Throughall Rees Pennant’s changes of conduct, of manner, of thought, of appearance, Lady Marion Cenarth had remained unswervingly faithful and devoted, brooding over the short notes Goodhare induced him to write to her, with alternate rapture and anxiety; making appointments to meet him at the house of a convenient friend, bearing with his caprices of temper, proud of his tepid sufferance of her vehement adoration, ready at all times, as she repeatedly hinted, to throw away the dignity of her sex and position, and incur all the humiliation and danger of a private marriage. This step, in spite of Goodhare’s persuasions, Rees was in no hurry to take. Poor Lady Marion’s devotion was perhaps too slavish, too entirely unconcealed, to have been highly valued by any man. It therefore speedily palled upon Rees, who was not only accustomed to feminine adoration, but who had become doubly fastidious since Deborah Audaer’s visit to town.
The appearance of the beautiful country girl, with her modest, straightforward manner, and handsome, yet most innocent, eyes, had been like a draught of fresh, sweet air to a man coming out of a chamber foul with asphyxiating gases—not without a certain chilling effect, but refreshing, invigorating, pure—reminding him of the wholesome joys of the life he had left, and contrasting them with the feverish, soul-deadening pleasures of the life he was leading. So that, dropping out of his mind altogether his own shameful conduct on that occasion, he had allowed himself to brood over Deborah’s image as that of the angel who—but not before he was tired of it—should lead him back from his exhausting London life to recruit his energies in quiet Carstow.
So that this mandate of Amos Goodhare’s to go and marry Lady Marion fell in the midst of his dreams with disconcerting suddenness. Amos had used his craft so well on Rees’s weak nature that not all Sep’s shrewd observations had been able to shake the young man’s confidence in the judgment of the old. Amos thought for him, and Rees acted upon those thoughts with docility, though he constantly protested with a verbal freedom which Goodhare, while permitting, hated him for.
Rees, therefore, did not now stay to ask himself whether Amos had some private motive in this matter of his marriage, but he arrived at the meeting-place in the worst possible temper.
Mrs. Walker, Lady Marion’s accommodating friend, was the wife of a city architect, and one of those persons who are ready, by no matter what means, to attach themselves to people of a rank superior to their own. Although exceedingly small, plain, and vulgar she had, by the attractions of a coarse, easy-going good nature and a somewhat startling freedom of speech, secured the equivocal attentions of a young fellow of no brains but of good social position, and it was through him that she had made the acquaintance of Lady Marion Cenarth, who was his own cousin. Mrs. Walker was therefore just the sort of person to be an accommodating friend, and Lady Marion, while inwardly loathing her unrefined manners, was glad to make use of her.
On this particular evening Mrs. Walker had had an appointment to go to the theatre, but the fog having prevented her keeping it, she gave Lady Marion her undesirable companionship, and the two sat in the drawing-room with Francis Cenarth, the brainless one before mentioned; the hostess trying to talk a jargon of fashionable slip-slop, to which Lady Marion who, whatever her faults might be, was not frivolous, turned rudely inattentive ears.
“He’s not coming, my dear, that is clear, so I should advise you to give up hope, and look pleasant,” whispered Mrs. Walker, as she crossed over to her friend with a cup of tea.
But at that moment a cab stopped at the door, and Lady Marion, with a naïve start and a flushing face, betrayed her hopes. A minute later Rees was in the room.
If Lady Marion was annoyed at the presence of Mrs. Walker, her admirer was unspeakably relieved by it. He drank cup after cup of tea, and bore lightly the chief burden of the conversation, delighted to shorten the inevitable tête-à-tête in which he would have to forswear his liberty and be surfeited with unwelcome caresses. At last, however, the hostess proposed to show her own admirer a picture her husband had just bought, in order to allow the supposed passionate lovers an opportunity of exchanging mutual vows. The two drawing-rooms, which were both furnished with a good taste which seemed at first sight a surprising characteristic of their occupier, ran from the front to the back of the house, and were divided simply by a reed curtain. Mrs. Walker passed through these with Francis Cenarth, and Rees was left to make his proposal. As usual, having let Amos make up his mind for him, Rees was not long in carrying out his instructions when once he and the opportunity stood face to face.
The reed curtain had scarcely ceased to rustle behind his hostess and her companion, when he threw himself into a chair by Lady Marion’s side.
“Well, Marion,” he said in a rather languid, pretty-pretty manner, “have you any idea why I was so anxious to see you to-night?”
The poor girl flushed with surprise and agitation. Indeed, she had not noticed any great degree of anxiety in her lover’s manner. Knowing her own personal disadvantages, with a cankering knowledge that she was lean, high-shouldered, awkward, and altogether without beauty, and regarding Rees with worshipful eyes which even exaggerated his good looks and attractions, she had always been content with very little. Now, therefore, she scarcely dared to think that the goal of her hopes was really reached.
“No, Rees,” she stammered, looking at him with sudden, most eloquent shyness, and a bright gleam of excitement in her rather dull blue eyes, “I—I didn’t know that you had any particular reason.”
“And if I tell you that I have, can you guess what it is?”
“No—no, Rees.”
She had scarcely uttered these words when a cab drew up so sharply outside that, in the fog, the horse stepped upon the curbstone, and was got off amid much shouting and clatter. Rees jumped up and looked out from behind the blind to see what had happened. He stepped back muttering an exclamation, with a strange look in his eyes.
“It’s the earl,” he said briefly.
Lady Marion started to her feet with a cry, and stood for a few moments staring at him vacantly. Then, whispering quickly:
“Behind the curtain—the other room—papa must not see you!” she met Mrs. Walker, just as the latter, hearing a loud and peremptory ring, ran in from the next room.
“It’s my father,” said Lady Marion.
Mrs. Walker did not notice the girl’s tone of alarm. The honor of having an earl in her house, no matter what his errand might be, out-weighed every other thought in her mind. She had only time to draw one deep breath of gratification before the drawing-room door was opened and Lord St. Austell was announced.
He walked in with a firm step and dignified manner—“every inch a nobleman” was the description Mrs. Walker afterwards gave of him. With a curt bend to the lady, who came forward very ready to overflow with an effusive welcome, he asked shortly:
“My daughter is here, I believe, madam?”
“Yes, papa,” said a tremulous voice behind him.
He turned and saw Lady Marion standing near the door, with a very white face. Then, with only a glance at her, he again addressed the lady of the house.
“Can I have a few words with my daughter alone, madam?”
Nothing could be more courteous than his words and attitude, nothing more contemptuous than his tone and manner. It was impossible to mistake the fact that he took at a glance the measure, social and moral, of the person he was addressing. No upbraidings, no explanations were necessary. Mrs. Walker retired at once with some incoherent words which sounded like an apology, and the earl turned at once again to his daughter.
“Last week you begged of me,” he began at once, without any preface, “two letters from General Wenlock as autographs, you said. Who did you give them to?” No answer. “Was it to Amos Goodhare?”
Another pause.
Then, in a stifled voice, poor Lady Marion answered, “No, papa.”
“Who was it to, then?”
He was perfectly quiet. Rees, who was listening, with bated breath, behind the reed curtain, could only just distinguish the words.
Again Lady Marion made no answer.
The earl spoke again, after a short silence, in very measured tone.
“Your uncle Charles will be a ruined man by this time to-morrow unless we find out into what hands those letters have got. They have been used for purposes of forgery.”
The girl uttered a low cry and hid her face in her hands.
“Will you tell me now?”
“I cannot.”
She lifted a countenance like that of a dead person, staring wildly, blankly, before her.
“Then I know. It was Rees Pennant!”
Lord St. Austell was by no means a dull person when an important occasion arose for the exercise of his wits. He had been told where to find his daughter by a servant who knew better than to say what reason took her to Mrs. Walker’s, and until this moment he had not had the least suspicion of her attachment to Rees and her secret correspondence with him. But he had caught sight of a slight, well-formed figure he recognised behind the reed curtain, for neither Rees nor Lady Marion had remembered that a small lamp was burning at the back of the second room. In an instant the earl understood everything. Connecting Amos with the change in Rees, as he had already known how to connect him with the personation of himself at the Tower that day, he felt that he had now more than a clue, and therefore spoke with certainty.
Marion was in despair. She at once began a denial so energetic that Rees, perceiving that the game was up, stepped through the rustling reeds with a grand air.
“It is unnecessary to say more,” he said, standing in the centre of the room, conscious even at this moment of the effective picture he made. “I admit that the letters were given to me.”
The earl came to the point at once. What were these two, this knave and this fool, that he should spend time and words on them when the honor of his family was at stake?
“Then you know where the jewels are,” he said, still in a low voice, but with perceptibly rising excitement. “Put me in the way of finding them to-night, and you may marry my daughter to-morrow.”
Rees gave him a low bow.
“Thank you,” he said. “You do me too great an honor. For, in the first place, I don’t want to marry your daughter; and in the second, the jewels you speak of have already passed out of my reach and out of my knowledge altogether. I wish your daughter a better husband than I should make, the Crown jewels a better keeper than your brother, and yourself a very good evening.”
With a low but a very rapid bow, Rees darted out of the room, only just evading the grasp which the earl, beside himself with rage, would have laid upon his coat-collar. In another instant the front door slammed behind him with a noise that echoed through the house, and two minutes later still he was as much lost to the earl in the pitchy blackness of the fog as if he had left the regions of earth.
WhileRees Pennant and his two confederates in evil were passing an existence of feverish excitement in London, life at Carstow rippled on with the monotony of a brook in a plain. The only break that ever occurred in the quiet uniformity of Deborah’s daily duties was on the occasion of Godwin’s visits, which had become more frequent of late. He was thinking seriously of “settling down,” so he told Deborah soon after Christmas. He now spent every second Sunday at his mother’s house, and, by Deborah’s imperatively express command, had altogether given up making her his matter-of-fact offers of marriage, and spent much of his time at Carstow, away from the house.
“Settling down?” echoed Deborah, laughing, when he made this announcement. “That seems rather an odd expression to apply to yourself, Godwin. You’ve never been anything else than settled down. Now you might, with some sense, apply that term to Rees.”
“Rees, Rees, Rees,” repeated Godwin, impatiently. “You don’t mean to say that after all this time, you have Rees as much on the brain as ever.”
“ ‘Out of sight’ is not ‘out of mind’ with us women,” answered Deborah, didactically.
“Not when you live in the country, perhaps. If you lived in a big town you’d learn better how to rate people at their proper value.”
“And you would go up, you think, and poor Rees down?”
“Certainly, if you used the educational advantages of town life as you ought. But to come back to the point—when I say I intend to settle down, I mean to marry. I didn’t tell you about it before, because I knew it would distress you.”
“Distress me, why?”
“Well, everyone thinks more highly of the prize they’ve lost. So I knew that you, when you found I was engaged to somebody else, would have some regrets, however transient, at having thrown away your chances.”
“You are very good, and in consideration of that goodness, I’ll shed all my tears in private.”
“But if I don’t mind seeing them? If I shouldliketo see them?”
“Then I shall know that you are a mere monster of selfish cruelty, and I shall keep them to myself all the more.”
“Well, don’t you want to know who I’m engaged to?”
“Idoknow.”
Godwin looked much astonished.
“To the second Miss Brownlow.”
He sat down in the next chair to Deborah, and stared at her in blank amazement.
“But—but you’ve never seen me with her! I’m perfectly certain that in your presence I’ve never exchanged half a dozen words with her.”
“No, but she is the very girl mamma and I picked out for you, as being admirably suited to you in every way—sensible, practical, straightforward and quite nice-looking enough.”
“Quite nice-looking enough for me; I see.”
“Now don’t be angry. The fact that you’ve chosen her proves that sheisnice-looking enough for you. And knowing how sensible you are, and how you always do the right thing, it was quite natural to expect that you would choose the right woman. When are you going to be married?”
“I don’t know,” answered Godwin, shortly, “it depends on who my wife is.”
“What! I thought you said you were engaged!”
“I am—or very near it. But I am going to give you one more chance.”
“And Miss Brownlow?”
Godwin shrugged his shoulders.
“She’ll suffer less at the loss of such an ordinary admirer as I than she would by gaining such an ordinary husband as I should make—to her.”
“And do you think,” asked Deborah, looking full at him with an expression of great scorn, “that that would be honorable conduct? You who know what an opportunity of marriage means to a girl in a country town?”
Godwin returned her look very straightforwardly.
“Isn’t that rather a low point of view to look at the matter from?”
“It is probably hers.”
“Well, that admission condemns you. For I decline to think that the well-being and happiness of a girl whose only aim in existence is to catch a husband by any means she can is of so much consequence as—well, as mine. Is that frank enough?”
Deborah was a little taken aback by this straightforward egotism.
“Then you must logically deny any sort of equality between men and women?”
“I do, emphatically. Women are our superiors or our inferiors, never our equals. And better education for them will not alter this fact; it will accentuate it.”
“Now you are running right away from the point, which is this. Is the inequality between the sexes so great that a man may jilt a girl for his own happiness without losing his right to be considered an honorable man?”
“Well, he loses the first freshness of his honor; but if he gets rid of a girl who could be nothing better than his housekeeper, to get one who will be, in the noblest sense of the word, his wife, he gains a great deal more than he loses.”
“And if she brings an action for breach of promise?”
“Then she loses the cloak which has so far covered her natural want of delicacy.”
“You are as hard and didactic as ever.”
“I’m not hard; but I have a few gleams of sense left shining through the mass of cobwebs with which you have filled my head.”
“I don’t understand the simile.”
“Well, I’m in love with you; I love you so much that I’d rather come to you without a rag of honor left than be saluted as the noblest man in the world by any other woman. Just as you, who know that Rees has turned out such a scamp that we daren’t inquire into his actions, would think nothing of lowering yourself to the point of forgiving him.”
Deborah got up and touched the bell for tea, too much agitated to answer him. Godwin had not only spoken to her with less reserve than ever before, but had looked at her with passion, and finally poured out his words with a vehemence quite in sharp contrast with his accustomed matter-of-fact manner.
“Well,” said he, rising quickly and leaning over her as she rang the bell; “do you think more of me now than you did before?”
“No. Less,” she answered sharply.
But it was not true. No woman thinks less of a man for letting her into the secrets of his innermost feelings. Godwin retreated, however, without guessing this, and made no further reference to their conversation until the following morning, when he was on the point of starting on his journey back to his work.
“You needn’t tell my mother anything about Miss Brownlow,” he said hurriedly, in a low voice, with his hat in his hand and his eyes on the floor.
“But why not? I think she would be pleased. Mamma likes her. And poor mamma wants cheering just now.”
“Yes; but it might not come off, you know, and then she’d be disappointed. Well, you’ll see me again in a fortnight.”
“You’re more assiduous in your courtship of Miss Brownlow than you were in my case.”
“Yes, there’s more work to do in getting up the excitement.”
“Godwin, I have something serious to say to you about mamma. You know how reserved she is.”
“Yes.”
“And don’t you notice a difference in her from visit to visit.”
“I am afraid I do. And I know the reason of it—Rees.”
Deborah’s voice dropped to an emphatic whisper.
“She is breaking her heart about him.”
Godwin began to move restlessly from one foot to the other.
“Well, well; perhaps that sad ignorance is better than full knowledge would be.”
Deborah shuddered.
“There is nothing to be done, Godwin, is there?”
He shook his head.
“Not until the prodigal comes back—as he will do sooner or later, to oust the dutiful son,” he answered bitterly.
Deborah said nothing to this—did not even look at him—but her cheeks flushed guiltily.
“Well, good-bye, you’ll miss your train,” she said at last.
“Good-bye,” said he curtly.
And he turned abruptly, without again offering to shake hands, and started on his way to the station.
It was true that Mrs. Pennant brooded over the defection of her eldest son. Without having discussed the matter with any one, she knew that there was something discreditable in his mode of life, something which none of the artfully worded suggestions in her own letters could induce him to confess. Belonging, as she did, to that numerous class of women who would allow their sons any latitude and spend their time in efforts, not to reform their darlings, but to shield them, she lived in perpetual terror lest Rees should “get into trouble;” and when, three days after Godwin’s confession to Deborah, Lord St. Austell was announced one morning while Mrs. Pennant was taking her breakfast in her bed-room, the old lady sprang up from her chair with an intuitive conviction that this visit concerned her son.
Deborah thought so too. Wishing therefore to spare the old lady as much as she could of any coming shock, she cried out, as Mrs. Pennant hurried towards the door.
“What, mamma, you are surely not going to let Lord St. Austell seeyouin your dressing-gown!”
The old lady stopped. The habits of her life conquered even her impatience for news of her son. Stepping back to the looking-glass and catching sight of her haggard old face and unsmoothed hair, she said:
“You go down, Deborah, and tell his lordship I shall be ready to receive him in ten minutes.”
But Deborah thought she could reckon on a good half-hour. She was white and agitated herself when she entered the morning-room, where the earl was standing by the fire. His expression told her that her fears were well-founded.
“I don’t know how to break the news to you,” he said at once, in a low voice, as they shook hands. “But have you heard anything? You look as if you had.”
“Nothing. I have only guessed by your face, and in fact from your coming, so early, so unexpectedly. Mamma guessed too.”
“The old lady? She isn’t up yet, is she?” asked he anxiously.
“Yes. She will be down in a few minutes.”
“Then I must make haste. For I could not meet her. You know it is about—Rees.”
“Is he dead?”
“No, unhappily, I might almost say. He is concerned in a stupendous robbery.”
Deborah listened with surprising outward calmness. She had expected some calamity of this sort for such a long time that it almost seemed to her that she was hearing old news.
“Is he in the hands of the police?” she asked quietly.
“No. They have not even been informed of the robbery yet, except perhaps unofficially. For the great object is to get the jewels back without noise.”
“Jewels?”
“Crown jewels.”
Deborah started. She had not expected anything so sensational as that.
“What are you going to do?” she whispered.
“I am going to try home influence, your influence, if you will help us.”
“Of course.”
“Put on your things.” He looked at his watch. “We have twenty-eight minutes before the train starts. No time to lose. If by to-night we are not in the way to recover the jewels we must trust to the police.”
Deborah ran to the door, but, with her fingers on the handle, she turned with a white face.
“Mamma!” she whispered, scarcely doing more than form the words with her lips, “she is outside.”
She rattled the handle, but still she heard the sound of heavy breathing on the other side. At last, very gently, she opened the door, and found, as she had begun to fear, Mrs. Pennant on her knees, with half-closed eyes, in a kind of fit. The old lady had known that an attempt would be made to keep from her something concerning her son, and had had recourse to eavesdropping to find out the truth.
“I can’t go up to London now,” said Deborah quietly, but in a tone of despair.
“We will see,” said the earl.
Before she could say another word he was out of the house. In five minutes the family doctor had arrived, and in ten minutes Mrs. Kemp, the admiral’s widow, was standing by the bed to which her old friend had been carried. It was a stroke of paralysis, the first, and not a very severe one. Within an hour Mrs. Pennant had recovered sufficiently to remember what she had heard, and to insist on her adopted daughter’s going up to town.
By the next train, therefore, Lord St. Austell and Deborah Audaer were on their way to London.
Inthe midst of his anxiety on his brother’s account Lord St. Austell was filled with admiration, but rather puzzled, by the entire change in Deborah’s manner towards him. Being on old man of the world he was able, as soon as he had done for the time all there was to be done, to ease his mind sufficiently of its burden to enjoy the idea of a long tête-à-tête with the beautiful girl. When he asked her if he should have the compartment reserved, she made no objection. When he loaded her with little attentions, and began to assume his most fascinating manner, she thanked him smilingly, but still showed none of the rather distant timidity with which she had formerly treated his advances. He grew more and more anxious to know the reason of this change.
“I did not think, Miss Audaer, at this time yesterday that I should ever have the pleasure of a journey in your society.”
“No indeed, nor did I,” said Deborah simply.
“In fact, at one time I was afraid that I had had the misfortune to come under the ban of your displeasure.”
“Oh no, how could you, when you were so kind to Rees?”
“Yet even your fondness for Rees would never before induce you to come up to London with me to find out how he was getting on.”
Deborah said nothing to this. After a short pause Lord St. Austell went on:
“So that, while I am delighted to find that the—shall we call it—prejudice under which I labored in your eyes has broken down, I am at the same time at a loss to account for the change which has made me so happy.”
“Are you really?” asked Deborah with surprise, turning towards him eyes full of intelligence and sincerity. “I should have thought a man of your experience would have understood it so easily.”
There was no quality of his to which the earl would not rather have heard her allude than to his experience, suggesting, as it did, the years which had brought it. However, he had a great deal too much tact and shrewdness to betray his feeling on the subject.
“I confess,” he said, “that long and varied as my experience has been, your charming sex still has surprises for me. Will you explain the reason of the altered light in which you regard me?”
“There has been no alteration. It is simply this: You asked me to accompany you to London this morning with the definite object of trying to do you a service. In those circumstances, unless I am much mistaken in you, a girl might safely trust herself in your care from here to Japan.”
The girl’s spirit and modesty took the oldrouéby storm. It was such a deft and graceful appeal to all that was best in the traditions of his not very worthy school, that this particular girl was indeed, after making it, an almost sacred object in his eyes. He leaned back in his seat in the carriage, regarding her with admiration more respectfully than before.
“What a strangely different world this would be,” he said at last, “if only half the women in it possessed your divine attribute of common sense!”
“Perhaps there are some divine attributes lacking in the men, too,” suggested Deborah demurely.
“That is more than likely. But who, that knows anything about him, would expect divinity in such a creature as a man?”
“Not I, for one,” answered Deborah, with simple sincerity which was rather startling.
“And it’s rather hard, isn’t it, that such commonplace, tainted wretches as we are, should expect such moral perfection in our helpmates.”
Deborah paused a few moments, and then answered thoughtfully:
“I don’t think so. Surely it is better that one-half the world should be good than that none should be. And if a man can’t be good himself, it is at least something that he can admire goodness in his wife and wish for a good influence around his children.”
The earl was much interested.
“There,” said he, with excitement, “is the sensible way of looking at it. What a wife you’d make?”
“Yes,” said Deborah, quietly, “to a good husband.”
“But I understood you to say——”
“That a man should choose a good mother for his children. But I think also that a woman should choose a good father for hers.”
“And you would be very hard to please?”
“Very.”
“But don’t you know that most women prefer a man not too utterly immaculate?” suggested the earl, gently.
“That is because they hope to reform him.”
“And—stop me at once if you think I am getting impertinent—but have you never, never entertained any idea of the sort?”
Deborah blushed, but she turned to answer him very frankly.
“Yes, I have. I wanted very badly to reform Rees Pennant. And that set me thinking what sort of a thing such a reform could be. And then I began to doubt my own powers.”
“And you decided to give him up?”
“No, oh no. But I saw that it would need a great deal of love on the man’s side as well as on the woman’s to bring such a reform about.”
“And had you not in the meantime met some one who—well, who insisted on occupying a corner in your thoughts?”
Deborah started.
“Oh, no; at least——.” She hesitated in some confusion.
The earl laughed softly.
“Ah, you are a very woman after all. I was beginning to be afraid you were rather too superior to our poor common clay.”
“But you are quite wrong if you think——”
“I don’t think anything; I never did. I have been a soldier, you know, not a philosopher. I can act, you see; I could run down to Carstow to fetch you; but having done so, I have for the time given up all thought about our errand, and the numerous difficulties this business has thrown me into.”
“Indeed!” said Deborah gravely, “I can’t think about it clearly; it has come upon me like a misfortune which one has dreamed about all night and which happens in the daytime.”
Lord St. Austell shivered, and Deborah saw that his face had turned quite grey, and that his eyes moved restlessly, as if trying to escape the sight of some haunting object. He opened one of the pile of papers he had hastily bought at the station, and asked her opinion upon one of the public topics of the day. But that his mind was more burdened by the object of their journey than he chose to confess was proved by a remark into which he burst quite abruptly after a long silence.
“This young scamp Rees has a wonderful fascination about him. He has bewitched one of my own daughters. I caught them together last night at the house of some miserable little snob.”
“Lady Marion?” said Deborah quietly.
“What? You have heard?”
“Oh, that has been well known for a long time.”
“To every one but me, I suppose?”
“I should think so.”
“Well, your confession that a woman can become disgusted with even a worthless man gives me hope.”
“I did not speak for every woman, remember,” said Deborah warningly.
Her caution was justified. At Paddington, waiting for the train from Carstow, stood poor Lady Marion, leaner, more hatchet-faced than ever, in a long cloak and a shabby black hat, looking old enough for her own mother. Deborah saw her first, and jumping quickly out of the carriage, went up to her. The poor thing looked at the handsome girl before her with angry eyes, and would have turned her back and walked on. Deborah was not to be daunted.
“We have come to try and save Rees,” she whispered, following her.
Lady Marion turned quickly.
“To save him! Ah, yes,you,” she added immediately, in a bitterly envious tone. “He loves you.”
“Well, if you care for him, surely the great thing is that he should be saved,” urged the other persuasively.
Lady Marion had stopped reluctantly, and she now looked everywhere but at Deborah’s beautiful face.
“But papa, what does he say?”
Before her companion could answer, Lord St. Austell was beside them. He looked coldly and sternly at his daughter.
“Come down here, out of the crowd,” said he. “I wish to speak to you.”
He took her arm and led her down the platform to the almost deserted end, which is, morning and evening, piled with huge milk cans going and returning between the London dairies and the country. Deborah followed them at a long distance, and waited. The earl addressed his daughter very coldly.
“What is the meaning of this exhibition. You promised me, when I took you home last night, that you would remain there.”
“I couldn’t papa, I couldn’t,” sobbed the girl.
“What have you come here for?”
“To tell you that I love him, and that if you don’t let him off I shall kill myself and let everybody know why. You don’t believe me!” the poor distracted creature continued passionately.
“I do. I could believe anything of such an idiot,” said her father contemptuously. “You have seen him, I suppose, this morning?”
“No. I don’t know where he lives.”
“Ah, he was afraid of your worrying him even at his rooms, evidently.” And he uttered an exclamation of disgust. “Now go home. Nothing is further from my thoughts than punishing Rees. I would not even give him a fool for a wife.”
He led her, without too much gentleness, through the station, put her in a hansom, and gave the driver the address of his home.
Then, with a laconic caution that she had better remain at home and keep quiet, he turned his back upon her and went in search of Deborah, whom he found just inside the doors, wearing a rather sad face.
“I wish that foolish girl of mine had a little of your sense,” said he, as he helped Deborah into a hansom and got in after her.
“She is the ideal faithful woman, though.”
“Yes, because she has no beauty.”
They drove on in silence to the lodgings in St. Martin’s-lane, where, in answer to their inquiries, they were told that Mr. Pennant still lived; then they were ushered into the little back room, which Deborah remembered, and, finding that Rees was not there, they said they would wait. Mr. Pennant’s hours were very uncertain, the old landlady, who opened the door herself, said; and as he scarcely ever had a meal at home, and always let himself in with a latch-key, she could give very little information about his movements. Both Mr. Pennant and Mr. Jocelyn, she mentioned, as if it was no uncommon occurrence, had slept out last night.
“Jocelyn!” repeated Lord Austell, turning to Deborah.
“It must be Sep, Mrs. Kemp’s nephew,” answered she.
“We will wait,” repeated he. “If you should meet either of them on their way in, don’t tell them any one is here. We want to surprise them.”
“Very well, sir,” said Mrs. Williamson. Then she continued, with a smile, “If Mr. Goodhare should call, sir, I suppose you would wish him told that his brother is inside?”
Lord St. Austell started.
“Brother!” he repeated sharply.
“Lor’, yes, sir, I saw the likeness in a minute!”
The earl glanced in the looking-glass over the mantelpiece, and laughed with an effort.
“No,” he said. “Let him in, but don’t let him know I’m here.”
“Very well, sir.”
She left the room, and the earl turned to Deborah in great agitation.
“Now do you know who is the prime mover in all this?” he asked, almost fiercely, when the door closed.
“Amos Goodhare,” she answered quietly. “He has been Rees’s evil genius for the last eighteen months.”
“And mine for a much longer time than that. But,” he added gloomily, after a pause, “I would have avoided meeting him if I could. It can do no good. He is a rascal, but I cannot charge him, and he knows it.”
He was silent for some time, pacing up and down the little room, listening intently to every sound, glancing from time to time at his watch impatiently, while the gloom upon his face constantly increased.
“Perhaps none of them will come,” suggested Deborah.
“Yes, they will; at any ratehewill,” said the earl. “When I am highly strung, as I am to-night, I can feel a misfortune approaching. And this man has always brought misfortune to me. Don’t smile, my dear girl. When you have reached my age, you will believe, at any rate somewhat, in portents.”
But Deborah was not smiling. There was something more of solemnity, something more of a kindly dignity, in the earl’s manner, as the afternoon wore slowly on. She began to believe, as she watched the change which was creeping over him, and turning him, as it were, from the genial carpet knight into the soldier ready for battle, that they were, indeed, as his presentiment told him, on the eve of some great calamity, which would overshadow even the anxieties from which they were suffering.
The dark afternoon was merging into evening, and the fire had been allowed to sink very low, when, at last, there was a sound of turning of a latch-key in the outer door. The earl, who had been resting for a moment in a chair by the dying fire, with his head in his hands, sat up and signed to Deborah to keep still on the little sofa where she was sitting.
Before she could guess his purpose they both heard a very light tread in the hall outside, the door opened noiselessly, and a man, not at first distinguishable in the darkness, crept into the room like a shadow.
Then by his height, and his stealthy movements, they knew him to be Amos Goodhare.
WhenAmos Goodhare entered the little sitting-room, Deborah was sitting on a sofa, so far back in the black shadow that she knew it was impossible for him to see her. But Lord St. Austell was sitting so far forward in the arm-chair that the faint glow of the little fire shone upon him. Nevertheless, Amos behaved exactly as if he saw no one.
The window was to the left of the door, and only four or five steps from it. He crossed the narrow space with a very soft tread, and throwing open the window, which he did quickly, but without the least noise, descended on the stone flags outside, and, turning to the right, disappeared quickly in the darkness.
Lord St. Austell sprang up from his seat, ran to the window, and strained his eyes to follow him. He had his hand on the sill to jump out after him, when he felt Deborah’s touch upon his sleeve.
“Lord St. Austell,” she whispered, “don’t on any account follow that man alone. He is dangerous.”
The earl turned impatiently. He was at all times physically fearless.
“My dear girl, don’t be alarmed, these men have nothing to fear and everything to hope from me. By this time they must have found it practically impossible to dispose of the stolen property, and must be in hourly dread of the police. Now, I can hush up the whole affair if they will restore the jewels.”
Deborah was still holding his sleeve with no uncertain grip, and she spoke in a low but very decided tone:
“It is not that, but Amos Goodhare has a grudge against you, I am sure of it.”
“No reasonable one, I assure you.”
By this time the girl was clinging to both his arms, almost struggling with him to prevent his carrying out his purpose.
“What does that matter,” she cried, vehemently. “Was a prejudice ever the weaker for being unreasonable? I tell you he saw you and pretended not to, in order to lure you to follow him. You don’t know where he’s gone, and what accomplices he may have waiting in that nest of dirty courts and passages out there. Get police assistance before you try to find him.”
“Confound the girl!” muttered Lord St. Austell savagely, as at last, not without the exercise of something like violence, he got partially free from her clinging hands. “You’ve made me miss him!”
Deborah let him go at once, with an exclamation of relief.
“That’s all right!”
He had already got half out of the window, when suddenly he drew back and came to her. She was sitting by the table leaning her head on her hand.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Audaer,” said he, most contritely with the ring of sincere feeling in his voice, as he felt in the obscurity for her hand, which she gave him at once. It was cold and trembling. “My dear girl, I hope I have not hurt you—for heaven’s sake, tell me I have not!” he cried with much concern.
“No, you have not,” she answered in a hoarse and broken voice. “But I am beginning to feel what you feel—that some dreadful thing is going to happen—that that man’s presence brings harm.”
“Well, I choose to think that your presence counteracts it, for you are a good, brave girl. Now, child, I want you to wait here for me, and if Rees should come, use your influence with him. I am going to use mine with Amos.”
“You are—really?”
“Really. Good-bye for the present.”
Deborah was in so excited a state that even the haste with which he added those last three words, “for the present,” seemed to her portentous. She listened with straining ears to the last sound of his footsteps as he trod the uneven stones in the direction Amos had taken.
As in the case of most “presentiments,” Lord St. Austell’s vague foreboding was the result chiefly of very clear and distinct knowledge. He knew very well that his personator at the Tower on the previous day could be no other than Amos Goodhare, between whom and himself there had alway existed a dislike, all the stronger for having been most decently veiled. There was a likeness in the temperament and disposition of the two men as marked as their outward resemblance to each other, and this likeness accentuated their difference of social position, and so increased the mistrust of the one, and the hatred of the other. What treatment, then, could the earl hope to receive at the hands of a man who hated him, who had just proved himself to be an audacious and unprincipled scoundrel, and who held all the cards in his own hands. Lord St. Austell had not the least fear of personal violence; in his younger days he had proved a brave and a lucky soldier, and he would have felt reassured rather than alarmed if he had thought that the matter would be decided by any sort of physical encounter. What he feared was that Goodhare would absolutely refuse to come to terms, would stubbornly affect ignorance of the whole affair, in which case the career of his brother Charles, keeper of the regalia, would be ruined.
As he picked his way over the stones, under the eaves of the outer buildings which had grown up between the old houses, with the raindrops dripping down upon him, and his feet slipping from time to time, with a little splash, into the pools and rivulets in the uneven pavement, he debated which price he should have to pay for the information he wanted.
But he never came near the true one.
He was brought to a standstill, in the midst of his cogitations, by a low brick wall. He was a tall man and he could see over it. He saw the backs of the deserted houses on the left, and a passage running behind them. At the back door of the fourth house a man was standing, who came forward quickly, peering into the darkness. When he was close to the wall he said:
“I beg your pardon. Can you oblige me with a light?”
“Certainly, Amos.”
“Your lordship! Is it possible? What can you be doing here?”
“I was looking for you.”
“For me! You do me too much honor. But what am I to do? I feel at present rather under a cloud, and, to confess the whole truth, I am in hiding from the police. You know, your lordship, since you threw me over, I have always been an unlucky man.”
He spoke in his old tone of almost fawning respect, and his last words conveyed a reproach uttered with tender melancholy. Lord St. Austell’s hopes rose.
“Perhaps I can get you out of the police difficulty, Amos, and perhaps you can help me in return,” he said in the low voice in which their colloquy had been conducted from the beginning. “Can’t you take me somewhere where we can talk. I’m standing with my feet in a pool of water, and with more of the same exhilarating liquid meandering down my back from a broken waterspout over my head.”
“Well, I really don’t know what to do,” said Amos, in apparent confusion. “I’ve a wretched den on this side of the wall where I hide myself, but it’s not the sort of place I could take your lordship into.”
“But I give you my word my lordship would prefer anything to his present position.”
With a shamefaced effort, Amos apparently made up his mind.
“Come then, my lord, if you will. At any rate, you’ll see what straits I’m reduced to.”
Something in the man’s tone rang false, and Lord St. Austell noticed it. But he did not hesitate. There were notches in the wall which would have made the climbing an easy matter to a less athletic man than he still was, and although he remarked good-humoredly that he had hoped his climbing days were over, he got over without the least difficulty, and followed Amos up the passage.
“Dreary hole this,” he exclaimed, glancing up at the deserted houses with their blank, nailed-up windows, and at the cold reflection of a distant gaslamp on the wet pavement at the other end of the passage. Big drops of rain-water splashed down from the broken roofs, and little streams trickled into the passage from bent and rusty water-pipes. “But I should have thought these deserted houses would be just the sort of place the police would keep an eye on.”
“I believe they think they are too obviously suitable a hiding-place, and that the fear of a chance inspection would keep poor vagabonds away. I have had an occasional rattle at my shutters from a passing bobby when I have been keeping close, but I have never been disturbed in any other way.”
Amos was standing by the door of the fourth house. Bending down, he drew away the lower part of the boarding with which it was nailed up. “I’m afraid your lordship will have to stoop,” said he.
As Lord St. Austell instantly bent down to creep through the opening, the face of the other man underwent a sudden change. His features became convulsed with fury, and he drew up his right arm as if the impulse to take advantage of his companion’s stooping position was irresistible. The next moment he had controlled himself, and following the earl into the house, he drew up the boards behind them.
It was quite dark inside the passage of the house.
“You go first, Amos,” said Lord St. Austell; and he leaned back against the wall for Goodhare to pass him.
“You don’t mind going down a floor lower, do you, my lord? I daren’t strike a light till we get below the street level.”
“Do you take refuge in the cellar then?”
“Your lordship will allow that it is better than a police cell. This way. Shall I go first? Mind how you come. It’s only a ladder.”
Lord St. Austell followed without hesitation, but he was not so dull as to ignore the fact that his errand was becoming more dangerous than he had expected. He followed to the first cellar, to which a faint light penetrated through a grating below what had once been the shop window. Goodhare, after listening for a few moments to be sure that no tread of a passer-by was audible on the stone pavement outside, pushed open a door on the right and climbed down into a lower cellar which was as much overheated as the upper one was too cold. The ruddy glow of a fire was seen at once on floor and ceiling, and a gust of air hot as the breath of a furnace, seemed almost to sear the wet, cold faces of the two men as they entered.
“Good heavens! I shall never be able to stay down here,” exclaimed the earl, stepping back from the huge square iron grate, like the cage of an ancient beacon, which stood in the middle of the floor, and in which blazed an enormous fire.
“Oh, you will manage it as long as I want to keep you,” said Amos, quietly.
He drew the door close and made it fast with a rough bolt, while Lord St. Austell examined the cellar in which he found himself, which Amos not inaptly termed a den.
There was no boarding on the floor, nothing but the rough earth. The walls were only bricked in about half-way down, as if the cellar had been dug out after the house was built. A piece of sacking on the floor, two benches, a dirty sofa, and deal table covered with tools and lumber, formed all the furniture. The earl looked attentively at a huge melting-pot which stood before the fire.
“That,” said Goodhare, “was what the gold crowns from the Tower were melted in.”
The coolness with which he said this caused Lord St. Austell to look round at his companion. He was startled by the change in him. Instead of the stooping, lean librarian, with the shabby coat and cringing manner, he saw a well-dressed, dignified man, with trim grey beard—the counterpart of himself. One great difference there was between them, one only. The earl’s eyes looked out upon the world with the cynical and languid interest of a man who has tasted and tired of every human pleasure; those of his companion glowed with the ferocity of a wild beast interrupted in a meal of human flesh.
“Why, Amos, rascality seems to agree with you!” exclaimed St. Lord Austell.
Goodhare laughed harshly.
“Rascality is perhaps too strong a word, as your lordship will perhaps allow when I point out one particular feature of the transactions in which I have lately been engaged. I began, as perhaps you have not yet heard, by taking a little sum that was lying idle on your lordship’s property at Carstow. It was in old-fashioned gold, but I managed, with some difficulty, to get it converted into the current coin of to-day.”
The two men were standing one on either side of the blazing fire which shot up golden flames and threw a lurid brightness on both faces. There was no other light in the cellar.
Lord St. Austell perceived now that he was in a trap, but no one could have guessed his thoughts from the stolidly calm expression of his face.
“Yes,” he said, very quietly. “It is the first I had heard of it. Go on.”
“When that little provision was exhausted, I took to the calling of gentlemanly footpad. Before you condemn me, if you look back on the street robberies of the past winter, you will do me the justice to remember that the first was committed on your own person and the rest on those of your intimate friends.”
“I don’t see how that excuses you.”
“I will make it clear to your lordship by-and-bye. Last of all, when my funds had sunk so low that it needed a bold stroke to restore them, I helped myself, with the aid of my friends, to part of the jewels kept in the tower, of which your brother is custodian. Do you see the connection?”
“Of course I see that you seem to have had me always for choice as the victim of your malpractices.”
“And you cannot yet see why, my lord?” asked Goodhare, with a panting ferocity which he scarcely now took the trouble to veil.
“No. Except that you are a d——d ungrateful beast, biting by preference the hand that fed you.”
“Could your lordship give me a list of your benefactions to me?” asked Goodhare, glaring across at him over the smoke and flame of the fire.
“Well I gave you the post of librarian at Llancader, until I found you taking advantage of the position to rob me of MSS., which, as I see, you knew how to use.”
“And did I not earn my pay? Was I idle, drunken, dissolute?”
“Certainly not. You were an ideal librarian, and I respected you for it.”
“Respected me for repressing every instinct of my nature, every passion which you were freely indulging! I should think so.”
“Our positions were not the same: I could not alter that fact.”
“Did you do all for me that my father—and yours—on his death-bed desired that you should do?”
The earl looked uneasy.
“I did all that a man is ever expected to for an illegitimate half-brother,” said he evasively. “If I had been a Quixote I couldn’t have given up my title to you. The law would not allow it.”
“But you could have given up Llancader, as my father, when he was dying, told me you would do.”
The earl flushed a little.
“He should have made that provision by will if he wished it attended to. I could not be expected to dismember the property. I am not a rich man, as you know. For my position I’m a poor one. I never have a thousand pounds to spend as I choose.”
“Not when your wines and women have all been paid for, I dare say.”
“Why sneer? I never knew you cared for those things. You were always for books, books. And a studious man is supposed to be virtuous.”
“Why? Is every thought holy that is printed and bound up in morocco? Through your father’s dishonesty to my mother and yours to me, I have had to pass the best years of my life in revelry of the imagination only. And so I whetted an appetite for pleasure which I have only just begun to satisfy as yours is exhausted.”
The earl felt for the first time in his life an impulse of fear; there was something scarcely human, something ghoulish, in the face before him. The eyes seemed to shoot flames through the fire-smoke.
“I am getting tedious, my lord,” continued Goodhare, with mock respect, after a short pause, during which the two men watched each other warily. “Let us sum up the situation. Your father and mine, an unmarried man, deceived my mother, a country lawyer’s daughter, by a mock marriage. He took her away to North Wales, and kept her there in privacy, on goodness knows what wretched plea. I was their son—his eldest son. She knew who he was; she thought I was his heir. I was fourteen before, in that out-of-the-way place, we learnt that he had married a woman of his own rank. Then the truth came out. My mother was broken-hearted, and did not live through the year. I was brought up a gentleman and left a beggar. Then, with stupendous generosity you gave me office as librarian—to close my mouth. And all your favors you gave to Rees Pennant, whom for that reason I have ruined. And so I lived near enough to hear the vices condoned in you which in me would have been condemned; to see a beautiful girl repulse my honorable advances with as much horror as she did your dishonorable ones. And yet my mother was a better woman than yours, andIam the eldest son.”
“But you are mad! Can I help the law?”
“Can I respect it? Let us be logical. You are the eldest son above ground, in the daylight, by right of the law. I am the eldest son down in the earth, from which I took my birthright. And so here, down in the earth, I take my revenge on the law and on you!”
With a spring he leapt over the iron grate, in which the fire now burnt with a steady red glow. Seizing Lord St. Austell by the throat before the earl had the least intimation of his purpose, Goodhare, with a growling noise like a wild beast, twisted him and flung him down on to the red-hot coals. Before his victim had time for more than one struggle, one shout for help, Amos had torn open his waistcoat, and plunging a large claspknife between his ribs, stabbed him to the heart.
With a sigh of fiendish satisfaction, he threw the body, the clothes of which were in a blaze, on to the floor, and wrapping it tightly in the matting, extinguished the flames. Then, unbolting the door, he dragged the ghastly burden across the rough floor, and lifting it, not without difficulty and with an exclamation of disgust, into the upper cellar, he rolled it into a corner with a series of sharp kicks. Striking a match, he cast one more look, full of a thirsty, savage delight, at the staring eyes and mouth distended with horror; then, turning lightly on his heel, he threw away the match, and taking a bottle carefully from a rough wine-bin which stood in one corner, he climbed down into the inner cellar, took a corkscrew from his pocket, opened the bottle lovingly, and, pouring himself out a tumblerful, drank it off with great enjoyment.
Meanwhile, Deborah had suffered much more from gloomy anticipations than the unfortunate Lord St. Austell. She opened the window wide, in spite of the rain and the cold, and putting her head out, listened and watched eagerly for his return.
Half an hour had passed, and her anxiety had reached fever pitch, when the door of the room was opened very slowly. Catching sight of a woman’s figure in the gloom, the intruder tried to retreat. But Deborah, who was no fussy young woman, and who was getting tired of mysteries, rushed to the door and kept it shut.
“I know who you are,” she cried. “You’re Sep Jocelyn. And you shall not go until you have told me everything I want to know.”
Sep, in a trembling voice, was trying to silence her throughout the whole of this speech.
“Sh-sh,” he whispered as she finished. “Do you want to get me into trouble, perhaps have me murdered! Where’s”—and his voice sank still lower—“where’s Goodhare?”
“I don’t know. He went out through that window some time ago. Do you know where he is gone?”
“It’s better not to ask too many questions here, Miss Audaer. Where’s Rees?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him. I want to see him.”
“Have you come to see Rees, Miss Audaer?” asked Sep, in a weak, mistrustful voice.
“I will tell you everything when you have lit the gas,” said she, struck by the fear in his tones. “Have you any matches about you?”
Very unwillingly Sep produced a box, which Deborah took from him. As soon as the gas was alight she turned to look at him, and surprised a furtive glance towards the door. Before he had time to follow his evident inclination, she put her arm through his and drew him down on to the sofa beside her. Sep never resisted anybody, so of course he yielded like a lamb to her.
“And now,” she said, looking him full in the face, “what is the matter with you?”
“Nothing,” stammered Sep, glancing quickly at her, and then avoiding her eyes.
The answer was absurd. With his wan face, wrinkled and furrowed by deadly anxiety and fear, and marked with black streaks of smoke and fog, his bloodshot, swollen eyes, his quivering lips, and the trembling fits which from time to time seized his limbs, Sep Jocelyn had evidently something very seriously the matter with him.
“You are cold,” said Deborah gently.
“I am always cold.”
“Have you just returned from a journey?”
Sep started, and began to tremble so violently that Deborah, with her wits on the alert, began to have an inkling of the truth.
“Listen, Sep,” she said in a low, earnest voice. “I know the trouble you and Rees are in. It is through that man Goodhare, I feel sure.”
“Sh-sh,” interrupted Jocelyn, glancing around him fearfully.
“I’ve come to get you all out of it. If you will tell me where the jewels are, I can promise you that nothing will ever be heard of the business. And if you will come back to Carstow with me, I can promise that your aunt, who misses you most dreadfully, will take you back to her arms without a word of reproach.”
“Oh, no; she couldn’t now. You don’t know—I can’t tell you; but it’s too late. The next shelter I get will be a prison.”
Deborah was shocked. He was altogether broken down, a mere wreck, a shivering, quaking creature, broken-nerved, bemuddled, helpless.
“Lord St. Austell’s influence will keep you out of prison.”
“Lord St. Austell!” Sep started violently. “Why, he’s the very last person to help us. He has no end of grudges against us, if he only knew.”
“He does know, but the career of his brother Charles and the honor of his family outweigh everything with him. You see, if the loss of part of the regalia were made known, there would be a public outcry, and his brother would be disgraced. Now, Sep, what interest have I in the matter except yours and Rees Pennant’s?”
“Rees’s! Yes, that is true,” he muttered.
“Well, then, trust your secret to me. You were sent away with the jewels to dispose of them, were you not?”
Sep admitted this with a half-involuntary nod, not looking at her.
“Where?”
“To Amsterdam.”
“But the jewels were only stolen yesterday, and you are back already!”
“I didn’t go. I lost heart. I was afraid. I fancied I was followed.” And he cast another hunted look around him. “And now I daren’t meet Goodhare. And yet—I don’t know where to go. So I sneaked back here—to wait—till I’m taken.”
“No! Your instinct guided you back to be saved,” cried Deborah, in re-assuring tones. “You have the jewels with you now?”
“No-o,” stammered Sep.
“Oh yes, you have,” said she, confidently. “Now, trust them with me, and Goodhare need not know at present that you have not taken them to Amsterdam.”
“But where shall I go?”
“Go back to your aunt at Carstow, and she’ll nurse all those worried lines out of your face again.”
“But I daren’t; I’m ashamed to,” objected the poor wretch.
“Then go away and hide yourself somewhere for to-night, and be at Paddington to-morrow at twelve, and you shall go down with me.”
“And Rees, what about Rees?” asked Sep, who although he had lost most of his old enthusiasm about his friend, still retained the remains of a dogged and not very reasonable devotion to him.
“You don’t think I should forget him,” said Deborah, gravely.
“Of course not,” he answered, hastily. “You will get him out of the scrape too?”
“Certainly.”
“But there are so many other scrapes behind this one!”
“I think I can get them all hushed up.”
“But then there’s Goodhare,” whispered Sep, with a shudder. “He’ll have us both back if he wants to!”
“I think he will find it expedient to keep out of the way for the future. Now come, we haven’t much time.”
She held out her hand, assuming a tone of greater confidence than she felt; for she feared that at the last moment Sep might decline to part with the treasure entrusted to him. However, he looked at her outstretched hand, and then, irresolutely, tremblingly drew out from a pocket of his coat first one flat packet, and then another.
Deborah could scarcely refrain from snatching them, or keep her fingers from quivering, as she took them and hid them in the front of her own dress, under her mantle. Sep felt a-trembling as soon as he had given them up, and buried his face in his hands.
“And now,” said she, softly, “I must find Lord St. Austell. He went out at that door, following Goodhare.”
Sep started up wildly. “Following Goodhare!” he almost shouted. Then, sinking his voice to a hoarse whisper, he stammered out: “You musn’t hope anything from Lord St. Austell, then. If Goodhare took him where I expect he did, he would never let him out alive. Goodhare hates him, and he is more devil than man!”
Deborah rose quickly and quietly and opened the door into the yard.
“Take me to this place at once,” said she.
Remonstrance with her was useless. With staggering steps Sep accompanied her along the outer passage.