never seen him before. He thought he looked curiously ill and feeble, so far as he could see of him in the darkened room. The Squire lay on the pillow, his black velvet skull-cap on, and his long white hair straggling on each side his shrunken face. Webb, describing this to me when I reached home at night, said he looked like a fine old picture. His voice had sunk to little more than a whisper; but his mind was clear nay, vigorous."

The tears rose to Ella's eyes. She could see, in imagination, her poor uncle lying there.

"No, my dear young lady, rely upon it, there's no flaw in your succession to Heron Dyke," concluded the experienced lawyer. "My advice to you is, think no more of the affair. There's nothing in it, save, as Shakespeare says, 'A pure invention of the enemy.' Set your mind at rest."

Ella, somewhat reassured, though not wholly, went on her way. She could not forget the intense truth that had shone forth in Hubert Stone's countenance and tones. That _he_ believed what he had asserted had been to her mind clearly apparent.

It was a few days subsequent to this visit to Mr. Daventry, that Miss Winter was engaged to take afternoon tea at The Lilacs. Some ladies were forming themselves into a committee for the purpose of ameliorating the condition of the poor of Nullington during the ensuing winter, and they were to meet that afternoon, Thursday, at Mrs. Ducie's. However, Miss Winter could not go, some friends having come to the Hall, unexpectedly, from a distance, and she sent Mrs. Toynbee to represent her.

So the new carriage from London, that had been so great an eyesore to old Aaron, conveyed her thither in state. Mrs. Toynbee enjoyed her afternoon immensely: she met Lady Cleeve, Maria Kettle, and other ladies with whom she had a slight acquaintance, who were already there. As Miss Winter's representative she found herself and her opinions deferred to, which was what she liked. Moreover, Mrs. Toynbee had some extraordinary news to tell, and was bursting with its importance.

Not until quite the last did she get a suitable opportunity; so much close discussion of the business in hand had taken place. Philip Cleeve had come in then; his mother had asked him to call for her. He was the only gentleman present, Captain Lennox having gone to Norwich. A remark made by some one gave the opportunity to Mrs. Toynbee.

"We had a most startling adventure at the Hall this morning," began she: and at the word "startling," the whole company fell into silence, and looked up. "Several rooms at the Hall, as I am given to understand, have been shut up for a great number of years; it was the late Mr. Denison's pleasure to keep them so----"

"Katherine Keen! oh dear, no," returned Mrs. Toynbee, stiffly. "In one of these unused rooms there stood a curiously carved escritoire, or bureau, of polished black oak, a family heirloom, the panels of which bear the date of 1714. Miss Winter took a fancy to examine this relic, for so I may term it; she had it removed to her morning-room, and to-day, after breakfast, she set to work to examine its contents, calling me to her aid. They proved to be nothing more valuable than a number of expired leases, and other papers connected with the farm property. But while thus engaged we made a very curious discovery. By some means or other, probably from the accidental touching of a hidden spring, a secret recess at the back of the escritoire was suddenly exposed to view."

"We were, as you may imagine, on the tiptoe of curiosity in a moment. I was, and I could see that Miss Winter was: she had seemed to me to be searching for some particular document, by the way she examined all the old papers."

"What we found, hidden away from the light for it is hard to guess how many years, was a large parcel of jewels," replied Mrs. Toynbee in slow and important tones.

"Beautiful jewels. Rings, brooches, necklets, earrings, and lockets; nearly all set with precious stones of great apparent value. Of course their setting is sadly old-fashioned; but that can easily be altered by-and-by."

The ladies went into fresh excitement; one and all declaring how much they should like to see the jewels.

"Miss Winter has put them back into the cabinet. At the lowest estimation, the stones alone must be worth a thousand pounds."

"Articles of that value ought to be at the bankers'," remarked Philip Cleeve. He was standing by the mantelpiece, a little apart from the circle. An anxiety bordering on restlessness sat in his countenance, sufficiently apparent to one of those around him--Maria Kettle; and his hand, which had met hers on his entrance, felt dry and feverish.

"I dare say Miss Winter will send them to the bankers' in a few days' time," said Mrs. Toynbee in answer to the remark. "But she wants Mr. Daventry to see them first, and he is not at home. She----"

"Daventry is in London," interrupted Philip. "He won't be back till the beginning of next week--Monday or Tuesday."

"True," assented Mrs. Toynbee. "I called at the office as I drove in, and found that only Mr. Webb was there. Miss Winter--really she is ultra-scrupulous in many things--does not feel sure whether the jewels rightly belong to her; she will do nothing with them before she gets Mr. Daventry's opinion. Until then they will remain where they are, untouched."

"Safe!" echoed Mrs. Toynbee: "why should they not be safe? They are where they have been lying hidden all these years. None of the servants have been told of the discovery; not even old Aaron and his wife."

"By the way," cried Margaret Ducie, lifting her head from the pencilled notes she had been making of the suggested plans for the relief of the poor, "has that relative of theirs, young Stone, turned up yet?"

"Not yet," said Mrs. Toynbee. "Nobody can imagine where he is staying. We think he must be unavoidably detained somewhere--though it is strange he does not write to say so."

The meeting and conversation recorded above took place on Thursday afternoon. On the following Monday morning old Aaron Stone proceeded, as usual, to open the doors and windows of the Hall--for he would not allow that duty to be performed by anybody but himself. At an unearthly hour, as the maids considered it, whom he obliged to be also up in readiness for their work, old Aaron would be on the move. As he was on this day; there was only just light enough yet for him to see his way about.

After unbolting the outer doors, he first turned into Miss Winter's morning-room, as it was called, which opened from the large hall. The moment he entered it, he saw that some one had been there before him. The lower sash of the window was thrown up, one of the shutters had been forced open, while sundry papers scattered about the floor betrayed that the escritoire had been visited. Aaron knew nothing about the jewels that had been found and left there; but the evidence of robbery was enough for him. Hurrying up to Miss Winter's chamber, he aroused her from sleep with his news. She partly dressed herself and followed him down.

Her first thought was of the jewels, and she proceeded to examine the secret recess. Yes, it stood open. The jewels had disappeared; they were stolen. But not another article in the room, save the bureau, had been touched.

Whilst his mistress was slowly gathering in these particulars, Aaron opened the other shutter, and stepped over the low sill into the garden. The hard gravelled path came close up to the window, so that he had little hope of finding any footmarks which might serve as a clue to the thief or thieves. But Aaron, glancing keenly about, saw something lying under a holly-bush, a little distance away, that for the moment caused his heart to stand still. To his old eyes it almost looked like Hubert; Hubert lying on his back.

The sleepy maids were beginning to come downstairs then. One of them--it was Betsy Tucker--entered the morning-room, and stood half-dazed at what she saw. The window open, papers scattered on the carpet, her mistress, partially dressed, standing before the bureau, and Aaron hastening down the gravel path outside.

A low cry, growing into an agonised shriek, burst upon the girl's ear and that of her mistress. It came from the old man. He had dropped on one knee, and was trying to lift what was lying there: Hubert Stone. Ah, never more, never more would he be lifted in life. His wide-open eyes, staring upwards, saw nothing, his form was rigid, his hair wet with the night's dews. He had been dead some hours, stabbed by some villain through the heart.

END OF VOL. II.

BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS AND ELECTROTYPERS, GUILDFORD.

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Mysteries of Heron Dyke: A Novel of Incident. Volume 2 (of 3)