"Wyllard seemed to have quite recovered from the shock of yesterday evening," he said presently. "I never saw him looking better than he looked this afternoon."
"Wyllard is a man made of iron," answered Bothwell carelessly. "I sometimes think there is only one soft spot in his heart, and that is his love for my cousin. In that he is distinctly human. I never saw a more devoted husband. I never knew a happier couple."
Bothwell sighed, as if this mention of the happiness of others recalled the thought of his own misery. At least, it was thus that Edward Heathcote interpreted the sigh.
Completely absorbed in his own cares, Bothwell had forgotten for the moment that he was talking to the man whom his cousin had jilted in order to marry Julian Wyllard. The courtship and the marriage had happened while Bothwell was in the East. It had never been more to him than a tradition; and the tradition was not in his mind when he talked of his cousin's wedded happiness.
"I am glad that it is so, very glad," said Heathcote earnestly.
He spoke in all good faith. He had loved with so unselfish a love that the welfare of his idol had been ever of more account to him than his own bliss. He had renounced her without a struggle, since her happiness demanded the sacrifice. And she was happy. That was the grand point. He had paid the price, and he had won the reward. He had loved with all his heart and strength; he had never ceased so to love. That wedded life, which to the outside world had seemed a life of domestic happiness, had been on his part only a life of resignation. He had married a friendless girl who loved him—who had betrayed the secret of her love for him unawares, in very innocence of inexperienced girlhood. He had taken a helpless girl to his heart and home, because there seemed upon this earth no other available shelter for her; and he had done his best to make her happy. He had succeeded so well that she never knew that this thoughtful kindness which wrapt her round as with a balmy atmosphere, this boundless benevolence which shone upon her like the sun, was not love. She was one of the happiest of women, and one of the proudest wives in the west country; and she died blessing him who had made her life blessed.
And now the gossips were all full of pity for the widower's loss and loneliness—a poor bereaved creature living in a lonely old Grange, with a young sister, the twin daughters, just four years old, and an ancient maiden lady who looked after the sister, the children, the house, and the servants, and in her own person represented the genius of thrift, propriety, prudence, wisdom, and all the domestic virtues. People in the neighbourhood of Bodmin, and his old friends at Plymouth, all thought and talked of Mr. Heathcote as borne down by the weight of his bereavement, and all hoped that he would soon marry again.
The Spaniards lay in a valley between Bodmin Road station and Penmorval. It lay on Bothwell's road to his cousin's house, and he had thus no excuse for parting company with the Coroner, had he been so inclined. The old wrought-iron gate between gray granite pillars, each crowned with the escutcheon of the Heathcotes, stood wide open, and the rose and myrtle curtained cottage by the gate had as sleepy an air in the summer evening as if it had stood by the gate of the Sleeping Beauty's enchanted domain. Even the old trees, the great Spanish chestnuts, with their masses of foliage, had a look of having outgrown all reason in a century of repose. No prodigal son had laid the spendthrift's axe to the good old trees around the birthplace of the Heathcotes. There was only the extent of a wide paddock and a lawn between the hall-door and that grand old gateway, and the house, though substantial and capacious, hardly pretended to the dignity of a mansion. It was long and low and rambling—a house of many small rooms, queer winding passages, innumerable doors and windows, and low heavily-timbered ceilings; a house in which strange visitors and their servants were given to seeing ghosts and hearing unearthly noises of funereal significance—albeit the family had jogged on quietly enough from generation to generation, without any interference from the spirit world. People coming from brand-new houses in Earl's Court or Turnham Green protested that The Spaniardsmustbe haunted; and shuddered every time the mice scampered behind the panelling, or the wind sighed amidst the branches of those leafy towers that girdled lawn and meadow.
Bothwell thought that Mr. Heathcote would leave him at the gate of The Spaniards.
"Good-night," he said somewhat shortly.
"I'll go on to Penmorval with you, and hear what impression the inquest made upon Wyllard," said the other. "It's not half-past seven yet—your cousin will be able to spare me a few minutes before dinner."
Bothwell walked on without a word. Ten minutes brought them to the gates of Penmorval, by far the lordlier domain, with a history that was rich in aristocratic traditions. But that ancient race for which Penmorval had been built, for whose sons and daughters it had grown in grandeur and dignity as the centuries rolled along—ofthesethere remained no more than the echo of a vanished renown. They were gone, verily like a tale that is told; and theparvenufinancier, the man who had grown rich by his own intellect and his own industry—naturally a very inferior personage—reigned in their stead.
Penmorval seemed not quite so dead asleep as Heathcote Grange,aliasThe Spaniards. In the sweet stillness of the summer evening, Bothwell and his companion heard voices—women's voices—familiar and pleasant to the ears of both.
Mrs. Wyllard was strolling in the avenue, with a young lady by her side, a girl in a white gown and a large leghorn hat; tall, slight, graceful of form, and fair of face—a girl who gave a little cry of pleased surprise at seeing Heathcote.
"I was just rushing home, Edward," she said, "for fear I should keep you waiting for dinner."
"Indeed, Hilda! Then I can only say that your idea of rushing is my idea of sauntering," her brother answered, smiling at the girlish face, as he shook hands with Mrs. Wyllard.
"What did Mr. Wyllard think of the inquest?" he asked. "You have seen him, I suppose?"
"Only for a minute as he drove by to the house, while Hilda and I were walking in the avenue. Why, Bothwell, how fagged and ill you look!" exclaimed Dora to her cousin.
"Only bored," answered Bothwell, which was not complimentary to the companion of his long walk.
"But you look positively exhausted, poor fellow," pursued Dora pityingly. "Why didn't you come back in the dog-cart? There was room for you."
"I wanted to be alone."
"And I wanted company," said Heathcote, laughing, "so I inflicted my society upon an unwilling companion. Very bad manners, no doubt."
"I'm afraid you got the worst of the bargain," muttered Bothwell, with a sullen look, at which Hilda's blue eyes opened wide with wonder.
"Do you know, Mr. Heathcote, an idle life does not agree with my cousin," said Dora. "I never know what it is to be weary of Penmorval or the country round; but for the last three or four weeks Bothwell has behaved as if he hated the place, and could find neither rest nor amusement within twenty miles of us. He is perpetually running off to Plymouth or to London."
"I wish women would take to reading their dictionaries, instead of cramming their heads with other women's novels," exclaimed Bothwell savagely, "for then perhaps they might have some idea of the meaning of words. When you say I run up to London perpetually, Dora, I suppose you mean that I have been there twice—on urgent business, by the way—within the last five weeks."
"And to Plymouth at least a dozen times," protested Dora. "All I can say is that you are my idea of perpetual motion."
"I know you are hardly ever at home, Mr. Grahame," said Hilda, supporting her friend.
They strolled towards the house as they talked, and half-way along the avenue they met the master of Penmorval, correctly attired in sober evening-dress, with a light overcoat worn loosely above his faultless black.
"How do you do, Heathcote? Do you know, Dora, that it is ten minutes to eight? You'll stop and dine with us, of course," added Wyllard cordially. "You refused last night; but now Hilda is here, and you have no excuse for going home."
"I only came to afternoon tea," said Hilda.
"And you and my wife have been gossiping from five o'clock until now. Deepest mystery of social life, what two women can find to talk about for three mortal hours in the depths of a rural seclusion like this!"
"A mystery to a man, who cannot imagine that women either think or read," retorted Dora, taking her husband's arm. "You men have a fixed idea that your wives and sisters have only two subjects of conversation, gowns and servants. Of course, you will stay and dine, Mr. Heathcote. I am not going to dress for dinner, so please don't look at your frock-coat as if that were an insuperable obstacle. You and Hilda are going to stop, whether you like it or not."
"You know we always like to be here," said Hilda, in her low sweet voice.
She stole a shy little look at Bothwell, as if wondering what he thought of the matter; but Bothwell's countenance was inscrutable.
Hilda was pained but not surprised by his manner. He had changed to her so strangely within the last few months—he who half a year ago had been so kind, so attentive. She was not angry—she was not vain enough to wonder that a man should begin by caring for her a little, and then leave off caring all at once, and relapse into absolute indifference. She supposed that such fickleness was a common attribute of the superior sex.
They all went to the house, and through a glass door into the large low drawing-room, where the butler immediately announced dinner. The two ladies had only time to take off their hats before they went into the dining-room. They were both in white, and there was a grace in Dora Wyllard's simple gown, a cluster of roses half hidden by the folds of an Indian muslin fichu, a swan-like throat rising from a haze of delicate lace, which was more attractive than the costliest toilet ever imported from Paris to be the wonder of a court ball. Yes, she was of all women Edward Heathcote had ever known the most gracious, the most beautiful. Those seven years of happy married life had ripened her beauty, had given a shade of thoughtfulness to the matron's dark eyes, the low wide brow, the perfect mouth, but had not robbed the noble countenance of a single charm. The face of the wife was nobler than the face of the girl. It was the face of a woman who lived for another rather than for her own happiness; the face of a woman superior to all feminine frivolity, and yet in all things most womanly.
Edward Heathcote sighed within himself as he took his place beside his hostess in the subdued light of the old panelled room, a warm light from lamps that hung low on the table, under rose-coloured shades, umbrella-shaped, spreading a luminous glow over silver and glass and flowers, and leaving the faces of the guests in rosy shadow. He sighed as he thought how sweet life would have been for him had this woman remained true to her first love. For she had loved him once. Eight years ago they two had clasped hands, touched lips, as affianced lovers. He could never forget what she had been to him, or what she might have been. He sat at her husband's table in all loyalty of soul, in staunch friendship. He would have cut his heart out rather than debased himself or Dora by one guilty thought. Yet he could but remember these things had been.
The two ladies left almost immediately after dinner, and Bothwell sauntered out into the garden directly afterwards. Not to rejoin them, as he would have done a few months ago, but to smoke the cigar of solitude in a path beside a crumbling, old red wall, and a long, narrow border of hollyhocks, tall, gigantic, yellow, crimson, white, and pink. There were fruit-trees on the other side of the wall, which was supported with tremendous buttresses at intervals of twenty feet or so, and about wall and buttresses climbed clematis and passion-flower, jasmine, yellow and white, and the great crimson trumpets of the bignonia.
The banker and the lawyer sat silently for a few minutes, Julian Wyllard occupied in the choice of a cigar from a case which he had first offered to his guest; and then Edward Heathcote asked him what he thought of the inquest.
"I thought it altogether unsatisfactory," answered Wyllard. "You did your best to thrash out a few facts; but those fools of railway people had nothing to tell worth hearing. Everybody knows that the poor creature fell off the train—or was thrown off. What we want to find out is whether there was foul play in the business."
"It is my belief that there was," said Heathcote, looking at him fixedly in the dim roseate light, almost as unsatisfactory for such a scrutiny as the changeful glow of the fire.
"And mine," answered Wyllard; "and so strong is my conviction upon this point that I stopped at the post-office on my way home, and telegraphed to my old friend Joe Distin, asking him to come down and help us to solve the mystery."
"Do you mean the criminal lawyer?"
"Whom else should I mean? He and I were schoolfellows. I have asked him to stop at Penmorval while he carries on his investigation."
Mrs. Wyllard was surprised and even horrified when, on the morning after the inquest, her husband told her that he had invited Distin, the criminal lawyer, to stay at Penmorval while he investigated the mystery of the nameless girl's death. The presence of such a man beneath her roof seemed to her like an outrage upon that happy home.
"My dear Dora, what a delightful embodiment of provincial simplicity you show yourself in this business!" said her husband laughingly. "I believe you confound the lawyer who practises in the criminal courts with the police-agent you have read about in French novels. A man of low birth and education, with nothing but his native wit to recommend him; a man whose chief talent is for disguises, and who passes his life in a false beard and eyebrows, in the company of thieves and murderers, whom it is his business to make friends with and then betray. Joe Distin is a solicitor of long standing, whose chief practice happens to be in the Old Bailey. He is a most accomplished person, and the friend of princes."
"He is your friend, Julian, so I ought not for a moment to have doubted that he is a gentleman," answered Dora sweetly, with her hand resting on her husband's shoulder. Such a lovely hand, with long tapering fingers, and dimples where other people have knuckles, like a hand in an early Italian picture. "Still, I wish with all my heart that he were going to stay at the hotel. I don't want you to be involved in this terrible business. Why should you concern yourself about it, Julian? Nothing you can do can be of use to the poor dead girl. What is it all to you? What have you to do with it?"
"My duty," answered Wyllard firmly. "As a magistrate I am bound to see that a terrible crime—if crime it be—shall not go unpunished in my district. I have no particular aptitude in unravelling mysteries. I therefore send for my old schoolfellow, who has won his reputation among the sinuous ways of crime."
"Ah, I remember. You and Mr. Distin were together at Marlborough," said Dora musingly. "That is enough to make him an interesting person in my mind."
"Yes, we were companions and rivals in the same form," answered Julian. "There were some who thought us two the sharpest lads in the school. In all our studies we were neck and neck: but in other points the difference between us was a wide one. Distin was the son of a rich London solicitor—an only son, who could draw upon an indulgent father for means to gratify every whim, who had his clothes made by a fashionable tailor, and could afford to hire a hunter whenever he got the chance of riding one. I was one of many children—the fourth son of a Warwickshire parson; so I had to reckon my cash by sixpences, and to wear my clothes till they were threadbare. Yes, there was an impassable gulf between Distin and me in those days."
"And now you must be a great deal richer than he, and you can receive him in this lovely old place."
"There will be some pride in that. Yes, Dora, Fortune was at home to me when I knocked at her door. I have been what is called a lucky man."
"And you are a happy one, I hope," murmured his wife, leaning her head upon his shoulder, as he stood before the open window, looking dreamily out at summer woods.
"Ineffably happy, sweet one, in having won you," he answered tenderly, kissing the fair broad brow.
"You must have been wonderfully clever," said Dora enthusiastically, "beginning without any capital, and within twenty years making a great fortune and a great name in the world of finance."
"I was fortunate in my enterprises when I was a young man, and I lived at a time when fortunes were made—and lost—rapidly. I may have had a longer head than some of my compeers; at any rate, I was cooler-headed than the majority of them, and I kept out of rotten schemes."
"Or got out of them before they collapsed," Mr. Wyllard might have said, had he displayed an exhaustive candour.
But in talking of business matters to a woman a man always leaves a margin.
So after a good deal more discursive talk between husband and wife it was agreed that Mr. Distin's visit was not to be regarded as an affliction. A telegram arrived while Mr. and Mrs. Wyllard were talking, announcing the lawyer's arrival by the same train which had carried the nameless waif to her grave in the valley, the train which was due at Bodmin Road at a quarter before eight. The dog-cart was to meet the guest, and dinner was to be deferred till nine o'clock for his accommodation.
"You can send a line to Heathcote and ask him to dine with us to-night," said Wyllard. "I know he is interested in this business, and would like to meet Distin."
"And Hilda—you won't mind having Hilda?"
"Not in the least. Hilda is an ornament to any gentleman's dining-table. But how fond you have become of Hilda lately!"
"I was always fond of her. Do you know there is something that puzzles me very much?"
"Indeed!"
"A few months ago I thought Bothwell was in love with Hilda. He seemed devoted to her, and was always asking me to have her over here. I was rejoicing at the idea of the poor fellow getting such a sweet girl for his wife, for I thought Hilda rather liked him, when all at once he cooled, and appeared actually to go out of his way in order to avoid her. Strange, was it not?"
"The fickleness of an idle mind, no doubt," answered Wyllard carelessly.
He had not his wife's keen interest in the joys and sorrows of other people. He was said to be a kind-hearted man. He was good to the poor in a large way, and never shut his purse against the appeal of misfortune. But he could not be worried about the details of other people's lives. He did not care a straw whether Bothwell was or was not in love with Hilda. To his wife, on the contrary, the question was vital, involving the happiness of two people whom she loved.
"If your cousin does not put his shoulder to the wheel before long he will fall into a very bad way," said Wyllard decisively.
"He would be very glad to do it, if he only knew what wheel to shoulder," said Bothwell's voice outside, as he sauntered to the window, wafting aside the smoke of his cigarette.
It seemed to Dora as if her cousin spent his home life in smoking cigarettes and sauntering in the gardens, where, on his energetic days, he helped her in her war of extermination against the greenfly.
"There is always a wheel to be moved by the man who is not afraid of work," said Wyllard.
"So I am told, but I have found no such wheel, as a civilian. Seriously, Julian, I know that I am an idler and a reprobate, that I am taking advantage of your kindness and letting life slip by me just because I have the run of my teeth in this fine old place, and because you and Dora are worlds too good to me. I have been taking my own character between my teeth and giving it a good shaking within the last few days, and I mean to turn over a new leaf. I shall go abroad—to the South Seas."
"What are you to do for a living in the South Seas?"
"Something. Sub-edit a colonial paper, keep a grocery store, turn parson and convert the nigger. I shall fall upon my feet, you may be sure. I shall find something to do before I have been out there long. Or if Otaheite won't give me a roof and a crust, I can cross to the mainland and drive sheep. Something I must do for my bread. Into the new world I must go. The atmosphere of the old world is stifling me. I feel as if I was living in an orchid house."
"No, Bothwell, you are not going to the other end of the world," said Dora affectionately. "You ought not to say such things, Julian, making him feel as if he were an intruder, as if he were not welcome here; my first cousin, the only companion of my youth that remains to me now my dear mother is gone. Surely we who are rich need not grudge our kinsman a home."
"My dearest, you ought to know that I spoke for Bothwell's sake, and from no other motive than my care for his interest," answered Julian gravely. "A young man without a profession is a young man on the high-road to perdition."
"I believe you with all my soul," cried Bothwell, with feverish energy, "and I shall sail for Otaheite in the first ship that will carry me. Not because I do not love you, Dora, but because I want to be worthier of your love."
He lighted a fresh cigarette, and sauntered away from the window, to breathe latakia over the John Hoppers and Victor Verdiers on the wall.
Dora's eyes filled with tears. She was angrier with her husband than she had ever been since her marriage.
"It is very unkind of you to drive Bothwell out of your house," she said indignantly. "You make me regret that I have not a house of my own. You forget how fond we have always been of each other—that he is as dear to me as a brother."
"It is because I remember that fact that I am anxious to stimulate Bothwell to action of some kind," answered her husband. "Do you think it is good for any young man to lead the kind of life your cousin leads here?"
"If he were to marry he would become more industrious, I have no doubt," said Dora. "You might pension off old Mr. Gretton, and make Bothwell your land-steward."
"Which in Bothwell's case would mean a genteel dependence, under the disguise of a responsible position. Bothwell would be seen on every racecourse in the west country—would play billiards at the George, shoot my game, and let somebody else do my work."
"Do you mean that my cousin is a dishonourable man?" asked Dora indignantly.
"No, dear. I mean that he is a man who has spoiled one career for himself, and will have to work uncommonly hard in order to find another."
This was cruel logic to Dora's ear. For the first time in her life she thought that her husband was ungenerous; and for the first time in her life she reckoned her own fortune as an element of power. Hitherto she had allowed her rents to be paid into her husband's bank. She had her own cheque-book, and drew whatever money she wanted; but she never looked at her pass-book, and she did not even ask what income each year brought her, or what surplus was left at the end of the year. She had never offered to help Bothwell with money; she had felt that any such offer would humiliate him. But now she considered for the first time that her money must have accumulated to a considerable extent, and that it was in her power to assist Bothwell with capital for any enterprise which he might desire to undertake. If he had set his heart upon going to the South Sea Islands, he should not start with an empty purse.
The train from Paddington came into Bodmin Road station with laudable punctuality, and without mischance of any kind; and the dog-cart brought Mr. Distin to Penmorval before half-past eight. Dora was in the drawing-room when he arrived. She had dressed early in order to be ready to welcome her husband's friend; even albeit he came to her with a perfume of the Old Bailey.
In spite of Wyllard's praise of his old schoolfellow, Dora had expected a foxy and unpleasant individual, with craft in every feature of his face.
She was agreeably surprised on beholding a good-looking man, with aquiline nose, dark eyes, hair and whiskers inclining to gray, slim, well set up, neat without being dapper or priggish—a man who might have been taken for an artist or an author, just as readily as for a lawyer versed in the dark ways of crime.
"My friend Wyllard looks all the better for his rural seclusion," said Distin, after he had been introduced to Dora. "He seems to me a younger man by ten years than he was when I met him in Paris just ten years ago. And that means twenty years to the good, you see."
"Is it really ten years since you have met?" exclaimed Dora.
"Exactly a decade. Our last meeting was a chance encounter in the Palais Royal in the summer of '72, when Paris was just beginning to recover herself after the horrors of the Commune. We ran against each other one day at dinner-time—both making for Véfour's, where we dined together and talked over old times. I thought that evening my friend looked aged and haggard, nervous and worried, and I put it down to the ruling disease of our epoch, high-pressure. I knew it could not be the effect of late hours or dissipation of any kind, for Wyllard was always as steady as old Time. But now I find him regenerated, glorified by rustic pleasures. Happy fellow, who can afford to enjoy hisotium cum dignitatein the very prime of life."
"You hear what he says, Dora," said Wyllard laughingly. "Now, I daresay what he thinks is: 'How can this poor devil endure his existence out of London—two hundred and forty miles from the clubs—from the opera-house—from the first nights of new plays—the crowd of familiar faces?' I know my friend Distin of old, and that he could not exist out of London any more than a fish can live out of water."
"I like my little London," admitted Distin coyly, almost as if he were talking of a fascinating woman. "There's so much in it, and it's such a devilish wicked place, to those who really know it. But I think the country a most delightful institution—from Saturday to Monday."
"The cockney stands confessed in that one remark," said Wyllard, laughing.
"That is the worst of Devonshire and Cornwall," pursued Distin, in his airy way. "Charming scenery, eminently picturesque; but not available between Saturday and Monday. Now, there is one ineffable charm in those pretty places up the river, and that rural district round Tunbridge Wells."
"Pray what is that?"
"One is always so delighted to arrive on Saturday afternoon, and so charmed to leave on Monday morning. The rustic aroma just lasts till Sunday night, and the keen craving for town begins with the dawn of Monday. But I must go and get rid of two hundred and forty miles of dust," said Mr. Distin, slipping off as lightly as a boy.
He left the drawing-room at twenty minutes to nine, and returned at five minutes before the hour, in full evening-dress. It was like a conjuring trick. His costume was of the quietest, yet there was a finish and style about everything that impressed even the ignorant. One felt that the very latest impress of Fashion's fairy fingers had touched that shirt, had meted out the depth of the silk collar, the curve of the sleeve. That black pearl centre-stud might have been the last gift of a prince or a grateful beauty. One ring, and one only, adorned the solicitor's left hand; but that ring was a table diamond, two hundred and forty years old, said to have been given by Anne of Austria to the Duke of Buckingham.
Bothwell, who took some pride in his clothes, looked clumsy and unfashionable beside the London lawyer, or at any rate fancied that he did. Edward Heathcote was at all times a careless dresser, but his tall figure, and a certain dash which was more soldierly than civilian, made him an important personage in every circle. He had the free grace, the easy movements, of a man who has spent his boyhood and youth out of doors—hunting, shooting, fishing, mountaineering.
The dinner was lively, thanks chiefly to Joseph Distin, for Bothwell had a dispirited air, and Hilda could not help feeling unhappy at seeing his gloom, though she tried to conceal her sympathy. Mr. Wyllard and Mr. Distin had the conversation to themselves during the greater part of the meal, for Mr. Heathcote was graver and more reserved than usual, and Dora had a subdued and thoughtful air. She would have been quite ready to admit that Joseph Distin was a very agreeable person, and altogether worthy of her husband's friendship; but she could not dissociate him from the horror of the event which caused his presence in that house. She felt that of those gathered around her table that night, in the shaded light of the low lamps, amidst the perfume of hothouse flowers, the greater number were brooding upon a mystery which might mean murder.
She was very glad to escape to the drawing-room with Hilda, directly dinner was over.
"And now, I suppose, they will talk of that poor creature's death," she said. "Come, Hilda, sing one of Schubert's ballads, and let us try to forget all that horror."
Hilda seated herself at the piano obediently, and began "Mignon." She had a superb mezzo-soprano, clear as a bell, ripe and round and full. The rich notes went pealing up to the low ceiling and floating out at the open windows. Perhaps Bothwell heard them in the dining-room, for he came sauntering in presently, and slipped quietly into a seat in a shadowy corner. Hilda always sang and played from memory. There was no irksome duty to be done in the way of turning over music.
"What made you desert the gentlemen, Bothwell?" asked Dora, when the song was over.
"They were talking of that diabolical inquest again. Nobody in Bodmin seems able to talk of anything else. Wherever I went to-day I heard the same ghastly talk—every imaginable suggestion, and not one grain of common sense. What ghouls people must be to gloat over such a subject! No wonder that men who live in great cities despise the rustic mind."
"I do not find that the inhabitants of cities are any less ghoulish," retorted Dora, who felt warmly about her native soil, and would have fought for Cornish people and Cornish institutions to the death. "See how the London papers gloat over the details of crime."
These three spent the evening very quietly in the drawing-room, while the three men in the dining-room were discussing the event on the railway.
Hilda sang some of Mrs. Wyllard's favourite songs, while her hostess sat in the lamp-light by an open window working at a group of sunflowers on a ground of olive plush. Bothwell kept in his dark corner all the evening, so quiet that he might have been asleep, save that he murmured a "Thank you, Miss Heathcote, very lovely," after one of Hilda's songs. She thought that he was only grateful for having had his slumber soothed by a vague strain of melody.
The men in the dining-room had turned away from the lighted table, and were sitting in a little knot in the embrasure of the wide Tudor window, smoking their cigars, half in the ruddy glow of the lamps and half in the mellow light of the newly-risen moon. They could hardly see each other's faces in that uncertain light. Stodden, the butler, had wheeled a table over to the window and arranged the claret-jugs and glasses upon it, before he left the room. The little knot of men smoking and drinking by the window looked a picture of comfort, with the soft sweet air blowing in from the garden, and the great full moon shining over the roses and the fountain in the old-fashioned parterre. Joseph Distin's keen eye noted every detail of his friend's surroundings; and he told himself that, for the fourth son of a village vicar, Julian Wyllard had done remarkably well.
Between them Wyllard and the Coroner had contrived to put the London lawyer in full possession of the facts relating to the girl's death. Those facts were unfortunately of the scantiest. Edward Heathcote breathed no hint of that dark suspicion about Bothwell which had flashed into his mind after the inquest, and which he had vainly endeavoured to shake off since that time. Bothwell's manner at dinner this evening had not been calculated to disarm suspicion. His moody brow, his silence and abstraction, were the unmistakable signs of secret trouble of some kind. That trouble was coincidental in time with the event on the railway; for Heathcote and Bothwell had met in Bodmin, and had ridden home together on the previous day, and the young man had been cheery enough.
"The ticket found upon the girl was from London to Plymouth, I apprehend," said Distin, when he had heard everything.
"Yes."
"Then she started from Paddington that morning. My business will be to find out who she was, and the motive of her journey."
"And do you think there is a possibility of tracing her in London, without a shred of evidence—except the photograph of a dead face?" exclaimed Wyllard. "To my mind it seems like looking in a brook for a bubble that broke there a week ago."
"As a west countryman you should remember how otter-hounds hunt the bead on the water," answered Distin. "With a photograph, the police ought to be able to trace that girl—even in the wilderness of London."
"But if she were a foreigner, and only passed through London?" suggested Wyllard.
"Even then she would leave her bead, like the otter. She could not get a night's shelter without some one knowing of her coming and going. Unless she slept in the lowest form of lodging-house—a place through which the herd of strange faces are always passing—the probabilities are in favour of her face being remembered."
"Judging by the neatness of her clothes and the refinement of her features, she must have been the last person likely to set foot in a common lodging-house," said Heathcote. "But there was no money found upon her; neither purse nor papers of any kind."
"That fact is to me almost conclusive," said Distin.
"Upon what point?"
"It convinces me that she was made away with."
"Indeed!" exclaimed Wyllard, much surprised. "The thing never occurred to me in that light."
"Naturally, my dear friend. You have not devoted twenty years of your life to the study of the criminal mind," answered the lawyer easily. "Don't you see that the first thought of a man who made up his mind to throw a girl out of a train—unless he did the act in a blind fury which gave him no time for thought of any kind—his first precaution, I say, would be to see that there was no evidence of her identity upon her, more especially where the victim was a stranger in the land, as this poor thing was? The identification of the victim is often half-way towards the identification of the murderer. But if the dead can be buried unrecognised—a nameless unknown waif, in whose fate no private individual is interested—why, after the funeral the murderer may take his ease and be merry, assured that he will hear no more of the matter. Public interest in a mysterious crime of that kind soon dies out."
"And you think that this poor girl was the victim of a crime?" asked the Coroner, surprised to find his own idea shared by the great authority.
"In my own mind I have no doubt she was murdered."
"But why should she not have committed suicide?"
"Why should she have travelled from London to Cornwall in order to throw herself over that particular embankment?" demanded Distin. "An unnecessary luxury, when there were the Holborn Viaduct and a score of bridges at her service, to say nothing of the more natural exit by her own bedroom window. Besides, in the statistics of self-murder you will find that nineteen out of twenty suicides—nay, I might almost say ninety-nine out of a hundred—leave a piteous little note explaining the motive of the deed—an appeal to posterity, as it were. 'See how great a sufferer I have been, and what a heroic end I have made.' No, there is only one supposition that would admit this girl being her own destroyer. Some ruffian in the train might have so scared her that she flung herself out, in a frantic effort to escape from him. But against this possibility there is the fact of the absence of any purse or papers. She could not have been travelling that distance without, at least, a few shillings in her possession."
"Who knows!" said Julian Wyllard. "Very narrow are the straits of genteel poverty. If, as I suppose, she was a poor little nursery governess going to her situation, she may have had just money enough to pay for her railway ticket, and no more. She may have relied upon her employers meeting her at the station with a conveyance."
"If she were a nursery governess, due at some country house on that day, surely her employers would have communicated with the Bodmin police before now," said Distin.
"News finds its way slowly to sleepy old houses in remote districts off the railway," replied Wyllard. "There are people still living in Cornwall who depend upon a weekly paper for all news of the outer world."
"If the poor girl were going to such benighted wretches, let us hope they will wake in a day or two, and enlighten us about her," said Distin. "And now to be distinctly practical, and to tell you what I am going to do. Mr. Heathcote's carriage was announced nearly an hour ago, and I saw him looking at his watch just now."
"I was only uneasy about Mrs. Wyllard and my sister. We are keeping them up rather late," said the Coroner apologetically.
"Dora won't mind. She loves the tranquillity of midnight," replied Wyllard. "Go on, Distin. What is your plan?"
"Your adjourned inquest does not come on for nearly a fortnight," said Distin. "Now, you can't expect me to waste all that time in Cornwall, delicious as it would be to dream away existence among the roses of your delightful garden; so the best thing I can do is to run up to London to-morrow morning"—he spoke as if he were at Maidenhead or Marlow—"find out all I canthere, and return here in time for the Coroner's next sitting. By which time," added the specialist cheerily, "I hope we shall have got up a pretty little case for the Public Prosecutor. Mr. Heathcote will kindly keep me informed of any new details that crop up here. I shall have the poor little girl's photograph in my pocket-book. You'll send a messenger to your town early to-morrow morning, Wyllard, and tell the photographer to meet me at the station with his photographs of the dead girl? He ought to have them ready by that time."
"I will give the order to-night," said Wyllard; and then the three men repaired to the drawing-room.
"I have been very happy here," said Hilda to her brother; "but I thought you were never coming for me. Mrs. Wyllard must be dreadfully tired."
"Never tired of your company, Hilda," interjected Dora. "Nor of Schubert."
"And as for Mr. Grahame, he has been asleep ever since dinner."
"That is a baseless calumny, Miss Heathcote. I have not lost a note of your songs. I am told that Schubert was rather a low person—convivial, that is to say somewhat Bohemian; fond of taverns and tavern company. But I will maintain there must have been a pure and beautiful soul in the man who wrote such songs as those."
"I am so glad you like them," answered Hilda, brightening at his praise. "I daresay you often heard them in India."
"No; the people I knew in India had not such good taste as you."
"But in a country like that, where ladies have so little to do, music must be such a resource," persisted Hilda, who was curiously interested in Mr. Grahame's Indian experiences.
She was always wondering what his life had been like in that strange distant world, what kind of people he had known there. She wondered all the more perhaps on account of Bothwell's reticence. She could never get him to talk freely of his Indian days, and this gave the whole thing an air of mystery.
The clock in the great gray pile of stabling was striking twelve as the Coroner's carriage drove away.
"I cannot think what has happened to Mr. Grahame," said Hilda. "He used to be so lively, and now he is so dull."
"The change is palpable to others, then, as well as to me," thought Heathcote. "Whatever the cause may be, there is a change. God help him if my fear is well grounded! If I were a criminal, I would as soon have a sleuthhound on my track as Joseph Distin."
Mr. Distin was on his way to London before noon next day, curled up in a corner of acoupé, looking out eagerly at every station for the morning papers. He had the dead girl's photographs—full-face, profile—in his letter-case. On making his adieux at Penmorval he declared that he had thoroughly enjoyed his little run into the country, his night in the fresh air.
"So delicious to wake at six—my usual hour—and smell your roses, and hear your fountain," he said. "I look forward with delight to my return the week after next."
During that interval which occurred between Mr. Distin's departure and the adjourned inquest, Edward Heathcote gave himself up to his usual avocations, and took no further trouble to fathom the mystery of the stranger's untimely fate. After all, he told himself, wearied by brooding upon a subject that troubled him greatly, it was not for him to solve the problem. He was not the Public Prosecutor, nor was he a detective, nor even a criminal lawyer, like Joseph Distin. His business was to hear what other people had to say, not to hunt up evidence against anybody. His duty began when he took his seat at an inquest, and ended when he left it. Why, then, should he vex his mind with dark suspicions against a man who was the near kinsman, the adopted brother, of that woman for whose sake or for whose happiness he would have gladly died?
This was how Edward Heathcote argued with himself; and it was in pursuance of this conclusion that he gave himself up to a life of idleness during the twelve days that succeeded Mr. Distin's departure. He rode far afield in the early morning, he drove with his sister and the twins in the afternoon. He appeared at two archery meetings and three tennis-parties, a most unusual concession to the claims of society, and he dawdled away the rest of his existence, reading the last new books in English, French, and German, and discussing them with Hilda's duenna, Theresa Meyerstein, a curious specimen of the German Fräulein, intensely domestic, and yet deeply learned—a woman able to turn from Schopenhauer to strawberry jam, from Plato to plum-pudding—a woman who knew every theory that had ever been started upon the mind and its functions, and who could tell to a hundredweight how much coal ought to be consumed in a gentleman's household. Mr. Heathcote had discovered this paragon of domesticity and erudition, acting as deputy-manager at a boarding-house at Baden, during the first year of his widowhood, and he brought her away from the white slavery and the scanty remuneration of that institution to the luxury of an English country house, and the certainty of a liberal recompense for her labours. Fräulein Meyerstein rewarded her employer by a most thorough fidelity, and adored Hilda and the twin daughters. Her soul had languished in a chilling atmosphere, for lack of something to love, and she lavished the garnered treasures of long years upon these Cornish damsels who were committed to her care.
More than once during those long summer days Hilda urged the necessity of calling at Penmorval; but her brother told her she could go alone, or take the Fräulein, who dearly loved a drive, and a gossip over a cup of tea, and who was always kindly received by Mrs. Wyllard, in spite of her short petticoats, anatomical boots, and Teutonic bonnets.
"You can perform those small civilities without any assistance from me," said Heathcote. "You women are so tremendously posted in the details of etiquette. Now, it would never have occurred to me that because we dined at Penmorval a few nights ago, we were strenuously bound, to call upon Mrs. Wyllard before the end of the week. I thought that, with friends of long standing those Draconic laws were a dead letter."
"I don't mean to say that we need be ceremonious, Edward," answered Hilda, "but I am sure Dora will expect to see us. She will think we are forgetting her if we don't go."
"Then you go, dear, and let her see that you are not forgetful, whatever I may be," said Heathcote.
He had a horror of entering that house of Penmorval just now, lest he should see or hear something that would give him new cause for suspecting Bothwell. He had a feeling that he could only cross that threshold as the bringer of evil: and it would be a bitter thing for him to carry evil into her home for whose peace he had prayed night and morning for the last eight years.
So Hilda drove her ponies up the hill to Penmorval, and Miss Meyerstein sat beside her in all the glory of her new bonnet, sent from Munich by a relative, and reported as the very latest fashion in that city. Unhappily for the success of the bonnet in Cornwall, Bodmin fashions and Munich fashions were wide as the poles asunder. Bodmin boasted a milliner who took in the fashion-magazines, and beguiled her clients with the idea that everything she made for them was Parisian. The Bodmin milliner had a heavy hand, and laid on feathers and flowers as if with a trowel; but her bonnets and hats were light as thistledown in comparison with the art of Bavaria.
It was the afternoon of the adjourned inquest, and Joseph Distin was on the scene, ready to watch the inquiry. He had arrived at Penmorval in time for breakfast, after travelling all night.
"Such a good way of getting rid of the night," he said, as he discussed a salmi of trout, caught in the stream that traversed Penmorval Park.
Alone in the library with Julian Wyllard after breakfast, the London lawyer confessed that for once in his life he had been pretty nearly beaten. He had shown the photographs of the dead face to two of the cleverest detectives in London—had set one to work in the east and the other in the west, promising a liberal reward for any valuable information; and nothing had come of their labours. One had tried every lodging-house within a certain radius of Paddington. The other had explored the neighbourhood of London Bridge Station, and failing there, had come as far west as Charing Cross. The ground had been thoroughly beaten, and no likely place had been forgotten in which a stranger of this girl's class could find shelter.
"She might have gone to the house of friends," suggested Wyllard.
"If she had friends in London—were they ever such slight acquaintances even—they would have been heard of before now," argued Distin. "I take it that she was unknown to a mortal on this side of the Channel, except the man who murdered her, and who had no doubt some very powerful motive for wanting to get rid of her."
"What do you suppose that motive to have been?"
"My dear Wyllard, what a question for a clever man to ask!" exclaimed the lawyer, with a shade of contempt. "To speculate upon the motive I must have some knowledge of the man, and of this girl's murderer I know nothing. If I could once find the man, I should soon find the motive. Such a murder as this generally means the breaking of some legal tie that has become onerous—some bond which death alone can loosen."
The room at the Vital Spark was filled to overflowing on the occasion of the adjourned inquiry. At the previous examination only the inhabitants of Bodmin and its immediate neighbourhood had been present; but on this second afternoon people had come from long distances, and there was not standing room for the audience, which filled the passage, and waited with strained ears to catch a stray word now and then through the open door.
The idea of a profound mystery—of a dastardly crime—had been fostered in the local mind by the newspapers, which had harped upon the ghastly theme, and gloated over the particulars of the nameless girl's fate in paragraphs and leaderettesad nauseam. Articles headed "More details concerning the Bodmin Mystery," "Further particulars about the strange death on the railway," had served as the salt to give savour to cut and dried reports about the harvest, the markets, and those small offenders whose peccadilloes furnish the material for Justice to exercise her might upon at petty sessions.
Every one had read about that strange death of a lonely girl in the summer sunset. Every one was interested in a fate so melancholy—an abandonment so inexplicable.
"I thought that there was hardly ever a human being so isolated as to be owned by no one," said the curate of Wadebridge. "Yet it would seem that this poor girl had no one to care for her in life, or to identify her after death. If she had one friend living in England or France, surely that person must have made some sign before now."
"People in France are very slow to hear about anything that happens in England," replied Dr. Menheniot, to whom the curate had been talking.
"But I heard Mr. Heathcote, at the first inquiry, say that he meant to advertise in a Parisian newspaper."
"Then be sure the advertisement appeared," answered Menheniot. "Heathcote is one of those few men with whom meaning and doing are the same thing."
The inquiry dragged its slow length along, and hardly one new fact was elicited. There was a great deal of repetition, in spite of the Coroner's attempt to keep all his witnesses to the point. Mr. Distin sat near the Coroner, and asked a few questions of two or three of the witnesses; and though he elicited no actually new facts, he seemed to put things in a clearer light by his cross-examination.
Just before the close of the inquiry, he said:
"I see Mr. Grahame, of Penmorval, is here this afternoon. I should like to ask him a question or two, if you have no objection."
The Coroner paled ever so slightly at this suggestion, but he had no objection to offer: so Bothwell Grahame was asked to come up to the table, and kiss the Book, which he did with a somewhat bewildered air, as if the thing came upon him as an unpleasant surprise.
"You were in the train that evening, I believe, Mr. Grahame," said Distin.
"I was."
"Were you alone, in a compartment, or in company with other passengers?"
"I had a third-class compartment to myself."
"And you saw this girl fall?"
"I saw her fall—but as I saw just a little less than Dr. Menheniot and the guard saw, I don't see the good of my being questioned," answered Bothwell, with rather a sullen air.
"I beg your pardon," returned Mr. Distin suavely, "every witness sees an event from a different point of view. You may have noticed something which escaped the two witnesses we have just heard."
"I noticed nothing more than you have been told by these two, and I saw less than they saw. I did not look out of the window till I heard the girl's shriek, and I saw her in the act of falling."
"Good. But you may have observed this solitary girl—a foreigner, and therefore more noticeable—on the platform at Plymouth. You were on the platform at Plymouth, you know."
"I was. But I did not see the girl at the station."
"Strange that she should have escaped your observation, although the porter who was busy with his duties had time to notice her," said Mr. Distin.
"Would it surprise you to hear that during the four or five minutes I spent in the station before the train started I was standing at the bookstall buying papers, with my back to the platform?"
"That would account for your not having seen this noticeable young stranger. You were in Plymouth for several hours, I believe, Mr. Grahame?"
"I was; but upon my word I don't see what hearing that fact can have upon this inquiry."
"Perhaps not. Still, you will not object to tell us what you were doing in Plymouth—how you disposed of your time there."
This question evidently troubled Bothwell, simple as it was, and easy as it ought to have been to answer.
"I played a game at billiards at the Duke of Cornwall," he said.
"I am sure you are too good a player for that to occupy more than half an hour," said Mr. Distin, with his silky air, as if he were employed in a very pleasant business, and were bent upon being as cheery as possible.
"I had to wait for the table."
"Come now, Mr. Grahame, you need not be mysterious about so simple a matter," exclaimed Mr. Distin. "You don't mean to tell us that you went to Plymouth by the 12.15 train"—he had ascertained this fact before the inquiry began—"and spent the whole of the day there, in order to play a game at billiards in a public billiard-room. You must have had other business in Plymouth."
"Certainly. I had other business there."
"Will you kindly tell us what that business was?"
"As it concerned others besides myself, and as it has not the faintest bearing upon this case, I must decline to answer that question."
"Really, now, I should advise you to be more frank. You leave Bodmin early in the day—without giving any notice of your departure—and you return late in the evening. A most mysterious catastrophe occurs in the train which brings you home—a death so strange, so horrible, that it casts a cloud over all the passengers travelling by that train—leaves a stigma upon all, as it were, until the guilt of that deed can be brought home to one. Surely, under such circumstances, the utmost frankness is desirable. Every traveller in that train should be ready to answer any question which those who are charged with the elucidation of this mystery may ask."
"I have answered your questions as to what occurred to me in the train, and at the station; but I decline to be catechised about my business in Plymouth," answered Bothwell doggedly.
"That will do," said Distin; and Bothwell went to his seat next Julian Wyllard, whose handsome presence appeared in the front rank of spectators, amongst those of theélitewho were favoured with chairs, while the commonalty stood in a mob at the back of the room.
The audience had been breathless during this examination of Bothwell Grahame. The young man's sunburnt face was clouded with anger, his dark strongly-marked brows were scowling over those gray-blue eyes which once had such a pleasant expression.
"I can't think what has come to Grahame," muttered a sporting squire to his next neighbour. "He used to be such a pleasant fellow, but to-day he looks like a murderer."
"You don't think he threw the girl out of the train, do you?" asked the other.
"God forbid! But by that London lawyer's questions one would thinkhesuspected Grahame of having had a hand in the business."
The jury gave their verdict presently, "Death from misadventure."
"Tell Dora not to expect me at dinner," said Bothwell to Julian Wyllard, before they left the inn; "I shall dine in Bodmin."
"Have you any engagement?"
"No, but I can easily make one. I am not going to break bread with your lawyer friend. So long as he is at Penmorval I shall be missing."
"My dear Bothwell, you have no right to be angry at a simple question which you might have so easily answered," remonstrated Wyllard gravely.
"It was a question which I did not choose to answer, and which he had no right to ask. It was an outrage to ask such a question—to press it as he did. Fifty years ago he might have been shot for a lesser insult. By Jove, I never felt more sorry that the good old duelling days are over—the days when one man could not insult another with impunity."
"How savage you are, Bothwell, and against a man who was only in the exercise of his profession!"
"He had no right to question me as if I were a murderer," retorted Bothwell savagely. "Did he think that I spent my time in Plymouth plotting that girl's death? If I had made up my mind to push a woman over an embankment, I should not have wanted to spend a day in Plymouth in order to plan the business. A murder of that kind must be touch and go—no sooner thought of than done."
"All trouble would have been saved, my dear fellow, if you had given a straight answer to a simple question."
"To answer would have been to acknowledge his right to question me. No judge would have allowed counsel to have asked such a motiveless question. Nowhere except at a petty rustic inquiry would such a thing be permitted."
"I can only say that you are needlessly angry, Bothwell," said Wyllard. "Here comes Distin. You had better drive home with us."
"No, thank you; I shall be home before the house shuts up; but you'll see no more of me to-night."
"Good-night, then."
The Penmorval barouche was waiting before the porch of the Vital Spark—a great day for that rural hostelry when such a carriage could be seen waiting there—a great day at the bar, where all the strength of the establishment could not serve brandies-and-sodas and pale ales fast enough. Joseph Distin came tripping out, and took his place in the carriage beside Julian Wyllard. He had lingered at the inn for a few minutes' talk with the Coroner.
"Is not Mr. Grahame going back with us?" he asked, as they drove towards the town.
"No. You wounded his dignity by those questions of yours. He is a curious young man, and is easily offended."
"He is a very curious young man," answered the lawyer, with a thoughtful air.
He was looking at the landscape intently as they drove along the shady road, between deep banks and luxuriant hedges; but he would have found it rather difficult to say afterwards what kind of timber prevailed in the hedgerows, or what crops grew in the fields.
He was thoughtful all that evening, though he did his utmost to make himself agreeable to Mrs. Wyllard at dinner, talking to her of art, music, the drama, society, all the arts and graces and pleasures of life—doing everything in his power to distract her thoughts from that one grim theme which was the motive of his presence in that place.
When she was gone, and Distin and his host were alone together over their claret, the lawyer dropped his society manner as if it had been a mask, and began to talk seriously.
"For the first time for a good many years I find myself completely at fault," he said, leaning across the table, and cracking filberts in sheer distraction of mind. "I thought that I should be able to get up a case while I was in London, but not a shred of evidence have I discovered. If this girl had dropped from the moon, it could not be more difficult to trace her."
"Well, my dear Distin, you have done your best, and we must be satisfied," replied Wyllard quietly. "I felt it to be my duty as a magistrate to do all in my power to fathom the mystery of that poor girl's death. The best thing I could do was to put the case in your hands. If you cannot help us, no one can. We must be satisfied."
"But I am not satisfied, Julian; I never shall be satisfied until I have solved this problem," said Distin resolutely. "I am not the sort of man who can stand being baffled in a matter of this kind. Is all my professional training to go for nothing, do you think? And yet in your interest it might be best that I should let this business drop out of my mind—-forget the whole story if possible."
"How do you mean, inmyinterest?" exclaimed Wyllard, surprised. "What bearing can the case have upon me or my interest, beyond my desire to do my duty as a magistrate?"
"I fear that this mystery touches you nearer than you suppose. Surely, Wyllard, you must have been struck by the manner of your wife's kinsman under my examination."
"Great Heaven!" cried Wyllard, "you don't mean to tell me that you suspect Bothwell Grahame of any hand in this business?"
"In perfect frankness, between man and man, I believe that young man to be in some way—either as principal or accessory—concerned in the murder of that girl."
"My dear Distin, you must be mad."
"Come now, my dear Wyllard, you cannot pretend that you did not notice the strangeness of Mr. Grahame's manner this afternoon: his refusal to answer my question about his business in Plymouth."
"He was angry at your catechising him in that manner; and I must confess that your question appeared to the last degree irrelevant, even to me."
"Granted. My question was irrelevant. But it was a test question. I should never have cross-examined Mr. Grahame, if I had not seen reason for suspecting him before the inquiry began. I was painfully impressed by his manner the night I dined here with him; and I believe, from certain indications dropped unconsciously by your Coroner, that he too saw reason for suspecting Mr. Grahame. His manner to-day confirms my suspicion. I am deeply grieved that it should be so, on your wife's account."
"You had need be sorry for her. Why, Bothwell is like a brother to her. It would break her heart," said Wyllard, strongly agitated.
He had risen from the table, and was walking slowly up and down the room, between the windows opening wide upon the gray evening sky, and the warm lamplight within. Joseph Distin could not see his face, but he could see that he was strongly moved.
"My dear fellow, let us hope that Mrs. Wyllard will never know anything about this suspicion of mine," said Distin soothingly. "I have—so far—not one scrap of evidence against Mr. Grahame; except the evidence of looks and manner, and the one fact of his refusal to say what he was doing in Plymouth the day of the girl's death. There is nothing in all that to bring a man to the gallows. I may have my own ideas about this mystery, and Mr. Heathcote may have pretty much the same notion, but there is nothing to touch your wife's cousin so far. I shall go back to town, and try to forget the whole matter. All you have to do is to keep your own counsel, and take care that Mrs. Wyllard knows nothing of what has passed in strictest confidence between you and me."
"I would not have her know it for worlds. It would break her heart; it might kill her. Women cannot bear such shocks. And to think that a man can be suspected of a crime on such grounds—suspected by you, a student of crime and criminals—because of a moody manner, a refusal to answer a question! The whole thing seems too absurd for belief."
"Say that the thing is absurd, and that for once in his life Joe Distin has made a fool of himself. Take your wife to Aix-les-Bains—or to Biarritz——"
Julian Wyllard started at that last word as if he had been stung.
"What the deuce is the matter with you, or with Biarritz?" asked Distin sharply.
"Nothing. My mind was wandering, that's all. You were saying——"
"That you had better forget all that has passed between us to-night—forget the death of that girl—make a clean slate. Take your wife to some foreign watering-place, the brightest and gayest you can find. And let Bothwell Grahame dree his weird as best he may. The catastrophe on the railway will be forgotten in a week."
"I doubt it. We have not much to think about at Bodmin, and we exaggerate all our molehills into mountains. That girl's death will be the talk of the town for the next six months."
"And yet people go on existing in such places, and think they are alive!" exclaimed Distin.
He left Penmorval after breakfast next morning, without having seen Bothwell, who was out on the hills breaking in a new horse while the family were at breakfast. He had been out since five o'clock, the butler told Mrs. Wyllard.
"Is he riding Glencoe?" she asked, with a look of alarm.
"Yes, ma'am."
"He is a dreadful horse, I know, Julian," she said. "Manby told me about him only yesterday. He had narrowly escaped being thrown the day before; and he said that Glencoe was a really dangerous horse, and that we ought to get rid of him."
"So that he may break somebody else's bones," suggested Mr. Distin. "That is what a good coachman always advises."
"And now Bothwell has gone out on him, alone."
"You would not have him take some one to pick him up if he were thrown," said Wyllard. "My dear Dora, there is not the slightest occasion for alarm. The horse is young, and a little gay; but your cousin excels as a rough-rider, and there will be no harm done."
"But why should he want to ride that horse?" said Dora; "I'm sure Manby would advise him not."
"The very reason why he should do it," replied her husband.
"I wonder if he is trying to kill himself while I am eating my breakfast calmly here?" speculated Joseph Distin. "He must know that I suspect him; and he may think that the game is up."
Whatever Bothwell's intention might have been, he came back to Penmorval before eleven o'clock, bringing home the big bay hunter bathed in sweat, and as tame as a sheep.
"A fine, honest horse! Only wants riding," he said, as he flung the bridle to the groom, who had been watching for him at the stable-gates, with an air of expecting to see broken bones.
In the hall Bothwell met Dora, cool, and calm, and beautiful, in her white muslin breakfast gown. She was bringing in a basket of flowers from the hothouse, to be arranged by her own hands.
"Is that London lawyer gone yet?" asked Bothwell curtly.
He could not be civil even to his cousin when he spoke of Joseph Distin.
"Yes, he has gone—I hope, never to come back again," said Dora. "He is really a very well-bred man, and he made himself most agreeable here; but he seemed to bring with him an atmosphere of crime. I could not help thinking of all the horrible cases he must have been concerned in, and that he had grown rich by the crimes of mankind. He could find out nothing about that poor girl's death, it seems, although he is so clever."
"Which goes rather to establish my view that the girl fell out of the train by accident," replied Bothwell.
The year was a month older since Joseph Distin went back to town, baffled and angry with himself, yet glad for his friend's sake that his discoveries had gone no further. The heather was purpling on the hills, where the dwarf furze flashed here and there into patches of gold. The tourist season had set in; but the tourist for the most part avoided the little town of Bodmin, nestling snugly inland among the hills, and turned his face to the sea, and the wild rocks which defend that romantic western coast, to the Lizard and the Land's End, to rugged Tintagel and sandy Bude.
Life at Penmorval had drifted by as calmly as an infant's sleep, in those four weeks of soft summer weather. There had been no visitors staying in the house, for both Julian Wyllard and his wife loved a studious repose, and there were long intervals in which they lived almost alone. Penmorval would be full by and by, in October, when the pheasant-shooting began; and in the mean time it was pleasant to Dora Wyllard to be able to ride and drive with her husband—to be the companion of his walks, to read the books he read, and to waste long evenings in inexhaustible talk. They always had so much to say to each other. The sympathy between them was so complete.
Hilda Heathcote was at Penmorval nearly every day. She ranked almost as one of the family. She came to Mrs. Wyllard for counsel and instruction upon all manner of subjects—sometimes for a gardening lesson, sometimes for a lesson in crewel-work, in French, German, Italian. Dora was in advance of her young friend in all these subjects; but the pupil was so bright and quick that it was a pleasure to teach her. Between them Mrs. Wyllard and Miss Heathcote achieved marvels in the way of art-needlework—piano-backs which were as beautiful as pictures, portières worthy to rank with the highest examples of Gobelin tapestry, counterpanes that ought to have been exhibited at South Kensington. The calm leisure of country life lent itself to such slow and elaborate labours.
Mrs. Wyllard had a big box of foreign books once a month from Rolandi's library, and she meted out to Hilda such volumes as were fit for a young English lady's perusal; and then they met to talk over the books, sometimes alone, sometimes with Bothwell as a third. Bothwell was very scornful of all the sentimental books, laughed at the super-refined heroines of French novels, the dreamy heroes of German romance; but he read all the books that Hilda read, and he seemed to enjoy talking about them at that protracted function of afternoon tea from which he rarely absented himself.
The weather was peerless during this month of August, and Mrs. Wyllard's afternoon tea-table was set out in an arbour of clipped yew, at the end of the Italian garden, a point from which there was a fine view of the moors, and the great brown hills beyond.
Bothwell's sullen gloom had passed away soon after Mr. Distin's departure. He seemed to Hilda to have become once again the old Bothwell—gay, and cheery, and kind, and frank. But he did not commit himself by any of those delicate little attentions to Hilda which had made him such an agreeable person half a year ago. That particular phase of his character was a thing of the past.