Chapter Twelve.

Chapter Twelve.“It is his!”The figure before me was that of a woman, calm, sweet-faced, her countenance rendered piquant by its expression of surprise.It was none other than Mabel Anson.Dressed in a tight-fitting tailor-made gown of some dark cloth, and a neat toque, she looked dignified and altogether charming. The slight severity of attire became her well, for it showed her marvellous figure to perfection, while the dash of red in her hat gave the necessary touch of colour to complete a tasteful effect. Her countenance was concealed by the thinnest of gauze veils, and as she held forth her well-gloved hand with an expression of pleasure at the unexpected meeting, her bangles jingled musically.“This is indeed a most pleasant surprise, Miss Anson,” I said, when I recovered speech, for so sudden had been our encounter that in the moment of my astonishment my tongue refused to utter a sound.“And to me also,” she laughed.“I’ve been wondering and wondering when we should meet again,” I blurted forth. “I’m so very glad to see you.”For the first few moments after she had allowed her tiny hand to rest for an instant in mine we exchanged conventionalities, and then suddenly, noting a roll of music in her hand, I asked—“Are you going home?”“Yes, across the Park,” she laughed. “Mother forbids it, but I much prefer the Park to those stuffy omnibuses.”“And you’ve been to your music, I suppose?” I inquired.“Yes. I’ve not been well for the past few days, and have missed several lessons. Now, like a good pupil, I’m endeavouring to make them up, you know.” And she laughed merrily.“How many times a week do you go to the Academy?” I asked, surprised that she should have gone there that day, after what the hall-porter had told me.“Twice, as a general rule,” she remarked; “but just now I’m rather irregular.”“And so you prefer to cross the Park rather than ride by omnibus?”“Certainly. Mother doesn’t approve of girls riding on the tops of ’buses, and says it’s fast. Therefore I’d much rather walk, for at this hour half London seems to be going from Piccadilly Circus to Hammersmith. I go right across, past the Serpentine, through Kensington Gardens to the Broad Walk, and out by the small gate next thePalace Hotel,” she added, with a sweep of her gloved hand.Her eyes were lovely. As she stood there in the fading sunlight she seemed the fairest vision I had ever seen. I stood spell-bound by her marvellous beauty.“And may I not act as your escort on your walk to-day?” I asked.“Certainly. I have no objection,” she answered with graceful dignity, therefore I turned and walked beside her, carrying her music.We took the road, which leads straight away to the Magazine, and crosses the Serpentine beyond. There in the yellow glow of the October sunset I lounged at her side and drank my fill of her loveliness. Surely, I thought, there could be no more beautiful woman in all the world. The Colonel’s strange warning recurred to me, but I laughed it to scorn.As we passed beneath the rustling trees the sun’s last rays lit up her beautiful face with a light that seemed ethereal and tipped her hair until there seemed a golden halo about her. I was no lovesick youth, be it remembered, but a man who had had a bitter experience of the world and its suffering. Yet at that hour I was fascinated by the grace of her superb carriage, the suppleness of her figure, the charm of her sweet smile, and the soft music of her voice as she chatted to me.She told me of her love for music; and from the character of the pieces which formed her studies I knew that she must be a musician of a no mean order. The operatic melody which she had sung at the Colonel’s was, she declared, a mere trifle. We discussed the works of Rossini and Massent, of Wagner and Mendelssohn, and of Verdi, Puccini, Mascagni, Perosi, and such latter-day composers. I had always prided myself that I knew something of music, but her knowledge was far deeper than mine.And so we gossiped on, crossing the Park and entering Kensington Gardens—those beautiful pleasure grounds that always seem so neglected by the majority of Londoners—while the sun sank and disappeared in its blood-red afterglow. She spoke of her life abroad, declaring that she loved London and was always pleased to return to its wild, turbulent life. She had spent some time in Paris, in Vienna, in Berlin, but no one was half as interesting, she declared, as London.“But you are not a Londoner, are you?” I asked.“No, not exactly,” she responded, “although I’ve lived here such a long time that I’ve become almost a Cockney. Are you a Londoner?”“No,” I answered; “I’m a countryman, born and bred.”“I heard the Colonel remark that other night that you had been afflicted by blindness for some time. Is that so?”I responded in the affirmative.“Terrible!” she ejaculated, glancing at me with those wonderful dark eyes of hers that seemed to hold me in fascination and look me through and through. “We who possess our eyesight cannot imagine the great disadvantages under which the blind are placed. How fortunate that you are cured!”“Yes,” I explained. “The cure is little short of a miracle. The three greatest oculists in London all agreed that I was incurable, yet there one day came to me a man who said he could give me back my sight. I allowed him to experiment, and he was successful. From the day that I could see plainly he, curiously enough, disappeared.”“How strange! Did he never come and see you afterwards?”“No. He took no reward, but simply discontinued his visits. I do not even know his real name.”“How extraordinary!” she observed, greatly interested. “I really believe that there is often more romance and mystery in real life than in books. Such a circumstance appears absolutely bewildering.”“If to you, Miss Anson, then how much more to me! I, who had relinquished all hope of again looking upon the world and enjoying life, now find myself actually in possession of my vision and able to mix with my fellow-men. Place yourself for a moment in my position, and try to imagine my constant thankfulness.”“You must feel that a new life is opened to you—that you have begun a fresh existence,” she observed with a true touch of sympathy in her sweet voice. Then she added, as if by afterthought. “How many of us would be glad to commence life afresh!”The tone in which she uttered that sentence seemed incongruous. A few moments before she had been all brightness and gaiety, but in those words there vibrated a distinctly gloomy note.“Surely you do not desire to commence your life again?” I said.She sighed slightly.“All of us have our burden of regrets,” she answered vaguely, raising her eyes for an instant to mine, and then lowering them.We appeared in those moments to grow confidential. The crimson and orange was fast fading from the sky. It was growing dark beneath the shadow of the great elms, and already the line of street lamps out in Kensington Gore were twinkling through the foliage on our left. No one was in the vicinity, and we were walking very slowly, for, truth to tell, I desired to delay our parting until the very last moment. Of all the leafy spots in giant London, there is none so rural, so romantic, or so picturesque in summer as that portion of Kensington Gardens lying between Queen’s Gate and the Broad Walk. Save for the dull roar of distant traffic, one might easily fancy one’s self far in the country, a hundred miles from the sound of Bow Bells.“But you are young, Miss Anson,” I observed philosophically, after a brief pause. “And if I may be permitted to say so, you have scarcely begun to live your life. Yet you actually wish to commence afresh!”“Yes,” she responded briefly, “I do. Strange, is it not?”“Is the past, then, so full of bitterness?” I asked, the Colonel’s strange warning recurring to me at the same moment.“Its bitterness is combined with regrets,” she answered huskily, in a low voice.“But you, young, bright, happy, and talented, who need not think of the trials of everyday life, should surely have no regrets so deep as to cause you this anxiety and despair,” I said, with a feeling of tenderness. “I am ten years older than you, therefore I may be permitted to speak like this, even though my words may sound presumptuous.”“Continue,” she exclaimed. “I assure you that in my present position I appreciate any words of sympathy.”“You have my deepest sympathy, Miss Anson; of that I assure you,” I declared, detecting in her words a desire to confide in me. “If at your age you already desire to recommence life, your past cannot have been a happy one.”“It has been far from happy,” she answered in a strange, mechanical voice. “Sometimes I think that I am the unhappiest woman in all the world.”“No, no,” I hastened to reassure her. “We all, when in trouble, imagine that our burden is greater than that of any of our fellows, and that while others escape, upon us alone fall the graver misfortunes.”“I know, I know,” she said. “But a pleasant face and an air of carelessness ofttimes conceal the most sorrowful heart. It is so in my case.”“And your sorrow causes you regret, and makes you wish to end your present life and commence afresh,” I said gravely. “To myself, ignorant of the circuit stances, it would seem as though you repented of some act or other.”“What do you mean?” she gasped quickly, looking at me with a strange expression in her dark eyes. “I do not repent—I repent nothing!”I saw that I had made a grave mistake. In my fond and short-sighted enthusiasm I had allowed myself to speak a little too confidentially, whereupon her natural dignity had instantly rebelled. At once I apologised, and in an instant she became appeased.“I regret extremely that you should have such a weight of anxiety upon your heart,” I said. “If I can do anything to assist you, rely upon me.”“You are extremely kind,” she answered in a gloomy tone; “but there is nothing—absolutely nothing.”“I really can’t understand the reason why, with every happiness around you, you should find yourself thus plunged in this despair,” I remarked, puzzled. “Your home life is, I presume, happy enough?”“Perfectly. I am entirely my own mistress, save in those things which might break through the ordinary conventionalities of life. I must admit to you that I am rather unconventional sometimes.”I had wondered whether, like so many other girls, she had some imaginary grievance in her home; but now, finding that this was not so, it naturally occurred to me that the cause of her strange desire to live her life over again arose through the action of some faithless lover. How many hundreds of girls with wealth and beauty, perfectly happy in all else, are daily wearing out their lives because of the fickleness of the men to whom they have foolishly given their hearts! The tightly-laced corsets of every eight girls in ten conceals a heart filled by the regrets of a love long past; the men smile airily through the wreaths of their tobacco-smoke, while the women, in those little fits of melancholy which they love to indulge in, sit and reflect in silence upon the might-have-beens. Is there, I wonder, a single one of us, man or woman, who does not remember our first love, the deep immensity of that pair of eyes; the kindly sympathy of that face, which in our immature years we thought our ideal, and thereupon bowed the knee in worship? If such there be, then they are mere unrefined boors without a spark of romance in their nature, or poetry within their soul. Indeed, the regrets arising from a long-forgotten love ofttimes mingle pleasure with sadness, and through one’s whole life form cherished memories of those flushed days of a buoyant youth. To how many of those who read these lines will be recalled vivid recollections of a summer idyll of long ago; a day when, with the dainty or manly object of their affections, they wandered beside the blue sea, or on the banks of the tranquil, willow-lined river, or perhaps hand-in-hand strolled beneath the great old forest trees, where the sunlight glinted and touched the gnarled trunks with grey and gold! To each will come back the sweet recollection of a sunset hour now long, long ago, when they pressed the lips of the one they loved, and thought the rough world as rosy as that summer afterglow. The regret of those days always remains—often only a pleasant memory, but, alas! sometimes a lamentation bordering upon despair, until the end of our days.“And may I not know something, however little, of the cause of this oppression upon you?” I asked of her, after we had walked some distance in silence. “You tell me that you desire to wipe out the past and commence afresh. The reason of this interests me,” I added.“I don’t know why you should interest yourself in me,” she murmured. “It is really unnecessary.”“No, no,” I exclaimed hastily. “Although our acquaintance has been of but brief duration, I am bold enough to believe that you count me among your friends. Is it not so?”“Certainly, or I would not have given you permission to walk with me here,” she answered with a sweetness which showed her unostentatious delicacy of character.“Then, as your friend, I beg of you to repose whatever confidence in me you may think fit, and to be assured that I will never abuse it.”“Confidences are unnecessary between us,” she responded. “I have to bear my grief alone.”“Your words sound strange, coming from one whom I had thought so merry and light-hearted,” I said.“Are you, then, ignorant of the faculty a woman has of concealing her sorrows behind an outward show of gaiety—that a woman always possesses two countenances, the face and the mask?”“You are scarcely complimentary to your own sex,” I answered with a smile. “Yet that is surely no reason why you should be thus wretched and downhearted.” Her manner puzzled me, for since the commencement of our conversation she had grown strangely melancholy—entirely unlike her own bright self. I tried to obtain from her some clue to the cause of her sadness, but in vain. My short acquaintance with her did not warrant me pressing upon her a subject which was palpably distasteful; nevertheless, it seemed to me more than strange that she should thus acknowledge to me her sorrow at a moment when any other woman would have practised coquetry.“I can only suffer in silence,” she responded when I asked her to tell me something of the cause of her unhappiness.“Excuse my depression this evening. I know that to you I must seem a hypochondriac, but I will promise you to wear the mask—if ever we meet again.”“Why do you speak so vaguely?” I inquired in quick apprehension. “I certainly hope that we shall meet again, many, many times. Your words would make it appear as though such meeting is improbable.”“I think it is,” she answered simply. “You are very kind to have borne with me like this,” she added, her manner quickly changing; “and if we do meet, I’ll try not to have another fit of melancholy.”“Yes, Miss Anson,” I said, halting in the path, “let us meet again. Remember that we have to-day commenced a friendship—a friendship which I trust will last always.”But she slowly shook her head, as though the heavy sadness of her heart still possessed her.“Friendship may exist between us, but frequent meetings are, I fear, impossible.”“Why? You told me only a moment ago that you were your own mistress,” I observed.“And so I am in most things,” she answered. “But as far as meeting you, we can only leave that to chance.”“Why?”“Please do not endeavour to force me to explanations,” she answered with firmness. “I merely tell you that frequent meetings with you are unlikely—that is all.”We had walked on, and were nearing the gate leading out into the High Street, Kensington.“In other words, then, you are not altogether pleased with my companionship?”“No, really,” she laughed sweetly. “I didn’t say that. You have no reason to jump at such a conclusion. I thank you very much indeed for your words of sympathy.”“And you have no desire to see me again?” I interrupted, in a tone of bitter disappointment.“If such were the case, ours would be a very extraordinary friendship, wouldn’t it?” and she lifted her eyes to mine with a kindly look.“Then I am to take it that my companionship on this walk has not been distasteful to you?” I asked anxiously.She inclined her head with dignified air, saying. “Certainly. I feel that this evening I have at least found a friend—a pleasant thought when one is comparatively friendless.”“And as your friend—your devoted friend—I ask to be permitted to see you sometimes,” I said earnestly, for, lingering at her side, I was very loth to part from her. “If I can ever be of any assistance, command me.”“You are very kind,” she answered, with a slight tremor in her voice. “I shall remember your words always.” Then, putting forth her well-gloved hand, as we stood upon the kerb of the High Street, she added, “It is getting late. We’ve taken such a long time across the Park that I must drive home;” and she made a gesture to a passing hansom.“Before we part,” I said, “I will give you a card, so that should you require any service of me you will know where to write;” and, as we stood beneath the street lamp, I drew out a card and, with a pencil I took from my vest-pocket, scribbled my address.In silence she watched, but just as I had finished she suddenly gripped my hand, uttering a loud cry of amazement.“What’s that you have there?” she demanded. “Let me see it!”Next instant—before, indeed, I could be aware of her intention—she had snatched the pencil from my grasp, and was examining it closely beneath the gaslight.“Ah!” she gasped, glaring at me in alarm. “It is—yes, it is his!”The small gold pencil which I had inadvertently used was the one I had taken from the pocket of the dead unknown on that fateful August night.

The figure before me was that of a woman, calm, sweet-faced, her countenance rendered piquant by its expression of surprise.

It was none other than Mabel Anson.

Dressed in a tight-fitting tailor-made gown of some dark cloth, and a neat toque, she looked dignified and altogether charming. The slight severity of attire became her well, for it showed her marvellous figure to perfection, while the dash of red in her hat gave the necessary touch of colour to complete a tasteful effect. Her countenance was concealed by the thinnest of gauze veils, and as she held forth her well-gloved hand with an expression of pleasure at the unexpected meeting, her bangles jingled musically.

“This is indeed a most pleasant surprise, Miss Anson,” I said, when I recovered speech, for so sudden had been our encounter that in the moment of my astonishment my tongue refused to utter a sound.

“And to me also,” she laughed.

“I’ve been wondering and wondering when we should meet again,” I blurted forth. “I’m so very glad to see you.”

For the first few moments after she had allowed her tiny hand to rest for an instant in mine we exchanged conventionalities, and then suddenly, noting a roll of music in her hand, I asked—

“Are you going home?”

“Yes, across the Park,” she laughed. “Mother forbids it, but I much prefer the Park to those stuffy omnibuses.”

“And you’ve been to your music, I suppose?” I inquired.

“Yes. I’ve not been well for the past few days, and have missed several lessons. Now, like a good pupil, I’m endeavouring to make them up, you know.” And she laughed merrily.

“How many times a week do you go to the Academy?” I asked, surprised that she should have gone there that day, after what the hall-porter had told me.

“Twice, as a general rule,” she remarked; “but just now I’m rather irregular.”

“And so you prefer to cross the Park rather than ride by omnibus?”

“Certainly. Mother doesn’t approve of girls riding on the tops of ’buses, and says it’s fast. Therefore I’d much rather walk, for at this hour half London seems to be going from Piccadilly Circus to Hammersmith. I go right across, past the Serpentine, through Kensington Gardens to the Broad Walk, and out by the small gate next thePalace Hotel,” she added, with a sweep of her gloved hand.

Her eyes were lovely. As she stood there in the fading sunlight she seemed the fairest vision I had ever seen. I stood spell-bound by her marvellous beauty.

“And may I not act as your escort on your walk to-day?” I asked.

“Certainly. I have no objection,” she answered with graceful dignity, therefore I turned and walked beside her, carrying her music.

We took the road, which leads straight away to the Magazine, and crosses the Serpentine beyond. There in the yellow glow of the October sunset I lounged at her side and drank my fill of her loveliness. Surely, I thought, there could be no more beautiful woman in all the world. The Colonel’s strange warning recurred to me, but I laughed it to scorn.

As we passed beneath the rustling trees the sun’s last rays lit up her beautiful face with a light that seemed ethereal and tipped her hair until there seemed a golden halo about her. I was no lovesick youth, be it remembered, but a man who had had a bitter experience of the world and its suffering. Yet at that hour I was fascinated by the grace of her superb carriage, the suppleness of her figure, the charm of her sweet smile, and the soft music of her voice as she chatted to me.

She told me of her love for music; and from the character of the pieces which formed her studies I knew that she must be a musician of a no mean order. The operatic melody which she had sung at the Colonel’s was, she declared, a mere trifle. We discussed the works of Rossini and Massent, of Wagner and Mendelssohn, and of Verdi, Puccini, Mascagni, Perosi, and such latter-day composers. I had always prided myself that I knew something of music, but her knowledge was far deeper than mine.

And so we gossiped on, crossing the Park and entering Kensington Gardens—those beautiful pleasure grounds that always seem so neglected by the majority of Londoners—while the sun sank and disappeared in its blood-red afterglow. She spoke of her life abroad, declaring that she loved London and was always pleased to return to its wild, turbulent life. She had spent some time in Paris, in Vienna, in Berlin, but no one was half as interesting, she declared, as London.

“But you are not a Londoner, are you?” I asked.

“No, not exactly,” she responded, “although I’ve lived here such a long time that I’ve become almost a Cockney. Are you a Londoner?”

“No,” I answered; “I’m a countryman, born and bred.”

“I heard the Colonel remark that other night that you had been afflicted by blindness for some time. Is that so?”

I responded in the affirmative.

“Terrible!” she ejaculated, glancing at me with those wonderful dark eyes of hers that seemed to hold me in fascination and look me through and through. “We who possess our eyesight cannot imagine the great disadvantages under which the blind are placed. How fortunate that you are cured!”

“Yes,” I explained. “The cure is little short of a miracle. The three greatest oculists in London all agreed that I was incurable, yet there one day came to me a man who said he could give me back my sight. I allowed him to experiment, and he was successful. From the day that I could see plainly he, curiously enough, disappeared.”

“How strange! Did he never come and see you afterwards?”

“No. He took no reward, but simply discontinued his visits. I do not even know his real name.”

“How extraordinary!” she observed, greatly interested. “I really believe that there is often more romance and mystery in real life than in books. Such a circumstance appears absolutely bewildering.”

“If to you, Miss Anson, then how much more to me! I, who had relinquished all hope of again looking upon the world and enjoying life, now find myself actually in possession of my vision and able to mix with my fellow-men. Place yourself for a moment in my position, and try to imagine my constant thankfulness.”

“You must feel that a new life is opened to you—that you have begun a fresh existence,” she observed with a true touch of sympathy in her sweet voice. Then she added, as if by afterthought. “How many of us would be glad to commence life afresh!”

The tone in which she uttered that sentence seemed incongruous. A few moments before she had been all brightness and gaiety, but in those words there vibrated a distinctly gloomy note.

“Surely you do not desire to commence your life again?” I said.

She sighed slightly.

“All of us have our burden of regrets,” she answered vaguely, raising her eyes for an instant to mine, and then lowering them.

We appeared in those moments to grow confidential. The crimson and orange was fast fading from the sky. It was growing dark beneath the shadow of the great elms, and already the line of street lamps out in Kensington Gore were twinkling through the foliage on our left. No one was in the vicinity, and we were walking very slowly, for, truth to tell, I desired to delay our parting until the very last moment. Of all the leafy spots in giant London, there is none so rural, so romantic, or so picturesque in summer as that portion of Kensington Gardens lying between Queen’s Gate and the Broad Walk. Save for the dull roar of distant traffic, one might easily fancy one’s self far in the country, a hundred miles from the sound of Bow Bells.

“But you are young, Miss Anson,” I observed philosophically, after a brief pause. “And if I may be permitted to say so, you have scarcely begun to live your life. Yet you actually wish to commence afresh!”

“Yes,” she responded briefly, “I do. Strange, is it not?”

“Is the past, then, so full of bitterness?” I asked, the Colonel’s strange warning recurring to me at the same moment.

“Its bitterness is combined with regrets,” she answered huskily, in a low voice.

“But you, young, bright, happy, and talented, who need not think of the trials of everyday life, should surely have no regrets so deep as to cause you this anxiety and despair,” I said, with a feeling of tenderness. “I am ten years older than you, therefore I may be permitted to speak like this, even though my words may sound presumptuous.”

“Continue,” she exclaimed. “I assure you that in my present position I appreciate any words of sympathy.”

“You have my deepest sympathy, Miss Anson; of that I assure you,” I declared, detecting in her words a desire to confide in me. “If at your age you already desire to recommence life, your past cannot have been a happy one.”

“It has been far from happy,” she answered in a strange, mechanical voice. “Sometimes I think that I am the unhappiest woman in all the world.”

“No, no,” I hastened to reassure her. “We all, when in trouble, imagine that our burden is greater than that of any of our fellows, and that while others escape, upon us alone fall the graver misfortunes.”

“I know, I know,” she said. “But a pleasant face and an air of carelessness ofttimes conceal the most sorrowful heart. It is so in my case.”

“And your sorrow causes you regret, and makes you wish to end your present life and commence afresh,” I said gravely. “To myself, ignorant of the circuit stances, it would seem as though you repented of some act or other.”

“What do you mean?” she gasped quickly, looking at me with a strange expression in her dark eyes. “I do not repent—I repent nothing!”

I saw that I had made a grave mistake. In my fond and short-sighted enthusiasm I had allowed myself to speak a little too confidentially, whereupon her natural dignity had instantly rebelled. At once I apologised, and in an instant she became appeased.

“I regret extremely that you should have such a weight of anxiety upon your heart,” I said. “If I can do anything to assist you, rely upon me.”

“You are extremely kind,” she answered in a gloomy tone; “but there is nothing—absolutely nothing.”

“I really can’t understand the reason why, with every happiness around you, you should find yourself thus plunged in this despair,” I remarked, puzzled. “Your home life is, I presume, happy enough?”

“Perfectly. I am entirely my own mistress, save in those things which might break through the ordinary conventionalities of life. I must admit to you that I am rather unconventional sometimes.”

I had wondered whether, like so many other girls, she had some imaginary grievance in her home; but now, finding that this was not so, it naturally occurred to me that the cause of her strange desire to live her life over again arose through the action of some faithless lover. How many hundreds of girls with wealth and beauty, perfectly happy in all else, are daily wearing out their lives because of the fickleness of the men to whom they have foolishly given their hearts! The tightly-laced corsets of every eight girls in ten conceals a heart filled by the regrets of a love long past; the men smile airily through the wreaths of their tobacco-smoke, while the women, in those little fits of melancholy which they love to indulge in, sit and reflect in silence upon the might-have-beens. Is there, I wonder, a single one of us, man or woman, who does not remember our first love, the deep immensity of that pair of eyes; the kindly sympathy of that face, which in our immature years we thought our ideal, and thereupon bowed the knee in worship? If such there be, then they are mere unrefined boors without a spark of romance in their nature, or poetry within their soul. Indeed, the regrets arising from a long-forgotten love ofttimes mingle pleasure with sadness, and through one’s whole life form cherished memories of those flushed days of a buoyant youth. To how many of those who read these lines will be recalled vivid recollections of a summer idyll of long ago; a day when, with the dainty or manly object of their affections, they wandered beside the blue sea, or on the banks of the tranquil, willow-lined river, or perhaps hand-in-hand strolled beneath the great old forest trees, where the sunlight glinted and touched the gnarled trunks with grey and gold! To each will come back the sweet recollection of a sunset hour now long, long ago, when they pressed the lips of the one they loved, and thought the rough world as rosy as that summer afterglow. The regret of those days always remains—often only a pleasant memory, but, alas! sometimes a lamentation bordering upon despair, until the end of our days.

“And may I not know something, however little, of the cause of this oppression upon you?” I asked of her, after we had walked some distance in silence. “You tell me that you desire to wipe out the past and commence afresh. The reason of this interests me,” I added.

“I don’t know why you should interest yourself in me,” she murmured. “It is really unnecessary.”

“No, no,” I exclaimed hastily. “Although our acquaintance has been of but brief duration, I am bold enough to believe that you count me among your friends. Is it not so?”

“Certainly, or I would not have given you permission to walk with me here,” she answered with a sweetness which showed her unostentatious delicacy of character.

“Then, as your friend, I beg of you to repose whatever confidence in me you may think fit, and to be assured that I will never abuse it.”

“Confidences are unnecessary between us,” she responded. “I have to bear my grief alone.”

“Your words sound strange, coming from one whom I had thought so merry and light-hearted,” I said.

“Are you, then, ignorant of the faculty a woman has of concealing her sorrows behind an outward show of gaiety—that a woman always possesses two countenances, the face and the mask?”

“You are scarcely complimentary to your own sex,” I answered with a smile. “Yet that is surely no reason why you should be thus wretched and downhearted.” Her manner puzzled me, for since the commencement of our conversation she had grown strangely melancholy—entirely unlike her own bright self. I tried to obtain from her some clue to the cause of her sadness, but in vain. My short acquaintance with her did not warrant me pressing upon her a subject which was palpably distasteful; nevertheless, it seemed to me more than strange that she should thus acknowledge to me her sorrow at a moment when any other woman would have practised coquetry.

“I can only suffer in silence,” she responded when I asked her to tell me something of the cause of her unhappiness.

“Excuse my depression this evening. I know that to you I must seem a hypochondriac, but I will promise you to wear the mask—if ever we meet again.”

“Why do you speak so vaguely?” I inquired in quick apprehension. “I certainly hope that we shall meet again, many, many times. Your words would make it appear as though such meeting is improbable.”

“I think it is,” she answered simply. “You are very kind to have borne with me like this,” she added, her manner quickly changing; “and if we do meet, I’ll try not to have another fit of melancholy.”

“Yes, Miss Anson,” I said, halting in the path, “let us meet again. Remember that we have to-day commenced a friendship—a friendship which I trust will last always.”

But she slowly shook her head, as though the heavy sadness of her heart still possessed her.

“Friendship may exist between us, but frequent meetings are, I fear, impossible.”

“Why? You told me only a moment ago that you were your own mistress,” I observed.

“And so I am in most things,” she answered. “But as far as meeting you, we can only leave that to chance.”

“Why?”

“Please do not endeavour to force me to explanations,” she answered with firmness. “I merely tell you that frequent meetings with you are unlikely—that is all.”

We had walked on, and were nearing the gate leading out into the High Street, Kensington.

“In other words, then, you are not altogether pleased with my companionship?”

“No, really,” she laughed sweetly. “I didn’t say that. You have no reason to jump at such a conclusion. I thank you very much indeed for your words of sympathy.”

“And you have no desire to see me again?” I interrupted, in a tone of bitter disappointment.

“If such were the case, ours would be a very extraordinary friendship, wouldn’t it?” and she lifted her eyes to mine with a kindly look.

“Then I am to take it that my companionship on this walk has not been distasteful to you?” I asked anxiously.

She inclined her head with dignified air, saying. “Certainly. I feel that this evening I have at least found a friend—a pleasant thought when one is comparatively friendless.”

“And as your friend—your devoted friend—I ask to be permitted to see you sometimes,” I said earnestly, for, lingering at her side, I was very loth to part from her. “If I can ever be of any assistance, command me.”

“You are very kind,” she answered, with a slight tremor in her voice. “I shall remember your words always.” Then, putting forth her well-gloved hand, as we stood upon the kerb of the High Street, she added, “It is getting late. We’ve taken such a long time across the Park that I must drive home;” and she made a gesture to a passing hansom.

“Before we part,” I said, “I will give you a card, so that should you require any service of me you will know where to write;” and, as we stood beneath the street lamp, I drew out a card and, with a pencil I took from my vest-pocket, scribbled my address.

In silence she watched, but just as I had finished she suddenly gripped my hand, uttering a loud cry of amazement.

“What’s that you have there?” she demanded. “Let me see it!”

Next instant—before, indeed, I could be aware of her intention—she had snatched the pencil from my grasp, and was examining it closely beneath the gaslight.

“Ah!” she gasped, glaring at me in alarm. “It is—yes, it is his!”

The small gold pencil which I had inadvertently used was the one I had taken from the pocket of the dead unknown on that fateful August night.

Chapter Thirteen.The Enchantment of a Face.The face of Mabel Anson, my new-found friend and idyll, had in that instant changed. Her countenance was pale as death, while the hand holding the small pencil trembled.“Whence did you obtain this?” she demanded in an awe-stricken tone, which showed plainly that she recognised it. She held her breath in expectancy.What could I reply? To explain the truth was impossible, for I had pledged my honour to Edna to preserve the secret. Besides, I had no wish to horrify her by the strange story of my midnight adventure. Hence a lie arose involuntarily to my lips.“I found it,” I stammered.“Found it? Where?”“I found it when groping about during the time I was blind, and I’ve carried it ever since, wondering whether one day I should discover its owner.”“It is extraordinary?” she gasped—“most extraordinary.”“You appear to recognise it,” I observed, much puzzled at her attitude. “If you can tell me to whom it belongs I will return it.”She hesitated, and with a quick effort regained her self-control.“I mean it possesses an extraordinary resemblance to one I have seen many times before—but I suppose there are lots of pencil-cases of the same shape,” she added with affected carelessness.“But there is a curious, unintelligible cypher engraved upon it,” I said. “Did you notice it?”“Yes. It is the engraving which makes me doubt that I know its owner. His initials were not those.”“You speak in the past tense,” I observed. “Why!”“Because—well, because we are no longer friends—if you desire to know the truth;” and she handed me back the object, which, with the dress-stud, formed the only clue I had to the identity of the unfortunate victim of the assassin.There was something in her manner which was to me the reverse of convincing. I felt absolutely certain that this unimportant object had, in reality, been identified by her, and that with some hidden motive she was now intentionally misleading me.“Then you do not believe that this really belonged to your friend?” I asked, holding it up to her gaze.“No,” she answered quickly, averting her face as though the sight of it were obnoxious. “I feel certain that it did not. Its resemblance is striking—that’s all.”“It would have been a remarkable coincidence if it really were the property of your friend,” I said.“Very remarkable,” she admitted, still regarding me strangely. “Yet the trite saying that ‘The world is small’ is nevertheless very true. When I first saw it I felt certain it belonged to a gentleman I knew, but on closer examination I find it is older, more battered, and bears initials which have evidently been engraved several years.”“Where did your friend lose his?” I inquired, reflecting upon the lameness of her story. The mere recognition of a lost pencil-case would never have affected her in the manner that sight of this one had if there were not some deeper meaning attached to it.“I have no idea. Indeed, I am not at all sure that it is not still in his possession.”“And how came you to be so well acquainted with its aspect?” I asked, in eagerness to ascertain the truth.She hesitated for a few moments. “Because,” she faltered—“because it was a present from me.”“To an admirer?”She did not answer, but even in that dim lamplight I detected the tell-tale flush mounting to her cheeks.Then, in order, apparently, to cover her confusion, she added—“I must really go. I shall be late for dinner, and my mother hates to wait for me. Good-bye.”Our hands clasped, our eyes met, and I saw in hers a look of deep mystery, as though she held me in suspicion. Her manner and her identification of that object extracted from the pocket of the dead man were very puzzling.“Good-bye,” I said. “I hope soon to have the pleasure of meeting you again. I have enjoyed this walk of ours immensely.”“When we meet—if ever we do,” she answered with a mischievous smile, “remember that I have promised to wear the mask. Good-bye.” And she twisted her skirts gracefully, entered the cab, and a moment later was driven off, leaving me alone on the kerb.I hesitated whether to return home by ’bus or Underground Railway, but, deciding on the latter, continued along the High Street to the station, and journeyed to the Temple by that sulphurous region of dirt and darkness known as the “Inner Circle.”The reader may readily imagine how filled with conflicting thoughts was my mind on that homeward journey. Although I adored Mabel Anson with a love beyond all bounds, and would on that evening have declared my passion for her had I dared, yet I could not disguise from myself that sight of the pencil-case I had taken from the dead unknown had wrought an instant and extraordinary change in her.She had identified it. Of that fact there was no doubt. Her lame explanation that it bore a resemblance to the one she had given to her friend was too palpably an afterthought. I was vexed that she should have thus attempted a deception. It was certainly true that one gold pencil-case is very like another, and that a Birmingham maker may turn out a thousand of similar pattern, yet the intricate cypher engraved on the one in question was sufficient by which to identify it. It was these very initials which had caused her to deny that it was really the one she had purchased and presented; yet I felt convinced that what she had told me was untrue, and that those very initials had been placed upon it by her order.Again, had she not spoken of its owner in the past tense? This, in itself, was a very suspicious circumstance, and led me to the belief that she was aware of his death. If he were dead, then certainly he would no longer be her friend.Her sudden and abject amazement at seeing the pencil in my hand; her exclamation of surprise; her eagerness to examine it; all were facts which showed plainly that she knew that it remained no longer in his possession, and was yet dumbfounded to find it in my hand. Had she not also regarded me with evident suspicion? Perhaps, having identified her present, she suspected me of foul play?The thought held me petrified. For aught I knew she might be well aware of that man’s tragic end, and the discovery of part of his property in my possession was to her evidence that I had committed murder.My position was certainly growing serious. I detected in the rather formal manner in which she took leave of me a disinclination to shake my hand. Perhaps she believed it to be the hand of the murderer. Indeed, my declaration that I had found that incriminating object was in itself sufficient to strengthen her suspicion if, as seemed quite probable, she was aware of her friend’s tragic end. Yet I had really found it. It was no lie. I had found it in his pocket, and taken it as a clue by which afterwards to identify him.Now, if it were true that the man who had been struck dead at my side was actually Mabel’s friend, then I was within measurable distance of elucidating the mystery of that fateful night and ascertaining the identity of the mysterious Edna, and also of that ruler of my destiny, who corresponded with me under the pseudonym of “Avel.”This thought caused me to revert to that hour when I had sat upon the seat in the Park, keeping a tryst with some person unknown. Seated in the corner of the railway-carriage I calmly reflected. More than a coincidence it seemed that at the moment my patience became exhausted, and I rose to leave the spot my mysterious correspondent had appointed for the meeting, I should have come face to face with the woman whose grace and beauty held me beneath their spell. For some purpose—what I knew not—I had been sent to that particular seat to wait. I had remained there in vain, smoking a dozen cigarettes, reading through my paper even to the advertisements, or impatiently watching every person who approached, yet the moment I rose I encountered the very person for whom I had for days past been in active search.Had Mabel’s presence there any connexion with the mysterious order which I had obeyed? Upon this point I was filled with indecision. First, what possible connecting link could there be between her natural movements and the letter from that unknown hand? As far as I could discern there was absolutely none, I tried to form theories, but failed. I knew that Mabel attended at the Royal Academy of Music, and what was more natural than that she should cross the Park on her way home? Her way did not lie along the path where I had kept such a watchful vigil, and had I not risen and passed towards Grosvenor Gate at that moment we should not have met. There, indeed, seemed no possible combination between the request I had received from my unknown correspondent and her presence there. In my wild imaginings I wondered whether she were actually the woman whom in my blindness I had known as Edna, but next instant flouted the idea.The voice, the touch, the hand, all were different. Again, her personal appearance was not at all that of the woman described by West, the cabman who had driven me home after my strange adventures.No; she could not be Edna.As the train roared through the stifling tunnels City-wards, I strove to arrive at some decision. Puzzled and perplexed at the various phases presented by the enigma which ever grew more and more complicated, I found any decision an extremely difficult matter. I am not a man given to forming theories upon insufficient evidence, nor jumping to immature conclusions, therefore I calmly and carefully considered each fact in its sequence as related in this narrative. The absence of motives in several instances prevented any logical deduction. Nevertheless, I could not somehow prevent a suspicion arising within me that the appointment made by my anonymous correspondent had some remote connexion with my meeting with the woman who had so suddenly come into my life—a mere suspicion, it is true, but the fact that no one had appeared to keep the appointment strengthened it considerably.Whenever I thought of Mabel, recollections of Channing’s strange admonition arose within me. Why had he uttered that warning ere I had been acquainted with her a few hours? To say the least, it was extraordinary. And more especially so as he refused to give any explanation of his reasons.The one dark spot in my life, now that I had recovered my sight, was the ever-present recollection of that midnight tragedy. Its remembrance held me appalled when I thought of it. And when I reflected upon my own culpability in not giving information to the police, and that in all probability this neglect of mine had allowed the assassin to escape scot free, I was beside myself with vexation and regret. My thoughts for ever tortured me, being rendered the more bitter by the reflection that I had placed myself in the power of one who had remained concealed, and whose identity was inviolable.As I declared in the opening of the narrative, it seems almost incredible that in these end-of-the-century-days a man could find himself in such a plight, surrounded by mysterious enemies, and held in bondage by one unknown and unrevealed. Laboriously I tried to unravel the tangled skein of events and so extricate myself, but, tired with the overtask, I found that the mystery grew only more inscrutable.The woman I loved—the woman to whom I had fondly hoped some day ere long to make the declaration of the secret of my heart—had discovered in my possession an object which might well be viewed as evidence of a foul and cowardly crime. I feared—indeed, I felt assured—that her sweet sympathy had, in an instant, been turned to hatred.I loved her. I adored her with all the strength of my being, and I knew that without her my life, in the future must only be an aimless blank. In the sweetest natures there can be no completeness and consistency without moral energy, and that Mabel possessed it was plainly shown. In her confidences with me as we traversed the Park and Kensington Gardens she had shown, with the most perfect artfulness, that she had that instinctive unconscious address of her sex which always renders a woman doubly charming. Persons who unite great sensibility and lively fancy possess unconsciously the power of placing themselves in the position of another and imagining rather than perceiving what is in their hearts. A few women possess this faculty, but men never. It is not inconsistent with extreme simplicity of character, and quite distinct from that kind of art which is the result of natural acuteness and habits of observation—quick to perceive the foibles of others, and as quick to turn them to its own purpose; which is always conscious of itself, and if united with strong intellect, seldom perceptible to others.In her chat with me she had no design formed or conclusion previously drawn, but her intuitive quickness of feeling, added to her imagination, caused her to half-confide in me her deep sorrow. Her compassionate disposition, her exceeding gentleness, which gave the prevailing tone to her character, her modesty, her tenderness, her grace, her almost ethereal refinement and delicacy, all showed a true poetic nature within, while her dark, fathomless eyes betrayed that energy of passion which gave her character its concentrated power.Was it any wonder, even though she might have been betrayed into a momentary tergiversation, that I bowed down and worshipped her? She was my ideal; her personal beauty and the tender sweetness of her character were alike perfect. Therefore my love for her was a passion—that headlong vehemence, that fluttering and hope, fear and transport, that giddy intoxication of heart and sense which belongs to the novelty of true love which we feel once, and but once, in our lives.Yet I was held perplexed and powerless by her unexpected and unacknowledged identification of that clue to the unknown dead.

The face of Mabel Anson, my new-found friend and idyll, had in that instant changed. Her countenance was pale as death, while the hand holding the small pencil trembled.

“Whence did you obtain this?” she demanded in an awe-stricken tone, which showed plainly that she recognised it. She held her breath in expectancy.

What could I reply? To explain the truth was impossible, for I had pledged my honour to Edna to preserve the secret. Besides, I had no wish to horrify her by the strange story of my midnight adventure. Hence a lie arose involuntarily to my lips.

“I found it,” I stammered.

“Found it? Where?”

“I found it when groping about during the time I was blind, and I’ve carried it ever since, wondering whether one day I should discover its owner.”

“It is extraordinary?” she gasped—“most extraordinary.”

“You appear to recognise it,” I observed, much puzzled at her attitude. “If you can tell me to whom it belongs I will return it.”

She hesitated, and with a quick effort regained her self-control.

“I mean it possesses an extraordinary resemblance to one I have seen many times before—but I suppose there are lots of pencil-cases of the same shape,” she added with affected carelessness.

“But there is a curious, unintelligible cypher engraved upon it,” I said. “Did you notice it?”

“Yes. It is the engraving which makes me doubt that I know its owner. His initials were not those.”

“You speak in the past tense,” I observed. “Why!”

“Because—well, because we are no longer friends—if you desire to know the truth;” and she handed me back the object, which, with the dress-stud, formed the only clue I had to the identity of the unfortunate victim of the assassin.

There was something in her manner which was to me the reverse of convincing. I felt absolutely certain that this unimportant object had, in reality, been identified by her, and that with some hidden motive she was now intentionally misleading me.

“Then you do not believe that this really belonged to your friend?” I asked, holding it up to her gaze.

“No,” she answered quickly, averting her face as though the sight of it were obnoxious. “I feel certain that it did not. Its resemblance is striking—that’s all.”

“It would have been a remarkable coincidence if it really were the property of your friend,” I said.

“Very remarkable,” she admitted, still regarding me strangely. “Yet the trite saying that ‘The world is small’ is nevertheless very true. When I first saw it I felt certain it belonged to a gentleman I knew, but on closer examination I find it is older, more battered, and bears initials which have evidently been engraved several years.”

“Where did your friend lose his?” I inquired, reflecting upon the lameness of her story. The mere recognition of a lost pencil-case would never have affected her in the manner that sight of this one had if there were not some deeper meaning attached to it.

“I have no idea. Indeed, I am not at all sure that it is not still in his possession.”

“And how came you to be so well acquainted with its aspect?” I asked, in eagerness to ascertain the truth.

She hesitated for a few moments. “Because,” she faltered—“because it was a present from me.”

“To an admirer?”

She did not answer, but even in that dim lamplight I detected the tell-tale flush mounting to her cheeks.

Then, in order, apparently, to cover her confusion, she added—

“I must really go. I shall be late for dinner, and my mother hates to wait for me. Good-bye.”

Our hands clasped, our eyes met, and I saw in hers a look of deep mystery, as though she held me in suspicion. Her manner and her identification of that object extracted from the pocket of the dead man were very puzzling.

“Good-bye,” I said. “I hope soon to have the pleasure of meeting you again. I have enjoyed this walk of ours immensely.”

“When we meet—if ever we do,” she answered with a mischievous smile, “remember that I have promised to wear the mask. Good-bye.” And she twisted her skirts gracefully, entered the cab, and a moment later was driven off, leaving me alone on the kerb.

I hesitated whether to return home by ’bus or Underground Railway, but, deciding on the latter, continued along the High Street to the station, and journeyed to the Temple by that sulphurous region of dirt and darkness known as the “Inner Circle.”

The reader may readily imagine how filled with conflicting thoughts was my mind on that homeward journey. Although I adored Mabel Anson with a love beyond all bounds, and would on that evening have declared my passion for her had I dared, yet I could not disguise from myself that sight of the pencil-case I had taken from the dead unknown had wrought an instant and extraordinary change in her.

She had identified it. Of that fact there was no doubt. Her lame explanation that it bore a resemblance to the one she had given to her friend was too palpably an afterthought. I was vexed that she should have thus attempted a deception. It was certainly true that one gold pencil-case is very like another, and that a Birmingham maker may turn out a thousand of similar pattern, yet the intricate cypher engraved on the one in question was sufficient by which to identify it. It was these very initials which had caused her to deny that it was really the one she had purchased and presented; yet I felt convinced that what she had told me was untrue, and that those very initials had been placed upon it by her order.

Again, had she not spoken of its owner in the past tense? This, in itself, was a very suspicious circumstance, and led me to the belief that she was aware of his death. If he were dead, then certainly he would no longer be her friend.

Her sudden and abject amazement at seeing the pencil in my hand; her exclamation of surprise; her eagerness to examine it; all were facts which showed plainly that she knew that it remained no longer in his possession, and was yet dumbfounded to find it in my hand. Had she not also regarded me with evident suspicion? Perhaps, having identified her present, she suspected me of foul play?

The thought held me petrified. For aught I knew she might be well aware of that man’s tragic end, and the discovery of part of his property in my possession was to her evidence that I had committed murder.

My position was certainly growing serious. I detected in the rather formal manner in which she took leave of me a disinclination to shake my hand. Perhaps she believed it to be the hand of the murderer. Indeed, my declaration that I had found that incriminating object was in itself sufficient to strengthen her suspicion if, as seemed quite probable, she was aware of her friend’s tragic end. Yet I had really found it. It was no lie. I had found it in his pocket, and taken it as a clue by which afterwards to identify him.

Now, if it were true that the man who had been struck dead at my side was actually Mabel’s friend, then I was within measurable distance of elucidating the mystery of that fateful night and ascertaining the identity of the mysterious Edna, and also of that ruler of my destiny, who corresponded with me under the pseudonym of “Avel.”

This thought caused me to revert to that hour when I had sat upon the seat in the Park, keeping a tryst with some person unknown. Seated in the corner of the railway-carriage I calmly reflected. More than a coincidence it seemed that at the moment my patience became exhausted, and I rose to leave the spot my mysterious correspondent had appointed for the meeting, I should have come face to face with the woman whose grace and beauty held me beneath their spell. For some purpose—what I knew not—I had been sent to that particular seat to wait. I had remained there in vain, smoking a dozen cigarettes, reading through my paper even to the advertisements, or impatiently watching every person who approached, yet the moment I rose I encountered the very person for whom I had for days past been in active search.

Had Mabel’s presence there any connexion with the mysterious order which I had obeyed? Upon this point I was filled with indecision. First, what possible connecting link could there be between her natural movements and the letter from that unknown hand? As far as I could discern there was absolutely none, I tried to form theories, but failed. I knew that Mabel attended at the Royal Academy of Music, and what was more natural than that she should cross the Park on her way home? Her way did not lie along the path where I had kept such a watchful vigil, and had I not risen and passed towards Grosvenor Gate at that moment we should not have met. There, indeed, seemed no possible combination between the request I had received from my unknown correspondent and her presence there. In my wild imaginings I wondered whether she were actually the woman whom in my blindness I had known as Edna, but next instant flouted the idea.

The voice, the touch, the hand, all were different. Again, her personal appearance was not at all that of the woman described by West, the cabman who had driven me home after my strange adventures.

No; she could not be Edna.

As the train roared through the stifling tunnels City-wards, I strove to arrive at some decision. Puzzled and perplexed at the various phases presented by the enigma which ever grew more and more complicated, I found any decision an extremely difficult matter. I am not a man given to forming theories upon insufficient evidence, nor jumping to immature conclusions, therefore I calmly and carefully considered each fact in its sequence as related in this narrative. The absence of motives in several instances prevented any logical deduction. Nevertheless, I could not somehow prevent a suspicion arising within me that the appointment made by my anonymous correspondent had some remote connexion with my meeting with the woman who had so suddenly come into my life—a mere suspicion, it is true, but the fact that no one had appeared to keep the appointment strengthened it considerably.

Whenever I thought of Mabel, recollections of Channing’s strange admonition arose within me. Why had he uttered that warning ere I had been acquainted with her a few hours? To say the least, it was extraordinary. And more especially so as he refused to give any explanation of his reasons.

The one dark spot in my life, now that I had recovered my sight, was the ever-present recollection of that midnight tragedy. Its remembrance held me appalled when I thought of it. And when I reflected upon my own culpability in not giving information to the police, and that in all probability this neglect of mine had allowed the assassin to escape scot free, I was beside myself with vexation and regret. My thoughts for ever tortured me, being rendered the more bitter by the reflection that I had placed myself in the power of one who had remained concealed, and whose identity was inviolable.

As I declared in the opening of the narrative, it seems almost incredible that in these end-of-the-century-days a man could find himself in such a plight, surrounded by mysterious enemies, and held in bondage by one unknown and unrevealed. Laboriously I tried to unravel the tangled skein of events and so extricate myself, but, tired with the overtask, I found that the mystery grew only more inscrutable.

The woman I loved—the woman to whom I had fondly hoped some day ere long to make the declaration of the secret of my heart—had discovered in my possession an object which might well be viewed as evidence of a foul and cowardly crime. I feared—indeed, I felt assured—that her sweet sympathy had, in an instant, been turned to hatred.

I loved her. I adored her with all the strength of my being, and I knew that without her my life, in the future must only be an aimless blank. In the sweetest natures there can be no completeness and consistency without moral energy, and that Mabel possessed it was plainly shown. In her confidences with me as we traversed the Park and Kensington Gardens she had shown, with the most perfect artfulness, that she had that instinctive unconscious address of her sex which always renders a woman doubly charming. Persons who unite great sensibility and lively fancy possess unconsciously the power of placing themselves in the position of another and imagining rather than perceiving what is in their hearts. A few women possess this faculty, but men never. It is not inconsistent with extreme simplicity of character, and quite distinct from that kind of art which is the result of natural acuteness and habits of observation—quick to perceive the foibles of others, and as quick to turn them to its own purpose; which is always conscious of itself, and if united with strong intellect, seldom perceptible to others.

In her chat with me she had no design formed or conclusion previously drawn, but her intuitive quickness of feeling, added to her imagination, caused her to half-confide in me her deep sorrow. Her compassionate disposition, her exceeding gentleness, which gave the prevailing tone to her character, her modesty, her tenderness, her grace, her almost ethereal refinement and delicacy, all showed a true poetic nature within, while her dark, fathomless eyes betrayed that energy of passion which gave her character its concentrated power.

Was it any wonder, even though she might have been betrayed into a momentary tergiversation, that I bowed down and worshipped her? She was my ideal; her personal beauty and the tender sweetness of her character were alike perfect. Therefore my love for her was a passion—that headlong vehemence, that fluttering and hope, fear and transport, that giddy intoxication of heart and sense which belongs to the novelty of true love which we feel once, and but once, in our lives.

Yet I was held perplexed and powerless by her unexpected and unacknowledged identification of that clue to the unknown dead.

Chapter Fourteen.A Revelation.Although many days passed, no word of apology came from my mysterious correspondent for not having kept the appointment. I watched every post for nearly a fortnight, and as I received no explanation, my suspicion regarding Mabel’s connexion with the strange affair became, of course, strengthened.With heart-sinking I had taken leave of her on the kerb in Kensington High Street on that well-remembered evening, feeling that the likelihood of our frequent meeting was very remote, especially now that she apparently held me in suspicion. In this case, however, I was mistaken, for within a week we met again quite accidentally in Bond Street, and, finding her disposed to accept my companionship, I accompanied her shopping, and spent an extremely pleasant afternoon. Her mother was rather unwell, she explained, and that accounted for her being alone.She was dressed entirely in black, but with a quiet elegance that was surprising. I had never known before that day how smart andchica woman could appear in a gown of almost funereal aspect. Her manner towards me retained nothing of its previous suspicion; she was bright and merry, without that cloud of unhappiness that had so strangely overshadowed her on the last occasion we had been together. She possessed a clever wit, and gossiped and joked amusingly as we went from shop to shop, ordering fruit for dessert, and flowers for table-decoration. That her mother was wealthy appeared certain from the extravagant prices which she gave for fruits out of season and choice hothouse flowers. She bought the best she could procure, and seemed utterly regardless of expense.I remarked how dear were some grapes which she had ordered, but she only smiled and gave her shoulders a little shrug.This recklessness was not done to impress me, for I was quick to detect that the shopkeepers knew her as a good customer, and brought forward their most expensive wares as a matter of course.Although at first she declined my invitation, as though she considered it a breach of theconvenances, I at length persuaded her to take some tea with me at Blanchard’s, and we continued our gossip as we sat together at one of the little tables surrounded by other ladies out shopping with their male encumbrances.I had, rather unwisely, perhaps, passed a critical remark regarding a lady who had entered in an unusually striking toilette, in which she looked very hot and extremely uncomfortable, and laughing at what I had said, she replied—“You are certainly right. We women always overweigh ourselves in our garments, to say nothing of other and more fatiguing things. Half of life’s little worries accrue from our clothes. From tight collar to tight shoe, and not forgetting a needlessly befeathered hat, we take unto ourselves burdens that we should be much happier without.”“I agree entirely,” I said, smiling at her philosophy. “Some blatant crank bent on self-advertisement might do worse than found an Anti-ornamental Dress League. Just think how much of life’s trials would at once slip off a man if he wore neither collar nor tie—especially the dress-tie!”“And off a woman, if she wore neither belt, gloves, nor neck arrangement!”“Exactly. It would be actually making us a present for life of nearly an hour a day. That would be seven hours a week, or nearly a fortnight a year,” I said. “It’s worth consideration.”“Do you remember the derision heaped upon that time-saving arrangement of our ancestors, the elastic-side boot?” she observed, with a merry smile. “But just fancy the trouble they must have saved in lacing and buttoning! Sewing on shoe-buttons ought always to be done by criminals condemned to hard labour. Button-sewing tries the conscientiousness and thoroughness of the work more than anything else, and I’m certain oakum-picking can’t be worse. It also tries the quality of the thread more than anything else; and as to cottons, well, it treats them as Samson did the withs.”The carriage met her outside the Stores in the Haymarket at five o’clock, and before she took leave of me she mischievously asked—“Well, and how do you find me when I wear my mask?”“Charming,” I responded with enthusiasm. “Mask or no mask, you are always the same to me, the most charming friend I have ever had.”“No, no,” she laughed. “It isn’t good form to flatter. Good-bye.”And she stretched forth her small hand, which I pressed warmly, with deep regret at parting. A moment later the footman in his brown livery assisted her into the carriage. Then she smiled merrily, and bowed as I raised my hat, and she was borne away westward in the stream of fine equipages, hers the smartest of them all.A week later, having seen nothing further of her, I wrote and received a prompt response. Then in the happy autumn days that followed we contrived to meet often, and on each occasion I grew deeper and deeper in love with her. Since that evening when we had stood together beneath the street lamp in Kensington, she had made no mention of the pencil-case or of its owner. Indeed, it seemed that her sudden identification of it had betrayed her into acknowledging that its owner had been her lover, and that now she was trying to do all she could to remove any suspicion from my mind.Nevertheless, the remembrance of that crime and of all the events of that midnight adventure was ever within my mind, and I had long ago determined to make its elucidation the chief object of my life. I had placed myself beneath the thrall of some person unknown, and meant to extricate myself and become again a free agent at all costs.On several occasions I had seen the cabman West on the rank at Hyde Park Corner, but although he had constantly kept his eyes open in search of Edna, his efforts had all been in vain. I had seen also the old cab-driver who bore the nickname “Doughy,” but it turned out that it had not been his cab which my mysterious protectress had taken after parting from me. One point, however, I settled satisfactorily. On one of our walks together I contrived that, the man West should see Mabel, but he afterwards declared that the woman of whom he was in search did not in the least resemble her. Therefore, it was certain that Mabel and Edna were not, as I had once vaguely suspected, one and the same person.Sometimes I would meet my idol after her studies at the Royal Academy of Music, and accompany her across the park; at others we would stroll together in the unfrequented part of Kensington Gardens, or I would walk with her shopping and carry her parcels, all our meetings being, of course, clandestine ones.One morning in the middle of November I was overfed at receiving an invitation from Mrs Anson to dine at The Boltons, and a couple of days later the sum of my happiness was rendered complete by finding myself seated beside Mabel in her own home.The house possessed an air of magnificence and luxury which I scarcely expected. It was furnished with great elegance and taste, while the servants were of an even more superior character than the house itself. Among the homes of my many friends in the West End this was certainly the most luxurious, for money seemed to have been literally squandered upon its appointments, and yet withal there was nothing whatever garish nor any trace of a plebeian taste. There was a combined richness and quietness about the whole place which impressed one with an air of severity, while the footman who ushered me in was tall, almost a giant in stature, and solemn as a funeral mute.Mrs Anson rose and greeted me pleasantly, while Mabel, in a pretty gown of coral-pink, also shook my hand and raised her fine dark eyes to mine with a glance of pleasure and triumph. It was, no doubt, due to her that I had been bidden there as guest. A red-headed, ugly-faced man named Hickman, and a thin, angular, irritating woman, introduced to me as Miss Wells, were my only fellow-guests. The man regarded me with some suspicion as I entered, and from the first I took a violent dislike to him. It may have been his forbidding personal appearance which caused my distrust. Now that I reflect, I think it was. His face was bloated and deeply furrowed, his eyes large, his lips thick and flabby, his reddish beard was ill-trimmed and scanty. He was thick-necked; his face was further disfigured by a curious dark-blue scar upon the left jaw, and I could not help remarking within myself, that if some faces resembled those of animals, his was closely allied to that of a savage bulldog. Indeed, I had never before seen such an eminently ugly face as his.Yet he spoke with the air and perfect manner of a gentleman. He bowed with refined dignity as I was introduced, although I thought his smile seemed supercilious, while I was almost certain that he exchanged a curious, contemptuous look with Mabel, who stood behind me.Was he aware of our little exchanges of confidences? Had he secretly watched us in our walks along the leafy byways of Kensington Gardens, and detected that I loved her? It seemed very much as though he had, and that he had endeavoured to disparage me in her eyes.At Mrs Anson’s invitation, I took Mabel in to dinner, and sat next her, while opposite us sat the dog-faced man with the irritating spinster. The latter was a fitting companion for him, bony of countenance, her back straight as a board, her age uncertain, and her voice loud, high-pitched, and rasping. She wore a number of bangles on her left wrist; one of them had pigs and elephants hanging on it, with hearts, crosses, bells, and framed and glazed shamrock leaves mixed in. That would not have mattered much had she not been eating, but as dinner progressed the room grew a trifle warm, and she unfortunately had a fan as well as those distressing bangles, which fan she rhythmically waved to and fro, playing the orchestra softly when fanning herself, or loudly as she plied her knife and fork “click-clack, jingle-jingle, tinkle-tinkle, click-clack!” until the eternal music of those pigs, elephants, crosses, hearts and bells prevented anything beyond a jerky conversation. She turned and twisted and toyed with hermenu, tinkling and jingling the whole time like a coral consoler or an infant’s rattle. Little wonder, I thought, that she remained a spinster. With such an irritating person to head his household, the unfortunate husband would be a candidate for Colney Hatch within a month. Yet she was evidently a very welcome guest at Mrs Anson’s table, for my hostess addressed her as “dear,” and seemed to consider whatever positive opinion she expressed as entirely beyond dispute.I liked Mrs Anson. Although of that extremely frigid type of mother, very formal and unbending, observing all the rules of society to the letter, and practically making her life a burden by the conventionalities, she possessed, nevertheless, a warm-hearted affection for her child, and seemed constantly solicitous of her welfare. She spoke with the very faintest accent with her “r’s,” and I had, on the first evening we had met at the colonel’s, wondered whether she were of Scotch, or perhaps foreign, extraction. The general conversation in the interval of the Irritating Woman’s orchestra turned upon foreign travel, and incidentally, in answer to an ingenious question I put to her, she told me that her father had been German, but that she had nearly all her life lived in England.The Irritating Woman spoke of going to the Riviera in December, whereupon Mabel remarked—“I hope mother will go too. I’m trying to persuade her. London is so dull and miserable in winter compared with Cannes or Nice.”“You know the Riviera well, I suppose?” I inquired of her.“Oh, very well,” she responded. “Mother and I have spent four winters in the south. There’s no place in Europe in winter like the Côte d’Azur—as the French call it.”“I much prefer the Italian Riviera,” chimed Miss Wells’s high-pitched voice. She made it a point of honour to differ with everybody. “At Bordighera, Ospedaletti, San Remo, and Alassio you have much better air, the same warmth, and at about half the price. The hotels in Nice and Cannes are simply ruinous.” Then, turning to Mrs Anson, she added, “You know, dear, what you said last year.”“We go to the Grand, at Nice, always,” answered Mrs Anson. “It is dear, certainly, but not exaggeratedly so in comparison with the other large hotels.”“There seems of late to have been a gradual rise in prices all along the Riviera,” remarked Hickman. “I’ve experienced it personally. Ten or twelve years ago lived in Nice for the season for about half what it costs me now.”“That exactly bears out my argument,” exclaimed the Irritating Woman, in triumph. “The fact is that the French Riviera has become far too dear, and English people are, fortunately for themselves, beginning to see that by continuing their journey an extra twenty miles beyond Nice they can obtain just as good accommodation, live better, breathe purer air, and not be eternally worried by those gaudy tinsel-shows called Carnivals, or insane attempts at hilarity miscalled Battles of Flowers.”“Oh, come, Miss Wells,” protested Mabel, “surely you won’t condemn the Battles of Flowers at Nice! Why, they’re acknowledged to be amongst the most picturesque spectacles in the world!”“I consider, my dear, that they are mere rubbishy ruses on the part of the Niçois to cause people to buy their flowers and throw them into the roadway. It’s only a trick to improve their trade.”We all laughed.“And the Carnival?” inquired Hickman, much amused.“Carnival!” she snorted. “A disgraceful exhibition of a town’s lawlessness. A miserable pageant got up merely to attract the unsuspecting foreigner into the web spread for him by extortionate hotel-keepers. All the so-called fun is performed by paid mountebanks; the cars are not only inartistic, but there is always something extremely offensive in their character, while the orgies which take place at the masked balls at the Casino are absolutely disgraceful. The whole thing is artificial, and deserves no support at all from winter visitors.”Mrs Anson, for once, did not agree with this sweeping condemnation, while Mabel declared that she always enjoyed the fun of the battles of flowers and paper confetti, although she admitted that she had never had the courage to go out on those days when the pellets of lime, or “harp confetti,” are permitted. Both Hickman and myself supported Mabel in defence of the annual fêtes at Nice as being unique in all the world.But the Irritating Woman was not to be convinced that her opinions were either ill-formed or in the least distorted. She had never been present at a Carnival ball, she admitted, but it had been described to her by two estimable ladies who had, and that was, for her, sufficient. They were a pair of pious souls, and would, of course, never exaggerate to the length of a lie.Dinner over, the ladies retired, and Hickman and myself were left to smoke and gossip. He was certainly a very ugly man, and at times asserted an overbearing superiority in conversation; but having watched him very closely, I at length arrived at the conclusion that this was his natural manner, and was not intended to be offensive. Indeed, ever since that first moment when I had entered and been introduced, he had shown himself to be very pleasant and affable towards me.“Poor Miss Wells!” he laughed, after the door had closed. “She’s so infernally positive about everything. It would be as good as an entertainment to induce her to expound her views upon religious matters.”“Any argument seems utterly useless,” I remarked.“Do you know Nice well?” he inquired, after reflecting a moment.“I’ve spent three winters there,” I answered.“And at Monte Carlo, I suppose?”“Yes, of course,” I responded, laughing. “I suppose scarcely any man goes to Nice without going over to Monty and risking a few louis.”“Were you lucky?”“So, so. One season I won five thousand francs. In fact, I’ve never lost on the whole season. I’ve always left the Riviera with some of the bank’s money.”“Then you can heartily congratulate yourself,” he said, “I’m the reverse. I generally lose. Do you believe in any system at roulette?”“No; they are all frauds,” I answered promptly. “Except one,” he interposed. “There’s one based on the law of averages, which must turn up in your favour if you’re only patient enough. The reason why it is so difficult is because it’s such a long and tedious affair.”“Explain it,” I urged, for a new system that was infallible was, to me, of greatest interest. I had, in the days before my blindness, made a study of the chances at roulette, and had played carefully upon principles which had, to me, appeared most natural. The result had been that with care I had won—not much, it was true—but it was better than leaving one’s money to swell the company’s dividends.“The system,” he said, tossing off his glass of curaçoa at one gulp, “is not at all a complicated one. If you study the permanences of any table—you can get them from theGazette Rose—you’ll find that each day the largest number of times either colour comes up in succession is nine. Now, all you have to do is to go to a table at the opening of the play, and taking one colour, red or black it makes no difference, stake upon it, and allow your money to accumulate until it is swept away. If the colour you stake upon comes up eight times in succession, and you have originally staked twenty francs, your gains lying on the table will amount to two thousand five hundred and sixty francs. Even then, don’t touch it. The colour must, in the law of averages, come up nine times in succession each day, taking the week through. If it comes up, you’ll win five thousand and twenty francs for the louis you staked, and then at once leave the table, for it will not come up nine times again that day. Of course, this may occur almost at the opening of the play, or not until the table is near closing, therefore it requires great patience and constant attendance. To-day it may not come up nine times, but it will probably come up nine times on two occasions to-morrow, and so the average always rights itself.”His theory was certainly a novel one, and impressed me. There might, I thought, be something in it. He had never had patience to try it, he admitted, but he had gone through a whole year’s “permanences,” and found that only on three or four occasions had it failed.For half an hour or so he sat lucidly explaining the results of his studies of the game with the air of a practised gambler. In these I became at once interested—as every man is who believes he has found the secret of how to get the right side of the bank; but we were at length compelled to put down our cigars, and he led the way into the drawing-room, where the ladies awaited us.The room was a large, handsome one, elegantly furnished, and lit by two great lamps, which shed a soft, subdued light from beneath their huge shades of silk and lace. Mabel was sitting at the open grand piano, the shaded candlelight causing the beautiful diamond star in the coils of her dark-brown hair to flash with a dazzling iridescence, and as I entered she turned and gave me a sweet smile of welcome.A second time I glanced around that spacious apartment, then next instant stood breathless—transfixed.I could not believe my own eyes. It seemed absolutely incredible. Yet the truth was beyond all doubt.In the disposition of the furniture, and in the general appointments of that handsome salon, the home of the woman I so dearly loved, I recognised the very room which I had once explored with my keen sense of touch—the room in which had been committed that ghastly, mysterious, midnight crime!

Although many days passed, no word of apology came from my mysterious correspondent for not having kept the appointment. I watched every post for nearly a fortnight, and as I received no explanation, my suspicion regarding Mabel’s connexion with the strange affair became, of course, strengthened.

With heart-sinking I had taken leave of her on the kerb in Kensington High Street on that well-remembered evening, feeling that the likelihood of our frequent meeting was very remote, especially now that she apparently held me in suspicion. In this case, however, I was mistaken, for within a week we met again quite accidentally in Bond Street, and, finding her disposed to accept my companionship, I accompanied her shopping, and spent an extremely pleasant afternoon. Her mother was rather unwell, she explained, and that accounted for her being alone.

She was dressed entirely in black, but with a quiet elegance that was surprising. I had never known before that day how smart andchica woman could appear in a gown of almost funereal aspect. Her manner towards me retained nothing of its previous suspicion; she was bright and merry, without that cloud of unhappiness that had so strangely overshadowed her on the last occasion we had been together. She possessed a clever wit, and gossiped and joked amusingly as we went from shop to shop, ordering fruit for dessert, and flowers for table-decoration. That her mother was wealthy appeared certain from the extravagant prices which she gave for fruits out of season and choice hothouse flowers. She bought the best she could procure, and seemed utterly regardless of expense.

I remarked how dear were some grapes which she had ordered, but she only smiled and gave her shoulders a little shrug.

This recklessness was not done to impress me, for I was quick to detect that the shopkeepers knew her as a good customer, and brought forward their most expensive wares as a matter of course.

Although at first she declined my invitation, as though she considered it a breach of theconvenances, I at length persuaded her to take some tea with me at Blanchard’s, and we continued our gossip as we sat together at one of the little tables surrounded by other ladies out shopping with their male encumbrances.

I had, rather unwisely, perhaps, passed a critical remark regarding a lady who had entered in an unusually striking toilette, in which she looked very hot and extremely uncomfortable, and laughing at what I had said, she replied—

“You are certainly right. We women always overweigh ourselves in our garments, to say nothing of other and more fatiguing things. Half of life’s little worries accrue from our clothes. From tight collar to tight shoe, and not forgetting a needlessly befeathered hat, we take unto ourselves burdens that we should be much happier without.”

“I agree entirely,” I said, smiling at her philosophy. “Some blatant crank bent on self-advertisement might do worse than found an Anti-ornamental Dress League. Just think how much of life’s trials would at once slip off a man if he wore neither collar nor tie—especially the dress-tie!”

“And off a woman, if she wore neither belt, gloves, nor neck arrangement!”

“Exactly. It would be actually making us a present for life of nearly an hour a day. That would be seven hours a week, or nearly a fortnight a year,” I said. “It’s worth consideration.”

“Do you remember the derision heaped upon that time-saving arrangement of our ancestors, the elastic-side boot?” she observed, with a merry smile. “But just fancy the trouble they must have saved in lacing and buttoning! Sewing on shoe-buttons ought always to be done by criminals condemned to hard labour. Button-sewing tries the conscientiousness and thoroughness of the work more than anything else, and I’m certain oakum-picking can’t be worse. It also tries the quality of the thread more than anything else; and as to cottons, well, it treats them as Samson did the withs.”

The carriage met her outside the Stores in the Haymarket at five o’clock, and before she took leave of me she mischievously asked—

“Well, and how do you find me when I wear my mask?”

“Charming,” I responded with enthusiasm. “Mask or no mask, you are always the same to me, the most charming friend I have ever had.”

“No, no,” she laughed. “It isn’t good form to flatter. Good-bye.”

And she stretched forth her small hand, which I pressed warmly, with deep regret at parting. A moment later the footman in his brown livery assisted her into the carriage. Then she smiled merrily, and bowed as I raised my hat, and she was borne away westward in the stream of fine equipages, hers the smartest of them all.

A week later, having seen nothing further of her, I wrote and received a prompt response. Then in the happy autumn days that followed we contrived to meet often, and on each occasion I grew deeper and deeper in love with her. Since that evening when we had stood together beneath the street lamp in Kensington, she had made no mention of the pencil-case or of its owner. Indeed, it seemed that her sudden identification of it had betrayed her into acknowledging that its owner had been her lover, and that now she was trying to do all she could to remove any suspicion from my mind.

Nevertheless, the remembrance of that crime and of all the events of that midnight adventure was ever within my mind, and I had long ago determined to make its elucidation the chief object of my life. I had placed myself beneath the thrall of some person unknown, and meant to extricate myself and become again a free agent at all costs.

On several occasions I had seen the cabman West on the rank at Hyde Park Corner, but although he had constantly kept his eyes open in search of Edna, his efforts had all been in vain. I had seen also the old cab-driver who bore the nickname “Doughy,” but it turned out that it had not been his cab which my mysterious protectress had taken after parting from me. One point, however, I settled satisfactorily. On one of our walks together I contrived that, the man West should see Mabel, but he afterwards declared that the woman of whom he was in search did not in the least resemble her. Therefore, it was certain that Mabel and Edna were not, as I had once vaguely suspected, one and the same person.

Sometimes I would meet my idol after her studies at the Royal Academy of Music, and accompany her across the park; at others we would stroll together in the unfrequented part of Kensington Gardens, or I would walk with her shopping and carry her parcels, all our meetings being, of course, clandestine ones.

One morning in the middle of November I was overfed at receiving an invitation from Mrs Anson to dine at The Boltons, and a couple of days later the sum of my happiness was rendered complete by finding myself seated beside Mabel in her own home.

The house possessed an air of magnificence and luxury which I scarcely expected. It was furnished with great elegance and taste, while the servants were of an even more superior character than the house itself. Among the homes of my many friends in the West End this was certainly the most luxurious, for money seemed to have been literally squandered upon its appointments, and yet withal there was nothing whatever garish nor any trace of a plebeian taste. There was a combined richness and quietness about the whole place which impressed one with an air of severity, while the footman who ushered me in was tall, almost a giant in stature, and solemn as a funeral mute.

Mrs Anson rose and greeted me pleasantly, while Mabel, in a pretty gown of coral-pink, also shook my hand and raised her fine dark eyes to mine with a glance of pleasure and triumph. It was, no doubt, due to her that I had been bidden there as guest. A red-headed, ugly-faced man named Hickman, and a thin, angular, irritating woman, introduced to me as Miss Wells, were my only fellow-guests. The man regarded me with some suspicion as I entered, and from the first I took a violent dislike to him. It may have been his forbidding personal appearance which caused my distrust. Now that I reflect, I think it was. His face was bloated and deeply furrowed, his eyes large, his lips thick and flabby, his reddish beard was ill-trimmed and scanty. He was thick-necked; his face was further disfigured by a curious dark-blue scar upon the left jaw, and I could not help remarking within myself, that if some faces resembled those of animals, his was closely allied to that of a savage bulldog. Indeed, I had never before seen such an eminently ugly face as his.

Yet he spoke with the air and perfect manner of a gentleman. He bowed with refined dignity as I was introduced, although I thought his smile seemed supercilious, while I was almost certain that he exchanged a curious, contemptuous look with Mabel, who stood behind me.

Was he aware of our little exchanges of confidences? Had he secretly watched us in our walks along the leafy byways of Kensington Gardens, and detected that I loved her? It seemed very much as though he had, and that he had endeavoured to disparage me in her eyes.

At Mrs Anson’s invitation, I took Mabel in to dinner, and sat next her, while opposite us sat the dog-faced man with the irritating spinster. The latter was a fitting companion for him, bony of countenance, her back straight as a board, her age uncertain, and her voice loud, high-pitched, and rasping. She wore a number of bangles on her left wrist; one of them had pigs and elephants hanging on it, with hearts, crosses, bells, and framed and glazed shamrock leaves mixed in. That would not have mattered much had she not been eating, but as dinner progressed the room grew a trifle warm, and she unfortunately had a fan as well as those distressing bangles, which fan she rhythmically waved to and fro, playing the orchestra softly when fanning herself, or loudly as she plied her knife and fork “click-clack, jingle-jingle, tinkle-tinkle, click-clack!” until the eternal music of those pigs, elephants, crosses, hearts and bells prevented anything beyond a jerky conversation. She turned and twisted and toyed with hermenu, tinkling and jingling the whole time like a coral consoler or an infant’s rattle. Little wonder, I thought, that she remained a spinster. With such an irritating person to head his household, the unfortunate husband would be a candidate for Colney Hatch within a month. Yet she was evidently a very welcome guest at Mrs Anson’s table, for my hostess addressed her as “dear,” and seemed to consider whatever positive opinion she expressed as entirely beyond dispute.

I liked Mrs Anson. Although of that extremely frigid type of mother, very formal and unbending, observing all the rules of society to the letter, and practically making her life a burden by the conventionalities, she possessed, nevertheless, a warm-hearted affection for her child, and seemed constantly solicitous of her welfare. She spoke with the very faintest accent with her “r’s,” and I had, on the first evening we had met at the colonel’s, wondered whether she were of Scotch, or perhaps foreign, extraction. The general conversation in the interval of the Irritating Woman’s orchestra turned upon foreign travel, and incidentally, in answer to an ingenious question I put to her, she told me that her father had been German, but that she had nearly all her life lived in England.

The Irritating Woman spoke of going to the Riviera in December, whereupon Mabel remarked—

“I hope mother will go too. I’m trying to persuade her. London is so dull and miserable in winter compared with Cannes or Nice.”

“You know the Riviera well, I suppose?” I inquired of her.

“Oh, very well,” she responded. “Mother and I have spent four winters in the south. There’s no place in Europe in winter like the Côte d’Azur—as the French call it.”

“I much prefer the Italian Riviera,” chimed Miss Wells’s high-pitched voice. She made it a point of honour to differ with everybody. “At Bordighera, Ospedaletti, San Remo, and Alassio you have much better air, the same warmth, and at about half the price. The hotels in Nice and Cannes are simply ruinous.” Then, turning to Mrs Anson, she added, “You know, dear, what you said last year.”

“We go to the Grand, at Nice, always,” answered Mrs Anson. “It is dear, certainly, but not exaggeratedly so in comparison with the other large hotels.”

“There seems of late to have been a gradual rise in prices all along the Riviera,” remarked Hickman. “I’ve experienced it personally. Ten or twelve years ago lived in Nice for the season for about half what it costs me now.”

“That exactly bears out my argument,” exclaimed the Irritating Woman, in triumph. “The fact is that the French Riviera has become far too dear, and English people are, fortunately for themselves, beginning to see that by continuing their journey an extra twenty miles beyond Nice they can obtain just as good accommodation, live better, breathe purer air, and not be eternally worried by those gaudy tinsel-shows called Carnivals, or insane attempts at hilarity miscalled Battles of Flowers.”

“Oh, come, Miss Wells,” protested Mabel, “surely you won’t condemn the Battles of Flowers at Nice! Why, they’re acknowledged to be amongst the most picturesque spectacles in the world!”

“I consider, my dear, that they are mere rubbishy ruses on the part of the Niçois to cause people to buy their flowers and throw them into the roadway. It’s only a trick to improve their trade.”

We all laughed.

“And the Carnival?” inquired Hickman, much amused.

“Carnival!” she snorted. “A disgraceful exhibition of a town’s lawlessness. A miserable pageant got up merely to attract the unsuspecting foreigner into the web spread for him by extortionate hotel-keepers. All the so-called fun is performed by paid mountebanks; the cars are not only inartistic, but there is always something extremely offensive in their character, while the orgies which take place at the masked balls at the Casino are absolutely disgraceful. The whole thing is artificial, and deserves no support at all from winter visitors.”

Mrs Anson, for once, did not agree with this sweeping condemnation, while Mabel declared that she always enjoyed the fun of the battles of flowers and paper confetti, although she admitted that she had never had the courage to go out on those days when the pellets of lime, or “harp confetti,” are permitted. Both Hickman and myself supported Mabel in defence of the annual fêtes at Nice as being unique in all the world.

But the Irritating Woman was not to be convinced that her opinions were either ill-formed or in the least distorted. She had never been present at a Carnival ball, she admitted, but it had been described to her by two estimable ladies who had, and that was, for her, sufficient. They were a pair of pious souls, and would, of course, never exaggerate to the length of a lie.

Dinner over, the ladies retired, and Hickman and myself were left to smoke and gossip. He was certainly a very ugly man, and at times asserted an overbearing superiority in conversation; but having watched him very closely, I at length arrived at the conclusion that this was his natural manner, and was not intended to be offensive. Indeed, ever since that first moment when I had entered and been introduced, he had shown himself to be very pleasant and affable towards me.

“Poor Miss Wells!” he laughed, after the door had closed. “She’s so infernally positive about everything. It would be as good as an entertainment to induce her to expound her views upon religious matters.”

“Any argument seems utterly useless,” I remarked.

“Do you know Nice well?” he inquired, after reflecting a moment.

“I’ve spent three winters there,” I answered.

“And at Monte Carlo, I suppose?”

“Yes, of course,” I responded, laughing. “I suppose scarcely any man goes to Nice without going over to Monty and risking a few louis.”

“Were you lucky?”

“So, so. One season I won five thousand francs. In fact, I’ve never lost on the whole season. I’ve always left the Riviera with some of the bank’s money.”

“Then you can heartily congratulate yourself,” he said, “I’m the reverse. I generally lose. Do you believe in any system at roulette?”

“No; they are all frauds,” I answered promptly. “Except one,” he interposed. “There’s one based on the law of averages, which must turn up in your favour if you’re only patient enough. The reason why it is so difficult is because it’s such a long and tedious affair.”

“Explain it,” I urged, for a new system that was infallible was, to me, of greatest interest. I had, in the days before my blindness, made a study of the chances at roulette, and had played carefully upon principles which had, to me, appeared most natural. The result had been that with care I had won—not much, it was true—but it was better than leaving one’s money to swell the company’s dividends.

“The system,” he said, tossing off his glass of curaçoa at one gulp, “is not at all a complicated one. If you study the permanences of any table—you can get them from theGazette Rose—you’ll find that each day the largest number of times either colour comes up in succession is nine. Now, all you have to do is to go to a table at the opening of the play, and taking one colour, red or black it makes no difference, stake upon it, and allow your money to accumulate until it is swept away. If the colour you stake upon comes up eight times in succession, and you have originally staked twenty francs, your gains lying on the table will amount to two thousand five hundred and sixty francs. Even then, don’t touch it. The colour must, in the law of averages, come up nine times in succession each day, taking the week through. If it comes up, you’ll win five thousand and twenty francs for the louis you staked, and then at once leave the table, for it will not come up nine times again that day. Of course, this may occur almost at the opening of the play, or not until the table is near closing, therefore it requires great patience and constant attendance. To-day it may not come up nine times, but it will probably come up nine times on two occasions to-morrow, and so the average always rights itself.”

His theory was certainly a novel one, and impressed me. There might, I thought, be something in it. He had never had patience to try it, he admitted, but he had gone through a whole year’s “permanences,” and found that only on three or four occasions had it failed.

For half an hour or so he sat lucidly explaining the results of his studies of the game with the air of a practised gambler. In these I became at once interested—as every man is who believes he has found the secret of how to get the right side of the bank; but we were at length compelled to put down our cigars, and he led the way into the drawing-room, where the ladies awaited us.

The room was a large, handsome one, elegantly furnished, and lit by two great lamps, which shed a soft, subdued light from beneath their huge shades of silk and lace. Mabel was sitting at the open grand piano, the shaded candlelight causing the beautiful diamond star in the coils of her dark-brown hair to flash with a dazzling iridescence, and as I entered she turned and gave me a sweet smile of welcome.

A second time I glanced around that spacious apartment, then next instant stood breathless—transfixed.

I could not believe my own eyes. It seemed absolutely incredible. Yet the truth was beyond all doubt.

In the disposition of the furniture, and in the general appointments of that handsome salon, the home of the woman I so dearly loved, I recognised the very room which I had once explored with my keen sense of touch—the room in which had been committed that ghastly, mysterious, midnight crime!

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