Nothing now held Mr. Ransom to his room. The two women in whose fate he was so nearly concerned, his sister-in-law and his wife, had both retired and there was no other eye he feared. Indeed, he courted an interview with the lawyer, if only it could be naturally obtained; and he had little reason to think it could not. So he went down-stairs.
In a moment he seemed to have passed from the realm of dreams to that of reality. Here was no mystery. Here was life as he knew it. Walking boldly into the office, he ran his eye over the half-dozen men who sat there and, picking out the lawyer from the rest, sauntered easily up to him and sat down.
"My name is Johnston," said he. "I'm from New York; like yourself, I believe."
The lawyer, with a twinkle in his light-blue eye, answered with a cordial nod; and in two minutes a lively conversation had begun between them on purely impersonal subjects suited to the intelligence of the crowd they were in. This did not last, however. An opportunity soon came for them to stroll off together, and presently Mr. Ransom found himself closeted with this man who he had reason to believe was the sole holder of the key to the secret which was devouring him.
A bottle of wine was on the table between them, and some cigars. As Mr. Ransom filled the two glasses, he spoke:
"I have to thank you—" he began, but saw immediately that he had made a wrong start.
"For what,Mr. Johnston?" asked the other coldly.
"For giving me this opportunity to speak alone with you," Ransom explained with a nervous gesture. "An hour of unrestrained gossip is so necessary to me after a day of hard work. Perhaps you don't know that I am an author—have been one for seven whole hours. I find it exhausting. You could give me great relief by talking a little on some foreign subject, say on the one now engrossing every one in the house, the twin ladies from New York. You were in the same coach with them. Did they quarrel and did the most wilful of the two insist on getting out at the foot of the hill and walking up through the lane?"
"I doubt if I have anything to say to Mr. Johnston on this subject," was the wary reply.
"What if he added another name to the Johnston?"
"It would make no appreciable difference. The driver is a loquacious fellow, talk to him."
Mr. Ransom felt his heart fail him. He surveyed closely the mouth which had uttered this off-hand sentence and saw that it was set in a line there was no mistaking. Little enlightenment was to be got from this man. Yet he made one more effort.
"Did my wife sign the will?" he asked. "All pretense aside, this is a very important matter to me, Mr. Harper; not on account of the money involved, but because the doing of this simple act seemed to require such an effort on her part."
"You are mistaken," was the quick reply, harshly accentuated. "She did just what she wanted to do. She was not in the least coerced, unless it was by circumstances."
"Circumstances! But that is what I mean. They seem to have been too much for her. I want to understand these circumstances."
The lawyer honored him with his first direct look.
"I don't understand them myself," said he.
"You don't?"
"No."
Mr. Ransom set down the wineglass he had raised half-way to his lips.
"You have simply followed her orders?"
"You have said it. Your wife is a woman of much more character than you think. She has amazed me."
"She is amazing me. I am here; she is here; only a few boards separate us. But iron bars could not be more effectual. I dare not approach her door; dare not ask her to accept from me the natural protection of a lover and husband. Instinct holds me back, or her will, which may not be stronger than mine but is certainly more dominant."
"Lawyers do not believe much in instinct as a usual thing, but I should advise confidence in this one. A woman with a tremendous will like that of Mrs. Ransom should be allowed a slack tether. The day will arrive when she will come to you herself. This I have said before; I can say nothing more to you to-night."
"Then there is nothing in the will you have drawn up to show that she has lost her affection for me?"
The lawyer drained his glass.
"I have not been given permission to declare its terms," said he, when his glass was again upon the table.
"In other words, I am to know nothing," exclaimed his exasperated companion.
"Not from me."
And this ended the conversation. Ransom withdrew immediately up-stairs.
At ten o'clock he retired. The last look he cast down the hall had shown him the drowsy figure of the maid still sitting at her watch. It seemed to insure a peaceful night. But he had little expectation of sleep. Though the wind had quieted down and the rain fell with increasing gentleness, the roar of the waterfall surged through all his thoughts, which in themselves were turbulent. He did sleep, however, slept peacefully till half-past one, when he and all in the house were startled by a wild and piercing cry rising from one of the rooms. Terror was in the sound and in an instant every door was open save the two which were shut upon Georgian and her twin sister.
Mr. Ransom was the first one in the hall. He had not undressed himself, expecting a totally sleepless night. It was his figure, then, that the maid encountered as she came running from her post at the end of the corridor.
"Which room? which?" he gasped out, ignoring every precaution in his blind terror.
"This one. I am sure it came from this one," she declared, knocking loudly on Anitra's door.
There was a rustle within, a cry which was half a sob, then the sound of a hand fumbling with the lock. Meanwhile, Mr. Ransom had bent his ear to his wife's door.
"All still in here," he cried. "Not a sound. Something dreadful has happened—"
Just then Anitra's door fell back and a wild image confronted him and such others as had by this time collected in the passageway. With only a shawl covering her nightdress, the gipsy-like creature stood clawing the air and answering the looks that appealed to her, with wild gurgles, till suddenly her hot glances fell on Roger Ransom, when she instantly became rigid and stammered out:
"She's gone! I saw her black figure go by my window. She called out that the waterfall drew her. She went by the little balcony and the roof. The roof was slippery with the rain and she fell. That's why I screamed. But she got up again. What is she going to do at the waterfall? Stop her! stop her! She hasn't steady feet like me, and I wasn't really angry. I liked her; I liked her."
Sobs choked the rest. Her terror was infectious. Mr. Ransom reeled, then flung himself at Georgian's door. It resisted but the silence within told him that she was not there. Neither was she in Anitra's room. They could all look in and see it bare to the window.
"You saw her climbing past there?" he cried, forgetting she was deaf.
"Yes, yes," she chattered, catching his meaning from his pointing finger. "There's a balcony. She must have jumped on it from her own window. She didn't come in here. See! the door is locked on her side."
This was true.
"I woke and saw her. My eyes are like lynx's. I got out of bed to watch. She fell—"
The noise of a breaking lock snapped her words in two. One of the men present had flung himself against this communicating door. Immediately they all crowded into the adjoining room. It was empty and bitterly cold and wet. An open window explained why, and possibly the letter lying on the bureau inscribed with her husband's name would explain the rest. But he stopped to read no letters now.
"Show me the way to those falls," he cried, pocketing the letter as he rushed by the disheveled Anitra into the open hall. "I'm her husband, Roger Ransom. Who goes with me? He who does is my friend for life."
The clerk and one or two others rushed for their coats and lanterns. He waited for nothing. The roar of the waterfall had told him too many tales that day. And the will! Her will just signed!
"Georgian!"
They could hear his cry.
"Georgian! Georgian! Wait! wait! hear what I have to say!" thrilled back through the mist as he stumbled on, followed by the men waving their lanterns and shouting words of warning he probably never heard. Then his cry further off and fainter. "Georgian! Georgian!" Then silence and the slow drizzle of rain on the soggy walk and soaked roofs, with the far-off boom of the waterfall which Mrs. Deo and the trembling maids gazing at the wide-eyed Anitra shivering in the center of her deserted room, tried to shut out by closing window and blind, forgetting that she was deaf and only heard such echoes as were thundering in her own mind.
Two o'clock.
Three o'clock.
Two men were talking below their breaths in the otherwise empty office. "That 'ere mill stream never gives up anything it has once caught," muttered one into the ear of the other. "It's swift as fate and in certain places deep as hell. Dutch Jan's body was five months at the bottom of it, before it came up at Clark's pool."
The man beside him shivered and his hand roamed nervously towards his breast.
"Did Jan, the Dutchman you speak of, fall in by accident, or did he—throw himself over—from homesickness, or some such cause?"
"Wa'al we don't say; on account of his old mother, you know, we don't say. It was called accident."
The other man rose and walked restlessly to the window.
"Half the town is up," he muttered. "The lanterns go by like fire-flies. Poor Ransom! It's a hopeless job, I fear." And again his hand wandered to that breast pocket where the edge of a document could be seen. "I have half a mind to go out myself; anything is better than sitting here."
But he sat down just the same. Mr. Harper was no longer a young man.
"The storm's bating," observed the one.
"But not the cold. Throw on a stick; I'm freezing."
The other man obeyed; then looking up, stared. A girl stood before them in the doorway. Anitra, with cheeks ablaze and eyes burning, her traveling dress flapping damp about her heels, and on her head the red shawl she preferred to any hat. Behind her shoulder peered the anxious face of Mrs. Deo.
"I'm going out," cried the former in the loud and unmodulated voice of the deaf. "He don't come back! he don't come back! I'm going to see why."
The lawyer rose and bowed; then resolutely shook his head. He did not know whether she had appealed to him or not. She had not looked at him, had not looked at any one, but he felt that he must protest.
"I beg you not to do so," he began. "I really beg you to remain here and wait with me. You can do no good and the result may be dangerous." But he knew he was talking to deaf ears even before the landlady murmured:
"She doesn't hear a word. I've talked and talked to her. I've used every sign and motion I could think of, but it's done no good. She would dress and she will go out; you'll see."
The next minute her prophecy came true; the wild thing, with a quick whirl of her lithe body, was at the front door, and in another instant had flashed through it and was gone.
"It is my duty to follow her," said the lawyer. "Help me on with my coat; I'll find some one to guide me."
"Here is a lantern. Excuse me for not going with you," pleaded Mrs. Deo, "but some one must watch the house."
The New Yorker nodded, took the lantern offered him, and went stoically out.
He met a man on the walk in front. He was faced his way and was panting heavily.
"Hello," said he, "what news?"
"They haven't found her; but there's no doubt she went over the fall. The fellow who calls himself her husband has just been reading a letter they say she left on her bureau for him. It was a good-by, I reckon, for you can't tear him from the spot. He says he'll stay there till daylight. I couldn't stand the sight of his misery myself. Besides, it's mortal cold; I've just been running to get warm. Who was the girl who just went scurrying by out of here? It's no place for wimmen down there. One lost gal is enough."
"That's what I think," muttered the lawyer, hurrying on.
He was not a very imaginative man; some of his best friends thought him a cold and prosaic one, but he never forgot that walk or the sensations accompanying it. Dark as it still was, the way would have been impassable for a stranger, had it not been for the guidance given by the noisy passing to and fro of the awakened townspeople. Those coming from the river approached in a direct line from one spot; those going to it advanced in the same line and to the same spot. A ring of lanterns marked it. It was near, very near where the heavy waters fell into a deep pool. No one now spoke of Anitra; she had evidently been warned by her first encounter to move with less precipitancy.
As he approached the place of central interest, he moved more warily too. The ground was very bad; he had never walked in such slush. Once and again he tripped; once he came down upon his face. The boom of the waters was now very near; he could see nothing but the flicker of the lanterns, but he felt the near rush of the stream, and presently was at its very edge. Startled by the nearness of his escape, for he had almost lost his footing by his sudden halt, he started back, looked again at the lanterns, took a turn and came upon the dozen or more men bending over the edge of the stream where the waters ran most swiftly. But he did not join them. Another sight attracted his eyes and presently himself. This was the sight of Ransom crouched on the wet earth, staring down at a slip of paper he held in his hands. A lantern set in the sand at his feet sent its feeble rays over his face and possibly over the paper; but he was no longer reading it, he was simply so lost in its sorrowful contents that all power of movement had deserted him.
Harper approached to his side, but he did not address him. Something stirred in his own breast and kept him silent. But there was another person near who was not so deterred. As Harper stood watching Ransom's crouched, almost insensible figure, he perceived a slight dark form steal from the shadows and lay a hand on the stooping man's shoulder, then as he failed to move or give any token of feeling this touch, he heard Anitra's voice say in accents almost musical:
"You will get ill here; you are not used to the cold and the night air. Come back to the house; Georgian would wish it."
The name roused him and he looked up. Their eyes met and a strange gleam—a shock, perhaps, of sympathetic feeling, flashed upon either face. The lawyer saw and instinctively retreated from out the circle of light cast by the lantern; but the men at the stream's edge heard nothing. The flash of something white had caught their eyes and one man was reaching for it.
"Georgian," came in astonished repetition from the bereaved man's lips.
"She would wish it," persisted the other with still deeper and more urgent meaning.
Then in a whisper so penetrating that even Mr. Harper caught its least inflection through all the thunder of the waterfall, "She loved you."
Ah! the enchantment, the feminine persuasiveness, the heart-moving sincerity which breathed through that simple phrase! From lips so untutored, it seemed marvelous. Ransom was not insensible to its power, for he quivered under her hand and his eyes took on a look of wonder. But he made no attempt to answer, even by a sign. He seemed content for that one instant just to listen and to look.
The man hanging over the stream drew back his arm. He had been deceived by a bit of froth; some of it clung yet to his fingers.
"Come," entreated the girl, her face emerging softly into the light, as she stooped lower over the lantern. "Come!" she had taken him by the hand and was drawing him gently upward.
With a leap he was on his feet and had thrown her off. Some memory had come to make her entreaty hateful.
"No," he cried, "no! Here is my place and here will I stay. You are a stranger to me! You drove her to this act, and you shall not cajole me into forgetting it."
He had spoken loudly; not so much because he remembered her affliction, but because of the roar of the fall and his own overwhelming passion. The result was that the lawyer caught every word; possibly the workers at the water-edge did also; for some of them quickly turned their heads. But she, though she stopped short in the spot where he had pushed her, gave no evidence of hearing his words or even of resenting his manner.
"Won't you come?" she falteringly pleaded, pointing towards the house with its twinkling lights. "You are cold; you are shuddering; they will do the searching who don't mind night or wet. Follow Anitra, Anitra who is so sorry."
"No!" he shouted. His tone, his look, were almost those of a madman. He even put out his hands towards her in repulsion. He seemed to cast her away. This gesture, if not his words, reached her understanding. The lawyer saw her sway, fling back her young head with its disheveled locks to the night, and fall moaning pitifully to the ground. Here she lay still, with the wet grass all about her and the last lingering drops of rain beating on her huddled form.
Mr. Harper started to raise her, for Ransom stood petrified. But no sooner had the lawyer made his presence known by this impetuous movement, than Ransom woke from his trance and, darting down, lifted the girl in his arms and began moving with her towards the house. As he passed the lawyer he muttered between set teeth:
"She's caused me all my misery. But she looks too much like Georgian for me to see another man touch her. God will care for my poor darling's body."
Morning.
The living household was about its tasks for all the horror of the night before, and the still unrelieved suspense as to the fate of one of its members.
The maid, who had sat on watch in the upper hall for so many hours the evening before, was again at her post, but this time with her eye fixed only on one door, the door behind which slept the exhausted Anitra. Ransom's room was empty; he was in the sitting-room below, closeted with the lawyer.
Some one had been there before them. The tray of bottles and glasses had been removed from the table, and in their place were to be seen a woman's damaged hat and a small tortoise-shell comb. Mr. Harper's hand was on the former, which was wound about with a wet veil.
"I think I recognize this," said he. "At least I have a distinct impression of having seen it before."
"It was picked up with the veil still on it near the entrance of the lane," explained Ransom.
"Then there can be no doubt that it is the hat Miss Hazen wore during her journey. She tossed it off the moment her foot touched the ground, and taking the shawl from her neck pulled it over her head instead. You remember that she had no hat on when they brought her in."
"I remember. This is Miss Hazen's hat without any doubt."
The lawyer eyed the speaker with curious interest. There was something in his tone that he did not understand.
"And this?" he ventured, laying a respectful finger on the comb.
"Found in the open field between the house and the mill-stream."
"Do you recognize it?"
"No. Georgian wore such combs, but I cannot absolutely say that this is hers."
"I can. You see this little gold work at the top? Well, I have an eye for such things and I noticed this comb in her hair last night. There were two of them just alike."
Instinctively the two men sat with their eyes fixed for a minute on this comb, then, equally instinctively, they both looked up and gazed at each other long and hard. It was the lawyer who first spoke.
"I think that we should have no further secrets between us," said he. "Here is Mrs. Ransom's will. There is a name mentioned in it which I do not know. Perhaps you do." Here he laid the document on the table.
Mr. Ransom eyed it but did not take it up. Instead, he drew a crumpled paper from his own pocket and, handing it to the lawyer, said: "First, I should like you to read the letter which she left behind for me. My feelings as a husband would lead me to hold it as a sacred legacy from all eyes but my own; but there is a mystery hidden in it, a mystery which I must penetrate, and you are the only man who can assist me in doing so."
The lawyer, lowering his eyes to hide their own suspicious glint, opened the paper, and carefully read these lines:
"Forgive. My troubles are too much for me. I'm going to a place of rest, the only place and the only rest possible to one in my position. I don't blame anybody. Least of all do I blame Anitra. It was not her fault that she was brought up rudely, or that she knows no restraint in love or in hate. Be kind to her for my sake, and if any one else claims her or offers to take her from you, resist them. I give her entirely to you. It's a more priceless gift than you think; much more priceless than the one which I take from you by my death. I could never have been happy with you; you could never have been happy with me. Fate stood between us; a darker and more inexorable fate than you, in your kindly experience of life, could imagine. Else, why do I plunge to my death with your ring on my finger and your love in my heart?"Georgian."
"Forgive. My troubles are too much for me. I'm going to a place of rest, the only place and the only rest possible to one in my position. I don't blame anybody. Least of all do I blame Anitra. It was not her fault that she was brought up rudely, or that she knows no restraint in love or in hate. Be kind to her for my sake, and if any one else claims her or offers to take her from you, resist them. I give her entirely to you. It's a more priceless gift than you think; much more priceless than the one which I take from you by my death. I could never have been happy with you; you could never have been happy with me. Fate stood between us; a darker and more inexorable fate than you, in your kindly experience of life, could imagine. Else, why do I plunge to my death with your ring on my finger and your love in my heart?
"Georgian."
"Ravings?" questioned Ransom hoarsely, as Mr. Harper's eyes rose again to his face.
"It would seem so," assented the lawyer. "Yet there is intelligence in all the lines. And the will—read the will. There is no lack of intelligent purpose there; little as it accords with the feeling she exhibits here for her sister. She leaves her nothing; and does not even mention her name. Her personal belongings she bequeaths to you; but her realty, which comprises the bulk of her property I believe, she divides, somewhat unequally I own, between you and a man named Auchincloss. It is he I want to ask you about. Have you ever heard her speak of him?"
"Josiah Auchincloss of St. Louis, Missouri," read Mr. Ransom. "No, the name is new to me. Didn't she tell you anything about him when she gave you her instructions?"
"Not a word. She said, 'You will hear from him if ever this will is published. He has a right to the money and I entreat you to show your respect for me by seeing that he gets it without any unnecessary trouble.' That was all she said or would say. Your wife was a woman of powerful character, Mr. Ransom. My little arts counted for nothing in any difference of opinion between us."
"Auchincloss!" repeated Ransom. "Another unknown quantity in the problem of my poor girl's life. What a tangle! Do you wonder that I am overcome by it? Anitra—the so-called brother—and now this Auchincloss!"
"Right, Ransom, I share your confusion."
"Do you?" The words came very slowly, penetratingly. "Haven't you some idea—some strange, possibly half-formed notion or secret intuition which might afford some clew to this labyrinth? I have been told that lawyers have a knack of getting at the bottom of human conduct and affairs. You have had a wide experience; does it not suggest some answer to this problem which will harmonize all its discordant elements and make clear its various complications?"
Mr. Harper shook his head, but there was a restrained excitement in his manner which was not altogether the reflection of that which dominated Ransom, and the latter, observing it, leaned across the table till their faces almost touched.
"Do you guess my thought?" he whispered. "Look at me and tell me if you guess my thought."
The lawyer hesitated, eying well the trembling lip, the changing color, the wide-open, deeply flushed eyes so near his own; then with a slow smile of extraordinary subtlety, if not of comprehension, answered in a barely audible murmur:
"I think I do. I may be mad, but I think I do."
The other sank back with a sigh charged with what the lawyer interpreted as relief. Mr. Harper reseated himself, and for a moment neither looked at the other, and neither spoke; it would almost seem as if neither breathed. Then, as a bird, deceived by the silence, hopped to the window sill and began its cheep, "cheep," Mr. Ransom broke the spell by saying in low but studiously business-like tones:
"Have you thought it worth while to study the ground under her window or anywhere else for footprints? It might not be amiss; what do you think about it?"
"Let us go," readily acquiesced the lawyer, rising to his feet with an honest show of alacrity; "after which I must telegraph to New York. I was expected back to-day."
"I know it; but your duties there will keep; these here cannot. Your hand on the promise that you will respect my secret till—well, till I can assure you that my intuitions are devoid of any real basis."
The lawyer's palm met his; then they started to go out; but before they had passed the door, Mr. Ransom came back, and lifting the comb from the table he put it in his pocket. As he did this, his eye flashed sidewise on the other. There were strange hints and presentiments in it which brought the color to the usually imperturbable lawyer's cheek.
In going out they passed the office-door. A dozen men were hanging about, smoking and talking. Among them was a countryman who had just swallowed, open-mouthed, the story of the past night's tragedy. He was now speaking out his own mind concerning it, and this is what these two heard him say as they went by:
"Do you know what strikes me as mighty strange? That they should clear that stone of the name of Anitra just in time to put Georgian's in its place. I call that peculiar, I do."
The lawyer and the husband exchanged a glance.
"Mrs. Ransom had a deep mind," the lawyer remarked, as the door slammed behind them. "She apparently thought of everything."
Ransom, directing a look down the street towards the factories and the roaring mill-stream, uttered a shuddering sigh.
"They are still searching," said he. "But they will never find her. They will never find her."
The lawyer pulled him away.
"That's because they search the water. We will search the land."
"That's half water, too; but it cannot hide every clew. You have eyes for the imperceptible; use them, Mr. Harper, use them."
"I will; but this is a detective's work. Do not expect too much from me."
"I expect nothing. I do not dare to. Let us tread very softly, that is all, and be careful to talk low, if we have anything to say."
By this time they had rounded the corner of the house and entered a narrow walk, flagged with brick, which connected the space in front with the rear offices and garden. This walk ran close to the walls which were broken on this side by an ell projecting in the direction of the mill-stream. It was from the roof of this ell that Anitra declared Georgian to have slipped and fallen.
Their first care was to glance up at the roof. It was a sloping one and Anitra's story seemed credible enough when they noted how much easier it would be to drop upon it from the little balcony overhead than to traverse the roof itself and reach the ground beneath without slipping. But as they looked longer, each face betrayed doubt. The descent from the balcony was easy enough, but how about the passage from Georgian's window to the balcony? This latter was confined to the one window, and was surrounded by an ornamental balustrade, high enough to offer a decided obstacle to the adventurous person endeavoring to leap upon it from the adjoining window-ledge. However, this leap, made in the dark and under circumstances inducing the utmost recklessness, might look practical enough from the window-ledge itself, and Mr. Harper, making a remark to this effect, proposed that they should examine the ground rather than the house for evidences of Mrs. Ransom's slip and fall as related by Anitra.
The only spot where they could hope to find such was in the one short stretch—the width of the ell—underlying the edge of the sloping roof. But this spot was all flagged, as I have already said, and when their eyes strayed beyond it to the untilled fields, stretching between them and the great rock at the verge of the waterfall from which she was supposed to have taken her fatal leap, it was to find them as unproductive of evidence as the brick walk itself. Not one pair of feet but many had passed that way since early morning. The ground showed a mass of impressions of all sizes and shapes, amid which it would have been impossible for them, without the necessary experience, to have followed up the flight of any one person. They had come to their task too late.
"Futile," decided the lawyer. "There is no use in our going that way." And he turned to look again at the ground in their immediate vicinity. As he did so, his eye lighted on the triangular spot where the ell met the side of the house under the kitchen windows. Here there was no flagging, the walk taking a diagonal course from the corner of the ell to the kitchen door.
"What are those?" he asked, pointing to two oblong impressions brimming with water which disfigured the center of this small plot.
"They look like footprints," ventured Ransom.
"They are footprints," decided Mr. Harper as they stooped to examine the marks, "and the footprints of a person dropping from a height. Nothing else explains their depth or general appearance."
"Couldn't they be those of a person approaching the ell to converse with some one above? I see others similar to these in the open place over there beyond the kitchen door."
"It is a trail. Let us follow it. It seems to lead anywhere but towards the waterfall. This is an important discovery, Mr. Ransom, and may lead to conclusions such as we might not otherwise have presumed to entertain, especially if we come upon an impression clear enough to point in which direction the person making it was going."
"Here is what you want," Ransom assured him in a low and curiously smothered voice. He was evidently greatly excited by this result of their inquiries, for all his apparent quiet and precise movements. "It's a woman's step, and that woman was going from the ell when she left these tokens of her passage behind her. Going! and as you say not in the direction of the waterfall."
"Hush! I see some one at the kitchen window. Let us move warily and be sure not to confound these prints with those of any other person. It looks as if a great many people had passed here."
"Yes, this is the way to the chicken-coops and out-houses. But in the ground beyond I think I see a single line of steps again,—small steps like these. Where can they be leading? They are deep like those of a person running."
"And straggling, like those of a person running in the dark. See how they waver from the direct line down there, turn, and almost come up against that wood-pile! Whose steps are these? Whose, Mr. Harper? Quick! I must see where they go. Our time will not be lost. The key to the labyrinth is in our hands."
The lawyer was in the rear and the eyes of the other were fixed far ahead. For this reason, perhaps, the former allowed himself a quiet shake of the head, which might not have encouraged the other so very much, had he caught sight of it. They were now on the verge of the garden, or what would soon be a garden if these rains betokened spring. A path ran along its edge and in this path the footsteps they were following lost themselves; but they came upon them again among the hillocks of some old potato-hills beyond, and finally traced them quite across the garden waste to a fence, along which they ran, blundering from ploughed earth to spots of smoother ground, and so back again till they came upon an old turn-stile!
Passing through this, the two men stopped and looked about them. They were in a road ridged with grass and flanked by bushes. One end ran east into a wooded valley, the other debouched on the highway a few feet to the right of the tavern.
"The lane!" exclaimed Mr. Harper. "The lead towards the waterfall was a feint. It was in this direction she fled, and it is from this point that search must be made for her."
Ransom, greatly perturbed, for this possibility of secret flight opened vistas of as much mystery, if not of as much suffering, as her death in the river, glanced at the sodden ground under their feet, and thus along the lane to where it lost itself from view among the trees.
"No possible following of steps here," he declared. "A hundred people must have come this way since early morning."
"It's a short cut from the Ferry. They told me last night that it lessened the distance by fully a quarter of a mile."
"The Ferry! Can she be there? Or in the woods, or on her way to some unknown place far out of our reach? The thought is maddening, Mr. Harper, and I feel as helpless as a child under it. Shall we get detectives from the county-seat, or start on the hunt ourselves? We might hear something further on to help us."
"We might; but I should rather stay on the immediate scene at present. Ah, there comes a fellow in a cart who should be able to tell us something! Stand by and I'll accost him. You needn't show your face."
Mr. Ransom turned aside. Mr. Harper waited till the slow-moving horse, dragging a heavily jogging wagon, came alongside, and he had caught the eye of the low-browed, broad-faced farmer boy who sat on a bag of potatoes and held the reins.
"Good morning," said he. "Bad news this way. Any better at the Ferry, or down east, as you call it?"
"Eh?" was the lumbering, half-suspicious answer from the startled boy. "I've heard naught down yonder, but that a gal threw herself over the waterfall up here last night. Is that a fact, sir? I'm mighty curus to know. My mother knew them Hazens; used to wash for 'em years ago. She told me to bring up these taters and larn all I could about it."
"We don't know much more than that ourselves," was the smooth and cautious reply. "The lady certainly is missing, and she is supposed to have drowned herself." Then, as he noted the fellow's eyes resting with some curiosity on Mr. Ransom's well-clad, gentlemanly figure, added gravely, and with a slight gesture towards the latter:
"The lady's husband."
The lad's jaw fell and he looked very sheepish.
"Excuse me, misters, I didn't know," he managed to mutter, with a slash at his horse which was vainly endeavoring to pull the cart from the rut in which it had stuck. "I guess I'll go along to the hotel. I've a bag of taters for Mrs. Deo."
But the cart didn't budge and the lawyer had time to say:
"Guess you didn't hear anything said about another lady I am interested in. No talk down your way of a strange young woman seen anywhere on the highway or about any of the houses between here and the Landing?"
"Jerusha! I did hear a neighbor of mine say somethin' about a stranger gal he saw this very mornin'. Met her down by Beardsley's. She was goin' through the mud on foot as lively as you please. Asked him the way to the Ferry. He noticed her because she was pretty and spoke in such a nice way—just like a city gal," he said. "Is it any one from this hotel?" added the fellow with a wondering look. "If so, she walked a mile before daylight in mud up to her ankles. A girl of powerful grit that! with a mighty good reason for catching the train."
"Oh! there's an early train then?" asked the lawyer, ignoring the other's question with unmoved good-humor. "One, I mean, before the 10:50 express?"
"Yes, sir, or so I've heard. I never took it. Folks don't from here, except they're in an awful hurry. Will y'er say who the young woman is? Not—not—"
"We don't know who she is," quietly objected the lawyer. "And you don't know who she is either," he severely added, holding the yawping countryman with his eye. "If you're the man I think you, you'll not talk about her unless you're asked by the constable or some one you are bound to answer. And what's more, you'll earn a five-dollar bill by going back the road you've come and bringing here, without any talk or fuss, the man you were just telling us about. I want to have a talk with him, but I don't want any one but you and him to know this. You can tell him it's worth money, if he don't want to come. Do you understand?"
"You bet," chuckled the grinning lad. "A five-dollar bill is mighty clearing to the mind, sir. But must I turn right back before going on to the hotel and hearing the news?"
"We'll help you turn the cart," grimly suggested Mr. Harper. "Get up there, Dobbin, or whatever your name is. Here, Ransom, lend a hand!"
There was nothing for the fellow to do but to accept the help proffered, and turn his cart. With one longing look towards the hotel he jerked at the rein and shouted at the horse, which, after a few feeble efforts, pulled the cart about and started off again in the desired direction.
"Sooner done, sooner paid," shouted the lawyer, as lad and cart went jolting off. "Remember to ask for Lawyer Harper when you come back. I won't be far from the office."
The fellow nodded; gave one grinning look back and whipped up his nag. The lawyer and Ransom eyed one another. "It's only a possibility," emphasized the former. "Don't lay too much stress upon it."
"Let us speak plainly," urged Ransom. "Mr. Harper, are you sure that you know just what my thought is?"
"The time has not come for discussing that question. Let us defer it. There is a fact to be settled first."
"Whether the girl—"
"No; this! Whether your wife could have jumped from her window to the balcony, as Anitra said. It did not look feasible from below, but as I then remarked to you, our opinion may change when we consider it from above. Will you go up-stairs with me to your wife's room?"
"I will go anywhere and do anything you please, so that we learn the exact truth. But spare me the curiosity of these people. The crowd on this side is increasing."
"We will go in by the kitchen door. Some one there will show us the way up-stairs."
And in this manner they entered; not escaping entirely all curious looks, for human nature is human nature, whether in the kitchen or parlor.
In the hall above Mr. Ransom took the precedence. As they neared the fatal room he motioned the lawyer to wait till he could ascertain if Miss Hazen would be disturbed by their intrusion. The door, which had been broken in between the two rooms, could not have been put back very securely, and he dreaded incommoding her. He was gone but a minute. Almost as soon as the lawyer started to follow him, he could be seen beckoning from poor Georgian's door.
"Miss Hazen is asleep," whispered Ransom, as the other drew near. "We can look about this room with impunity."
They both entered and the lawyer crossed at once to the window.
"Your wife could never have taken the leap ascribed to her by the woman you call Anitra," he declared, after a minute's careful scrutiny of the conditions. "The balustrade of the adjoining balcony is not only in the way, but the distance is at least five feet from the extreme end of this window-ledge. A woman accustomed to a life of adventure or to the feats of a gymnasium might do it, but not a lady of Mrs. Ransom's habits. If your wife made her way from this room to the balcony outside her sister's window, she did it by means of the communicating door."
"But the door was found locked on this side. There is the key in the lock now."
"You are sure of this?"
"I was the first one to call attention to it."
"Then," began the lawyer judicially, but stopped as he noted the peculiar eagerness of Ransom's expression, and turned his attention instead to the interior of the room and the various articles belonging to Mrs. Ransom which were to be seen in it. "The dress your wife wore when she signed her will," he remarked, pointing to the light green gown hanging on the inside of the door by which they had entered.
Ransom stepped up to it, but did not touch it. He could see her as she looked in this gown in her memorable passage through the hall the evening before, and, recalling her expression, wondered if they yet understood the nature of her purpose and the determination which gave it such extraordinary vigor.
Mr. Harper called his attention to two other articles of dress hanging in another part of the room. These were her long gray rain-coat and the hat and veil she had worn on the train.
"She went out bare-headed and in the plain serge dress in which she arrived," remarked Mr. Harper with a side glance at Ransom. "I wonder if the girl met on the highway was without hat and dressed in black serge."
Ransom was silent.
"Anitra's hat is below and here is Mrs. Ransom's. She who escaped from this house last night went out bare-headed," repeated the lawyer.
Mr. Ransom, moving aside to avoid the probing of the other's eye, merely remarked:
"You noticed my wife's dress very particularly it seems. It was of serge, you say."
"Yes. I am learned in stuffs. I remarked it when she got into the coach, possibly because I was struck by its simplicity and conventional make. There was no trimming on the bottom, only stitching. Her sister's was just like it. They had the look of being ready-made."
"But Anitra had no rain-coat. I remember that her shoulders were wet when she came in from the lane."
"No, she had no protection but her blouse, black like her dress. I presume that her hot blood resented every kind of wrap."
Again that sidelong glance from his keen eye. "She wore a checked silk handkerchief about her neck—the one she afterwards put over her head."
"You were on the same train with my wife and sister-in-law," Ransom now said. "Did you sit near them? Converse with them, that is, with Mrs. Ransom?"
"I have no reason for deceiving you in that regard," replied Mr. Harper. "I did not come up from New York on the same train they did. They must have come up in the morning, for when I arrived at the place they call the Ferry, I saw them standing on the hotel steps ready to step into the coach. I spoke to Mrs. Ransom then, but only a word. My grip-sack had been put under the driver's seat, and I saw that I was expected to ride with him, notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather. Mrs. Ransom saw it too and possibly my natural hesitation, for she turned to me after she had seen her sister safely ensconced inside, and said something about her regret at having subjected me to such inconvenience, but did not offer to make room for me in the body of the coach, though there was room enough if the other had been the quiet lady she was herself. But she was not, and possibly this was Mrs. Ransom's excuse for her apparent lack of consideration for me. Before we reached the point where the lane cuts in, I became aware of some disturbance behind me, and when we really got there, I heard first the coach door opening, then your wife's voice, raised in entreaty to the driver, calling on him to stop before her sister jumped out and hurt herself. 'She is deaf and very wild' was all the explanation she gave after Miss Hazen had leaped into the wet road and darted from sight into what looked to me, in the darkness, like a tangled mass of bushes. Then she said something about her having had hard work to keep her still till we got this far; but that she was sure she would find her way to the hotel, and that we mustn't bother ourselves about it for she wasn't going to; Anitra and she had run this road too many times when they were children. That is all I have to tell of my intercourse with these ladies prior to our appearance at the hotel. I think it right for me to clear the slate, Ransom. Who knows what we may wish to write upon it next?"
A slight shiver on Ransom's part was the sole answer he gave to this innuendo; then both settled themselves to work, the eyes of either flashing hither and thither from one small object to another, in this seemingly deserted room. In the momentary silence which followed, the even breathing of the woman in the adjoining room could be distinctly heard. It seemed to affect Mr. Ransom deeply, though he strove hard to maintain the business-like attitude he had assumed from the beginning of this unofficial examination.
"She has confided nothing more to you since your return from the river bank?" suggested the lawyer.
"No."
The word came sharply, considering Mr. Ransom's usual manner. The lawyer showed surprise but no resentment, and turned his attention to the bag both had noted lying open on two chairs.
"Nothing equivocal here," he declared, after a moment's careful scrutiny of its remaining contents. "The only comment I should make in regard to what I find here is that all the articles are less carefully chosen than you would expect from one of your wife's fondness for fine appointments."
"They were collected in a hurry and possibly by telephone," returned the unhappy husband, after a shrinking glance into the bag. "The ones she provided in anticipation of her wedding are at the hotel in New York. In the trunks and bags there you will find articles as elegant as you could wish." Here he turned to the dresser, and pointed to the various objects grouped upon it.
"These show that she arranged herself with care for her meeting with you last night. How did she appear at that interview? Natural?"
"Hardly; she was much too excited. But I had no suspicion of what she was cherishing in her mind. I thought her intentions whimsical, and endeavored to edge in a little advice, but she was in no mood to receive it. Her mind was too full of what she intended to do.
"Here's where she ate her supper," he added, picking up a morsel of crust from a table set against the wall. "And so this door was found fastened on this side?" he proceeded, laying his hand on the broken lock.
"It had to be burst open, you see."
"And the window?"
"Was up. The carpet, as you can tell by look and feeling, is still wet with the soaking it got."
Mr. Harper's air changed to one of reluctant conviction.
"The evidence seems conclusive of your wife having left this room and the house in the remarkable manner stated by Miss Hazen. Yet—"
Thisyetshowed that he was not as thoroughly convinced as the first phrase would show. But he added nothing to it; only stood listening, apparently to the even breathing of the sleeper on the other side of this loosely hanging door.
As he did so, his eye encountered the hot, dry gaze of Mr. Ransom, fixed upon him in a suspense too cruel to prolong, and with a sudden change of manner he moved from the door, saying significantly as he led the way out:
"Let us have a word or two in your own room. It is a principle of mine not to trust even the ears of the deaf with what it is desirable to keep secret."
Had the glance with which he said this lingered a moment longer on his companion's face, he would undoubtedly have been startled at the effect of his own words. But being at heart a compassionate man, or possibly understanding his new client much better than that client supposed, he had turned quite away in crossing the threshold, and so missed the conscious flash which for a moment replaced the somber and feverish expression that had already aged by ten years the formerly open features of this deeply grieved man.
Once in the hall, it was too dark to note further niceties of expression, and by the time Mr. Ransom's room was reached, purpose and purpose only remained visible in either face.
As they were crossing the threshold, the lawyer wheeled about and cast a quick look behind him.
"I observe," said he, "that you have a full and unobstructed view from here of the whole hall and of the two doors where our interest is centered. I presume you kept a strict watch on both last night. You let nothing escape you?"
"Nothing that one could see from this room."
With a thoughtful air, the lawyer swung to the door behind them. As it latched, the face of Mr. Ransom sharpened. He even put out a hand and rested it on a table standing near, as if to support himself in anticipation of what the lawyer would say now that they were again closeted together.
Mr. Harper was not without his reasons for a corresponding agitation, but he naturally controlled himself better, and it was with almost a judicial air that he made this long-expected but long-deferred suggestion:
"You had better tell me now, and as explicitly as possible, just what is in your mind. It will prevent all misunderstanding between us, as well as any injudicious move on my part."
Mr. Ransom hesitated, leaning hard on the table; then, with a sudden burst, he exclaimed:
"It sounds like folly, and you may think that my troubles have driven me mad. But I have a feeling here—a feeling without any reason or proof to back it—that the woman now sleeping off her exhaustion in Anitra's room is the woman I courted and married—Georgian Hazen, now Georgian Ransom, my wife."
"Good! I have made no mistake. That is my thought, too," responded the lawyer.
A few minutes later they were discussing this amazing possibility.
"I have no reason for this conclusion,—this hope," admitted Mr. Ransom. "It is instinct with me, an intuition, and not the result of my judgment. It came to me when she first addressed me down by the mill-stream. If you consider me either wrong or misled, I confess that I shall not be able to combat your decision with any argument plausible enough to hold your attention for a moment."
"But I don't consider you either wrong or misled," protested the other. "That is," he warily added, "I am ready to accept the correctness of the possibility you mention and afterwards to note where the supposition will lead us. Of course, your first sensation is that of relief."
"It will be when I am no longer the prey of doubts."
"Notwithstanding the mystery?"
"Notwithstanding the mystery. The one thing I have found it impossible to contemplate is her death;—the extinction of all hope which death alone can bring. She has become so blended with my every thought since the hour she vanished from my eyes and consequently from my protection, that I should lose the better part of my self in losing her. Anything but that, Mr. Harper."
"Even possible shame?"
"How, shame?"
"Some reason very strong and very vital must underlie her conduct if what we suspect is true, and she has not only been willing to subject you and herself to a seeming separation by death, but to burden herself with the additional misery of being obliged to assume a personality cumbered by such a drawback to happiness and even common social intercourse as this of the supposed Anitra."
"You mean her deafness?"
"I mean that, yes. What could Mrs. Ransom's motive be (if the woman sleeping yonder is Mrs. Ransom) for so tremendous a sacrifice as this you ascribe to her? The rescue of her sister from some impending calamity? That would argue a love of long standing and of superhuman force; one far transcending even her natural affection for the husband to whom she has just given her hand. Such a love under such circumstances is not possible. She has known this long lost sister for a few days only. Her sense of duty towards her, even her compassion for one so unfortunate, might lead her to risk much, but not so much as that. You must look for some other explanation; one more reasonable and much more personal."
"Where? where? I'm all at sea; blinded, dazed, almost at my wits' end. I can see no reason for anything she has done. I neither understand her nor understand myself. I ought to shrink from the poor creature there, sleeping off—I don't know what. But I don't. I feel drawn to her, instead, irresistibly drawn, as if my place were at her bedside to comfort and protect."
At this impulsive assertion springing from a depth of feeling for which the staid lawyer had no measure, a perplexed frown chased all the urbanity from his face. Some thought, not altogether welcome, had come to disturb him. He eyed Mr. Ransom closely from under his clouded brows. He could do this now with impunity, for Mr. Ransom's glances were turned whither his thoughts and inclinations had wandered.
"I would advise you," came in slow comment from the watchful lawyer, "not to be too certain of your conclusions till doubt becomes an absolute impossibility. Instinct is a good thing but it must never be regarded as infallible. It may be proved that it is your wife who has fled, after all. In which case it would be a great mistake to put any faith in this gipsy girl, Anitra."
Mr. Ransom's face hardened; his eyes did not leave the direction in which they were set.
"I will remember," said he.
His companion did not appear satisfied, and continued emphatically:
"Whether the woman now here is Mrs. Ransom or her wild and irresponsible sister, she is a person of dangerous will and one not to be lightly regarded nor carelessly dealt with. Pray consider this, Mr. Ransom, and do not allow impulse to supersede judgment. If you will take my advice—"
"Speak."
"I should treat her as if she were the woman she calls herself, or, at least, as if you thought her so. Nothing—" this word he repeated as he noted the incredulity with which the other listened—"would be so likely to make her betray herself as that."
"Let us go back and listen again at her door," was Mr. Ransom's emphatic but inconsequent reply.
The lawyer desisted from further advice, but sighed as he followed his new client into the hall. At the turn of the staircase they were stopped by the sound of wrangling voices in the office below. Mr. Harper heard his name mentioned and hastened to interfere. Assuring Mr. Ransom of his speedy return, he stepped down-stairs, and in a few minutes reappeared with a middle-aged man of characteristic appearance, whom he introduced to Mr. Ransom as Mr. Goodenough. The sight of the uncouth head of their youthful acquaintance of the morning peering up after him from the foot of the stairs was warranty sufficient that this was the man who had met the strange young lady on the highway early that morning.
At sight of him Mr. Ransom felt that inner recoil which we all experience at the prospect of an immediate and definite termination of a long brooding doubt. In another instant and with one word this uncultured and hitherto unknown man would settle for him the greatest question of his life. And he did not feel prepared for it. He had an impulse almost of flight, as if in this way he could escape a certainty he feared. What certainty? Perhaps he could not have answered had he been asked. His mind was in a turmoil. He had feelings—instincts; that was all.
The lawyer, noting his condition, undertook the leadership of affairs. Beckoning Mr. Goodenough into Mr. Ransom's room, he softly closed the door upon the many inquiring ears about, and, assuming the manner most likely to encourage the unsophisticated but straightforward looking man with whom he had to deal, quietly observed:
"We hear that you met this morning a young girl going towards the Ferry. There is great reason why we should know just how this young girl looks. A lady disappeared from here last night, and though, from a letter she left behind her, we have every reason to believe that her body is somewhere in the river, yet we don't want to overlook the possibility of her having escaped alive in another direction. Can you describe the person you saw?"
"Wa'al, I'm not much good at talk," was the embarrassed, almost halting reply. "I saw the gal and I remember just how she looked, but I couldn't put it into words to save my soul. She was pretty and chipper and walked along as if she was part of the mornin'; but that don't tell you much, does it? Yet I don't know what else to say. P'raps you could help me by asking questions."
"We'll see. Was she light-complexioned? Yellow hair, you know, and blue eyes?"
"No; I don't think she was. Not what I call light. My Sal's light; this gal wasn't like my Sal."
"Dark, then, very dark, with a gipsy color and snapping black eyes?"
"No, not that either. What I should call betweens. But more dark than light."
Harper flashed a glance at Ransom before putting his next question.
"What did she have on her head?"
"Bless me if I can tell! It wasn't a sun-bonnet, nor was it slapped all over with ribbons and flowers like my darter's."
"But she had some sort of hat on?"
"Sartain. Did you think she was just running to the neighbors?"
"But she wore no coat?"
"I don't remember any coat."
"Do you remember her frock?"
"No, not exactly."
"Don't you remember its color?"
"No."
"Wasn't it black? the skirt of it, at least?"
"Black? Wa'al, I guess not. A gal of her age in black! No, she was as bright as the flowers in my wife's garden. Not a black thing on her. I should sooner think her clothes were red than black."
Harper showed his surprise.
"Not a black skirt?" he persisted.
"No, sir'ee. I haven't much eye for fixin's but I've eye enough to know when a gal's dressed like a gal and not like some old woman."
Harper's eye stole again towards Ransom.
"Checkmate in four moves," he muttered. "The person we are interested in could have worn no such clothing as Mr. Goodenough describes. Yet clothing can be changed. How, I cannot see in this instance; but I will risk no mistake. The trail we followed led too surely in the direction of the highway for us to drop all inquiries because of a colored skirt and a hat we cannot quite account for. If the face is one we know (and I really believe it was), we can leave the other discrepancies to future explanation." And turning back to the patient countryman, he composedly remarked: "You are positive in your recollections of the young lady's features. You would have no difficulty in recognizing her if you saw her again?"
"Not a bit. Once I get a picter in my mind of a man or a woman I see it always. And I can see her as plain as plain the moment I stop to think. She was pretty, you see, and just a little scared to speak to a stranger. But that went as she saw my face, and she asked me very perlite if she was on the right road to the Ferry."
"And you told her she was?"
"Sartain; and how much time she had to get there to catch the boat."
"I see. So you would know her again if you saw her."
"I jest would."
The lawyer made a move towards the door which Mr. Ransom hastened to open. As the long vista of the hall disclosed itself, Mr. Harper turned upon the countryman with the quiet remark:
"There were two ladies here, you know. Twins. Their likeness was remarkable. If we show you the remaining one who now lies asleep, you surely will be able to tell if she is like the lady you saw."
"If she looks just like her you can bet beans against potatoes on that."
"Come, then. You needn't feel any embarrassment, for she's not only sound asleep but so deaf she couldn't hear you if she were awake. You need only take one glance and nod your head if she looks like the other. It is very desirable that none of us should speak. The case is a mysterious one and there's enough talk about it already without the women hiding and listening behind every shut door you see, adding their gossip to the rest."
A knowing look, a twitch at the corners of a good-natured mouth, and the man followed them down the hall, past one or two of the doors alluded to, till they reached the one against the panel of which Mr. Ransom had already laid his ear.
"Still asleep," his gesture seemed to signify; and with a word of caution he led the way in.
The room was very dark. Mrs. Deo had been careful to draw down the shade when she put her strange charge to bed, and at this first moment of entrance it was impossible for them to see more than the outline of a dark head upon a snowy pillow. But gradually, feature by feature of the sleeping woman's countenance became visible, and the lawyer, turning his acute gaze on the man from whose recognition he expected so much, impatiently awaited the nod which was to settle their doubt.
But that nod did not come, not even after Mr. Ransom, astonished at the long pause, turned on the stranger his own haggard and inquiring eyes. Instead, Mr. Goodenough lifted a blank stare to either face beside him, and, shaking his head, stumbled awkwardly back in an endeavor to leave the room. Mr. Ransom, taken wholly by surprise, uttered some peremptory ejaculation, but a glance from the lawyer quieted him, and not till they were all shut up again in that convenient room at the head of the stairs did any of the three speak.
And not even then without an embarrassed pause. Both the lawyer and his unhappy client had a deep and, in the case of the latter, a heartrending disappointment to overcome, and the clock on the stairs ticked out several seconds before the lawyer ventured to remark:
"Miss Hazen's face is quite new to you, I perceive. Evidently it was not her twin sister you met on the high road this morning."
"Nor anything like her," protested the man. "A different face entirely; prettier and more saucy. Such a gal as a man like me would be glad to call darter."
"Oh, I see!" assented the lawyer. Then with the instinctive caution of his class, "You have made no mistake?"
"Not a bit of a one," emphasized the other. "Sorry I can't give the gentleman any hope, but if the sisters look alike, it was not this woman's twin I met. I'm ready to take my oath on that."
"Very well. One catches at straws in a stress like this. Here's a fiver to pay for your trouble, and another for the lad who brought you here. Good day. We had no sound reason for expecting any different result from our experiment."
The man bowed awkwardly and went out. Mr. Harper brought down his fist heavily on the table, and after a short interval of silence, during which he studiously avoided meeting his companion's eye, he remarked:
"I am as much taken aback as yourself. For all he had to say about her gay clothing, I expected a different result. The girl on the highway was neither Mrs. Ransom nor her sister. We have made a confounded mistake and Mrs. Ransom—"
"Don't say it. I'm going back to the room where that woman lies sleeping. I cannot yet believe that my heart is not shut up within its walls. I'm going to watch for her eyes to open. Their expression will tell me what I want to know;—the look one gives before full realization comes and the soul is bare without any thought of subterfuge."
"Very well. I should probably do the same if I were you. Only your insight may be affected by prejudice. You will excuse me if I join you in this watch. The experiment is of too important a character for its results to depend upon the correct seeing of one pair of eyes."