The Step on the Stair by Anna Katharine Green - HTML preview

 

BOOK IV
 LOVE

 

LI

By night the whole town rang with the extraordinary news that I have just endeavored to convey to you. I had visited Mr. Jackson at his office and had a rather serious talk with the Inspector at the Police Station while I myself had many visitors, to all of whom I excused myself with the exception of one. That one was an elderly man who had in his possession an old picture of the inn which had been incorporated in the Bartholomew mansion. He offered to show it to me. I could not resist seeing it, so I ordered him sent up to my room.

At the first glimpse I got of this picture I understood much that I had been doubtful about before. The eighteen or twenty steps we had discovered leading down from Uncle’s closet, were but the upper portion of the long flight originally running up from the ground to the large hall where entertainments had been given. The platform where we had found the box made the only break in the descent. This was on a level with the floor of the second story of the inn and from certain indications visible in this old print I judged that it acted as the threshold of a door opening into this story, just as the upper one now represented by the floor of Uncle’s closet opened into the great hall. The remaining portions of the building had been so disguised and added to by the clever architect, that only from the picture I was now studying could one see what it had originally been.

I thanked the man and seeing that for a consideration he was willing to part with this picture, made myself master of it at once, wishing to show it to Orpha.

Orpha! Would I hear from her? Was my letter to her little more than a pebble dropped into a bottomless well?

I tried not to think of her. How could I with the future rising before me an absolutely blank wall? Both the Inspector and Mr. Jackson advised me to keep very quiet—as I certainly wished to do—and make no move till the will had been offered for probate and the surrogate’s decision obtained. The complications were great; time alone would straighten them out. The murder charge not made as yet but liable to fall any day like a thunderbolt on one or the other of us—Edgar’s violent character hidden under an exterior so delightful—the embarrassing position of Orpha—all combined to make it wise for me to walk softly and leave my affairs to their sole manipulation. I was willing, but—

And instantly I became more than willing. A note was handed in. It was from Orpha and vied with mine in its simplicity.

To trust you is easy. It was because my father trusted you that he laid his great fortune in your hands.

ORPHA.

 

LII

During the days which now passed I talked to no one, but I read with avidity what was said in the various journals of the discovery of the will under the bizarre circumstances I have already related, and consequently was quite aware that public opinion was as much divided over what bearing this latest phase had upon the main issue as it had been over the main issue itself and the various mystifying events attending it.

Gaining advocates in one quarter, I lost them in another and my heart frequently stood still with dismay as I realized the strength of the prejudice which shut me away from the sympathy and understanding of my fellow creatures.

I was waiting with all the courage possible for some strong and decisive move to be made by Edgar or his lawyers, when the news came that he was ill. Greatly distressed by this, I begged Mr. Jackson to procure for me such particulars as he could gather of the exact condition of things at Quenton Court. He did so and by evening I had learned that Edgar’s illness dated from the night of our finding the will. That an attempt had been made to keep this fact from the public, but it had gradually leaked out and with it the rumor that nobody but those in attendance on him had been allowed to enter his part of the house, though no mention of contagion had been made nor any signs perceived of its being apprehended. That Orpha was in great distress because she was included amongst those debarred from the sick room—so distressed that she braved the displeasure of doctor and nurse and crept up to his door only to hear him shouting in delirium. That some of the servants wanted to leave, not so much because the house seemed fated but because they had come to fear the woman Wealthy, who had changed very markedly during these days of anxious nursing. She could not be got to speak, hardly to eat. When she came down into the kitchen as she was obliged to do at times, it was not as in the old days when she brought with her cheer and pleasant fellowship to them all. She brought nothing now but silence and a face contorted from its usual kindly expression into one to frighten any but the most callous or the most ignorant.

For the last twenty-four hours Edgar had given signs of improvement, but Wealthy had looked worse. She seemed to dread the time when he would be out of her hands.

All this had come to Mr. Jackson from private sources, but he assured me that he had no reason to doubt its truth.

Troubled, and fearing I scarcely knew what, I had another of my sleepless nights. Nor was I quite myself all the next day till at nightfall I was called to the telephone and heard Orpha’s voice in anxious appeal begging me to come to her.

“Wealthy is so strange that we none of us know what to do with her. Edgar is better, but she won’t allow any of us in his room, though I think some one of us ought to see him. She says the doctor is on her side; that she is only fulfilling his orders, and I’m afraid this is so, for when I telephoned him an hour ago he told me not to worry, that in a few days we could see him, but that just now it was better for him to see nobody whose presence would remind him of his troubles. The doctor was very kind, but not quite natural—not quite like his old self, and—and I’m frightened. There is certainly something very wrong going on in this house; even the servants feel it, and say that the master ought to be here if only to get the truth out of Wealthy.”

The master! Dear heart, how little she knew! how little any of us knew how much we should have to go through before either Edgar or myself could assume that rôle. But I could assume that of her friend and protector, and so with a good conscience I promised to go to her at once.

But I would not do this without notifying the Inspector. A premonition that we were at a turn in the twisted path we were all treading which might offer me a problem which it would be beyond my powers to handle under present auspices, deterred me. So I telephoned to Headquarters that I was going to make a call at Quenton Court; after which, I proceeded through the well-known streets to the home of my heart and of Orpha.

I knew from the relieved expression with which Haines greeted me that Orpha had not exaggerated the situation.

He, however, said nothing beyond the formal announcement that Miss Bartholomew awaited me in the library; and there I presently found her. She was not alone (had I expected her to be?), but the lady I saw sitting by the fire was not Miss Colfax this time but the elderly relative of whom I have previously spoken.

Oh, the peace and quiet look of trust which shone in Orpha’s eyes as she laid her hand in mine. It gave me strength to withhold my lips from the hand I had not touched in many, many weeks; to face her with a smile, though my heart was sad to bursting; to face anything which might lie before us with not only consideration for her but for him who ever held his own in the background of my mind as the possible master of all I saw here, if not of Orpha.

I had noticed that Haines, after ushering me into the library had remained in the court; and so I was in a degree prepared for Orpha’s first words.

“There is something Haines wants to show you. It will give you a better idea of our trouble than anything I can say. Will you go up with him quietly to—to the floor where—”

“I will go anywhere you wish,” I broke in, in my anxiety to save her distress. “Will you go, too, or am I to go up with him alone?”

“Alone, and—and by the rear stairs. Do you mind? You will understand when you are near your old room.”

“Anything you wish,” I repeated; and conscious of Haines’ impatience, I joined him without delay.

We went up to the second floor by the Moorish staircase, but when there, traversed the hall to the rear which, with one exception, is a replica of the one above. It had no cozy corner, but there was the same turn to the right leading to the little winding stairway which I knew so well.

As we reached the foot of this, Haines whispered:

“I hope you will pardon me, sir, for taking you this way and for asking you to wait in the small hall overhead till I beckon you to come on. We don’t want to surprise any one, or to be surprised, do you see, sir?” And, with a quick, light movement, he sprang ahead, beckoning me to follow.

There was not much light. Only one bulb had been turned on in the third story hall, and that was at the far end. As I reached the top of the little staircase and moved forward far enough to see down to the bend leading away from the cozy corner, I could only dimly discern Haines’ figure between me and the faintly illuminated wall beyond. He seemed to be standing quietly and without any movement till suddenly I saw his arm go up, and realizing that I was wanted, I stepped softly forward and before I knew it was ensconced in Wealthy’s old place behind the screen, with just enough separation between its central leaves for me to see through.

Haines was at my side, but he said nothing, only slightly touched my elbow as if to bid me take the look thus offered me.

And I did, not knowing what to expect. Would it be Edgar I should see? Or would it be Wealthy?

It was Wealthy. She was standing at the door of Edgar’s bedroom, with her head bent forward, listening. As I stared uncomprehendingly at her figure, her head rose and she began to pace up and down before his door, her hands clenched, her arms held rigid at her side, her face contorted, her mind in torture. Was she sane? I turned towards Haines for explanation.

“Like that all the time she is not in the room with him,” he whispered. “Walking, walking, and sometimes muttering, but most often not.”

“Does the doctor know?”

“She is not like this when he comes.”

“You should tell him.”

“We have tried to; but you have to see her.”

“How long has she been like this?”

“Only so bad as this since noon. Miss Orpha is afeard of her, and there being nobody here but Mrs. Ferris, I advised her to send for you to comfort her a bit. I thought Dr. Cameron might heed what you said, sir. He thinks us just foolish.”

“Miss Colfax? Where is she?”

“Gone to New York to buy her wedding-clothes.”

“When did she go?”

“To-day, sir.”

I looked back at Wealthy. She was again bending at Edgar’s door, listening.

“Is his case so bad? Is this emotion all for him? Is she afraid he will die?”

“No; he is better.”

“But still delirious?”

“By spells.”

“Has she no one to help her? Does she remain near him night as well as day, without rest and without change?”

“She has a helper.”

“Ah! Who?”

“A young girl, sir, but she—”

“Well, Haines?”

“Is in affliction, too. She is deaf—and she is dumb; a deaf mute, sir.”

“Haines!”

“The truth, sir. Miss Wealthy would have no other. They get along together somehow; but the girl cannot speak a word.”

“Nor hear?”

“Not a thing.”

“And the doctor?”

“He brought her here himself.”

The truth was evident. Delirium has its revelations. If one should listen where I saw Wealthy listening, the mystery enveloping us all might be cleared. Was it for me to do this? No, a thousand times, no. The idea horrified me. But I could not leave matters where they were. Wealthy might develop mania. For as I stood there watching her she suddenly started upright again, presenting a picture of heart-rending grief,—wringing her hands and sobbing heavily without the relief of tears.

She had hitherto remained at the far end of the hall close by Edgar’s rooms; but now she turned and began walking slowly in our direction.

“She is coming here. You know her room is just back of this,” whispered Haines.

I took a sudden resolution. Bidding him to stay where he was, I took a few steps forward and pulled the chain of the large electrolier which lighted this portion of the hall.

She started; stopping short, her eyes opening wide and staring glassily as they met mine. Then her hands went up and covered her face while her large and sturdy form swayed dizzily till I feared she would fall.

“Wealthy!” I cried, advancing hurriedly to her side. “Are you ill? Is my presence so disagreeable to you? Why do you look at me like this?”

She broke her silence with a gasp.

“Because—because”—she moaned—“I—I—” With a despairing cry, she grasped me by the arm. “Let us go somewhere and talk. I cannot keep my secret any longer. I—I don’t know what to do? I tried to injure you—I have injured you, but I never meant to injure Miss Orpha. Will—will you listen?”

“Yes, I will listen and with sympathy. But where shall we go? Into my uncle’s room?”

“No, no.” She shrank back in sick distaste. “Into my little cozy corner.”

“That is too far from Edgar’s room,” I protested. “He is alone, is he not?”

“Yes, yes; but he is sleeping. He is well enough for me to leave him for a little while. I cannot talk in the open hall.”

I felt that I was in a dilemma. She must not know of Haines’ near presence or she would not open her mouth. I thought of my own room, then of Clarke’s, but I dared not run the risk of her passing the cozy corner lest she might for some reason pause and look in. Impulsively, I made a bold suggestion.

“Edgar has two rooms. Let us go into his den; you will be near him and what is better, we shall be undisturbed.”

Her mouth opened, but she said nothing; she was wholly taken aback. Then some thought came which changed her whole aspect. She brightened with some fierce resolve and, acceding to my request, led me quickly down the hall.

At the furtherest door of all she stopped; it was the door from which Edgar had looked out on that fatal night to see if I were still lingering in the hall opposite. It had been dark there then; it was bright enough now.

With finger on lip she waited for an instant while she listened for any sounds from within. There were none. With a firm but quiet turning of the knob, she opened the door and motioned me to enter. The room was perfectly dark; but only for an instant. She had crossed the floor while I was feeling my way, and opening the door communicating with the bedroom, allowed the light from within to permeate the room where I stood. As it was heavily shaded, the result was what one might call a visible gloom, through which I saw her figure in a silhouette of rigid outline, so tense had she become under the influence of this daring undertaking.

Next moment I felt her hand on my arm, and in another, her voice in my ear. This is what she said:

“I thought he loved Orpha. Before God I thought he loved her as much as he loved fortune. Had I not, I would have let things alone and given you your full chance. But—but—listen.”

Edgar was stirring in the adjoining room, throwing his arms about and muttering words which soon took on emphasis and I heard:

“Lucy! Lucy! how could I help it? I had to do what Uncle said. Every one had to. But you are my only love, you! you!”

As these words subsided into moans, and moans into silence, I felt my arm gripped.

“That’s what’s killing me,” was breathed again into my ears. “I did what I did and all for this. He will fight for the money but not to spend on Orpha, and you, you love her. We all know that now.”

“Be calm,” I said. “It is all coming right. Miss Colfax will soon be married. And—and if Edgar is innocent—”

“Innocent?”

“Of anything worse than planning to marry one woman while loving another—”

“But he is not. He—”

I stopped her in time. I was not there to listen to anything which would force me to act. If there was action to be taken she must take it or Edgar.

“I don’t want to hear anything against Edgar,” I admonished her as soon as I could get her attention. “I am not the one to be told his faults. If they are such as Justice requires to have made known, you must seek another confessor. What I want is for you to refrain from further alarming the whole household. Miss Bartholomew is frightened, very much frightened by what she hears of your manner below stairs and of the complete isolation in which you keep your patient. It was she who sent for me to come here. I do not want to stay,—I cannot. Will you promise me to remain quiet for the rest of the night? To think out your problem quietly and then to take advice either from the doctor who appears to understand some of your difficulties or from—”

“Don’t say it! Don’t say it,” she cried below breath. “I know what my duty is, but, oh, I had rather die on the spot than do it.”

“Remember your young mistress. Remember how she is placed. Forget yourself. Forget your love for Edgar. Forget everything but what you owe to your dead master whose strongest wish was to see his daughter happy.”

“How can she be? How can she be? How can any of us ever be light-hearted again? But I will remember. I—will—try.” Then in a burst, as another cry of “Lucy” came from the other room, “Do you think Miss Orpha’s heart will go out to you if—if—”

I shrank away from her; I groped for the door. That question here!—in this semi-gloom—from such lips as these! A question far too sacred and too fraught with possibilities of yea and nay for me to hear it unmoved, bade me begone before I lost myself in uncontrollable anger.

“Do not ask me that,” I managed to exclaim. “All I can say is that I love my cousin sincerely and that some day I hope to marry her, fortune or no fortune.”

I thought I heard her murmur “And you shall,” but I was not sure and never will be. What I did hear was a promise from her to be quiet and to keep to the room where she was.

However, when I had rejoined Haines and we had gone to the floor below, I asked him if he would be good enough to relieve me for the night by keeping a personal watch over his young mistress. “If only I could feel assured that you were sitting here somewhere within sight of her door I should rest easy. Will you do that for me, Haines?”

“As I did that last night on my own account, I do not think it will be very hard for me to do it to-night on yours. I am proud to think you trust me, sir, to help you in your trouble.”

And this was the man I had dared to stigmatize in my own thoughts as a useful but unfeeling machine!

 

LIII

I left Orpha cheered, and passing down the driveway came upon a plain clothes man awaiting me in the shadow of the high hedge separating the extensive grounds from the street.

I was not surprised, and stopping short, paused for him to speak.

He did this readily enough.

“You will find a limousine waiting in front of one of the shops halfway down on the next block. It’s the Inspector’s. He would be glad to have a word with you.”

“Very good. I’ll be sure to stop.”

It could not be helped. We were in the toils and I knew it. Useless to attempt an evasion. The lion had his paw on my shoulder. I walked briskly that I might not have too much time for thought.

“Well?” was the greeting I received, when seated at the Inspector’s side I turned to see what mood he was in before we passed too far from the street lamp for me to get a good look at his features. “Anything new?”

“No.” I could say this conscientiously because I had not learned anything new. It was all old; long thought of, long apprehended. “Miss Bartholomew was concerned over the illness in the house. She is young and virtually alone, her only companion being an elderly relative with about as little force and character as a jelly fish. I felt that a call would encourage her and I went. Mrs. Ferris was present—”

“Never mind that. I’ve been young myself. But—” We were passing another lamp, the light was on my face, he saw my eyes fall before his and he instantly seized his advantage—“Are you sure,” he asked, “that you have nothing to tell me?”

I gave him a direct look now, and spoke up resolutely.

“Have pity, Inspector. You know how I am situated. I have no facts to give you except—”

“The young fellow talks in his sleep; we know that. I see that you know it, too; possibly you have heard him—”

“If I have I should not feel justified in repeating a man’s ravings to an officer of the law intent on official business. Ravings that spring from fever are not testimony. I’m sure you see that. You cannot require—”

“No, not to-night.” The words came slowly, reluctantly from his lips.

I faced him with a look of gratitude and real admiration. This man with a famous case on his hands, the solution of which would make his reputation from one end of the continent to the other, was heeding my plea—was showing me mercy. Or perhaps, he was reading in my countenance (why, we were in business streets, the best lighted in the city!) what my tongue so hesitated to utter.

“Not to-night,” he repeated. “Nor ever if we can help it. I am willing you should know that it is a matter of pride with me to get at the truth of this matter without subjecting you to further inquisition. Your position is a peculiar one and consideration should be shown you. But, mark me, the truth has got to be reached. Justice, morality, the future of your family and of the innocent girl who is its present representative all demand this. I shall leave no stone unturned. I can only say that, if possible, I shall leave your stone to be attended to last.”

“Inspector, you shall have this much from me. If you will wait two days, I think—I am almost certain—that a strand will be drawn from this tangle which will make the unravelling of the rest easy. It will be by another hand than mine; but you can trust that hand; it is an honest one.”

“I will wait two days, unless circumstances should arise demanding immediate action.”

And with no further talk we separated. But he understood me and I understood him and words would have added but little to our satisfaction.

 

LIV

The phone in my room rang early on the following morning. Haines had promised to let me know what kind of a night they had had, and he was promptly keeping his word.

All had gone well, so far as appeared. If he learned to the contrary later he would let me know. With this I had to be content for some three hours, then the phone rang again. It was Haines calling and this time to the effect that Nurse Wealthy was going out; that she had demanded an hour off, saying that she must have a breath of air or die. Miss Orpha had gladly given her the leave of absence she desired, and, to Haines’ own amazement, he had been put in charge of the sick room till her return, Mr. Edgar being much better this morning. No one knew where she was going but the moment she came back I should hear of it.

This was as I expected. But where was Wealthy going? Could she possibly be coming to see me in my hotel or was her destination Police Headquarters?

Strangely neither guess was correct. A third ring at the phone and I was notified that my presence was urgently desired at Mr. Jackson’s office, and upon hastening there I found her closeted with the lawyer in his private room. Her veil—a heavy mourning one,—was down and her attitude one of humility; but there was no mistaking her identity, and Mr. Jackson made no attempt at speaking her name, entering at once upon the momentous reason for which I had been summoned.

“I am sorry to have made you this trouble, Mr. Bartholomew,” said he, after having given orders that we were to be left undisturbed. “But this woman whom I am sure you recognize would not speak without your presence; and I judge that she has something important to tell.”

“Yes,” she insisted, moving a trifle in her restlessness. “I thought that nothing would ever make me talk; but we don’t know ourselves. I have not slept and do not think I shall ever sleep again unless I tell you—”

“Don’t you remember what I insisted upon in our talk last night, Wealthy? How it was not to me you must tell your story, but to—”

“I know whom you mean,” she interrupted breathlessly. “But it’s not for the police to hear what I have to say; only yourself and lawyer. I did you a wrong. You must know just what that wrong was. I have a conscience, sir. It’s troubled me all my life but never so much as now. Won’t you listen? Tell him to listen, Mr. Jackson, or I’ll leave this place and keep silence till I die.”

It was no idle threat. If she had been motherly and sweet in the old days, she was inflexible and determined in these. Under the kindliness of an affectionate nature there lay forces such as give constancy to the martyr. She would do what she said.

Looking away, I encountered the eye of Mr. Jackson. Its language was unmistakable. I felt myself in a trap.

But I would not yield without another effort. Smiling faintly, I said:

“You have never liked me, Nurse Wealthy; why, then, drag me into this? Let me go. Mr. Jackson will be a sympathetic listener, I know.”

“I cannot let you go; but I can go myself,” she retorted, rising slowly and turning her back upon me. She was trembling in sheer desperation as she took a step towards the door.

I could not see her go. I was not her sole auditor as on the night before. My duty seemed plain.

“Come back,” I called to her. “Speak, and I will listen.”

She drew a deep breath, loosened her veil, but did not lift it; then quietly reseated herself.

“I loved the Bartholomew family, all of them, till—You will excuse me, sir, I can hide nothing in telling my story—till you came to visit us and things began to go wrong.

“It was not liking I felt for them, but a passionate devotion, especially for Mr. Edgar, whose like I had never seen before. That he would marry Miss Orpha and that I should always live with them was as much a settled fact in my mind as the knowledge that I should some day die. And I was happy. But trouble came. The night which should have seen their engagement announced saw Mr. Bartholomew stricken with illness, and the beginning of changes, for which I blamed nobody but you.”

She was addressing me exclusively.

“I felt that you were working against us—against Mr. Edgar I mean,—and my soul turned bitter and my hatred grew till I no longer knew myself. That Mr. Edgar could do anything wrong—that he could deceive himself or Miss Orpha or the uncle who doted on him you could not have made me believe in those days. It was you, you who did all the harm, and Mr. Bartholomew, weakened by illness, was your victim. So I reasoned as I saw how things went and how you were given an equal chance with Mr. Edgar to sit with him and care for him, nights as well as days.

“Then the lawyers came, and though I am not over bright, it was plain enough to me that something very wrong was being done, and I got all wrought up and listened and watched to see if I could get hold of the truth; and I saw and heard enough to convince me that Mr. Edgar’s chance of fortune and happiness with Miss Orpha needed guarding and that if worst came to worst, I must be ready to do my part in saving him from losing the property destined for him since he was a little child.

“I said nothing of this to any one, but I hardly slept in my eagerness to know whether the two documents your uncle kept in the little drawer near his head were really two different wills. I had never heard of anybody keeping two wills ready to hand before. But Mr. Bartholomew was not like other men and you could not judge him by what other men do. That I was right in thinking that these two documents were really two wills I soon felt quite sure from his actions. There was not a day he did not handle them. I often found him poring over them, and he always seemed displeased if I approached him too closely at these times. Then again he would simply lie there holding them, one in each hand, as if weighing them one against the other,—his eyes on the great picture of Miss Orpha and a look of sore trouble on his face. It was the same look with which I saw him in the last few days glance from your cousin Edgar to yourself, and back again, when by any chance you were both in the room at the same time.

“I often wanted to have a good talk with Miss Orpha about these strange unnatural doings; but I didn’t dare. I knew she wouldn’t listen; and so with a heart eaten into by anxiety, I went on with my nursing, loving her and Mr. Edgar more than ever and hating you almost to the point of frenzy.

“You must pardon me for speaking so plainly, but it is necessary for you to know just how I felt or you would never understand what got into me on that last night of your uncle’s life. I could see long before any of the rest of you that something of great importance was going to happen in the house before we slept. I had watched him too long and too closely not to draw certain conclusions from his moods. When he ordered his evening meal to be set out near the fireplace and sent for Clarke to dress him, I felt confident that the great question which was driving him into his grave was on the eve of being settled. But how? This was what I was determined to find out, and was quite prepared if I found things going against Mr. Edgar to do whatever I could to help him.

“You will think this very presumptuous in a woman in my position; but those two motherless children were like my own so far as feeling went, and if there is any excuse for me it lies in this, that I honestly thought that your uncle was under an influence which might force him to do in his present condition what in his right mind he would never dream of doing, no, not if it were to save his life.”

Here she paused to catch her breath and gather strength to proceed. Her veil was still down, but her breast was heaving tumultuously with the fierce beating of her heart. We were watching her carefully, both Mr. Jackson and myself, but we made no move, nor did we speak. Nothing must check her at this point of her narrative.

We showed wisdom in this, for after a short interval in which nothing could be heard but her quick gasps for breath, she spoke again and in the same tone and with the same fervor as before.

“The supper cleared and everything made right in the room, he asked for Clarke, and when he came bade him go for Mr. Edgar. I could not stay after that. I knew his wishes. I knew this, too, that the prospect of doing something, after his many days of worriful thinking, had brought him strength;—that he was in one of those tense moods when to cross him meant danger; and that I must be careful what I said and did if I was to serve him, and that I must urge Mr. Edgar to be careful, too.

“But no opportunity was given me to speak to him. He came up, with Clarke following close behind, and went directly to your uncle’s room just as I stole away to the cozy corner. When he came out my eye was at the slit in my screen. From the way he walked I knew that things had gone wrong with him and later when you came out, I saw that they had gone well with you. Your head was high; his had been held low.

“I like Clarke, and perhaps you think, because we were sitting there together waiting for orders that I took him into my confidence. But I didn’t. I was too full of rage and fear for that. Nobody must know my heart, nobody, at least not during this uncertainty. For I was still determined to act; to say or do something if I got the chance. When after going to your uncle’s room, he came back and said that Mr. Bartholomew was not yet ready to go to bed,—that he wanted to be left alone for a half hour and that I was to see from the place where I was that no one came to disturb him, I felt that the chance I wanted was to be mine, and as soon as Clarke went on to his room, I got up and started to go down the hall.

“I am giving a full story, Mr. Quenton, for I want you to know it all; so I will not omit a little thing of which I ought to be ashamed, but of which I was rather proud at the time. When I had taken a few steps I remembered that a half hour was a long time, and that Clarke might find it so and be tempted to take a look to see if I was keeping watch as he had bid me. Not that he seemed to doubt me, but because he was always over particular in every matter where his master was concerned. So I came back and going to my room brought out a skirt like the one I had on and threw it over a chair behind the screen so that a little bit of the hem would show outside. Then I went to your uncle’s door and with a slow turn of the knob opened it without a sound and stepped into the passage-way. To my great satisfaction the portières which separated it from the room itself were down and pulled closely together. I could stand there and not be seen, same as in the cozy corner.

“Hearing nothing, I drew the heavy hangings apart ever so slightly and peered through the slit thus made at his figure sitting close by the fireside. He was in his big chair with the wings on either side and placed as it was, only his head was visible. I trembled as I saw him, for he was too near the hearth. What if he should fall forward!

“But as I stood there hesitating, I saw one of his hands come into view from the side of his chair—the side nearest the fire. In it was one of the big envelopes and for an instant I held my breath, for he seemed about ready to toss it into the fire. But he soon drew it back again and I heard a moan, then the low cry, ‘My boy! my boy! I cannot.’ And I knew then what it all meant. That there were really two wills and that he was trying to summon up courage to destroy the one which would disinherit his favorite nephew. Rebelling against the act and determined to stop it if I could, I slipped into the room and without making any noise, for I had on my felt slippers, I crept across the floor nearer and nearer till I was almost at his back. His head was bent a little forward, but he gave no sign of being aware of my presence. I could hear the fire crackle and now and then the little moan which left his lips, but nothing else. The house was like the house of the dead; not a sound disturbed it.

“Taking another step, I looked over his shoulder. He was holding those two documents, just as I had frequently seen him in his bed, one in each hand. He seemed to be staring at them and now one hand would tremble and now the other, and I was so close that I could see a red cross scrawled on the envelope he held in his right—the one he had stretched out to the fire and drawn back again a few minutes before.

“Dared I speak? Dared I plead the cause of the boy I loved, that he loved? No, I didn’t dare do that; he was a terrible man when he was roused and this might rouse him, who could tell. Besides, words were leaving his lips, he was muttering aloud to himself and soon I could understand what he was saying and it was something like this:

“‘I’m too old—too weak—some one else must do it—Orpha, who will not know what she is doing, not I,—not I. There’s time yet—I asked the doctor—two weeks was what he said—Edgar! my boy, my boy.’ Every murmur ending thus, ‘My boy! my boy!’

“All was well then; I need not fear for to-night. To-morrow I would pray Edgar to exert himself to some purpose. Better for me to slide back to my place behind the portière; the half hour would soon be up—But just then I heard a different cry, his head had turned, he was looking up at his daughter’s picture and now a sob shook him, and then came the words:

“‘Your mother was a just woman; and she says this must be done. I have always heeded her voice. To-morrow you shall burn—’

“There he stopped. His head sank back against the chair top, and, frightened out of my senses, I was about to start forward, when I saw the one will—the one with the red mark on it slip from his hand and slide across the hearth close to the burning logs.

“That was all I needed to make me forget myself and rush to the rescue of Edgar’s inheritance. I was on my knees in front of the fire before I realized what I had done, and clutching at the paper, knelt there with it in my hand looking up at your uncle.

“He was staring straight at me but he saw nothing. One of the spells of brief unconsciousness which he sometimes had had come upon him. I could see his breast rise and fall but he took no note of me, and, thanking God in my heart, I reached up and drew the other will from his unresisting hand and finding both of the envelopes unsealed, I changed the will in the marked one for that in the other and laid them both in his lap.

“I was behind his chair again before I heard the deep sigh with which he woke from that momentary trance; and I was already behind the portière and watching as before when I heard a slight rattle of paper and knew that he had taken the two wills again into his hands.

“But he did nothing further; simply sat there and as soon as I reckoned that the half hour was nearly up and that Clarke would be coming from his room to attend him, I stole out of the door and into my cozy corner in time to greet Clarke when he showed himself. I was as tired as I had ever been in my life, and doubtful as to whether what I had done would be helpful to Edgar or the reverse. What might not happen before the morrow of which he spoke. I was afraid of my own shadow creeping ahead of me along the wall as I hurried to take my place at your uncle’s bedside.

“But I was more doubtful yet and much more frightened when upon asking him if I should not put away the documents I saw on the stand at his side (a pile such as I had often taken from his little drawer in the bed-head with the two I was most interested in on top) he said that he wanted me for another purpose and sent me in great haste downstairs on a foolish little errand to Miss Orpha’s room. He was again to be left alone and for a long while, too.

“I wanted to call Clarke, but while your uncle looked at me as he was looking then, I knew that it would be madness to interfere, so I sped away on my errand, conscious that he was listening for the opening and shutting of the door below as proof that I had obeyed him.

“Was it a whim? It could easily be that, for the object he wanted had belonged to his dead wife and men as sick as he have such whims. But it might just as well be that he wanted to be alone so as to look at the two wills again, and if that was his purpose, what would happen when I got back?

“The half hour during which I helped my poor, tired young lady to hunt through drawers and trunks for the little old-fashioned shawl he had sent for was one of great trial to me. But we found it at last and when I saw it in her hand and the sweetness of her face as she stooped to kiss it, I wanted to take her in my arms, but did not dare to, for something stood between us which I did not understand then but which I know now was my sin.

“There was a clock on her dresser and when I saw how late it was I left her very suddenly and started on my way back. What happened to me on my way up you’ve already heard me tell;—the Presence, which was foolishness, and afterwards, on reaching the stair-head, something which was not foolishness,—I mean the hearing of the two doors of your uncle’s room being unlocked, one after the other, in expectation of my coming. What had he been doing? Why had he locked himself in? The question agitated me so that it was quite a few minutes before I could summon up courage to enter the room. When I did, it was with a sinking heart. Should I find the two wills still lying where I had last seen them, huddled with the other papers on the little stand? If they were, I need not fret; but if they were in his hands or had been hidden away somewhere, the fear and anxiety would be insupportable.

“But my first glance towards the little stand reassured me. They were still there. There was no mistaking those stiff dark envelopes; and, greatly heartened, I stepped to the bedside and took my first look at him. He was lying with closed eyes, panting a little but otherwise peaceful. I spoke his name and held out the little shawl. As he took it he smiled. I shall never forget that smile, never. Had it been meant for me I would have fallen on my knees, and told him what I had done, but it was for that young wife of his, dead for some seventeen years now; and the delight I saw in it hardened rather than softened me and gave me courage to keep silent.

“He was ready now to have those papers put away, and drawing the key to the little drawer from under the pillow, he handed it to me and watched me while I lifted the whole pile of business documents and put them back in the place from which they had been taken; and as nothing in his manner showed that he felt the least suspicion that any of these papers had been tampered with, I was very glad to see them put away for the night. I remember thinking as I gave him back the key that nothing must hinder me from seeking an early opportunity to urge Mr. Edgar to exert himself to win his uncle’s favor back. I knew that he could if he tried; and, satisfied so far, I was almost happy.

“Now we know that your uncle himself had tampered with them while I was gone that good half hour after the little shawl. He had taken out one of the wills from its envelope and carried it—he who could hardly stand—down that concealed stairway to the box dangling from one of the walls below. But how could I dream of anything so inconceivable as that—I who had been in and out of that room and up and down the main staircase for fifteen years without a suspicion that the Presence which sometimes haunted that spot was actual and not imaginary. I thought that all was well for the night at least and was bustling about when he suddenly called me.

“Running to his bedside, I found him well enough but in a very earnest mood. ‘Wealthy,’ he said, ‘I am old and I am weak. I no longer trust myself. The doctor said when he left to-day that I had two full weeks before me; but who knows; a whiff of air may blow me away at any minute, and the thing I want done might go undone and infinite trouble ensue. I am resolved to act as though my span of life was that of a day instead of a fortnight. To-morrow morning we will have the children all in and I will wind up the business which will set everything right. And lest I should not feel as well then as I do now, I will tell you before I sleep just what I want you to do.’ And then he explained about the bowl and the candles which I was to put on the stand when the time came and made it all so clear that I was now thoroughly convinced that it was really his intention to have Miss Orpha burn the will he had not had the courage to burn himself, and this speedily,—probably in the early morning.

“I stared at him, stupefied. What if they looked at the will before they burned it. This, Mr. Edgar would be likely to do, and give himself away in his surprise and so spoil all. I must hinder that; and when Mr. Bartholomew fell into a doze I crept to Mr. Edgar’s room, putting out the lights as I went, and, finding him awake, I told him what I had done and said that he need not worry if we found his uncle in the same mind in the morning as now and ordered the will burned which was in the marked envelope, for that was the one which should be burned and which he would himself burn if he were the man he used to be and had not been influenced by a stranger. Meaning you, sir, of course. God forgive me.”

“So he knew!” I burst forth, leaping to my feet in my excitement. “That’s why he took it all so calmly. Why from that day to this he has found it so difficult to meet my eye. Why he has followed me, seeming to want to speak—to tell me something—”

I did not go on—a thousand questions were rising in my mind. I cast a quick glance at Mr. Jackson and saw that he was startled too and waited, with every confidence in his judgment, for him to say what was in his mind.

“At what time was this?” he asked, leaning forward and forcing her to meet his eye.

“I don’t know.” She tried to shun his gaze; her hands began to tremble. “I didn’t take any notice. I just ran to his room and back; I had enough to think of without looking at clocks.”

“Was it before you heard the glass set back on the shelf?”

She gave a start, and pressing the two arms of her chair with those trembling hands of hers tried to rise, but finding that her knees would not support her, fell back. In the desperation of the moment she turned towards me, putting up her veil as she did so. “Don’t ask me any more questions,” she pleaded. “I am all unstrung; I’ve had no sleep, no rest, no ease for days. When I found that Mr. Edgar—you know what I would say, sir—I don’t want to repeat it here—”

“Yes, we know,” Mr. Jackson broke in. “You cannot bridle the curiosity of servants. We know that he loves another woman than your young mistress with all her advantages. You may speak plainly.”

“Oh, but it hurts!” she moaned. Then, as if no break had occurred, “When I found that he was not the man I thought him—that nothing I could do would ever make good the dream of years, I hated myself and what I had done and above all my treatment of you, Mr. Quenton. I did not succeed in the wrong I planned,—something happened—God knows what—to upset all that, but the feeling was there and I am sorry; and now that I have said so, may I not go? I have heard that you are kind; that none of us knew how kind; let me go—”

She paused, her lips half closed, every sense on the alert. She was no longer looking at me but straight ahead of her though the danger was approaching from the rear. A door behind her was opening. I could see the face of the man who entered and felt my own heart sink. Next moment he was at her side, his finger pressing on her shoulder.

“Let us hear your answer to the question which Mr. Jackson has just put to you. Was your visit to Mr. Bartholomew’s room before or after you heard the setting down of the medicine glass on the shelf?”

“Before.”

She spoke like one in a dream. She seemed to know who her interlocutor was though she did not turn to look at him.

“You lied when you said that you saw this gentleman here hurrying down the hall immediately after you had heard some one carefully shutting the door next to the medicine cabinet?”

“Yes, I lied.”

Still like one in a dream.

“Did you see him or his shadow pass down the hall at any time that night?”

“No.”

“Why these stories then? Why these lies?”

She was silent.

“Was it not Edgar Bartholomew you heard or saw at that door; and did you not know it was he?”

Again silence; but now a horrified one.

“Are you sure that he did not come in at that door you heard shut? That the only mistake made that night was that the dose was not strong enough—that your patient did not die in time for the will in this gentleman’s favor to be abstracted and destroyed, leaving the other one as the final expression of Mr. Bartholomew’s wishes and testamentary intentions? You need not answer. It is a law of this country that no one can be compelled to incriminate himself. But that is how it looks to us, Mrs. Starr. That is how it looks.”

With this he lifted his finger; and the breath held back in all our throats broke from us in a simultaneous gasp. She only did not move, but sat gazing as before, cheek and brow and even lips growing whiter and whiter till we all shrank back appalled. As the silence grew longer and heavier and more threatening I covered my face with my hands. I could not look and listen too. A vision of Edgar in his most buoyant mood, with laughter in his eye and winsome bonhomie in every feature flashed before me and passed. I could hardly bear it. Then I heard her voice, thin, toneless, and ringing like a wire which has been struck:

“Edgar is innocent. He never entered the room. No one entered it. That was another lie. I alone mixed the dose. I thought he would die at once and let me do what you said. It came to me as I sat there waiting for the morning—the morning I did not feel myself strong enough to face.”

 

LV

We believed her. I, because it lifted a great load from my heart; Lawyer Jackson and the Inspector because of their long experience with criminal humanity. Misery has its own voice! So has conscience; and conscience, despite the strain she had put upon it during these last few evil days was yet alive within her.

Notwithstanding this, the Inspector would not let the moment pass without a warning.

“Mrs. Starr,” said he, “it is my duty to tell you that you will be making a great mistake in taking upon yourself the full burden of this crime if you are simply its accessory before or after. The real culprit cannot escape by any such means as that, and you will neither help him or yourself by taking such a stand.”

The dullness which had crept into her eyes, the loose set of her lips, the dejection, with every purpose gone, which showed in the collapse of her hitherto firmly held body offered the best proof which had yet been given that she had not exaggerated her position. Even her voice had changed; all its ringing quality was gone; it sounded dead, utterly, without passion, almost without feeling:

“I did it myself when I was alone with—with my patient and this—this is why. If I must tell all, I will tell all, though the shame of it will kill me. When I got back from Mr. Edgar’s room, I took another look at Mr. Bartholomew. He was still sleeping and as much of his face as I could see for the little shawl, was calmer than before and his breath even more regular. I should have been happy, but I was not, and stood looking at him, asking myself again and again what he had been doing while I was below and if I were right in thinking that he had not looked into the envelopes. If he had and had changed the wills back where should we be? Mr. Edgar would lose his inheritance and all my wicked work would go for nothing. I could not bear the thought. If only I dared open that little drawer, and have a peep at those documents. I had not the least suspicion that one of them had been withdrawn from its envelope. The full one was on top and I was so nervous handling them under his eye that the emptiness of the under one had escaped me. So I had not that to worry about, only the uncertainty as to which was in the marked envelope—the envelope he had held over the fire and drew back saying that Orpha must do what he could not.

“I knew that if he should wake and detect me fumbling under his pillow for his key that I should fall at his bedside in shame and terror; yet I was putting out my hand, when he moved and turned his head, disarranging the shawl, and I saw projecting from under the pillow not the key but his eye-glasses and started back and let the curtain fall and sank into the chair I always had near, overcome by a certainty which took away all my strength just when I needed it for fresh thought.

“For there was no mistaking now what he had been doing in my absence. He could not read without his glasses, though he could see other things quite well. He had risen to get them—for I remembered only too clearly that they had been lying on his desk when I left the room. I can see them now, just where they lay close against the inkstand; and having got them, and being on his feet, he had locked the doors so that he would not be interrupted while he satisfied himself that the will he had resolved to destroy was in the marked envelope. That he had done more than this—taken the will he wished kept and carried it out of the room, was not within the mind of a poor woman like me to conceive. I was in a bad enough case as it was. He knew in which envelope was the will which would give Edgar his inheritance and I did not. Should I go and consult Edgar as to what we should do now? No; whatever was to be done should be done by me alone; he should not be dragged into it. That is how I felt. But what to do? I did not know. For an hour I sat there, the curtain drawn between us, listening to his breathing. And I thought it all out. I would do just what you said here a little moment ago. Open the drawer and take out the will I hated and burn it to ashes in the fireplace, leaving only the one which would make everything right. But to be free to do this he—must—first—die. I loved Edgar; I was willing to do anything for him but meet his uncle’s accusing eye. That would take bravery I did not possess. So I rose at last, very determined now my mind was made up, and moving quietly around the foot of the bed, crept stealthily to the medicine cabinet, and lifting out the phial I wanted, set it on a lower shelf and then returning for the glass of soothing mixture already prepared, dropped into it what I thought was a heavy dose, and putting back the medicine phial, carried the glass to the bedside where I put it on a chair close to his hand; for he had turned over again by this time and lay with his face toward the windows.

“The light from the fire added to that of the lamp on the other side of the bed made the room bright enough for me to do all this; but when I got back and had seated myself again, the lamp-light seemed an offense and I put it out. The glow from the fire was enough! He could see to reach the glass—and I waited—waited—till I heard a sigh—then a movement—then a quietly whispered Wealthy?—and then, a slight tinkle as though the button at his wrist had touched the glass—and then—

“Oh, God! will I ever forget it? Or how I waited and waited for what must follow, watching the shadows gather on the ceiling, and creep slowly down the walls till they settled upon my head and about the bed where I still heard him moving and muttering now and then words which had no meaning. Why moving? Why muttering? I had expected silence long before this. And why such a chill and so heavy a darkness? Then I realized that the fire he so loved was out for the first time since his illness,—the fire that was to destroy the will I had not yet touched or even sought out, and I rose to rebuild it, when he suddenly cried out, ‘Light!’ and shaken by the tone, subdued in one instant to my old obedient self, I turned on the lamp and pulled back the curtain.

“He was looking at me, not unkindly, but in the imperious way of one who knows he has but to speak to have his least wish carried out.

“He was ill. I was to rouse the house—bring the bowl—the candles—no waiting,—I knew what I was to do; he had told me the night before.

“And I did each and every thing just as he commanded. Alive to seeming failure, to possible despair, I went about my task, hoping against hope that all would yet go right; that Fate would step in and make my sin of some avail at this terrible crisis. Though the hands I wrung together in my misery as I ran through the hall were like ice to the touch, I was all on fire within. Now there is no more fire left here”—her hand falling heavy on her breast—“than on the stones of the desolated hearth;—only ashes! ashes!”

The Inspector moved, and was about to speak, but ceased as her voice rose again in that same awful monotone.

“I loved my Mr. Edgar then.” She spoke as though years had intervened instead of a few flitting days. “I used to think that in return for one of his gay smiles I would put my hands under his feet. But to-day, I do not seem to care enough for him to be glad that he is not guilty. If he were, and had to face what I have to face—shame, when I have always prided myself on my good-name—isolation, when to help others has been my life—death, when—” She paused at that, her head falling forward, her eyes opening into a wide stare, as though she saw for the first time the abyss into which she was sinking,—“I should not now be so lonely.”

The Inspector drew back, Mr. Jackson turned away his head. I could not move feature or limb. I was beholding for the first time the awakening of a lost soul to the horror of its own sin.

“I don’t know why it is,” she went on, still in that toneless voice more moving than any wail or even shriek. “It did not seem such a dreadful thing to do that night. It was but hastening his death by a few days, possibly by only a few hours. But now—now—” Suddenly to our amazement she was on her feet, her eyes roaming from one face to the other of us three, all signs of apathy gone, passion restored to her heart, feeling restored to her voice, as she cried out: “Will Miss Orpha have to know? I wish I could see her before she knows. I wish—I wish—”

It was my turn now. Leaping to her side, I held her while the sobs came in agony from her breast, shaking her and distorting her features till in mercy I pulled down her veil and seated her again in her chair.

As I withdrew my arm she managed to press my hand. And I heard very faintly from behind that veil:

“I am glad something happened to give you what you wanted.”

 

LVI

I thought I had only to go now, and leave her to the Inspector who I felt would deal with her as mercifully as he could. But Mr. Jackson shook his head as I was about to depart, and stepping up to the Inspector said a few earnest words to him after which the former sat down at his desk and wrote a few lines which he put in the official’s hands. Then he drew me apart.

“Wait,” he said; “we may want your signature.”

It was a written confession which the Inspector took upon himself to ask her to sign.

She was sitting back in her chair, very quiet now, her veil down, her figure immovable. The slow heaving of her chest bespoke life and that was all. The Inspector bent down as he reached her and after a minute’s scrutiny of her veiled features said to her not unkindly:

“It will save you much mental suffering if you will sign these words which I first ask you to listen to. Are you ready to hear them?”

She nodded, her hands which were clasped about a little bag she was carrying, twitching convulsively.

“Water, first,” she begged, turning up her eyes till they rested on his face.

He made me a motion, but did not stir from where he stood before her. Instead, he directed his full glance at her hands, and unclasping them gently from the bag she was clutching, opened them out and took away the bag which he laid aside. Then he raised her veil, and handed her the glass which I had brought and watched her while she drank. A few drops seemed to suffice to reinvigorate her, and giving back the glass, she waited for him to read.

The words were mercifully few but they told the full story. As she listened, she sank back into her old pose, only that her hands missing the little bag clutched the arms of the chair in which she sat, and seemed to grow rigid there. But they loosed their grasp readily enough as the Inspector brought a pad and a pen and laying the pad in her lap with the words she had listened to plainly before her, handed her the pen and asked her to sign them.

She roused herself to do this, and when he would draw her veil again she put up her hand in protest, after which she wrote somehow, almost without seeing what she did, the three words which formed her name. Then she sank back again and as he carried away the pad, and, laying the signed confession on the desk for Mr. Jackson and myself to affix our signatures to it as witnesses, she clutched again the arms of her chair and so sat as before, without further word or seeming interest in what was being done.

Should I go now without a word to her, without asking if she had any message to send to Edgar or to Orpha? While I was hesitating, whether or not to address her, I saw the Inspector start and laying his hand on Mr. Jackson’s arm point to her silent figure. A coldness, icy and penetrating struck my heart. I saw them hurriedly advance, I saw the Inspector for the second time slowly lift her veil, give one look and drop it again. And I saw nothing more for a minute, then as my senses cleared, I met the eyes of the two men fixed on me and not on her, and summoning up my strength I said:

“It is better so.”

They did not answer, but in each man’s eye I saw that had they spoken it would have been in repetition of my words:

“It is better so.”

 

LVII

My first duty, now as ever, was to Orpha. Before rumor reached her she must know, and from no other lips than mine, what had happened. Then,—I did not get much beyond that then, for mortal foresight is of all things most untrustworthy, and I had fought too long with facts to wish to renew my battle with delusive fancies.

To shut out every imagining which might get the better of my good sense, I forced myself to recall the foolish reasoning in which I had indulged when the possibility of Uncle having been the victim of Edgar’s cupidity was obsessing my brain. How I had attributed to him acts of which he had been entirely guiltless. How in order to explain our uncle’s death by poison I had imagined him going to the sick room upon seeing Wealthy leave it, and winning the old gentleman to his mind, had carried off the will whose existence threatened his rights, and burned it, with our uncle’s consent, in his own room. All this, while uncle was really behind locked doors making his painful journey down between the walls of his house, in order to place in safe keeping,—possibly from his own vacillation,—the will which endowed myself with what had previously been meant for Edgar alone.

That I had thus allowed my imagination to run so far away from facts was another lesson of the danger we incur in trusting to fanciful reasoning where our own interests are involved; and that I should have carried my futile deductions further, even to the point of supposing that after the question of poisoning was mooted he had taken Orpha and Wealthy upstairs in order to confuse his former finger-prints with fresh ones of his own and theirs, brought me a humiliation in my own eyes now that I knew the truth, which possibly was the best preparation I could have for the interview which now lay before me.

That I was not yet out of the woods,—that I was still open to the attack of vituperative tongues I knew full well; but that could not be helped. What I wanted was to square myself with my own conscience before I faced Orpha and turned another leaf in our heavy book of troubles.

 

LVIII

Haines, for all his decorum, showed an anxious face when he opened the door to me. It changed, however, to one of satisfaction as he saw who had come.

“Oh, sir!” he cried, as I stepped in, “where is Wealthy? Mr. Edgar has been asking for her this half hour. The girl is no good and he will have none of the rest of us in his room.”

“I will go to him. Is Miss Bartholomew in?”

“Yes, sir; he won’t see her either.”

“Haines, I have something serious to say to Miss Bartholomew. You may tell her that I should be very glad to have a few words with her. But first I must quiet him; and while I am in the third story, whether it be for a few minutes or half an hour, I rely on you to see that Miss Bartholomew receives no callers and no message from any one. If the phone rings, choke it off. Cut the wire if necessary. I am in earnest, Haines. Will you do as I ask?”

“I will, sir.”

I could see how anxious he was to know what all this meant, but he did not ask and I should not have told him if he had. It was for Edgar first, and then for Orpha to hear what I had to relate.

 

LIX

When I entered Edgar’s room he was sitting propped up in bed, a woeful figure. He had just flung a book at the poor mute who had vainly tried to find for him the thing he wanted. When he saw me he whitened and slid down half out of sight under the bed-clothes.

“Where is Wealthy?” he shouted out. “I want her and nobody else.” But before I could answer, he spoke again and this time with a show of his old-time lightness. “Not but what it is good of you to come and see a poor devil like me.”

“Edgar,” I said, advancing straight to his bedside and sitting down on its edge, “I have come, not only to see what can be done for you to-day, but to ask if you will let me stay by you till you are well enough and strong enough to kick me out.”

“But where is Wealthy?” he cried, with a note of alarm in his voice. “She went out for an hour. She should be back. I—I must have Wealthy, glum as she is.”

Should I shock him with the truth? Would it prove to be too much for him in his present feverish state? For a moment I feared so, then as I noticed the restlessness which made his every member quiver, I decided that he would be less physically disturbed by a full knowledge of Wealthy’s guilt and the events of the last hour, than by a prolonged impatience at her absence and the vexation which any attempt at deception would occasion him.

“Won’t I possibly do for a substitute?” I smiled. “Wealthy cannot come. She will not come any more, Edgar. Though you may not have known it she was a great sufferer—a great sinner—a curse to this house during the last few weeks. It was she—”

“Ah!”

He had me by the arm. He had half raised himself again so that his eyes, hot with fever and the horror of this revelation burned close upon mine. His lips shook; his whole body trembled, but he understood me. I did not need to complete my unfinished sentence.

“You must take it calmly,” I urged. “Think what this uncertainty has done to the family. It has almost destroyed us in the eyes of the world. Now we can hold up our heads again; now you can hold up your head again. It should comfort you.”

“You don’t know,” he muttered, turning his head away. Then quickly, violently, “I can never get away from the shame of it. She did it for me. I know that she did it for me and people will think—”

“No,” I said, “they will not think. She exonerates you completely. Edgar, I have to tell this news to Orpha. She must not hear it first from one of the servants or from some newspaper man. Let me go down to her. I will come back, but not to weary you, or allow you to weary yourself with talk. When you are better we will have it all out. What you have to do now is to get well, and I am going to help you.”

I started to rise but he drew me back again.

“There is something I must confess to you before you undertake that. I have not been fair—”

I took him by both hands.

“Let us forget that. It has come between us long enough. It must not do so any longer.”

“You know—”

“I had to listen to Wealthy’s story.”

Letting go of his hands, I again tried to rise; but for the second time he drew me back.

“You are going to tell Orpha. Are you going to tell Lucy, too?”

“Miss Colfax is not in the house; she left this noon for New York.”

He stiffened where he lay. I was glad I had let go of his hands. I could affect more easily a nonchalant manner. “She has an aunt there, I believe. Is there anything you want before I go down?”

Oh, the hunger in his stare! “Nothing now, nothing but to get well. You have promised to help me and you shall.” Then as I crossed to the door, “Where have they put her? Wealthy, I mean. I ought to do something.”

“No, Edgar, she is being cared for. She confessed, you know, and they will not be too harsh with her. I will tell you another time all that I have failed to say to-day. For two days we will not speak her name. After that you may ask me anything you will.”

With that I closed the door behind me. The greater trial was to come.

 

LX

So I thought, but the first view I had of Orpha’s face reassured me. Haines had successfully carried out the rôle I had assigned him and she was still ignorant of what had occurred to change the aspect of all our lives. Her expression was not uncheerful, only a little wistful; and we were alone, which made the interview both easier and harder.

“How is Edgar?”

Those were her first words.

“Better. I left him in a much calmer mood. He has been worrying about Wealthy. Have you been worrying, too?”

“Not worrying. I think she has been a long time gone, but she was very tired and needed a change and the air.”

“Orpha, how much faith do you put in this woman who has been so useful here?”

“Why, all there is in the world. She has never failed us. What do you mean?”

“You have found her good as well as useful?”

“Always. She has seemed more like a friend than a housekeeper. Why do you ask? Why are we discussing her when there are so many other things we ought to talk about?”

“Because this nurse of Edgar concerns us more than any one else in the world to-day. Because through her we nearly came to grief and now through her we are to see the light again. Will you try to understand me? Without further words, understand me?”

I could see the knowledge coming, growing, flaming in her face.

“Wealthy!” she cried. “Wealthy! Not any one nearer and dearer! I could never bring myself to believe that it was. But not to know! I could not have borne it much longer.”

And I had to sit there, with her dear hand so near and not touch it. To explain, counsel and console, with that old adjuration from lips whose dictates still remained authoritative over me, not to pass the line from cousinship to lover till he had taken off the ban or was dead. He was dead, but the ban had not yet been removed, for there were some things I must be sure of before love could triumph; one of which I was resolved to settle before I left Orpha’s presence.

So when we had said all there was to say of the day’s tragedy and what was to be expected from it, I spoke to her of the odd little key which had opened the way to the hidden stairway and asked her if she had it about her as I greatly desired to see it again.

“I am wearing it for a little while,” she answered and drawing the chain from her neck she laid both that and the key in my hand.

I studied the latter closely before putting the inquiry:

“Is this the key you found in the earth of the flower-pot, Orpha?”

“Yes, Quenton.”

“Is it the one you gave to the police when they came the next day?”

“Of course. It was still on the chain. But I took it off when I gave it to them. They had only the key.”

“Did you know that while they were working with that key here, another one—the one which finally found lodgment in the slit in the molding upstairs was traveling up from New York in Edgar’s pocket?”

Oh, the joy of seeing her eyes open wide in innocent amazement! She had had nothing to do with that trick! I was convinced of it before; but now I was certain.

“But how can that be? This key opens the way to the secret staircase. I know because I have tried it. How could there be another?”

“If Wealthy were still living I think she could tell you. At some time when you were not looking, she slipped the one key off and slipped on the other. She was used to making exchanges and her idea was to give him a chance to try the key, and, if possible, find the will unknown to you or the police. She had a friend in New York to whom she sent the key and a letter enclosing one for Edgar; and had not Providence intervened and given them both into my hands—”

Orpha had shaken her head in protest more than once while I was speaking but now she looked so piteously eager that I stopped.

“Am I not right?” I asked.

“No, no. Wealthy never knew anything about the key till the police came to try it. I told nobody but—”

The change in her countenance was so sudden and so marked that I turned quickly about, thinking that some one had entered the room. But it was not that; it was something quite different—something which called up more than one emotion—something which both lifted her head and caused it to droop again as if pride were battling with humiliation in her dismayed heart.

“Won’t you finish, Orpha?” I begged. “You said that you had told only one person about it and that this person was not Wealthy. Who, then, was it?”

“Lucy,” she breathed, bringing her hands, which had been lying supine in her lap, sharply together in a passionate clutch.

“Lucy! Ah!”

“She was with me the night I dropped the flower pot and picked up the chain and key from the scattered dirt. I had brought the pot from Father’s room the morning he died, for the flower in it was just opening and it seemed to speak of him. But I did not like the place where I had put it and was carrying it to another shelf, when it slipped from my hands. If I had left it in Father’s room the key might have been found long before; for I noticed on first watering it that the soil on top gave evidences of having been lately stirred up—something which made no impression on me, but which might have made a decisive one on the Inspector. Who do you think hid the key there? Father?”

“I wish I knew, Orpha; there are several things we do not know and never may now Wealthy is gone. But Miss Colfax? Tell me what passed between you when you talked about the key?”

It was a subject Orpha would have liked to avoid; which she would have avoided if I had not been insistent. Why? Had she begun to suspect the truth which made it hard for her to discuss her friend? Had some echo from the cry which for days had filled the spaces of the overhead rooms drifted down to her through the agency of some gossiping servant? It was likely; it was more than likely; it was true. I saw it in the proud detached air with which she waited for me to urge her into speech.

And I did urge her. It would not do at a moment when the shadows surrounding the past were so visibly clearing to allow one cloud to remain which might be dissipated by mutual confidence. So, gently, but persistently, I begged her to tell me the whole story that I might know just what pitfalls remained in our path.

 

LXI

Thus entreated, she no longer hesitated, though I noticed she stammered every time when obliged to speak the name of the woman who had shared with her—so much more than shared with her—Edgar’s affection.

“The flower-pot lay broken on the floor and I was surveying with the utmost surprise the key which I had picked up from the mold lying all about on the rug, when Lucy came in to say good night. When she saw what I held in my hand, she showed surprise also, but failed to make any remark,—which was like—Lucy.

“But I could not keep still. I had to talk if only to express my wonder and obtain a little sisterly advice. But she was in no hurry to give it, and not till I reminded her how lonely I was for all my host of so-called friends, and had convinced her by showing the chain, that this was the very key my father had worn about his neck and for which we had all been looking, did she show any real interest.

“‘And if it were?’ she asked. To which I answered eagerly, ‘Then, perhaps, we have in our hands the clew to where the will itself lies hidden.’ This roused her, for a spot of red came out on her cheek which had been an even white before; and glad to have received the least sign that she recognized the importance of my dilemma, I pressed her to tell me what I should do with this key now that I had found it.

“Even then she was slow to speak. She began one sentence, then broke it off and began another, ending up at last by entreating me to let her consider the subject before offering advice. You will acknowledge that it was a difficult problem for two ignorant girls like ourselves to solve, so I felt willing to wait; though I could not but wonder at her showing all at once so much emotion over what concerned me so much and herself so little—our cold Lucy always so proper, always so perfectly the mistress of herself whatever the occasion. Never had I seen her look as she was looking then nor observed in her before that slow moving of the eye till it met mine askance; nor heard her speak as she did when she finally asked:

“‘Who do you want to have it?’”

Orpha shot me a sudden glance as she repeated this question of Lucy’s, but did not wait for any comment, rather hastened to say:

“I am telling you just what she said and just how she looked because it means something to me now. Then it simply aroused my curiosity. Nor did I dream what was in her mind, when upon my protesting that it was not a question of what I wanted, but of what it was right for me to do, she responded by asking if I needed to be told that. The right thing, of course, for me to do was to call up the police and get from them the advice I needed.

“But, Quenton, I have a great dread of the police; they know too much and too little. So I shook my head, and seeing that Lucy was anxious to examine the key more closely, I put it in her hands and watched her as she ran her fingers over it remarking as she called my attention to it that she had never seen one quite so thin before—that she could almost bend it. Then in a quick low tone altogether unlike her own, added, as she handed it back that we had somebody’s fate in our hands, whose, she would not say. But this much was certain, mine was indissolubly linked with it. And when I shuddered at the way she spoke, she threw her arms about my neck and begged me to believe that she was sorry for me.

“This gave me courage to ask,”—and here Orpha’s lip took a sarcastic curve more expressive of self-disdain than of any scorn she may have felt for her confidant—“whether she thought Dr. Hunter would be willing to act as my advisor; that I did not like Mr. Dunn and never had, and now that my two cousins were away I could think of no one but him.

“But she rejected the idea at once—almost with anger, saying that it was a family matter and that he was not one of the family yet. That we must wait; come to no decision to-night, unless I was willing to try what we two could do with the key. Perhaps we might find the lock it fitted somewhere in my father’s room.

“But I refused, remembering that some member of the police is always in or near the grounds ready to remark any unusual lighting up of the third story windows. She did not seem sorry and, begging me to put the whole matter out of my mind till the next day, stood by while I dropped the chain and key into one of my bureau drawers, and then kissing me, went smilingly away.

“Quenton, I thought her manner strange,—at once too hurried and too affectionate to seem quite real—but I never thought of doubting her or of—of—Tell me if you know what I find it so difficult to say. Have the servants—”

“Yes, Orpha, I know through them what I have long known from other sources.” And waited with a chill at my heart to see how she took this acknowledgment.

Gratefully. Almost with a smile. She was so lovely that never was a man harder put to it to restrain his ardor than I was at that moment. But my purpose held. It had to; the time was not yet.

“I am glad,” fell softly from her lips; then she hurried on. “How could I doubt her or doubt him? We have been a thousand times together—all three, and never had I seen—or felt—Perhaps it is only he, not she. Listen, for I’m not through. Something happened in the night, or I dreamed it. I do not really know which. From what you say, I think it happened. I didn’t then, but I do now.”

“Go on; I am listening, Orpha.”

“I was very troubled. I slept, but only fitfully. My mind would be quite blank, then a sudden sharp realization would come of my being awake and seeing my room and the things in it with unusual distinctness. The moon would account for this, the curtains being drawn from one of the western windows, allowing a broad beam of unclouded light to pour into the room and lie in one large square on the floor. I once half rose to shut it out, but forgot myself and fell asleep again. When I woke the next time things were not so distinct, rather they were hazy as if seen through a veil. But I recognized what I saw; it was my own image I was staring at, standing with my hand held out, the key in my open palm with the chain falling away from it. Dazed, wondering if I were in a dream or in another world—it was all so strange and so unreal,—I was lost in the mystery of it till slowly the realization came that I was standing before my mirror, and that I was really holding in my hand the chain and key which I had taken from my bureau drawer. What is the matter, Quenton? Why did you start like that?”

“Never mind now. I will tell you some other time.”

She looked as if she hated to lose the present explanation; but, with a little smile charming in its naïveté, she went bravely on:

“As I took this quite in, I started to move away, afraid of my image, afraid of my own self, for I had never done anything like this before. And what seems very strange to me, I don’t remember the walk back to my bed; and yet I was in my bed when the next full consciousness came, and there was daylight in the room and everything appeared natural again and felt natural, with the one exception of my arm, which was sore, and when I came to look at it, it was bruised, as if it had been clutched strongly above the elbow. Yet I had no remembrance of falling or of hitting myself. I spoke to Lucy about it later, and about the image in the glass, too, which I took to be a dream because—”

“Because what, Orpha?”

“Because the chain and key were just where I had put them the night before,—the same chain and what I supposed to be the same key or I would never have said so when Lucy asked me about it.”

“Orpha, Miss Colfax has a streak of subtlety in her nature. I think you know that now, so there is no harm in my saying so. She was in the room when you laid by that key. She was watching you. It was she who helped you into your bed. She had a key of her own not unlike the one belonging to your father. She went for this and while you slept put it on the chain you may have dropped in crossing the floor or which she may have taken from your unresisting hand. And it was she who carefully restored it to the place it had occupied in the bureau drawer, ready to hand, in case the police should want it the next day. The other one—the real one, she mailed to Edgar. Did you ever hear her speak of a New York lawyer by the name of Miller?”

“Oh, yes; he is her aunt’s husband. It is to them she has gone. She is to be married in their house. They live in Newark.”

I own that I was a little startled by this information. In handing me the key and his letter two days before in Thirty-fifth Street he had taken me for Edgar. This he could not have done had he ever met him. Could it be that they were strangers? To settle the question, I ventured to remark:

“Edgar goes everywhere. Do you suppose he ever visited the Millers?”

“Oh, no. Lucy has not been there herself in years.”

“Then you do not think they are acquainted with him?”

“I have no reason to. They have never met Dr. Hunter. Why should they have met Edgar?”

Her cheek was aglow; she seemed to misunderstand my reason for these questions; so I hastened to explain myself by relating the episode which had had such an effect on all our lives. This once made clear I was preparing to consult with her about my plans for Edgar, when she cast a swift glance towards the door, the portières of which were drawn wide, and observing nobody in the court, said with the slightest hint of trouble in her voice:

“There is something else I ought to speak about. You remember that you advised me to make use of my first opportunity to visit the little stairway hidden these many years from everybody but my father? I did so, as I have already told you, and in that box, from which the will was drawn I found, doubled up and crushed into the bottom of it, this.”

Thrusting her hand into a large silken bag which lay at her side on the divan on which she was seated, she drew out a crumpled document which I took from her with some misgiving.

“The first will of all,” I exclaimed on opening it. “The one he was told by his lawyer to destroy, and did not.”

“But it is of no use now,” she protested. “It—it—”

“Take it,” I broke in almost harshly. The sight of it had affected me far beyond what it should have done. “Put it away—keep it—till I have time to—”

“To do what?” she asked, eyeing me with some wonder as she put the document back in the bag.

“To think out my whole duty,” I smiled, recovering myself and waving the subject aside.

“But,” she suggested timidly but earnestly as well, “won’t it complicate matters? Mr. Dunn bade Father to destroy it.” And her eye stole towards the fireplace where some small logs were burning.

“He would not tell us to do so now,” I protested. “You must keep it religiously, as we hope to keep our honor. Don’t you see that, cousin mine?”

“Yes,” came with pride now. But from what that pride sprung it would take more than man to tell.

And then I spoke of Edgar and won her glad consent to my intention of taking care of him as long as he would suffer it or need me. After which, she left me with the understanding that I would summon all the remaining members of the household and tell them from my personal knowledge what they would soon be learning, possibly with less accuracy, from the city newspapers.

 

LXII

Night again in this house of many mysteries. Late night. Quiet had succeeded intense excitement; darkness, the flashing here and there of many lights. Orpha had retired; even Edgar was asleep. I alone kept watch.

To these others peace of a certain nature had come amid all the distraction; but not to me. For me the final and most desperate struggle of all was on,—that conflict with self which I had foreseen with something like fear when I opened the old document so lately found by Orpha, and beheld Edgar’s name once more in its place as chief beneficiary.

Till then, my course had seemed plain enough. But with this previous will still in existence, signed and attested to and openly recognized as it had been for many years as the exact expression of my uncle’s wishes, confusion had come again and with it the return of old doubts which I had thought exorcized forever.

Had the assault been a feeble one—had these doubts been mere shadows cast by a discarded past, I might not have quailed at their onslaught so readily. But their strength was of the present and bore down upon me with a malignancy which made all their former attacks seem puerile and inconsequent.

For the events of the day previous to Orpha’s production of the old will had shown to my satisfaction that I might yet look for happiness whether my claim would be allowed or disallowed by the surrogate. If allowed, it left me free to do my duty by Edgar, now relieved forever in my eyes of all complicity in our uncle’s tragic death. If disallowed, it left Orpha free, as heiress and mistress of her own fortunes, to follow her inclination and formulate her future as her heart and reason dictated.

But now, with this former will still in existence, the question was whether I could find the strength to carry out the plan which my better nature prompted, when the alternative would be the restoration of Edgar to his old position with all the obligations it involved.

This was a matter not to be settled without a struggle. I must fight it out, and as I have said, alone. No one could help me; no one could advise me. Only myself could know myself and what was demanded of me by my own nature. No other being knew what had passed between Uncle and myself in those hours when it was given me to learn his heart’s secrets and the strength of the wish which had dominated his later life. Had Wealthy not spoken—had she not cleared Edgar from all complicity in Uncle’s premature death,—had I possessed a doubt or even the shadow of one, that in this she had spoken the whole unvarnished truth, there would have been no question as to my duty in the present emergency and I should have been sleeping, at this midnight hour just as Edgar was, or at the most, keeping a nurse’s watch over him, but no vigil such as I was holding now.

He was guilty of deception—guilty of taking an unfair advantage of me at a critical point in my life. He did not rightly love Orpha, and was lacking in many qualities desirable in one destined to fill a large place in civic life. But these were peccadilloes in comparison to what we had feared; and remembering his good points and the graces which embellished him, and the absolute certainty which I could not but feel that in time, with Lucy married and irrevocably removed from him, he would come to appreciate Orpha, I felt bound to ask myself whether I was justified in taking from him every incentive towards the higher life which our uncle had foreseen for him when he planned his future—a future which, I must always remember, my coming and my coming only had disturbed.

I have not said it, but from the night when, lying on my bed I saw my uncle at my side and felt his trembling arms pressing on my breast and heard him in the belief that it was at Edgar’s bedside he knelt, sobbing in my ear, “I cannot do it. I have tried to and the struggle is killing me,” I had earnestly vowed and, with every intention of keeping my vow, that I would let no ambition of my own, no love of luxury or power, no craving for Orpha’s affection, nothing which savored entirely of self should stand in the way of Edgar’s fortunes so long as I believed him worthy of my consideration. This may explain my sense of duty towards Orpha and also the high-strung condition of my nerves from the day tragedy entered our home and with it the deep felt fear that he did not merit that consideration.

I was aware what Mr. Jackson would say to all this—what any lawyer would say who had me for a client. They would find reason enough for me to let things take their natural course.

But would that exonerate me from acting the part of a true man as I had come to conceive it?

Would my days and nights be happier and my sleep more healthful if with a great fortune in hand, and blessed with a wife I adored, I had to contemplate the lesser fortunes of him who was the darling of the man from whom I had received these favors?

I shuddered at the mere thought of such a future. Always would his image rise in shadowy perspective before me. It would sit with me at meals, brood at my desk, and haunt every room in this house which had been his home from childhood while it had been mine for the space only of a few months. Together, we had fathomed its secret. Together, we had trod its strangely concealed stairway. The sense of an unseen presence which had shaken the hearts of many in traversing its halls was no longer a mystery; but the by-ways in life which the harassed soul must tread have their own hidden glooms and their own unexpectedness; and the echoes of steps we hear but cannot see, linger long in the consciousness and do not always end with the years. Should I brave them? Dare I brave them when something deep within me protested with an insistent, inexorable disclaimer?

The conflict waxed so keen and seemed destined to be so prolonged—for self is a wily adversary and difficult to conquer—that I grew impatient and the air heavy with the oppression of the darkness in which I sat. I was in Edgar’s den and comfortable enough; but such subjects as occupied me in this midnight hour call for light, space and utmost freedom of movement if they would be viewed aright and settled sensibly. Edgar was sleeping quietly; why not visit Uncle’s old room and do what he once told me to do when under the stress of an overwhelming temptation—sit within view of Orpha’s portrait and test my wishes by its wordless message.

But when I had entered the great room and, still in solitude though not in darkness, pulled the curtain from before that breathing canvas, the sight of features so dear bursting thus suddenly upon me made me forget my errand—forget everything but love. But gradually as I gazed, the purity of those features and the searching power they possessed regained its influence over me and I knew that if I would be true to her and true to myself,—above all, if I would be true to my uncle and the purpose of his life, I should give Edgar his chance.

For, in these long hours of self-analysis, I had discovered that deep in the inmost recesses of my mind there existed a doubt, vitiating every hope as it rose, whether we were right in assuming that the will we had come upon at the bottom of the walled-in stairway was the one he meant us to find and abide by. The box in which it was thrust held a former testament of his manifestly discarded. What proof had we that in thus associating the two he had not meant to discard both. None whatever. We could not even tell whether he knew or did not know which will he was handling. The right will was in the right envelope when we found it, he must therefore have changed them back, but whether in full knowledge of what he was doing, or in the confusion of a mind greatly perturbed by the struggle Wealthy had witnessed in him at the fireside, who could now decide. The intention with which this mortally sick man, with no longer prospect of life before him than the two weeks promised him by the doctor, forced himself to fit a delicate key into an imperceptible lock and step by step, without assistance, descend a stairway but little wider than his tread, into depths damp with the chill of years for the purpose of secreting there a will contradictory to the one he had left in the room above, could never now be known. We could but guess at it, I in my way, and Edgar in his, and the determining power—by which I mean the surrogate’s court—in its.

And because intention is all and guessing would never satisfy me, I vowed again that night, with my eyes fixed on Orpha’s as they shone upon me from her portrait, that come weal, or come woe,

Edgar should have his chance.

 

LXIII

The next day I took up my abode in Edgar’s room, not to leave him again till he was strong enough to face the importunities of friends and the general talk of the public. The doctor, warned by Orpha of my intention, fell into it readily enough after a short conversation we had together, and a week went by without Edgar hearing of Wealthy’s death or the inevitable inquest which had followed it. Then there came a day when I told him the whole story; and after the first agitation caused by this news had passed, I perceived with strengthening hope that the physical crisis had passed and that with a little more care he would soon be well and able to listen to what I had to say to him about the future.

Till then we both studiously avoided every topic connected with the present. This, strange as it may appear, was at his request. He wanted to get well. He was bent upon getting well and that as quickly as it was in his power to do so. Whether this desire, which was almost violent in its nature, sprang from his wish to begin proceedings against me in the surrogate’s court or from a secret purpose to have one last word with Lucy Colfax before her speedily approaching marriage, the result was an unswerving control over himself and a steady increase in health.

Miss Colfax was in Newark where the ceremony was to take place. The cards were just out and in my anxiety to know what was really seething in his mind—for his detached air and effort from time to time at gayety of manner and speech had not deceived me—I asked the doctor if it would be safe for me to introduce into my conversation with Edgar any topic which would be sure to irritate, if not deeply distress him.

“Do you consider it really necessary to broach any such topic at this time?”

“I certainly do, Doctor; circumstances demand it.”

“Then go ahead. I think your judgment can be depended upon to know at what moment to stop.”

I was not long in taking advantage of this permission. As soon as the doctor was gone, I drew from my pocket the cards which had come in the morning’s mail and handed them to Edgar, with just the friendly display of interest which it would be natural for me to show if conditions had been what they seemed to be rather than what they were.

I heard the paper crunch under the violent clutch which his fingers gave it but I did not look at him, though the silence seemed long before he spoke. When he did, there was irony in his tone which poorly masked the suffering underlying it.

“Lucy will make a man like Dr. Hunter a model wife,” was what he finally remarked; but the deliberate way in which he tore up the cards and threw the fragments away—possibly to hide the marks of his passion upon them—troubled me and caused me to listen eagerly as he went on to remark: “I have never liked Dr. Hunter. We could never hit it off. Talk about a crooked stick! She with all her lovers! What date is it? The seventeenth? We must send her a present!”

I sat aghast; his tone was indescribable. I felt that the time had come to change the subject.

“Edgar,” said I, “the doctor has assured me that so far as symptoms go your condition is satisfactory. That all you need now is rest of mind; and that I propose to give you if I can. You remember how when we two were at the bottom of that stairway with the unopened will between us that I declared to you that I would abide by the expression of our uncle’s wishes when once they were made plain to me? My mind has not changed in that regard. If you can prove to me that his last intention was to recur—”

“You know I cannot do that,” he broke in petulantly, “why talk?”

“Because I cannot prove that he did not so intend any more than you can prove that he did.”

I felt a ghostly hand on my arm jerking me back. I thought of Mr. Jackson and of how it would be like him to do this if he were standing by and heard me. But I shook off this imagined clutch, just as I would have withdrawn my arm from his had he been there; and went quietly on as Edgar’s troubled eyes rose to mine.

“I am not going to weary you by again offering you my friendship. I have done that once and my mind does not easily change. But I here swear that if you choose to contest the will now in the hands of the surrogate, I will not offer any defense, once I am positively assured that Orpha’s welfare will not suffer. The man who marries the daughter of Edgar Quenton Bartholomew must have no dark secret in his life. Tell me—we are both young, both fortunate enough, or shall I say unfortunate enough, to have had very much our own way in life up to the difficult present—what was the cause of your first rupture with Uncle? It is not as a father confessor I ask you this, but as a man who cannot rightfully regulate his own conduct till he has a full knowledge of yours.”

With starting eyes he rose before me, slowly and by jerks as though his resisting muscles had to be coerced to their task. But once at his full height, he suddenly sank back into his chair with a loud shout of laughter.

“You should have been a lawyer,” he scoffed. “You put your finger instinctively on the weakest spot in the defense.” Then as I waited, he continued in a different tone and with a softer aspect: “It won’t do, Quenton. If you are going to base your action on Orpha’s many deserts and my appreciation of them, you had better save yourself the trouble. I”—his head fell and he had to summon up courage to proceed—“I love her as my childhood’s playmate, and I admire her as a fine girl who will make a still finer woman, but—”

I put up my hand. “You need not say it, Edgar. I will spare you that much. I know—we all know where your preference lies. You shouted it out in your sickness. But that is something which time will take care of if—”

“There is no if; and time! That is what is eating me up; making me the wretch you have found me. It is not the fortune that Uncle left which I so much want,” he hurried on as his impulsive nature fully asserted itself. “Not for myself I mean, but for its influence on her. She is a queen and has a queen’s right to all that this world can give of splendor and of power. But Orpha has her rights, too; Lucy can never be mistress here. I see that as well as you do and so thanking you for your goodness, for you have been good to me, let us call it all off. I am not penniless. I can go my own way; you will soon be rid of me.”

Why couldn’t I find a word? Now was the time to speak, but my lips were dumb; my thoughts at a standstill. He, on the contrary, was burning to talk—to free himself from the bitterness of months by a frank outpouring of the hopes and defeats of his openly buoyant but secretly dissatisfied young life.

“You asked me what came between Uncle and myself on that wretched night of the ball,” he hurried on. “I have a notion to tell you. Since you know about Lucy—” His tongue tripped on the word but he shook his head and began volubly again. “I am not a fellow given to much thought unless it is about art or books or music, so I was deep in love before I knew it. She had come back from school—But I cannot go into that. You have seen her, and perhaps can understand my infatuation. I had supposed myself happy in the prospects always held out to me. But a few days of companionship with her convinced me that there was but one road to happiness for me and that was closed against me. That was when I should have played the man—told Uncle, and persuaded him to leave his fortune directly to Orpha. Instead of which, I let Uncle dream his dreams while Lucy and I met here and there, outwardly just friends, but inwardly—Well, I won’t make a fool of myself by talking about it. Had Orpha been older and more discerning, things might have been different; but she was a child, happy in the pleasures of the day and her father’s affection. When he, eager to see his plans matured, proposed a ball and the announcement of our engagement at this ball, she consented joyfully, more because she was in love with the ball than with me. But to Lucy and me it was quite another matter. We woke to the realities of life and saw no way of opposing them. For me to be designated as my uncle’s heir and marry Orpha had been the expectation of us all for years. Besides, there is no use in my concealing from you who know me so well, I saw no life ahead of me without fortune. I was accustomed to it and it was my natural heritage; nor would Lucy have married a poor man; it was not in her; there are some things one can never accept.

“I am speaking of affairs as they were that week when Lucy and I virtually parted. Before it was over she had engaged herself to Dr. Hunter, in order, as she said, to save ourselves from further folly. This marked the end of my youth and of something good in me which has never come back. I blamed nobody but I began to think for myself and plan for myself with little thought of others, unless it was for Lucy. If only something would happen to prevent that announcement! Then it might be possible for me to divert matters in a way to secure for me the desires I cherished. How little I dreamed what would happen, and that within a short half hour!

“I have asked the doctor and he says that he thinks Uncle’s health had begun to wane before that day. That is a comfort to me; but there are times when I wish I had died before I did what I did that night. You have asked to know it and you shall, for I am reckless enough now to care little about what any one thinks of me. I had come upon Uncle rather unexpectedly, as, dressed for the ball, he sat at his desk which was then as you know in the little room off his where we afterwards slept. He was looking over his will—he said so—the one which had been drawn up long before and which had been brought to the house that day by Mr. Dunn. As I met his eye he smiled, and tapping the document which he had hurriedly folded, remarked cheerfully, ‘This will see you well looked after,’ and put it back in one of the drawers. With some affectionate remark I told him my errand—I forget what it was now—and left him just as he rose from his desk. But the thought which came to me as he did this went with me down the stairs. I wanted to see that will. I wanted to know just how much it bound me to Orpha—Don’t look at me like that. I was in love, I tell you, and the thought which had come to me was this; he had not locked the drawer.

“Uncle was happy as a king as he joined us below that night. He looked at Orpha in her new dress as if he had never seen her before, and the word or two he uttered in my ear before the guests came made my heart burn but did not disturb my purpose. When I could—when most of the guests were assembled and the dance well under way—I stole through the dining-room into the rear and so up the back stairs to Uncle’s study. No one was on that floor; all the servants were below, even Wealthy. I found everything as we had left it; the drawer still unlocked, and the will inside.

“I took it out—yes, I did that—and I read it greedily. Its provisions were most generous so far as I was concerned. I was given almost everything after some legacies and public bequests had been made; but it was not this which excited me; it was that no conditions were attached to my inheriting this great fortune. Orpha’s name was not even mentioned in connection with it. I should be free—

“My thoughts had got thus far—dishonorable as they may appear—when I felt a sudden chill so quick and violent that the paper rattled in my hands; and looking up I beheld Uncle standing in the doorway with his eyes fixed upon me in a way no man’s eyes had ever been before; his, least of all. He had remembered that he had not locked up his desk and had come back to do so and found me reading his will.

“Quenton, I could have fallen at his feet in my shame and humiliation, for I loved him. I swear to you now that I loved him and do now above every one in the world but—but Lucy. But he was not used to such demonstrations, so I simply rose and folding up the paper laid it between us on the desk, not looking at him again. I felt like a culprit. I do yet when I think of it, and I declare to you that bad as I am, when, as sometimes happens I awake in the night fresh from a dream of orchestral music and the tread of dancing feet, I find my forehead damp and my hands trembling. That sound was all I heard between the time I laid down the will and the moment when he finally spoke:

“‘So eager, Edgar?’

“I was eager or had been, but not for what he thought. But how could I say so? How could I tell him the motive which had driven me to unfold a personal document he had never shown me? I who can talk by the hour had not a word to say. He saw it and observed very coldly:

“‘A curiosity which defies honor and the trust of one who has never failed you has its root in some secret but overpowering desire. What is that desire, Edgar? Love of money or love of Orpha?’

“A piercing thrust before which any man would quail. I could not say ‘Love of Orpha,’ that was too despicable; nor could I tell the truth for that would lose me all; so after a moment of silent agony, I faltered:

“‘I—I’m afraid I rate too high the advantages of great wealth. I am ashamed—’

“He would not let me finish.

“‘Haven’t you every advantage now? Has anything ever been denied you? Must you have all in a heap? Must I die to satisfy your cupidity? I would not believe it of you, boy, if you had not yourself said it. I can hardly believe it now, but—’

“At that he stumbled and I sprang to steady him. But he would not let me touch him.

“‘Go down,’ he said. ‘You have guests. I may forget this, in time, but not at once. And heed me in this. No announcement of any engagement between you and Orpha! We will substitute for that the one between Lucy and Dr. Hunter. That will satisfy the crowd and please the two lovers. See to it. I shall not go down again.’

“I tried to protest, but the calamity I had brought upon myself robbed me of all initiative and I could only stammer useless if not meaningless words which he soon cut short.

“‘Your guests are waiting,’ came again from his lips as he bent forward, but not with his usual precision, and took up the will.

“And I had to go. When halfway down the stairs I heard him lock the door of his room. It gave me a turn, but I did not know then how deeply he had been stricken—that before another hour he would be really ill. I had my own ordeal to face; you know what it was. My degeneration began from that hour. Quenton, it is not over. I—” He flung his hands over his face; when he dropped them I saw a different man—one whom I hardly understood.

“You see,” he now quietly remarked, “I am no fit husband for Orpha.”

And after that he would listen to nothing on this or any other serious topic.

 

LXIV

Two flights of stairs and two only, separated Edgar’s rooms from the library in which I hoped to find Orpha. But as I went down them step by step they seemed at one moment to be too many for my impatience and at another too few for a wise decision as to what I should say when I reached her. As so frequently before my heart and my head were opposed. I dared not yield to the instincts of the former without giving ear to the monitions of the latter. Edgar had renounced his claim, ungraciously, doubtless, but yet to all appearance sincerely enough. But he was a man of moods, guided almost entirely by impulses, and to-morrow, under a fresh stress of feeling, his mood might change, with unpleasant if not disastrous results. True, I might raise a barrier to any decided change of front on his part by revealing to Orpha what had occurred and securing her consent to our future union. But the indelicacy of any such haste was not in accord with the reverent feelings with which I regarded her; and how far I would have allowed myself to go had I found her in one of the rooms below, I cannot say, for she was not in any of them nor was she in the house, as Haines hastened to tell me when I rang for him.

The respite was a fortunate one perhaps; at least, I have always thought so; and accepting it with as much equanimity as such a disappointment would admit of, I decided to seek an interview with Mr. Jackson before I made another move. He was occupied when I entered his office, but we ultimately had our interview and it lasted long enough for considerable time to have elapsed before I turned again towards home. When I did, it was with the memory of only a few consecutive sentences of all he had uttered. These were the sentences:

“You will get your inheritance. You will be master of Quenton Court and of a great deal besides. But what I am working for and am very anxious to see, is your entrance upon this large estate with the sympathy of your fellow-citizens. Therefore, I caution restraint till Edgar recovers his full health and has had time to show his hand. I will give him two weeks. With his head-long nature that should be sufficient. You can afford to wait.”

Yes, I could afford to wait with such a prospect before me; and I had made up my mind to do so by the time I had rung the bell on my return.

But that and all other considerations were driven from my mind when I saw a renewal of the old anxiety in Haines’ manner as he opened the door to admit me.

“Oh, sir!” was his eager cry as I stepped in. “We don’t know how it happened or how he was ever able to get away; but Mr. Edgar is gone. When I went to his room a little while ago to see if he wanted anything I found it in disorder and this—this note, for you, sir.”

I took it from his hand; looked at it stupidly, feeling afraid to open it. Like a stray whiff of wind soaring up from some icy gulf, I heard again those final words of his, “You will soon be rid of me.” I felt the paper flutter in my hand; my fingers were refusing to hold it. “Take it, and open it,” I said to Haines.

He did so, and when he had drawn out the card it held and I had caught a glimpse of the few words it contained, my fear became a premonition; and, seizing it, I carried it into the library.

Once there and free to be myself; to suffer and be unobserved, I looked down at those words and read:

Do not seek me and do not worry about me. I have money and I have strength. When I can face the world again with a laugh you shall see me. This I will do in two weeks or never.

 

LXV

Two weeks! What did he mean by two weeks? Mr. Jackson had made use of the same expression. What did he mean? Then it came to me what Edgar meant, not what Mr. Jackson had. Lucy Colfax was to be married in two weeks. If he could face the world after that with a smile—

Ah, Edgar, my more than brother! Weak, faulty, but winsome even when most disturbing,—if any one could face a future bereft of all that gives it charm, you can. But the limit may have been reached. Who knows? It was for me to follow him, search him out and see.

“Haines,” I called.

He came with a rush.

“Has Miss Bartholomew returned?”

“No, sir, not yet. She and Mrs. Ferris are out for a long ride.”

“When she does come back, give her this note.” And I scribbled a few lines. “And now, Haines, answer me. Mr. Edgar could not have left on foot. Who drove him away?”

“Sammy.”

He mentioned a boy who helped in the garage.

“In what car?”

“The Stutz. Mr. Edgar must have come down the rear stairs, carrying his own bag, and slipped out at the side without any one seeing him. Bliss is out with Miss Orpha and Mrs. Ferris and so he could have every chance with Sammy, who is overfond of small change, sir.”

“Has Sammy shown up since? Is the car in the garage?”

“No, sir.”

“Haines, don’t give me away. Understand that this is to be taken quietly. Mr. Edgar told me that he was going to leave, but he did not say when. If he had, I would have seen that he went more comfortably. The doctor made his last call this morning and gave him permission to try the air, and he is doing so. We don’t know when he will return; possibly in two weeks. He said something to that effect. This is what you are to say to the other servants and to every inquirer. But, Haines, to Clarke—You know where Clarke is?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you reach him by telephone?”

“Easily, sir.”

“Then telephone him at once. Go to my room to do it. Say that I have need of his services, that Mr. Edgar, who is just off a sick bed, has left the house to go we don’t know where, and that he and I must find him. Bid him provide for a possible trip out of town, though I hope that a few hours will suffice to locate Mr. Bartholomew. Add that before coming here he is to make a few careful inquiries at the stations and wherever he thinks my cousin would be apt to go on a sudden impulse. That when he has done so he is to call you up. Above all, impress upon him that he is to give rise to no alarm.”

“I will, sir. You may rely upon me.” And as though to give proof of his sincerity, Haines started with great alacrity upstairs.

I was not long in following him. When I reached my room I found that he had got into communication with Clarke and been assured that all orders received by him from me would be obeyed as if they had come from his old master.

This relieved me immensely. Confident that he would perform the task I had given him with much better results than I could and at the same time rouse very much less suspicion, I busied myself with preparations for my own departure in case I should be summoned away in haste, thankful for any work which would keep me from dwelling too closely on what I had come to regard with increasing apprehension. When I had reached the end, I just sat still and waited; and this was the hardest of all. Fortunately, the time was short. At six o’clock precisely my phone rang. Haines had received a message from Clarke and took this way of communicating it to me.

No signs of the Stutz at either station, but Clarke had found a man who had seen it going out Main Street and another who had encountered it heading for Morrison. What should he do next?

I answered without hesitation. “Tell him to get a fast car and follow. After dinner, I will get another somewhere down street and take the same road. If I go before dinner, questions will be asked which it will be difficult for me to answer. Let me find a message awaiting me at Five Oaks.”

Five Oaks was a small club-house on the road to Morrison.

 

LXVI

When at a suitable time after dinner I took my leave of Orpha, it was with the understanding that I might not return that night, but that she would surely hear from me in the morning. I had not confided to her all my fears, but possibly she suspected them, for her parting glance haunted me all the way to the club-house I have mentioned.

Arriving there without incident, I was about to send in the man acting as my chauffeur to make inquiries when a small auto coming from the rear of the house suddenly shot past us down the driveway and headed towards Houston.

Though its lights were blinding I knew it at a glance; it was Edgar’s yellow Stutz. He was either in it and consequently on his way back home, or he was through with the car and I should find him inside the club-house.

Knowing him well enough to be sure that I could do nothing worse than to show myself to him at this time, I reverted to my first idea and sent in the chauffeur to reconnoiter and also see if any message had been left for James E. Budd—the name under which I thought it best to disguise my own.

He came back presently with a sealed note left for me by Clarke. It conveyed the simple information that Edgar had picked up another car and another chauffeur and had gone straight on to Morrison. I was to follow and on reaching the outskirts of the town to give four short toots with the horn to which he would respond.

It was written in haste. He was evidently close behind Edgar, but I had no means of knowing the capacity of his car nor at what speed we could go ourselves. However, all that I had to do was to proceed, remembering the signal which I was to use whenever we sighted anything ahead.

It was a lonely road, and I wondered why Edgar had chosen it. A monotonous stretch of low fences with empty fields beyond, broken here and there by a poorly wooded swamp or a solitary farmhouse, all looking dreary enough in the faint light of a half-veiled gibbous moon.

A few cars passed us, but there was but little life on the road, and I found myself starting sharply when suddenly the quick whistle of an unseen train shrilled through the stagnant air. It seemed so near, yet I could get no glimpse of it or even of its trailing smoke.

I felt like speaking—asking some question—but I did not. It was a curious experience—this something which made me hold my peace.

My chauffeur whom I had chosen from five others I saw lounging about the garage was a taciturn being. I was rather glad of it, for any talk save that of the most serious character seemed out of keeping with these moments of dread—a dread as formless as many of the objects we passed and as chill as the mist now rising from meadow and wood in a white cloud which soon would envelop the whole landscape as in a shroud.

To relieve my feelings, I ordered him to sound the four short blasts agreed upon as a signal. To my surprise they were answered, but by three only. There was a car coming and presently it dashed by us, but it was not Clarke’s.

“Keep it up,” I ordered. “This mist will soon be a fog.” My chauffeur did so,—at intervals of course—now catching a reply but oftener not, until from far ahead of us, through the curtain of fog shutting off the road in front, there came in response the four clear precise blasts for which my ears were astretch.

“There are my friends,” I declared. “Go slowly.”

At which we crawled warily along till out of the white gloom a red spark broke mistily upon our view, and guided us to where a long low racing machine stood before a house, the outlines of which were so vague I could not determine its exact character.

Next minute Clarke was by my side.

“I shall have to ask you to get out here,” he said, with a sidelong glance at my chauffeur. “And as the business you have come to settle may take quite a little while, it would be better for the car to swing in beside mine, so as to be a little way off the road.”

“Very good,” I answered, joining him immediately and seeing at the same time that the house was a species of tavern, illy-lit, but open to the public.

“What does it mean?” I questioned anxiously as he led me aside, not towards the tavern’s entrance, but rather to the right of it.

“I don’t know, sir. He is not inside. He drove up here about ten minutes ago, dismissed the car which brought him from the club-house, went in,—which was about the time I appeared upon the scene—and came out again with a man carrying a lantern. As I was then on my feet and about where we are standing now, I got one quick look at him as he passed through the doorway. I didn’t like his looks, sir; he must be feeling very ill. And I didn’t like the way he carried himself as he went about the turn you see there at the rear of the building. And I wanted to follow, though of course he is safe enough with the man he is with; but just then I heard your signal and ran to answer. That is all I have to tell you. But where is he going in such a mist? Shall I run in and ask?”

“Do,” I said; and waited impatiently enough for his reappearance which was delayed quite unaccountably, I thought. But then minutes seem hours in such a crisis.

When he did come, he, too, had a lantern.

“Let us follow,” said he, not waiting to give me any explanations. And keeping as closely to him as I could lest we should lose each other in the fog, I stumbled along a path worn in the stubbly grass, not knowing where I was going and unable to see anything to right or left or even in front but the dancing, hazy glow of the swinging lantern.

Suddenly that glow was completely extinguished; but before I could speak Clarke had me by the arm.

“Step aside,” he whispered. “The man is coming back; he has left Mr. Edgar to go on alone.”

And then I heard a hollow sound as of steps on an echoing board.

“That must be a bridge Mr. Edgar is crossing,” whispered Clarke. “But see! he is doing it without light. The man has the lantern.”

“Where is your lantern?” I asked.

“Under my coat.”

We held our breath. The man came slowly on, picking his way and mumbling to himself rather cheerfully than otherwise. I was on the point of accosting him when Clarke stopped me and, as soon as the man had gone by, drew me back into the path, whispering:

“The steps on the bridge have stopped. Let us hurry.”

Next minute he had plucked out his lantern from under his coat and we were pressing on, led now by the sound of rushing water.

“It’s growing lighter. The fog is lifting,” came from Clarke as I felt the boards of the bridge under my feet.

Next minute he had the lantern again under his coat, but for all that, I found, after a few more steps, that I could see a little way ahead. Was that Edgar leaning against one of the supports of the bridge?

I caught at Clarke’s hand.

“Shall we go forward?” I asked.

His fingers closed spasmodically on mine, and as suddenly loosened.

“Let me,” he breathed, rather than whispered, and started to run, but almost instantly stopped and broke into a merry whistle. I thought I heard a sigh from that hardly discerned figure in front; but that was impossible. What did happen was a sudden starting back from the brink over which he had been leaning and the sound of two pairs of feet crossing the bridge to the other side.

Clarke’s happy thought had worked. One dangerous moment was passed. How soon would another confront us?

I was on and over that bridge almost as soon as they. And then I began to see quite clearly where we were. The lights of a small flagging station winked at me through the rapidly dissolving mist, and I remembered having often gone by it on the express. Now it assumed an importance beyond all measurement, for the thunder of an approaching train was in the air and Edgar poised on the brink of the platform was gazing down the track as a few minutes before he had gazed down at the swirling waters under the bridge.

Ah, this was worse! Should I shout aloud his name? entreat him to listen, rush upon him with outstretched arms? There was not time even for decision—the train was near—upon us—slackening. It was going to stop. As he took this in I distinctly heard him draw a heavy breath. Then as the big lumbering train came to a standstill, he turned, bag still in his hand, and detecting me standing not a dozen steps behind him, uttered the short laugh I had come to know so well and with a bow of surpassing grace which yet had its suggestion of ironic humor, leaped aboard the train and was gone before I could recover from my terror and confusion.

But it was not so with Clarke. As the last car went whizzing by I caught sight of him on the rear platform and caught his shout:

“Home, sir, and wait for news!”

All was not lost, then. But that station with the brawling stream beyond, and the square and ugly tavern overlooking it all, have a terror for me which it will take years for me to overcome.

 

LXVII

I did not tell Orpha of this episode, then or ever. Why burden her young heart with griefs and fears? I merely informed her when I met her the next morning at breakfast that having seen Edgar take a late train for New York my anxieties were quelled and I had returned to tell her so before starting out again for the city on an errand of my own.

When I came to say good-by, as I did after receiving a telegram from Clarke—of which I will say more later—I told her not to be anxious or to worry while I was away; that being in New York, I should be able to keep a watch over Edgar and see that he was well looked after if by any chance he fell ill again; and the smile I received in return, though infinitely sad, had such confidence in it that I would not have exchanged it for the gayest one I had seen on her lips on that memorable night of the ball.

The telegram I have mentioned was none too encouraging. It had been sent from New York and ran thus:

Trouble. Man I want has escaped me. Hope to pick him up soon. Wait for second telegram. C.

It was two hours before the second one came. It was to the point as witness:

Sick. Safe in a small hospital in the Bronx. Will await trains at the Grand Central Station till you come.

C.

This sent me off in great haste without another interview with Orpha. On reaching the station in New York I found Clarke waiting for me according to promise. His story was short but graphic. He had had no difficulty on the train. He had been able to keep his eye on Edgar without being seen by him; but some excitement occurring at the short stop made at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street—a pickpocket run down or something of that kind—he had leaned from his window to look out and in that instant Edgar had stepped from the train and disappeared in the crowd.

He had tried to follow but was checked in doing so by the quick starting up of the train. But he had a talk with the conductor, who informed him that the man to whom he probably referred had shown decided symptoms of illness, and that he himself had advised him to leave the train and be driven to a hospital, being really afraid that he would break out in delirium if he stayed. This was a guide to Clarke and next morning by going the rounds of upper New York hospitals he had found him. He had been registered under his own name and might be seen if it was imperative to identify him, but at present he was in a delirious condition and it would be better for him not to be disturbed.

Thankful that it was not worse, but nevertheless sufficiently alarmed, a relapse being frequently more serious than the original attack, I called a taxi and we rode at once to the hospital. Good news awaited us. Edgar had shown some favorable symptoms in the last hour and if kept quiet, might escape the worst consequence of a journey for which he had not had the necessary strength. The only thing which puzzled the doctors was his desire to write. He asked for paper and pen continually; but when they were brought to him he produced nothing but a scrawl. But he would have this put in an envelope and sealed. But he failed to address it, saying that he would do that after he had a nap. But though he had his nap he did not on waking recur to the subject, though his first look was at the table where the so-called letter had been laid. It was there now and there they had decided to let it lie, since his eyes seldom left it and if they did, returned immediately to it again as if his whole life were bound up in that wordless scrawl.

This was pitiful news to me, but I could do nothing to save the situation but wait, leaving it to the discretion of the doctors to say when an interview with my cousin would be safe. I did not hesitate to tell them that my presence would cause him renewed excitement, and they, knowing well enough who we were, took in the situation without too much explanation. They succeeded in startling me, however, with the statement that it would probably be two weeks before I could hope to see him.

Two weeks again! Why always two weeks?

There was no help for it. All I could do was to settle down nearby and wait for the passing of those two weeks as we await the falling of a blow whose force we have no means of measuring. Short notes passed between Orpha and myself, but they were all about Edgar, whose condition was sensibly improving, but hardly so rapidly as we had hoped. Clarke had been given access to him; and as Clarke had wisely forborne from mentioning my name in the matter, simply explaining his own presence there by the accounts which had appeared in the papers of his former young master’s illness, he was greeted so warmly that he almost gave way under it. Thereafter, he spent much time at Edgar’s bedside, reporting to me at night the few words which had passed between them. For, Edgar, so loquacious in health, had little to say in convalescence; but lay brooding with a wild light coming and going in his eyes, which now as before were turned on that table where the unaddressed letter still lay.

For whom was that indecipherable scrawl meant? We knew; for Lucy.

 

LXVIII

I think that it was on the tenth day of my long wait,—I know that it was just two before Miss Colfax’s wedding—that Clarke came in looking a trifle out of sorts and said that he had done something which I might not approve of. He had mailed the letter which Edgar had finally addressed to Miss Colfax. A few words in explanation, and I perceived that he could hardly have helped it; Edgar was so appealing and so entirely unconvinced by what the nurse said concerning the incoherence of its contents. “I know what I have written,” he kept saying; and made Clarke swear that he would put it in the first box he saw on leaving the hospital.

“What harm can it do?” Clark anxiously inquired. “It may perplex and trouble Miss Colfax; but we can explain later; can we not, sir?”

I thought of the haughty self-contained Lucy, with a manner so cold and a heart so aflame, receiving this jumble of words amid the preparation for her marriage,—perhaps when her bridal veil was being tried on, or a present displayed,—and had nothing to say. Explanations would not ease the anguish of that secretly distracted heart.

“Shall we do anything about it, sir? I know where Miss Colfax lives.”

“No, we can do nothing. A matter of that sort is better left alone.”

But I was secretly very uneasy until Clarke came in from the hospital the following day with the glad story that Edgar had improved so much since the sending of this letter that he had been allowed to take an airing in the afternoon. “And to-morrow I am to go early and accompany him to a jeweler’s shop where he proposes to buy a present for the bride-to-be. He seemed quite cheerful about it, and the doctors have given their consent. He looks like another man, Mr. Bartholomew. You will find that when this wedding is over he will be very much like his old self.”

And again I said nothing; but I took a much less optimistic view of my cousin’s apparent cheerfulness.

“He sent me away early. He says that he is going to rest every minute till I come for him in one of Jones’ fine motor cars.”

“It’s a late hour for sending presents,” I remarked. “Three hours before the ceremony.”

“I am to bring him back to the hospital and then take the car and deliver it.”

“Very well, Clarke; only watch him and don’t be surprised if you find us on the road behind you. There is something in all this I don’t understand.”

 

LXIX

But when on the following morning I actually found myself riding in the wake of these two and saw Edgar alight with almost a jaunty air before one of the smallest, but most fashionable jeweler shops on the Avenue, I could not but ask myself if my fears had any such foundation as I had supposed. He really did look almost cheerful and walked with a perfectly assured air into the shop.

But he went alone; and when quite some little time had elapsed and he did not reappear, I was ready to brave anything to be sure that all was right. So taking advantage of a little break in the traffic, I ordered my chauffeur to draw up beside the auto waiting at the curb; and when we got abreast of it, I leaned out and asked Clarke, who hastily lowered his window, why he had not gone in with Mr. Bartholomew.

“Because he would not let me. He wanted to feel free to take his own time. He told me that it would take him at least half an hour to choose the article he wanted. He has been gone now just twenty-seven minutes.”

“Can you see the whole length of the shop from where you sit?”

“No, sir. There are several people in front—”

“Get out and go in at once. Don’t you see that this shop is next to the corner? That it may have a side entrance—”

He was out of the car before I had finished and in three minutes came running back.

“You are right, sir. He did not buy a thing. There is no sign of him in the shop or in the street. I deserve—”

“We won’t talk. Pay your chauffeur and dismiss him. Then get in with me, and we will drive as fast as the law allows to that house in Newark where he said the present was to go. If we do not find him there we may as well give up all hope; we shall never see him again.”

 

LXX

It was a wild ride. If he had been fortunate enough to secure a taxi within a few minutes after reaching the street, he must have had at least twenty minutes the start of us. But the point was not to overtake him, but to come upon him at Mr. Miller’s before any mischief could take place. I was an invited guest, though probably not expected; and it being a house-wedding, I felt sure of being received even if I was not in a garb suited to the occasion.

There were delays made up by a few miles of speeding along the country roads, and when we finally struck the street in which Mr. Miller lived, it lacked just one hour of noon.

What should we do? It was too soon to present ourselves. The few autos standing about were business ones, with a single exception. Pointing this out to Clarke, I bade him get busy and find out if this car were a local or a New York one.

He came back very soon to the spot where we had drawn up to say that it belonged to some relative of the bride; and satisfied from this and the quiet aspect of the house itself that nothing of a disturbing character had yet occurred, I advised Clarke to hang about and learn what he could, while I waited for the appearance of Edgar whom we had probably outridden in crossing the marshes.

We had a place on the opposite side of the street, from which I could see the windows of Mr. Miller’s house. I took note of every automobile which drove up before me, but I took note also of those windows and once got a glimpse in one of the upper ones of a veiled head and a white face turned eagerly towards the street.

She was expecting him. Nothing else would account for so haggard a look on a face so young; and with a thought of Orpha and how I would rather die than see her in the grip of such despair, I nerved myself for what might come, without a hope that any weal could follow such a struggle of unknown forces as apparently threatened us.

The house in which my whole interest was centered at this moment was of somewhat pretentious size, built of brick painted brown and set back far enough from the sidewalk to allow for a square of turf, in the center of which rose a fountain dry as the grass surrounding it. From what conjunction of ideas that fountain with its image of a somewhat battered Cupid got in my way and inflicted itself upon my thoughts, I cannot say. I was watching for Edgar’s appearance, but I saw this fountain; and now when the memory of that day comes back, first and foremost before anything else rises a picture of that desolate basin and its almost headless Cupid. I was trying to escape this obsession when I saw him. He had alighted by that time and was halfway up the walk, but I entered the door almost at his heels.

He was stepping quickly, but I was close behind and was looking for an opportunity to speak to him when he took a course through the half-filled hall which led him into a portion of the house where it would have been presumptuous in me to follow.

We had been asked to go upstairs, but with a shake of the head and the air of one at home, he had pressed straight on to the rear and so out of my sight. There was nothing left for me to do but to mount the stairs in front which I did very unwillingly.

However, once at the top and while still in the shadow of a screen of palms running across this end of the hall, I heard his voice from behind these palms asking for Miss Colfax. He had come up a rear staircase.

By this time there were others in the hall besides myself making for the dressing-rooms opening back and front, and I saw many heads turn, but nobody stop. The hour for the ceremony was approaching.

What to do? The question was soon answered for me. Edgar had stepped from behind the palms and was rapidly going front in the direction of the third story staircase. She was above, as I knew, and any colloquy between them must be stopped if my presence would prevent it.

Following in his wake, but not resorting to the leaps and bounds by which he reached the top of the stairs in a twinkling, I did not see the rush of the white-clad figure which fell into his arms with a moan which was more eloquent of joy than despair. But I was in time to hear him gasp out in wild excitement:

“I am here. I have come for you. You shall never marry any one but me. Sickness has held me back—hospital—delirium. I cannot live without you. I will not. Lucy, Lucy, take off that veil. We do not need veils, or wedding guests or orchestra or luncheon. We only need each other. Do you consent? Will you take me weakened by illness, deprived of my inheritance but true to you when the full realization came.”

And listening for her answer I heard just a sigh. But that sigh was eloquent and it had barely left her lips when I heard a rush from below and, noting who it was, I slipped quickly up to Edgar and touching him on the arm, said quietly but very firmly:

“Dr. Hunter.”

They started apart and Edgar, drawing back, cried under his breath:

“You here!”

“Would you wish it otherwise?” I asked; and stepped aside as Dr. Hunter, pale to the lips, but very dignified and very stern, advanced from the top of the stairs followed by a lady and gentleman who, as I afterwards learned, were Lucy’s aunt and uncle. There was a silence; which, repeated as it was below stairs, held the house in a hush for one breathless moment. Then I took the lead, and, pointing to an open door in front, I addressed the outraged bridegroom with all the respect I felt for him.

“Pardon me, Dr. Hunter. As the cousin and friend of Edgar Bartholomew, allow me to urge that we say what we have to say behind closed doors. The house is rapidly filling. Everything said in this hall can be heard below. Let us disappoint the curiosity of Mrs. Miller’s guests. Miss Colfax, will you lead the way?”

With a quick gesture she turned, and moving with the poise of a queen, entered the room from which I had seen her looking down into the street, followed by the rest of us in absolute silence. I came last and it was I who closed the door. When I turned, Dr. Hunter and Edgar were confronting each other in the middle of the room. Lucy was standing by herself, an image of beauty but cold to the eye as the marble she suggested. Mr. and Mrs. Miller stood aghast, speechless, and a little frightened. I hastened to put in a word.

“Edgar left a hospital bed to be here this morning. Have a little care, Dr. Hunter. His case has been a serious one.”

The doctor’s lips took a sarcastic curve.

“I have a physician’s eye,” was his sole return. Then without a word to Edgar, he stepped up to Lucy. “Will you take my arm?” he asked. “The clergyman who is to marry us is waiting.”

The image moved, but, oh, so slightly. “I cannot,” she replied. “It would be an outrage to you. All my heart goes out to the man behind you. It always has. He was not free—not really free—and I thought to help him do his duty by marrying you. But I cannot—I cannot.” And now all the fire in that woman’s soul flamed forth in one wild outburst as she cried aloud in undisguised passion, “I cannot so demean you, and I cannot so discourage Edgar. Free me, or—or I shall go mad.” Then she became quiet again, the old habit of self-restraint returned, the image resumed its calm, only her eyes steady and burning with the inner flame she sought to hide, held his with an undeviating demand.

He bowed before it, wincing a little as she lifted her arms and with a slow, deft movement, took the veil from her head and as slowly and deftly began to fold it up. I see her now as she did this and the fascination which held those two men in check—the one in a passion of rejoicing, the other in the agitation of seeing, for the first time, doubtless, in his placid courtship, the real woman beneath the simulated one who had accepted his attentions but refused him her love.

When she had finished and laid the veil aside, she had the grace to thank him for his forbearance.

But this he could not stand.

“It is for me to thank you,” said he. “It were better if more brides thought twice before bringing a loveless heart to their husband’s hearthstone.” And always dignified; always a man to admire, he turned towards the door.

Mr. Miller sought to stop him—to hold him back until the guests had been dismissed and the way prepared for him to depart, unseen and uncommiserated. But he would have none of that.

“I have been honest in my wish to make your niece happy and I need not fear the looks of any one. I will go alone. Take care of the sick man there. I have known great joy kill as effectually as great pain.”

Lucy’s head fell. Edgar started and reached out his hand. But the door was quickly opened and as quickly shut behind the doctor’s retreating form.

A sob from Lucy; an instant of quiet awe; then life came rushing back upon us with all its requirements and its promise of halcyon days to the two who had found their souls in the action and reaction of a few months of desperate trial and ceaselessly shifting circumstances.

And what of myself, as, with peace made with the Millers and arrangements entered into whereby Edgar was to remain with them till his health was restored, I rode back to New York and then—

Home! As the bee flies, home!

 

LXXI

When I entered C—— in the late afternoon I was met by a very different reception from any which had ever been accorded me before. It began at the station. News travels fast, especially when it concerns people already in the public eye, and in every face I saw, and in every handshake offered me, I read the welcome due to the change in my circumstances made by Edgar’s choice of a wife. The Edgar whom they had held in preference above all others was a delightful fellow, a companion in a thousand and of a nature rich and romantic enough to give up fortune and great prestige for love; but he was no longer the Edgar of Quenton Court, and they meant me to realize it.

And I did. But there was one whose judgment I sought—whose judgment I awaited—whom I must see and understand before I could return these amenities with all the grace which they demanded. There was nothing for me in this open and unabashed homage, rendered after weeks of dislike and suspicion, if the welcome I should not fail to receive from Orpha’s courtesy should be shot through with the sorrow of a loss too great for any love of mine to offset.

So I hastened and came to Quenton Court, and entering there found the court ablaze with color and every servant which the house contained drawn up in order to receive me. It was English, but then by birth I am an Englishman and the tribute pleased me. For their faces were no longer darkened by distrust and some even were brightened by liking; and were I to remain master here—

But that was yet to be determined; and when they saw with what an eager glance I searched the gallery for the coming of their youthful mistress, they filed quickly away till I was left alone with the leaping water and the rainbow hues and the countless memories of joy and terror with which the place was teeming.

Orpha had a favorite collie which from the first had shown a preference for my company that was sometimes embarrassing but oftener pleasing, since it gave me an opportunity to whisper many secrets in his ear. As I stood there with my eyes on the gallery, he came running to me with so many evidences of affection that I was fain to take it as an omen that all would be well with me when she who held him dear would greet me in her turn.

When would she come? The music of the falling drops plashing in their basin behind me was sweet, but I longed for the tones of her voice. Why did she linger? Dare I guess, when at last I heard her footfall in the gallery above, and caught the glimpse of her figure, first in one opening of its lattice work and then in another as she advanced towards the stairs which were all that now separated us, unless it were the sorrow whose ravages in her tender breast she might seek to hide, and might succeed in hiding from every eye but mine?

No, I would guess at nothing. I would wait; but my heart leaped high, and when she had passed the curve marking the turn of the great staircase, I bounded forward and so had the sweetest vision that ever comes to love—the descent, from tread to tread of the lady of one’s heart into the arms which have yearned for her in hope and in doubt for many weary days.

For I knew before she reached me that she loved me. It was in her garb of white, filmy and virginal, in her eager, yet timid step, in the glow of youth—of joyous expectation which gave radiance to her beauty and warmth to my own breast. But I said not a word nor did I move from my position at the foot of the stairs till she reached the last step but one and paused; then I uttered her name.

Had I uttered it before? Had she ever heard it before? Surely not as at that moment. For her eyes, as she slowly lifted them to mine, had a look of wonder in them which grew as I went on to say:

“Before I speak a word of all that has been burning in my heart since first I saw you from the gallery above us, I want you to know that I consider all the splendor surrounding us as yours, both by right of birth and the love of your father. I am ready to sign it all over—what we see and what we do not see—if you desire to possess it in freedom, or think you would be happier with a mate of your own choosing. I love you. There! I have said it, Orpha—but I love you so well that I would rather lose all that goes with your hand than be a drag upon your life, meant as you are for peace and joy and an unhampered existence. Do you believe that?”

“Yes, I believe that. But—” Oh, the delicious naïveté of her smile, bringing every dimple into play and lighting up into radiance the gravity of her gaze, “why should you think that I might want to be free to live in this great house alone? For me, that would be desolation.”

“Desolation because you would be alone or because—” even now I hardly dared to say it—“because it would be life without reality—without love? Orpha, I must know;—know beyond the shadow of a doubt. I cannot take the great gift bequeathed me by your father, unless with it receive the greatest gift of all—your undivided heart. You are young and very lovely—a treasure which many men will crave. I should never be satisfied for you to be merely content. I want you to know the thrill—the ecstasy of love—such love as I feel for you—”

I could not go on. The pressure of all the past was upon me. The story of the days and nights when in rapture and in tragedy she was my chief thought, my one unfailing inspiration to hold to the right and to dare misapprehension and the calumny of those who saw in me an interloper here without conscience or mercy, passed in one wild phantasmagoria through my mind, rendering me speechless.

With that fine intuition of hers—or perhaps, because she had shared alike my pains and my infinite horrors—she respected my silence till the time came for words and then she spoke but one:

“Quenton!”

Had she ever spoken it before? Or had I ever heard it as it fell at this moment from her lips? Never. It linked us two together. It gave the nay to all my doubts. I felt sure now, sure; and yet such is the hunger of a lover’s heart that I wanted her assurance in words. Would she grant me that?

Yes; but it came very softly and with a delicate aloofness at first which gave me the keenest delight.

“When you spoke of the first time you saw me and said it was from the gallery above us, you spoke as if life had begun for you that night. Did you never think that possibly it might have begun for me also? That content had revealed itself as content, not love? That I was happy that what we had expected to take place that night did not take place—that—that—”

Here her aloofness all vanished and her soul looked through her eyes. We were very near, but the collie was leaping about us, and the place was large and the gorgeousness of it all overpowering; so I contented myself with laying my hand softly on hers where it pressed against the edge of the final pillar supporting the lattice work.

“Let us go into the library,” I whispered.

But she led me elsewhere. Quieting the dog, she drew me away into a narrow hall, the purpose of which I had never understood till I had learned the secret of the hidden stairway and how this hall denoted the space which the lower end of the inn’s outside stairway had formerly occupied. Pausing, she gave me an earnest look, then, speaking very softly:

“It was here—on the steps which once united the ground with those still remaining above, that my father and my mother pledged themselves to each other in a love that has survived death. Shall we—”

She said no more: I had her in my arms and life had begun for us in very truth.

 

LXXII

Lovers have much to say when the barriers which have separated them are once down, and I will not hazard a guess at the hour when after a moment of delicious silence I ventured to remark:

“We have talked much about ourselves and our future. Shall we not talk a little now about Edgar?”

“Oh, yes; tell me the whole story. I’ve only heard that he arrived in time to prevent the marriage. That Dr. Hunter generously released her from all obligation to him and that she and Edgar will be united very soon.”

I was glad to comply. Glad to throw light into that darksome corner none of us had ever penetrated, our Lucy’s heart. When I had finished, we sat a moment in awe of the passionate tale, then I said:

“We must do something for Edgar. He will have no wedding, but he must have a wedding present.”

“Let it be much.”

“It shall be much.”

“But not too much. Edgar is reckless with money and even queens in these days sometimes come to grief. Shall we not put by a fund for the time when we see the sparkle leaving his eye and anxiety making Lucy’s pale cheeks still more pallid?”

“You shall do just as you wish, Orpha.”

“No; just as Father would wish.”

Ah! my beloved one!

 

LXXIII

I have one more memory of that night. As I was leaving—for I was resolved to remain at my hotel until our marriage, which, for many reasons, was to be an immediate one without preparation and with but little ceremony,—I asked my love why in the months of her father’s illness, and during the time when perplexities of various kinds were in all our hearts, she never allowed herself to remain alone with me or to go where I went even with her father’s permission.

And her answer, given with a smile and a blush was this:

“I did not dare.”

She did not dare! My conscientious darling.

And I had not dared. But my fears were not her fears. I had feared to be presumptuous; of building up a fairyland out of dreams; of yielding to my imagination rather than to my good sense. And yet, deep down in some inner consciousness, a faint insidious hope had whispered to itself that if I showed myself worthy, perhaps—perhaps—

And now perhaps had become reality, and all doubt and mistrust a vanished dream.

But though I had walked in clouded ways and had not known my Orpha’s heart, there had been one in the household who had. I learned it that night from a few words uttered by Clarke on my return to the hotel.

I was not surprised to find him waiting for me in the lobby; we had come into such close contact during the strenuous days that had just passed, that it would have seemed unnatural not to have found him there. But what did astonish me was to see the wistful look with which he contemplated me as I signified to him my wish for him to follow me upstairs. But once together in my room, I understood, and letting the full joyousness of my heart to appear, I smilingly said:

“You may congratulate me, Clarke. My good fortune is complete.”

And this is what he uttered in response, greatly to my surprise and possibly to his own:

“I thought it would all come right, sir.”

But it was not till he was on the point of leaving me for the night that I learned his full mind.

His hand was on the knob of the door and he was about to turn it, when he suddenly loosened his hold and came back.

“Excuse me, sir, but I shan’t feel quite right till I tell you all the truth about myself. Did you, when things looked a little dark after the terrible news the doctors gave us, get a queer looking sort of note hidden in your box of cigars?”

“Yes, I did, Clarke; and I don’t know yet who took that much compassion on me?”

“It was I, Mr. Bartholomew.” (Never had he called me that before. I wonder if it came with a long dreaded effort.) “But it was not from compassion for you, sir—more’s the pity; but because I knew my young lady’s heart and felt willing to help her that much in her great trouble.”

“You knew—”

“Not by any words, sir; but by a look I saw on her face one day as she stood in the window watching you motor away. You were to be gone a week and she could not stand the thought of it. I hope you will pardon me for speaking so plainly. I have always felt the highest regard for Miss Bartholomew.”

Oh, the pictures that came back! Pictures I had not seen at the time but which now would never leave me.

Perhaps he saw my emotion; perhaps he only realized it, but an instant of silence passed before he quietly added:

“A man thinks he’s honest till he comes to the point of trial. When they asked me if I wrote anything to anybody about that key, I said No, for I didn’t write anything as you must know who read the printed letters I pasted in such crooked lines on a slip of paper.”

I smiled; it was easy to smile that night.

“You know where the key was found. How do you think it got there?”

“In the flower-pot? Of course, I can’t say for certain, but this is how I’ve figured it out. On the morning he died, you found him, as you must remember, in the same flannel robe which he had worn while sitting up. This was because he would not allow me as he had always done before to remove it. That robe was buttoned close to his neck when we left him, but it was not so buttoned in the morning, and we know why. He had wanted to use the key he wore strung on a chain about his neck, and that key hung under his pajama jacket. To get it he had first to unfasten his dressing-gown and then his pajama jacket, or if he did not want to go to that trouble, to simply pull it up into his hand by means of the chain which held it. He probably did the latter, being naturally impatient with buttons and such like and letting it fall within reach, went about the business he had planned.

“So far excitement had kept him up, but when, after an act which would have tired a well man, he came back into his room—Well! that was different. He could draw into place the shelves which had hidden the secret stairway, and he could put out the light in his closet; for all this had to be done if he did not want to give away his secret. And he could manage, though not without difficulty, I’m sure, to reach and unlock his two doors; but that done, the little job of unbuttoning his jacket, throwing the chain over his head and rearranging his whole clothing so that the key would be invisible to his nurse when she came in, was just a little too much. But the key had to be hidden, and hidden quickly and easily, and he being, as there is every reason to believe on the further side of the bed where he had gone to unlock the upper door, he was at this time of failing strength within a foot of the potted plant standing in the window, and this gave him his idea.

“Gathering up the chain and key in his hand, he made use of the latter to push aside the soil in the pot sufficiently to make a hole large enough to hold anything so thin and slight as that chain and key. A flick given by his fingers to the loose mold and they were covered. That’s how I’ve reasoned it out; and if it is not all true some of it is for his slippers were found lying on that side of the bed, instead of under the stand by the closet where I had placed them on taking them off. What do you think, sir? Doesn’t that answer your question?”

“Yes, Clarke, as well as it ever will be answered. Have you given this explanation to Miss Bartholomew, or to any one else in fact?”

“No, sir. I’m not quick to talk and I should not have said as much to you if you had not asked me. For after all it is only my thoughts, sir. We shall never know all that passed through the mind of your uncle during those last three hours.”

It was after our return from a very short wedding journey, during which we had seen Edgar married to Lucy, that one evening when life seemed very sweet to us, Orpha put into my hands a sheet of discolored paper, folded letter-wise, saying softly:

“My last secret, Quenton. That is an old, old letter written by my father and found by me at the same time I found the early will in the old box at the foot of the hidden stairway. It was lying underneath the will and would have escaped my notice if the box had not fallen from its peg while I was pulling at the crumpled-up document in my effort to get it out. It is a treasure and the time has come for you to share it with me. Read it, Quenton.”

And this is what I read:

Some day, my darling child, you will find this letter. When you do, you will wonder why in building this house, I took such pains to retain within its walls a portion of the old iron stairway belonging to the ancient inn against which I chose to rear this structure.

I am going to tell you. You are a child now, thirteen last Tuesday. I hope you will be a woman when you read these lines, and a fine one, as just and as generous-hearted as your mother. You will understand me better so, especially if that great alchemist, Love, has wrought his miracle in your heart.

For Love is my theme, dear child, the love I felt for your mother. The stairway down which you have stepped in such amazement was our trysting place in those days. At its base was the spot where we pledged our young love. She lived within with her father and mother, but there were moments when she could steal out under the stars,—moments so blessed to me, a thoughtless lad, that their influence is with me yet though the grave has her sweet body, and Immortal Love her soul.

You will be like her. You will be to Edgar what your mother has been to me. When you are that—when a woman is a guiding star to her husband—she may face the ills of life without fear, for the blessing of Heaven is upon her.

As is that of your father,
EDGAR QUENTON BARTHOLOMEW.

 

THE END