The Vanity Box Part 1

The Vanity Box

CHAPTER I

"Please let Mrs. Forestier know that Sir Ian and Lady Hereward have come."

"Yes, my lady. She is in the rose-garden. I will tell her at once," said the butler, who had opened the door.

He rather expected that the visitors would propose going out of doors to find his mistress; for they had been away for a fortnight, and Lady Hereward was a great admirer of the rose-garden, which was now at the height of its June glory. But the weather that day was sullenly hot, with a still, perfumed heat like the heat of the tropics, and Lady Hereward was looking tired. Evidently, as there was no motor or carriage at the door, she and Sir Ian must have walked the two miles and a half from Friars' Moat to Riding Wood House, and though most of the way—taking the short cut—lay in forest shadow, this windless heat would be oppressive among crowding trees.

The butler moved toward the drawing-room door, but Lady Hereward stopped him. "We will sit here in the hall," she said. "It's delightfully cool." So ​speaking, she pushed down the long gray glove on her right arm, glancing at her bracelet watch. "We're very early," she went on. "We must have walked faster than we thought. We allowed ourselves too much time."

In pulling down her glove, Lady Hereward dropped something which fell noiselessly upon a polar-bear rug, and lay glittering, half buried in the silver-white fur. "My vanity box!" she exclaimed. "Stupid of me! I'm always dropping it."

The butler stooped rheumatically to pick up the little gold case, but the lady's husband was before him, and the old servant pottered away to call his mistress, thinking, as he had often thought before, how charmingly courteous Colonel Sir Ian Hereward invariably was to his wife. She liked and needed a good deal of attention, a good deal of waiting upon, as the observant Brewster was well aware; yet Sir Ian never failed, never seemed bored or impatient, as many husbands did after years of marriage. But then, if he were more devoted than ordinary husbands, her ladyship was more attractive than ordinary wives. Not that she was precisely beautiful, nor was she precisely young. Every one knew the distinguished officer's age—forty-one; and Lady Hereward was said to be some months older than Sir Ian, who was her distant cousin as well as her husband; but she did not look a day over thirty; and if she were not a beauty, she was interesting and ​unusual. "Like a proud sort of Madonna," the old man described her to himself as he went toward the rose-garden, to tell Mrs. Forestier that her luncheon guests had arrived, a little earlier than expected.

There was a portrait—one among many on the oak-panelled walls—which for some reason fascinated Sir Ian Hereward; and whenever he came to Riding Wood, he always stood in front of it, even if he had to find some excuse for doing so, looking up at the painted, unsmiling face with a curious, reluctant interest, as if he saw it for the first time.

It was not necessary to invent an excuse now, since he was alone with his wife, waiting for their hostess to appear; nevertheless he walked about the hall a little, before making his way to the portrait, picking up a book or two on the fat-legged Jacobean table in the middle of the flagged floor, and then moving on by slow degrees, pausing here and there to glance at some other portrait. This was not a deliberate plan carried out to cloak his real intention, unless from himself, for he had no idea that his wife knew or cared about his interest in the picture; yet he was always drawn to it, in spite of a certain desire to resist. He tried to persuade himself that he thought of that portrait as he thought of others in the hall at Riding Wood, merely as a fine piece of work by a great artist. It had been painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and was a family treasure. Once a few years ago, it had gone ​away to an exhibition, having been lent by Mr. Forestier, since dead; and during the time of its absence Sir Ian had not visited Riding Wood.

When her husband began his wanderings round the hall, Lady Hereward seized the opportunity to open her vanity box, and look at herself in the tiny mirror inside. She knew perfectly well what Sir Ian's goal was, and that, having reached it, he would not be likely to move until he heard Mrs. Forestier's footsteps. She knew perfectly well, too, why he was drawn to the portrait, and the fascination it had for him annoyed her extremely; still, as she scorned to refer to the subject, the fact remained that he would look at the portrait, and she might as well avail herself of the three or four minutes during which his back was turned. Never for an hour did she forget that she was a year older than Ian, or cease to yearn for her lost youth, or abandon the struggle to keep its semblance. Never for a moment did she fall into the error of letting her husband or her friends guess that she was engaged in a struggle. Nobody dreamed how unremitting were the efforts this Madonna-faced lady made to retain the softness and smoothness and slimness which belonged to her past. To be sure, she was known to carry a vanity box, but nobody ever saw her peep into it, and her fondness for the little gold case was counted as one with her devotion to jewelry. This was her only selfish hobby, and though ​she allowed herself to wear but a few jewels at a time, she owned some for which she might have been envied by richer women.

While Sir Ian gazed at the portrait, his wife glanced hastily at her own reflection in three inches by two of mirror. Her long oval face was white, and there were shadows under the light blue eyes. Her thin but beautifully cut lips were pale and dry, and the brown hair, softly folding down on either side of the pure forehead, almost covering the ears, lacked lustre. Lady Hereward felt disappointed in herself, although the wide gray hat, which dress and gloves matched, was becoming in shape. She took a tiny powder-puff out of the gold vanity box, and gave a pearly effect to her pallor; then, a touch of pink salve (not vulgar red) outlined the delicate curve of the lips; and last of all, the dove-wing folds of hair were pulled a little more over the ears, which were not as pretty or well made as everything else about Lady Hereward.

"You two dears! how good of you to come, and how glad I am to see you both!" cried Mrs. Forestier's voice at the door.

She was a small, dark woman of large enthusiasms, rather gushing, and perhaps even somewhat insincere—at least Sir Ian thought her so; but he had loved her dead husband dearly, therefore he had a kindly if somewhat contemptuous toleration for her, and an almost romantic affection for Riding Wood.

​Mrs. Forestier, bright black eyes shining, dimples twinkling, almost ran to greet Lady Hereward, both plump hands outstretched. The two women presented a strong contrast to one another as they kissed: Lady Hereward tall, slim, dignified and gracious; Mrs. Forestier short, round, energetic, with a rich, peachy bloom of complexion.

"I am lucky to get you at such short notice," she went on.

"We're always delighted to come here, you know," said Lady Hereward, "and we haven't been back from Paris long enough to have made any engagements."

Mrs. Forestier released her friend, and moved a few steps toward Sir Ian.

"Only to think of my keeping you waiting!" she reproached herself.

"It wasn't more than five minutes, and Ian loves mooning about among the portraits," said Lady Hereward.

"Don't you think, Milly, that the Sir Joshua by the staircase reminds one a tiny bit of Terry Ricardo, as she used to be? Heaven knows what she's like now." And Mrs. Forestier glanced at the picture which had been occupying Sir Ian's attention.

Millicent Hereward studied the portrait from a distance for a moment before answering, as if she had never noticed any resemblance, and needed to think the question over.

​"Perhaps it does, a tiny bit, now you speak of it; though of course Teresina Ricardo couldn't touch Lady Catherine for beauty," she replied at last.

"Perhaps Sir Joshua's idea of Lady Catherine," amended Mrs, Forestier. "If he could have had Teresina for a model, very likely he would have made her even handsomer than Lady Catherine. What do you think, Sir Ian? You used to know Terry in India."

"She was more fascinating than handsome, as I remember her," he answered with just a perceptible stiffening of his thin, brown soldier-face.

"I mean, what do you think about the portrait reminding one of her?"

"There is something like in the expression of the mouth—or the shape of the eyes."

"Or both," added Mrs. Forestier, "and I suppose it's not so very remarkable, since there are a few drops of the same blood in Terry's veins. I hadn't realized the resemblance, till the other day, though I sometimes said to myself: Who is that portrait like? But then I don't suppose I'd thought twice of Terry Ricardo in five years till a week ago—since you and Milly ran over to Paris."

"What made you think of her then?" asked Lady Hereward, turning her favourite ring on her finger.

"Why, she's in England—arrived yesterday, and has come to visit the Norman Ricardos. Maud Ricardo ​was here about a week ago, and told me they were expecting their cousin Terry."

"Oh!" said Lady Hereward.

Sir Ian said nothing.

Mrs. Forestier flashed one of her bright glances from the wife to the husband.

"Luncheon is served, madam," announced the old butler.

 CHAPTER II

They went into the dining-room, and the table conversation strayed from one thing to another, beginning with the Herewards' short visit abroad whence they had just returned. Paris, according to Millicent Hereward, was looking quite lovely, and had been very amusing. They had gone about a good deal, and she had brought back some pretty things. Next week they were going to spend in town, and she would wear them all. She liked London in June, but she liked the country better, especially when she had been out of England and had just come back. A week in town was long enough for her, at one time. They would go up again later, for another week, perhaps. "I'm not so sure you don't look a tiny bit tired, after your Paris dissipations," said Mrs. Forestier.

Lady Hereward smiled, though in reality she was vexed. At forty-two to look tired was to look old. "If I do, it's nothing," she replied. "I always feel excited in Paris, I hardly know why; as if things would happen. I don't sleep well there, though I always enjoy it so much; and when I do sleep I have the most horrid dreams. I don't suppose in the fortnight we were in Paris, I had forty-eight hours sleep. And now ​the heat's oppressive, isn't it? A brooding, ominous sort of feeling in the air. I shall be quite right again, when I've had a little good sleep, and the weather changes."

"Of course you will, better than ever," said Mrs. Forestier, who was never uncomplimentary or uncomfortable for long. "As for me I adore this sort of weather. It doesn't feel ominous to me. The world's looking so divine. I love my bit of it."

"So do I, mine," Lady Hereward hastened to reply. "It was good to come to dear old Friars' Moat again, wasn't it, Ian?"

"Yes," he said, smiling pleasantly at her, if a little absent-mindedly.

Mrs. Forestier wondered if she knew what he was really thinking about. It was difficult to be sure whether Sir Ian was romantically inclined or not, and yet—he had a romantic profile, she told herself; the kind of profile and the kind of romance that one associated with knights of old, and King Arthur's Round Table and all that. The gravity of his expression when not actually smiling was very marked, but suitable to a soldier who had gone through experiences which sober and age a man before his time. Sir Ian's eyes looked rather wistful, too, if you met them unexpectedly, catching his soul unprepared for attack, as it were; but very likely this did not mean anything as exciting as it appeared to mean. He was a happy ​and fortunate man, with a charming and devoted wife whom he must have married for love, since she had no money, and he had not been poor; a man who thoroughly enjoyed the country life to which he had settled down after inheriting his uncle's title and place, a few years ago.

"We walked through the woods, and we're going to walk home," went on Millicent Hereward.

"Oh!" said Nina Forestier. "Well, if you're planning to do that, perhaps I ought to tell you something I'm supposed not to tell. I've set my heart on keeping you as long as I can, and showing you the rose-garden. It's quite a dream now, yet if you want to walk home—how long does it take you from here to Friars' Moat?"

"One could do it in forty minutes," said Sir Ian.

"But one doesn't if one is with one's wife, and wanting to enjoy oneself," Millicent finished for him. "One does it in an hour. What is it you ought to tell me and are supposed not to tell?"

"Why—Maud Ricardo mentioned that she was going to take Terry over to pay you a surprise call about half-past four, the day after you came back from Paris. I think she rather wanted Terry to burst upon you; and yet, she'd hate to miss you, of course. I certainly shan't let you leave me till long after three, and if you don't want to miss them, won't you change your mind, and let me send you over in my motor, ​just in time to arrive by a quarter-past four? You can motor in ten or fifteen minutes."

"No, thank you very much, I can't give up the walk," said Millicent, slowly and rather thoughtfully. "I think we must start early and take plenty of time."

"I'm almost sorry I told you about Maud and Terry Ricardo," said Mrs. Forestier. "But as Maud mentioned her idea to me, she might think it spiteful if I were the one to make you miss her and her cousin."

"If the call was to be a surprise, she couldn't have blamed us for being out," said Sir Ian. He was a very hospitable man, yet he spoke as if he would not be sorry for an excuse to miss the visitors.

"She would blame us, though," said Millicent, "for she would ask where we were; and when she heard we'd been lunching here, she'd be sure to think Nina had told us, and that we'd stopped out late simply because we didn't care about seeing them."

"Who would tell her?" asked Sir Ian. "Not one of the footmen."

"She would very likely ask to see Miss Verney."

"By the way, Miss Verney didn't once come over here while you were gone," said Mrs. Forestier, "though I begged her to drop in any day, or every day, to tea, thinking she might be lonely."

"Nora isn't the sort of girl to be lonely, while she has the run of the library," remarked Sir Ian. "Still, I wonder she didn't come over."

​"She is sulking," said Lady Hereward.

"Isn't that rather an unkind thing to say?" asked Sir Ian.

"Not at all," Millicent answered somewhat sharply. "Nora doesn't care who knows. Indeed, I think she likes people to know that she's furious with me."

"Why, I thought she adored you—as everybody does—and even a little more," exclaimed Mrs. Forestier. "I'm sure she ought to. You've been an angel to her—and so has Sir Ian."

Sir Ian smiled at the suggestion, as concerned himself: "One would have to be decidedly fiendish not to be good to Nora."

"Oh, of course she's clever and pretty, and all that," admitted Mrs. Forestier, "but the fact remains that you and Milly came forward when she was left without a penny in the world, and nobody else was inclined to bother much about her, though she had crowds of relatives."

"Her relatives are all poor," said Lady Hereward. "We were glad to do what we could for her."

"And we've been well paid for what we have done," said Sir Ian. "Milly took her, it's true, not because she particularly felt the need of having a companion, but because she was heartily sorry for the poor child when the vicar died, leaving nothing. However, now that Nora has been nearly six months in the house, I'm sure Milly would hardly know what to do without ​her. She s made herself useful—almost indispensable in a thousand ways, little and big; and not only is she pretty and clever, as you say, but she is good. A most unusual girl."

"I should like to have you as my champion, if I needed one," laughed Nina Forestier.

"Nora doesn't need a champion, though," protested Lady Hereward. "Nobody is oppressing her. Nobody is unjust to her. On the contrary, everybody is very good and considerate. I am just as fond of her as ever, though I am hurt, and think I have a right to be hurt, because she has entirely changed to me in the last two months. It isn't my fault that she fell in love with the one most undesirable man in the world—her world, anyhow; and he being what he is, it isn't my fault that my very love for the girl prevented me from handing her over to him with my blessing."

"Milly is quite right, isn't she, Sir Ian?" said Mrs. Forestier, soothingly, seeing, or fancying she saw, that tears were not far from her friend's eyes.

"Quite right," responded Sir Ian, smiling at his wife. "She usually is right. By the way, she has brought back a present for all her pets in the village, from old bodies in their second childhood, to young bodies just beginning their first."

"She would!" exclaimed Nina Forestier, aware that the subject was changed. "How they all worship her! But then, as I said, everybody does."

​"Not everybody," answered Lady Hereward, looking out of the window with a far-away look, which went past the green lawn and the flower border blazing in the sun.

"She has brought a present for you, too," Sir Ian went on.

"Only a quaint old seal I picked up at an antique shop," said his wife. "It's nothing."

Mrs. Forestier protested that it was sure to be lovely, and even if it weren't, in itself, it would be lovely to her as a proof—unneeded, really—that Millicent never forgot her friends.

After that, they talked about some of those friends, great and humble; Mrs. Forestier told of the small happenings of county and village, while the Herewards had been away; and altogether it was a very pleasant luncheon. When it was over Sir Ian left the table with the ladies; they had coffee on the loggia which opened out from Mrs. Forestier's boudoir, and later, gave a few moments to the rose-garden, but only a few, for Lady Hereward insisted that they must not miss the Ricardos. As she and Sir Ian walked away together, with their pleasant air of good comradeship, Nina Forestier, looking after them from the loggia, thought how punctiliously conscientious her friend was. It was not probable that Milly could really be pleased at the idea of seeing Teresina Ricardo, and it would have been easy enough to have missed the ​intended "surprise visit" without appearing to have avoided it intentionally. Yet, rather than run the risk of seeming inhospitable to a woman who had not the slightest claim upon her, Milly would cut short her visit to Riding Wood. To be sure, she might have stopped a little longer, and still have reached home in time, if she had accepted the offer of Mrs. Forestier's motor. But, if one could get at her real reason or refusing it, very likely it would turn out to be consideration for the chauffeur, or something else absurdly unselfish, rather than her own desire for a second walk through the woods.

"However," thought Mrs. Forestier, as she saw the two tall, erect figures disappear over the brow of the slight hill which separated them from the long stretch of wood, "however, Milly is so desperately in love with Sir Ian after all these thirteen years of being his wife, that I believe she actually enjoys a tête-à-tête with him better than anything else. He's perfectly delightful to her, too, and they're the greatest friends. Yet I wonder if he's as much in love with her as she is with him, or——

She did not finish the sentence in her mind, but let it break off vaguely as she lost sight of Sir Ian and Lady Hereward, walking companionably together, shoulder to shoulder.

CHAPTER III

The stable clock at Friars' Moat had just struck the quarter after four, as a slender woman, dressed in white, walked up the avenue toward the house. She was alone, and walked slowly, glancing about her with interest, as if she wanted to impress every feature of the place upon her mind. Five minutes after the striking of the clock, she arrived at the door, but even then she did not ring at once. She looked at the old, old stone house, and down at the water-lily leaves in the moat which still ran along one side, though elsewhere it had been filled up generations ago.

An electric bell seemed singularly unsuited to the heavy oak door, hinged and studded with iron, but it was there, though a mere inconspicuous button, and the visitor touched it after a moment's hesitation.

A young footman in a quiet livery answered her ring, and she asked for Lady Hereward.

"Her ladyship went out to lunch, with Sir Ian, and has not come back yet," said the servant. He had never seen the face of the caller before, but it was interesting and striking. It was the face of a woman whom most people would like to know, and the footman thought her a personage, though she had come on foot ​and was simply dressed in a short white cotton frock, with a garden hat trimmed only with a drooping wreath of ivy leaves. He had a dim idea that it might be a grievous offence in the eyes of his mistress, if he let this stranger go, without making an effort to detain her; yet on the other hand, Lady Hereward had given no instructions concerning expected visitors. Usually, when she went out, if she wished to see any one who might arrive before she came back, she mentioned the hour of her return, and directed the servants to ask possible callers to wait. She had said nothing of the sort to-day, nevertheless the footman qualified his announcement of her absence. "I believe they intended to come back to tea," he ventured. "They may be here any minute, now."

"Thank you, but I think I had better not wait," the lady answered, in one of the most beautiful voices the young man had ever heard; a voice which, if she sang, would be a creamy contralto, honey-sweet. "Please give these cards to her ladyship, but say that Mrs. Ricardo had a headache, and sent Miss Ricardo alone, lest Lady Hereward heard they meant to come, and had possibly given up some engagement."

This seemed an almost unnecessarily detailed explanation, but the lady gave it with a certain explicit earnestness which showed that she really wanted it repeated precisely as made. The footman resolved to obey strictly, for this visitor of his mistress was one ​of those women whom men, in all ranks of life, instinctively long to please.

The servant knew Mrs. Ricardo by name and sight, though she did not come often to Friars' Moat, but he had never heard of a Miss Ricardo. She certainly could not be a daughter who had been away for a long time—as long as his service with the Herewards; for she must be at least twenty-six or seven, and Mrs. Ricardo was not more than thirty-five. His curiosity was aroused, and he wondered almost painfully who the lady in the white dress and the garden hat could possibly be.

He had never seen such eyes as hers, although his ideal of fine eyes had been turquoise blue ones until this minute, and these eyes were gray, even a greenish gray, when you looked straight into them, though the thick dark lashes on upper and lower lids made them seem dark as shadowed trout-pools. Oh, yes, they were eyes that were eyes! Apart from them, there was perhaps nothing very extraordinary about the dusky-pale oval of the face, yet Richard, the second footman, could fancy himself doing anything for a woman like this. Up to a few minutes ago, he had imagined that he was hopelessly in love with Lady Hereward's companion, Miss Verney, but now he had suddenly recovered from that passion. He could not bear to let Miss Ricardo go.

"Would you like to see Miss Verney, madam?" ​he asked in desperation, even as he mechanically tendered a little silver tray for visiting-cards.

"Miss Verney?" the lady repeated after him.

"Yes, madam; her ladyship's companion, a daughter of the late vicar at Havershall, a neighbouring village. I thought perhaps——"

"No, thank you, I won t trouble Miss Verney, if you will kindly remember to give my message."

What a voice! Richard hoped that he might have the artistic pleasure of hearing it again. As he was assuring the speaker that her message should by no means be forgotten, he caught sight of Sir Ian coming toward the house, across the lawn. One came in that direction, if one had taken the short cut to Friars Moat from Riding Wood. Already Sir Ian had seen the lady's face, as she turned from the door to go away, and seeing it, Richard the footman fancied that he paused. Perhaps it was only fancy, though, for after half a second's apparent hesitation, he quickened his steps. The servant thought that he had never seen his master look so soldierly, as he walked briskly forward, head up, shoulders squared.

This settled it, of course. The visitor would not go now. She would have to wait and speak with Sir Ian, who evidently recognized her, and probably she would have to wait now until Lady Hereward's return. No doubt that would be soon. It was even a little surprising that she should not be with Sir Ian, but ​very likely she had gone to the village of Riding St. Mary, to see some of her pensioners.

Just as the footman expected, Miss Ricardo stopped, at sight of Sir Ian, and waited for him to join her. Richard hovered a minute or two at the door, expecting his master to bring the visitor inside, but presently he saw that which convinced him it would be more discreet to retire.

Exactly what convinced him, he could hardly have explained, for really nothing happened which would not happen between any lady and gentleman who met after an absence of some time. Perhaps it was the way they looked at one another, which banished the servant almost against his will; yet it could hardly have been that, either, for they did not smile, or appear to be particularly pleased to see each other. Indeed, they were somewhat stiff in their manner; and their voices as they spoke, though quite polite, sounded strained. Nevertheless, the fact remained that Richard the footman felt impelled to efface himself.

It was the lady who spoke first, and held out her hand, saying in her sweet voice which quivered just perceptibly: "How do you do, Sir Ian? I wonder if I've changed so much that you don't remember me?"

"You have changed scarcely at all," he answered; and certainly there was no ring of gladness in his tone. Possibly it hid feeling, rather than expressed it.

They shook hands, and looked in each other's faces, ​as if half-afraid of what they might see there. Yet there was nothing that either need have feared. No colour showed through the ineradicable South African tan which had permanently bronzed the soldier's face; and the bright rose which stained the cheeks of the young woman made her look far prettier and more youthful than she had done five minutes before. She now appeared to be no more than twenty-five.

For an instant she forgot to draw her hand from Sir Ian's and naturally he could not let it drop, so he held it firmly in his, till it occurred to her that it would be well for her to take it away. She blushed deeply as she did so, though not in offence; otherwise her gray eyes would not have been so kind, so gentle, as they rested on the man s brown face, and seemed to count the silver threads on his temples.

"You have changed," she said, "but only as I have liked to think you would change, with the years. The South African War——

"Yes, that changed all of us," he caught her up.

"It gave you glory."

"Nonsense!" he exclaimed, then reddened a little. "I beg your pardon," he went on, "but glory is a very big word, and I did no more than almost any other man did. I had some luck, that's all."

"I'm very, very glad that you had luck, and that you were spared to enjoy it," said Miss Ricardo. "It is—pleasant to see you again."

​

"They did not smile, or appear to be particularly
pleased to see each other"

​"Thank you," he answered. But he did not return the compliment. A look of hopeless weariness and illness sharpened his face. His shoulders were not squared now. His head drooped. If a man as sunburnt as Sir Ian could turn pale, he was pale.

Perhaps his abruptness pained her. At all events she moved as if to go. "I'd just left Maud's card and mine for—Milly" (she brought the name out with a slight effort), "when I saw you. I wouldn't have come, as Maud had a headache, but she was sure Mrs. Forestier would have told Milly that she meant to bring me over to-day; and we both thought——

"Mrs. Forestier did tell us, but only when we were lunching there just now," Sir Ian said quickly, as she paused.

"I was sure you knew, the moment I saw you, for you didn't look a bit surprised."

"I'd got over my surprise."

"Maud thought it would be rather horrid for neither of us to come, if Milly had heard. She might——"

"She did say at once, that we would come home early, not to miss you and Mrs. Ricardo. She—we started soon after three, but—we parted in the woods, and I—came on ahead. I should think—she won't be long."

"Then—shall I wait? Would you like me to wait?"

"Yes. Yes, I would like it," he said. There was ​no doubt of his pained embarrassment now. It was plain that he was very deeply moved, even, it would seem, in almost unbearable distress. Miss Ricardo saw it only too clearly, and thought that she knew the cause. She grew pale.

"Ian, don't be unhappy," she said suddenly, in a very frank, sweet tone. "Please don't. Believe me, there's no reason why you should. Everything's over and forgotten, and I should like to be your friend. Why, do you think if I'd had any stupid feelings, I should come to visit my cousin Norman's wife, so near this—place? I knew I should be close to you and Milly, for I'd heard all about Friars' Moat, of course, from Maud, when you came in for your uncle's title; and I knew you had been living here for about seven years. I had to come to England, you see but—maybe you don't see; for perhaps nobody's told you of my brother-in-law's marriage? And the children need me no longer——Well, there was no home for me in India—no home I wanted—and I felt I should like to see dear England again, even if I should find myself a little 'out' of things after so many years. Maud asked me to visit her, and I didn't care to refuse. I thought—I thought I should like to meet you and Milly. Can't you understand, and let us be friends, as if there had never been any foolishness?"

"Foolishness!" echoed Sir Ian. "Oh, God—Terry!"

​"Don't!" exclaimed the woman. "It's all so far in the past, when I was a child, almost; and if I ever thought there was anything to forgive, I forgave it long ago."

"If I could only tell you!" he groaned. "But I can't, I'm bound——

"Hush, don't try to tell me anything," she said hurriedly. "I wouldn't have come if I hadn't forgotten everything but our friendship, and my friendship with Milly, who used to be so good—so very good to me when I was a child—and she no more than a girl. I don't want to be reminded of anything except happy memories, and though you have made me rather foolish and tearful—oh, without meaning to, I know!—I do think it would be better if I stayed now, and waited for your wife to come home. I—I made up my mind to pay this visit, you know, though—it wasn't quite easy; and Maud never heard—anything disagreeable, I hope, so you see——Yes, I am almost sure I had better stay, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am sure. Stay!" answered Sir Ian. "Shall we go into the house?"

There was agony in his eyes and voice, but Teresina Ricardo would not seem to hear. She had known that the first meeting would be difficult, though she had not expected him to show such remorse as this. She had thought often that perhaps he felt none. With her heart beating so hard that she was half afraid he ​might hear it, she talked about the beauty of the old house, and of the whole place and the country round. She had walked from Maud's, she said. She had wanted to walk, and Maud directed her so well that it would have been impossible to lose the way. "Only a mile and a half, and straight along, after the first turn. How lovely the Surrey lanes are! I didn't come out into the blazing sunlight once, till I'd got within six yards of your lodge, then into your shady avenue. I don't look very hot, do I?"

"You look just as you used to look when we rode together——" he began, but she stopped him, laughing.

"Now!—It's my turn to cry 'nonsense,' and I won't beg your pardon, as you did mine. I was eighteen then—if there ever was such a time, which seems impossible—and now I'm thirty-one, looking every day of my age. Yes, of course we'll go into the house where I'm sure it's beautifully cool, and wait for Milly. Did you say you thought she wouldn't be long?"

"I suppose she will come home—soon," Sir Ian replied heavily.

"Maud says she's as devoted to good works as ever."

"Oh, yes, very devoted."

"She was always the most unselfish mortal."

"I—yes."

"I don't wonder a bit, you know, Sir Ian, that you ​fell in love with her. Don't answer, please! There's nothing to say. I wanted to tell you that. I've felt so about—it almost from the first."

"Oh, God!" he said again, half under his breath.

They had moved away from the front door, as they talked, but now Miss Ricardo hastily walked through a long open window, which led into a room unmistakably a drawing-room. "May we go in here?" she threw over her shoulder, brightly, as if she had not heard the stifled cry of the man's soul.

He followed, without speaking, but the look on his stricken face made her ask by way of changing the subject: "Who is Miss Verney? I don't remember Maud's writing about her; but then Maud writes so seldom, and only puts into her letters what she thinks the most important things. Is Miss Verney important? Your footman wanted to call her down to see me, but I wouldn't let him."

"Yes, Miss Verney is important, in this house, anyhow," Sir Ian answered.

"Shall I see her?"

"You mean you want her to come in?"

"Why not? Yes, I should like to see her, if she's a nice girl."

"She is a very nice girl—though not very cheerful just now. She's had a lot of trouble." Sir Ian spoke as if he had been wound up to speak, like an automaton. And like an automaton he went to the bell and rang it.

​"Say to Miss Verney that I should be glad if she would come down and meet an old friend of mine, who has called," he said, when Richard the footman appeared.

"By George, catch me sending for any one, even if it was Miss Verney, if I was alone with a lady like that," thought the young man, as he went dutifully off upon his errand. But presently he came back, full of apologies.

"If you please, Sir Ian, I can't find Miss Verney anywheres," he said. "I made sure she was in her own sitting-room, ever since I took her up her lunch there, but she must have slipped out. I looked in the summer-house, too, Sir Ian, where she goes sometimes of an afternoon, but she isn't there, nor in the arbour by the pond. She must have gone for a walk, I'm afraid."

"Never mind. When she returns, you can give her the message."

"Yes, Sir Ian. And would you like me to serve tea, sir, or wait till her ladyship's return?"

Sir Ian hesitated, as if in doubt what to say, and before he had made up his mind, a girl who had been about to pass the window, turned, and looked from the lawn into the drawing-room.

"Oh, come in, Nora," called Sir Ian. "I have just sent and asked for you."

The girl obeyed, but with visible reluctance. She ​was a very pretty girl, dressed in half-mourning, and the white-dotted black muslin she wore gave great value to her almost startlingly fair skin, turquoise eyes, and bright auburn hair. But the eyes were clouded, and the fair skin blurred with crying. Her long white throat was uncovered, and a pulse beat in it. Her hand, with which she was nervously grasping the back of a chair near the window, was trembling. It was painful to the stranger to see the girl's embarrassment at being caught like this, on her way into the house; but she could not seem to notice her pitiful state.

Sir Ian, absorbed in his own thoughts, did not appear to see that Miss Verney was in trouble.

"Richard has been searching the house for you, and your favourite haunts out of doors," he said. "Have you been taking a walk?"

"Yes, I—have been taking a walk," she answered. "I thought, if I came back in time for tea——

"Of course. Why shouldn't you take walks?" Sir Ian broke in kindly. "I have been telling Miss Ricardo about you. Miss Ricardo is—an old friend of ours, and a cousin of Mrs. Ricardo, whom you know. She has just come back from India."

The visitor put out her hand to the girl, who was looking deadly white, as if she might faint, and the slim, childish hand which responded to hers, was cold. Miss Verney did not speak, and Miss Ricardo was ​sure it was because she could not. She wished she were able to think of some pretext to fling the girl, some excuse to leave the room.

"Yes, I'm just back from India," she said. "But I feel the weather very oppressive. How much more, then, you must feel it, who aren't accustomed to a Turkish-bath climate. I'm sure you must be tired after your walk, at the hottest part of the day."

"I am tired." The girl snatched eagerly at the straw held out to her. "I——"

"Were you in the woods?" asked Sir Ian, as if he were saying the first thing that came into his head. It was necessary to say something.

The question seemed for some reason to add to Miss Verney's embarrassment. "No—yes. I—was in the woods—for a while," she stammered.

"I didn't see you there," said Sir Ian. "Did you meet——" he paused for an instant, and the girl grew red and white. "Did you meet—my wife?"

"No," she said so faintly that at last Sir Ian's eyes were opened. "You are tired!" he exclaimed. "You've walked too far. I think we had better have tea without—waiting."

Miss Verney rang the bell, which gave her a chance to turn her back to Miss Ricardo and Sir Ian for a few seconds. When the footman appeared she asked for tea, as Sir Ian evidently expected her to do, and then said she would go and take off her hat. She was ​so warm that her head ached. (So warm, though her hands might have been in an iced bath!) In five minutes she would come down again. And she slipped away, as if in fear of being detained.

More than five minutes passed before she returned, but she appeared just in time to pour tea, and it was plain that she had spent the time of her absence in trying to wash the tear stains from her face. She had succeeded indifferently, but was more composed, and Terry Ricardo found Miss Verney's efforts at entertaining the guest very pathetic.

There were a great many nice things to eat; several kinds of tiny sandwiches, hot buttered muffins, little iced cakes, and strawberries, but nobody could eat, and seldom had there been less interesting talk between three intelligent people. As soon as she dared, Miss Ricardo rose.

"I'm afraid I must go," she said. "Maud will be wanting me. Milly has been detained, evidently; and if she is doing something for somebody, there's no telling when she may be back. You must say to her that I waited as long as I could; and give her Maud's love. Of course, we both hope that she'll soon come to White Fields."

This time Sir Ian did not urge Miss Ricardo to stay.

"I'll go with you as far as the lodge," he said.

They had not much to say to each other, as they walked together, and Terry kept her eyes on the ​ground. She could not look up and risk seeing again the agony she had seen in the man's eyes, for she felt that it was there, still; such agony as a man's eyes might betray, if he were enduring in grim silence the torture of the rack. She could not look until the instant of parting came, and then she said good-bye hurriedly, almost running away from him, lest he should suggest going farther.

Not once did she glance back, but if she had, she would not have found him gazing after her. He stood still as if stricken, for a few seconds, and then he turned hastily. Not, however, to go into the house. He struck off toward the short cut which would land him again into Riding Wood.

CHAPTER IV

It was what Mrs. Barnard, of Riding Wood Farm, called her lazy afternoon. Tired after her day's work, which began at five, she loved Saturday afternoon, which she devoted—from three o'clock till six—more or less to her week's mending. "More or less" because there was tea to get, and other little things invariably turned up to be done. Besides, those among Mrs. Barnard's friends who could take their freedom on Saturday afternoons, often dropped in for a gossip then, or to ask advice from the farmer's wife, a wise and large-hearted woman whose ruddy apple face beamed with kindness for all the world. "It's easy to be kind to folks, when you're happy yourself," she said; and Mrs. Barnard was happy. She loved her home and her work and her friends. She thought her silent, reserved husband, who had been a soldier, the best man living, and adored her one child, Margaret, known to those whom it concerned as Poppet.

While Mrs. Barnard mended the socks of Thomas, her husband and Poppet, her daughter, the little girl sat in a low chair beside her mother in what they called "the arbour," sewing doll's clothes. The arbour was a kind of rough, rustic pergola, which Tom Barnard ​had made the year of his marriage—the year in which, at the suggestion of his late Colonel, Sir Ian Hereward, Mr. Forestier had taken Barnard on as a farmer in the home farm of Riding Wood. That same year Tom and Rose, his wife, had planted grape-vines and honeysuckle and clematis to climb over the arbour, and all had flourished as if they were glad to encourage the young couple. Now, the happiness and the creepers were seven years old together; the creepers gave a deep green shade to the arbour, and the happiness gave sunshine to the whole farm.

Poppet was a year younger than the arbour, and it was her favourite seat, as well as her mother's. The farmhouse standing on a hill, and the embowered pergola leading out from the front door, those sitting on the sheltered rustic seats could see wagons stop or pass at the gate. They could also see any one coming up the path; and for a view they could look across a dip up to deep masses of forest. Over the tops of trees rose the crown of a stone tower, built by the late Mr. Forestier's father as a viewpoint. From the balcony of the tower, reached by a winding stairway which ran outside, several counties could be seen, and an ocean of waving blue, with a silver glitter on the horizon that meant the sea: a famous view; but Mrs. Barnard much preferred her own homelike outlook from the arbour. In the early days of her marriage, any one was allowed to go up into the tower; but tramps ​had taken advantage of its shelter, and Mr. Forestier had ordered it to be locked up. Only his widow, the Herewards, and the tenants of Riding Wood Farm had keys, so far as Rose knew. The Herewards because they were intimate friends as well as neighbours, and loved the view, and the Barnards because it was one of Tom's duties to look into the tower rooms now and then, and see that the place was kept in repair. Before Poppet was born, Rose used to go up with him by moonlight sometimes, and hand in hand they would look out over the blue and silver world, telling each other that they were the happiest couple in it, as romantically as if they had been poets, instead of farmers. But now, Mrs. Barnard, though just as happy and loving, took life a little more prosaically. That was why she preferred her own arbour and her own view, and never went to the tower by moonlight or any other light.

"Mummy, here comes Craigie," chirped Poppet, looking up from her doll's blouse, and down through the pergola toward the gate.

"Does she? But you mustn't say Craigie. You must say Miss Craigie, or Miss Kate," the child's mother corrected her, as she transferred a pile of socks and stockings from her lap to the seat, preparatory to greeting the visitor.

"Why?" Poppet wanted to know, looking up with large, grave, brown eyes like her father's. " ​Everybody at the Moat calls her Craigie—except Edward, the footman, who's in love with her."

"Dear me, dear me, what large ears little pitchers have, to be sure," mumbled Rose Barnard, pressing her pink lips together to keep from smiling. "It's quite different at the Moat. There Kate is a servant. Here she is a friend." And as by this time the subject of the conversation had come well into view, Mrs. Barnard jumped up, holding out her hand.

"This is nice, Kate," said she. "All the more welcome from being a surprise."

"I just had to come and see you," exclaimed the young woman whom Poppet must not call "Craigie." "I haven't got long to stop, though. I expect that her ladyship will be home by half-past four or so. She and Sir Ian are lunching over at the Wood, with Mrs. Forestier, and I'd have slipped away before if I could, but I got into a fuss with Edward."

"Poor Edward! I shouldn't wonder if it was more your fault than his, Kate," laughed Mrs. Barnard. "I expect he was jealous, thinking how you've been away in Paris, perhaps flirting with some smart couriers in the hotel."

"It's none of his business if I flirt or not," said Kate Craigie. "I never promised myself to him."

"That's what makes him so wild," remarked Rose. "He'd be quiet enough if you would." And she smiled at Kate, who was a handsome, well-made girl, ​with refined features, and the look which causes a young woman of her class to be called "very superior."

"That's partly it," Kate admitted. "But I can't make up my mind. Edward is awfully good looking, and I can't help liking him, but there s another thing I can't help, too. I can't help thinking it's silly to like him, and that he ain't the sort of match for me now. I could do a lot better, if I liked, and I tell him so frankly. Why, he'd never have dared to pop the question to Liane, and he wouldn't to me, if I'd come to the house as her ladyship's maid. He'd have felt the difference between us then just as he would with Liane, even if he'd happened to have fancied her, which of course he never did. It's just because I was parlour-maid when we first got to know each other that makes him feel himself on an equality."

"Well, there's something I can't help thinking," said Mrs. Barnard. "And that is that all such talk about equality, and this or that one being above or below, is nonsense with folk in our station of life. What does it matter if a girl's a parlour-maid or a lady's maid, or whether a man's a valet or a footman? They're servants, and just on the same level in the eyes of those that's above us all, just as I suppose the whole world's on a level to Royalties."

"I don't know about Royalties, but Edward's got to imagining that her ladyship's heard what he wants of me, and is putting me up to the idea that it ain't ​suitable to my position. That was what he was fussing about to-day. He thinks that she set me against him, while we were in Paris."

"As if her ladyship would!" exclaimed Rose in good-natured scorn.

Kate flushed. "Oh, I suppose you don't believe she takes the same interest in me as she did in Liane."

"If she hadn't liked you, and thought well of you, she wouldn't have taken you from parlour-maid and trained you to be her own maid, instead of getting another French woman after poor little Liane disappeared so mysteriously," Rose consoled her.

"She must have liked me, and I'm sure I do my best to please her," sighed Kate. "But I could scream, sometimes, the way she says 'Liane used to do this, or that.' Why if Edward's jealous of other men with me, I'm sure I suffer just as much as he does, or more. It's my nature to be jealous. I can't help it. I want to be all in all to any one I'm with. And I'm jealous of Liane. Sometimes I feel just mad with jealousy. I could stop doing her ladyship's hair, and box her ears, when she says in that quiet voice of hers, 'Craigie, you haven't Liane's touch.'"

"Good gracious, Kate, I hope you don't burst out like that to any one but me!" gasped Mrs. Barnard, horrified at this lèse majesté. "Any one would think you hated her ladyship, she who's so kind to every one."

"Sometimes I do hate her; sometimes I'd lie down ​and die for her, just according as she treats me," Kate persisted obstinately. "Her cold ways make me feel all on fire, often. Perhaps Edward feels like that about me. I hope he does. I like some one else to suffer. And he hates her ladyship, sure enough, because he's sure it's her fault I'm off with him, since she took me on as maid in Liane's place."

"Poor Liane!" murmured Mrs. Barnard. "I wonder if we'll ever know what's become of her."

"Her ladyship suspects," said Kate.

"Does she? The wise woman's curiosity overcame prudence for a moment.

"She thinks—I would ask you never to tell, only I know you never do tell things. She thinks that Mr. Barr had something to do with Liane's disappearance."

"My heavens, Mr. Barr! And he's in love with Miss Verney, as every one knows!"

"Men are strange. You can't tell what they'll do."

"Silly! Yes you can—Mr. Barr doesn't seem like that. What put such an idea in her ladyship's head?"

"I don't know what put it into her head, though they do say that Liane used to be seen walking down to the steward's house, after twilight, more than once before she cleared out, nine or ten weeks ago. Her ladyship may have heard that, or she may have heard more, for all I can tell. But what I do know is, that the idea is in her head, and very strong, too. I've ​known it for some time, and for the best of reasons; because I've heard her say so to Sir Ian. Oh, I don't eavesdrop. I'm not a Frenchwoman, and I have no sly tricks! But I happened to come in and catch a bit of what they were saying, in the midst of a tremendous talk. They shut up in an instant, and her ladyship never dreamed I'd heard. I never spoke of it to any one before, but I felt I'd got the clue to all that's been going on underneath the surface, up at the Moat, for weeks past."

"You mean——"

"I mean I'm sure her ladyship tried to persuade Sir Ian to discharge Mr. Ian Barr. She could never bear the sight of him, anyhow, and if she'd had her way, Sir Ian wouldn't have taken him on as steward."

"But that was what every one thought so noble of Sir Ian! The young fellow was his uncle's son, and if the old gentleman hadn't quarrelled with him, would probably have left him a lot of money."

"What was the story exactly? I know it only in a mixed-up way."

"Why, old Sir Ian, the uncle of the present one, was wild, and, many say, wicked as a young man. Any how, he was an avowed atheist—a dreadful thing. He lived abroad in his youth, and Friars' Moat was shut up. In Italy or somewhere he married an opera singer, they say, who was as bad as himself. So they separated; then he came back to his own country, and she ​was supposed to have died—killed in an earthquake, which destroyed some Italian towns. He was visiting a friend in Ireland at that time, and in his wild way fell in love with a wonderfully beautiful peasant girl. They were married, and he brought her to Friars' Moat, where the county refused to call—he was disliked, anyhow, for his lawlessness and his atheism and his awful temper. Soon he tired of his wife, and when little Ian was a baby it was discovered that his Italian wife was alive after all—a cruel thing for the poor Irish girl! She reproached her husband something dreadful, they say—for the baby's sake—and he was so furious that he refused to give her more money than an Irish peasant could live upon. Hoping that he'd do something for the child, the unhappy creature took a tiny cottage near by, and the wicked old man did have the decency to pay for the boy's schooling. When the little chap got old enough to hear the story, though, and of his father's meanness to the beautiful peasant mother, he wouldn't have another penny from him. And one day they met and there was an awful scene, for the boy inherited something of his father's wild temper. The story is that the old man struck him, for his 'impudence,' with a stick he carried; that the boy—only fourteen or so—wrenched it from him and threw it in his face. Of course that ended everything. Old Sir Ian disinherited the boy, to whom he meant to leave a few ​thousands. Young Ian wouldn't be called Hereward any more, as he had been. He took the name of Barr, which was in his mother's family, and in one way or another he supported not only himself, but her till the time when our Sir Ian came into everything, on his uncle's death—the first wife being really dead by that time, too. Our Sir Ian didn't know the truth till he got here, having been away from England so much. Then, when he found out, he wanted young Ian Barr to accept all the money, for, of course, it was out of his power to do anything about the estate. Young Ian wouldn't have a shilling! But when he got to know his cousin a little he was persuaded to take the stewardship. No doubt it was partly for his mother's sake, so she should have more luxuries; though she died soon after, it would have been foolish as well as ungracious to throw the job over then."

"So that's the story," exclaimed Kate. "It sounds all right for Mr. Barr, but isn't he an atheist too?"

"Oh, no, I don't think so. He isn't a church-goer, that's all. And he never got on with the vicar of Riding Wood, who couldn't understand or make allowances. Lady Hereward being so fond of the vicar, perhaps young Mr. Barr's attitude prejudiced her. And he has a very proud, independent way. I dare say she thought him ungrateful."

"I hear the servants say they never had a civil word ​for each other. And she hated him being named Ian—the son of a peasant girl!"

"Anyhow, Sir Ian didn't discharge him. He resigned the place of steward himself."

"Yes. But would he give up such a good berth and a pretty little home where he might have taken Miss Verney, if they'd married, unless there was a good reason? Perhaps Sir Ian advised him to resign."

"I don't believe he ever made love to Liane."

"I wonder? I shouldn't be surprised if they were secretly married, before he fell in love with Miss Verney, and now he regrets it too late."

"Nonsense! Tom and I always thought him a splendid young fellow. We've been so sorry for him, because of the burden he had to bear, through no fault of his own!"

"Liane was pretty, whatever she was," Kate grudgingly allowed. "Gentlemen used to turn and look after her. She knew that, and liked it. She was a vain piece, though her ladyship thought her so perfect."

To my mind, she couldn't compare with Miss Verney, no, not even if she d been in the same class of life," said Mrs. Barnard.

"Have you seen Miss Verney, lately?" asked Kate.

"Not for several weeks. She doesn't seem to walk this way any more, and she never drops in to ask about little Poppet here, as she used to do."

"She never goes anywhere, if she can help it, but ​just mopes about the house, or takes a short walk in the woods; and she has gone off in her looks! She's fallen away, you can't think; and she was slender enough as it was. She's lost colour too, and her colour was her greatest beauty. Richard, the second footman, used to stand and gape at her as if she was a Madonna, but even he said to Edward to-day that she'd changed."

"It's on account of poor Mr. Ian Barr, of course."

"Yes, that's what we all think. It can't be anything else. She is like another girl since he gave up his berth as steward, and went away, goodness knows where—unless she does. By the by, I came through the woods, and saw her there, up by the Tower. There was a novel in her hand, but she had an excited look, not as if she'd come to read, and I thought she had the air of being a bit put out at the sight of me. I couldn't help saying to myself, 'I wonder if she expects to meet somebody?'"

"You 'can't help' too many things, it seems to me, my dear," said Rose. "You can't help feeling this and that about poor Edward, who worships the ground you walk on——"

"Do you advise me to make it up with him, then?"

"Yes, indeed, if you love him. There's nothing that's worth much except love if you re thinking of taking a man. And if it's that you've come to ask me——"

​"Yes, it was. Just to talk it over. Hark! What's that?"

"That shot? Oh, that's nothing. We often hear shots in the woods. Some rabbit——"

"There it goes again."

"Yes, they got the poor little chap that time, for sure."

"Funny-sounding shots, don't you think?" asked Kate.

"I expect it's just an effect. You do hear them sounding different, sometimes. The keepers are getting rid of the rabbits this year, as fast as they can. They're a terrible pest to Tom, on the farm."

"Well I must be going," Kate announced. "It takes me a while to get home, and one can't walk fast this weather."

"Do stop and have a cup of tea. I was going to make it," said Rose.

"I told Edward if I wasn't in to tea, he could just make up his mind that I'd made up my mind to think no more about him."

"Oh, in that case," laughed the farmer's wife, "I won't urge you to stop."

"Her ladyship might be wanting me, anyhow, after she gets in," said Kate.

Mrs. Barnard kissed the young woman good-bye, patting her shoulder, and telling her to mind and be a good girl, not to be jealous of poor Liane with Lady ​Hereward, or to make Edward jealous of her. The girl went away cheered by advice and sympathy, and still more by the chance to empty her heart of its grievances. Mrs. Barnard walked down to the gate with her departing visitor, and came back to find Poppet large-eyed and tearful.

"Why, Mummy's darling white mouse, what is the matter?" she wanted to know.

"Rabbits," sniffed the child, swallowing down a sob. "I don't like them to have to shoot the poor bunnies. And perhaps if Miss Verney's in the woods, they'll shoot her, too, by mistake."

"By mistake for a bunny? Not much danger, my pet. You love Miss Verney, don't you?"

"She's the nicest lady in the world," said Poppet.

"Nicer than Lady Hereward?"

"I don't love Lady Hereward."

"What—when she s so kind to you, and brings you such a nice new doll every Christmas?"

"I don't love her because she doesn't love me," said the child. "She doesn't really care about any one —except Sir Ian."

"What a strange white mouse it is!" exclaimed Rose, kissing the child's cheek. "What things it thinks about, that nobody else would dream of."

"'Tis so, though," Poppet insisted. "My lady doesn't love any one in the world except Sir Ian. She ​does things for other people because she wants to be kind, but she'd kill any one to please Sir Ian."

"My goodness, baby, don't say such dreadful things!" cried her mother. "You frighten me with your weird ideas sometimes—just like a little old woman."

"I see things you don't see, Mummy," said the child, "because it's such a few years since I came down from Heaven that I haven't got tired of noticing."

"There's another queer idea on top of all the rest," gasped Mrs. Barnard. "You'd better come in and watch me make the tea."

CHAPTER V

Rose Barnard and Poppet had finished their tea, and Rose was washing up the dishes, when a cry from the child who had gone to the arbour, startled her so that she dropped a cup.

The farmer's wife was not nervous, or easily startled, but she had never heard a cry like that from the reserved and dreamy little girl. It was a cry of terror such as no child should have to utter; and the responsive jump of her own nerves, with the simultaneous crash of the breaking cup, increased the horror of the shrill sound tenfold. Rose flew from the kitchen through the living-room toward the arbour, and met Poppet running to her.

The mother s first thought was one of thanksgiving that the child was alive and apparently unhurt, for in the few seconds which had followed the cry, unspeakable fears had darted like forked lightning across the confused darkness of her brain. Her imagination had pictured Poppet attacked by a mad bull, or a desperate tramp, perhaps a lunatic.

"My baby—my baby—what is it?" she stammered, to the pale child, giving the little form haven in her arms.

​Poppet's scream of terror seemed to have exhausted her powers of expression. She could only gasp and, trembling against her mother's heart, point to the door. Rose put the child behind her, and, throbbing with all the fierce courage of a tigress in defence of her young, went to confront the thing which had drawn that shriek of fear from Poppet.

In the arbour stood Sir Ian Hereward, ashen gray, and aged by ten years since Rose had seen him last. With one hand he grasped a vine-draped support of the arbour, and his weight seemed to hang from it, as if it alone kept him from falling. He was staring straight ahead like a person who walks in his sleep, and sees only the passing of his own dream. There was blood on the hand which clutched the rustic pole, and blood on the hand that crumpled, unconsciously, his red-stained Panama hat. He did not appear to see Mrs. Barnard, until she gasped out, "Good heavens, sir, what's happened?" Then his eyes seemed to come to life, from their dead stare, and found the woman's wholesome face, like a light in darkness.

"Tom — where's Tom?" he asked.

The fancy came to Rose that his voice sounded like a voice from a tomb, and a great pity for the man overwhelmed her. He had been stricken by some appalling blow, she saw. Probably there had been an accident, but no physical hurt which had befallen him could have made the hero of many battles look like a ​galvanized corpse, and speak with the voice of a lost spirit. He might be wounded — he must be wounded, since blood-stains were on his hands and clothes, but no pain could have changed him as he was changed, this soldier whom her soldier-husband loved.

"Oh, sir, my poor Colonel!" she exclaimed, going back to the old name she had known so well when she had been only Tom's sweetheart. "If only Tom were here to help you. He's gone to London, on business for Mrs. Forestier, but he'll be back — he may be back almost any minute now. Tell me what I can do, till he comes. Tell me what's the matter."

Sir Ian grew more calm, though the sunken eyes in the ashen face looked no less like the eyes of a dead man.

"Send little Poppet away," he said. "I — I'm sorry I frightened her. I didn't mean——"

"Oh, sir, it's nothing. She's so sensitive. She'll be all right. Run, darling, into the kitchen, and wait there till Mummy comes. Sir Ian's in great trouble. Run; and you may get yourself a ginger-nut out of the stone jar."

"I don't want ginger-nut," whimpered the child. And then, bursting into loud sobbing, she darted away toward the kitchen, like one of the rabbits she loved, released from a trap.

"My wife — dead. Killed." The words came jerkily from lips stiff as if frozen.

​"Oh!" gasped Rose. "Her Ladyship! It can't be true. Perhaps she's only fainted. Was it a motor accident?"

"No," said Sir Ian. "I want Tom to go back with me. Back — to the Tower. I think — I'm a little dazed. A doctor must come. And — the police."

Sick and tremulous as she was, the farmer's wife had not lost her wholesome good sense. She saw that, whatever the dreadful thing which had happened her husband's old Colonel was in no fit state to answer questions, and she determined to ask no more.

"If I could leave you here, sir, for a minute," she said trying to speak quietly, "I'd go call Jimmy Russell, and send him on my bicycle like a flash into Riding St. Mary, to fetch Doctor Unwin. Then — then on the way back, he could run out to the Police Station. Tom's got his bicycle with him, and won't be long getting home from the station. The train's due now, but you know it's generally a bit late."

"The doctor and the — police must come to the Tower," said Sir Ian, with the same somnambulist look in his eyes again.

"Yes, Sir Ian; I'll tell Jimmy. You'll stop here till I get back, won't you?"

"I don't know," the dreary voice answered, and the eyes that saw a nightmare turned toward the woods where, far away, the crown of the Tower rose among dark pine trees.

​Rose guessed what was in his mind. "No, no, sir," she said firmly. "You mustn't go back there alone, whatever it is. It wouldn't do, on any account, especially if — if it's an affair for the police."

"What does it matter!" he murmured, as though to himself. "I can't leave her there alone — any longer. Go send the man to Riding St. Mary."

Mrs. Barnard went; and when she came back, Sir Ian Hereward had gone.

It was not until she stood in the arbour, gazing down the path toward the open gate, wishing with all her soul for Tom to come, that she remembered the two shots in the woods which Kate Craigie had said "sounded queer."

What if —— But no, such things did not happen in this sweet, quiet country which she loved. Such things could not happen to a great lady, a good lady, like Lady Hereward.

And then she saw Tom stopping his bicycle at the gate.

CHAPTER VI

Up the path came Tom Barnard, wheeling the somewhat old-fashioned bicycle, which he had bought second hand. From behind the saddle dangled two or three little brown paper parcels which he had brought back from London (whither he journeyed very seldom), to give pleasure to Rose and Poppet.

At sight of the familiar and well-loved figure, Mrs. Barnard's self-control suddenly snapped, and she broke into hysterical crying as she ran down the path, holding out both hands like a child, to the one she best loved and trusted.

"Why, little woman!" exclaimed the farmer, alarmed at such an unaccustomed display of emotion. "Nothing wrong with the baby?"

"No—no," and then the story came tumbling from her lips anyhow, in strange confusion, choked with sobs. How Poppet had screamed, and the Colonel was there, covered with blood—no, not covered, but there was a lot. And he could hardly speak, so she dared not ask questions; but he said her ladyship was dead, and he wanted Tom; and Jimmy Russell had gone on her (Rose's) bicycle for the doctor and the police—yes, the police; she wasn't mistaken. And ​whatever it was, was up by the Tower. She wanted the Colonel to stop; but he wouldn't, so she supposed——

Tom waited for no more. Leaving the bicycle with its dangling parcels, against the arbour, without another question or word to his wife, he turned on his heel and ran down the path with great loping strides which would take him up the hill to the Tower at the rate of a mile in eight minutes. It was enough for him that his adored Colonel was in trouble, and was to be found near the Tower: he wanted to know nothing further, for it was dreadful to Tom Barnard that Sir Ian had come in vain to seek his help. If he could have been transported in that instant to the Tower, without having to waste a moment by the way, in getting there, he would have given months of his life, even months of happiness with Rose and the child; for Tom owed the good fortune of years past and present to Sir Ian, and no sacrifice would be sacrifice, if made for him.

On the side of the road opposite the farmhouse gate, was a gate which led to a private path through the woods. There was a notice tacked to a tree near by, stating that trespassers would be prosecuted; but nobody ever had been prosecuted, within the memory of man. The gate was kept locked, but it was easy for a man to vault over it. Sir Ian Hereward had no doubt done so, in coming to the farm with his tragic news, and again on returning to the woods. Tom ​Barnard followed his example, for though he had a key which fitted the rusty padlock, it did not even occur to him to stop and get it.

The narrow path was made narrower still by the intrusion of bracken from either side, and was over hung by the branches of low-growing beech and ash trees. A little distance from the road it divided, going to the right toward the cottage of the head keeper, and mounting the hill straight ahead, with few windings toward the Tower. The windless air seemed, to Barnard, to be pressed down by the trees, until it weighed heavy as a pall upon his head. He had looked forward to the refreshment of coming back into the country after the heat and dust of London; and he had come to this! His temples throbbed, and the green light in the silent woods gave no ease to his eyes, which saw red, as if they peeped through a net work of bloodshot veins. The crackling of tiny branches and last year's pine-cones under his feet only emphasized the stillness and made it terrible to him for the first time in his recollection. It was as if the woods whispered of the secret that he was on his way to find out, a secret of horror, which it seemed unnatural that such a fairy place should harbour.

Barnard did not consciously think these thoughts, yet they beat in his brain, and it was the hammering of them against his temples which made his head throb as if it might burst.

​Fast as he walked, crashing through all obstacles such as flowering bushes and boughs of young trees, the time he took in gaining the top of the hill was almost interminable to him. But at last he reached the plateau where, seen down a green vista between two evenly planted avenues of pines, rose the stone tower. Beyond there was a drop, which gave to the hill an effect of great height, as if it stood like a great ship in the midst of the billowy blue sea which meant the rising and falling land of three counties. As Barnard entered the avenue of trees, a figure moved at the far end, showing black for an instant against the faint violet drop-curtain of mingling sky and landscape. Others might not have recognized it at that distance, but Tom did. It was the form of Sir Ian Hereward; and Tom called encouragingly, "I'm coming, sir!" Then he started to run faster, breathing hard; and the sweat that came out on his forehead felt cold, not hot, as he ran, though the air was dead even on the height.

Sir Ian came to meet him, with long steps, and though he was very pale, with set jaws, the curious nightmare-dread of what he might have to find at the Tower suddenly became less acute for Barnard as he saw his old Colonel's face.

"I wanted you, Tom," said Sir Ian. "You were the only man I——" he could not finish.

"I'm here, sir," answered Barnard. "I came the instant I got home."

​"Yes. I knew you would. Your wife told you what——"

"As well as she could, sir. Something has happened to her ladyship——"

"She is dead. I came to look for her, and I found—this."

He turned, facing toward the Tower as if by an effort, and walking with his head down. Tom followed, catching up with him, and keeping by his side.

The door leading into the ground-floor room of the Tower was open, though it was supposed to be locked always, as Tom Barnard well knew. He went into the small, square room, close on Sir Ian's heels, and saw Lady Hereward lying along the floor on her back. She lay so that, as they entered, the top of her head was turned toward them; and they saw her face, as it were, upside down. An expression of agony and despair seemed to be carved upon the stony features, and so terrible was it to see, that Barnard cried out. Sir Ian made no sound, but a slight shudder convulsed his muscles.

There was blood on the floor and on her delicate gray dress, a little, too, on her soft brown hair, which was scarcely disarranged, but none on the marble-white face. Her eyes were wide open, and raised, as if she had died looking at something above her head, and gazing down into them it was as if they stared up ​with an expression of anguish straight into Tom Barnard's.

Involuntarily he started back, but controlled himself directly. At first, he saw no wound; then, a second look showed a blackened mark low down in the side of the throat, from which blood had poured, but had now ceased to flow.

"Shot!" he ejaculated, half under his breath.

"Shot," Sir Ian echoed.

"My God, sir, who could have done it?"

"Who, indeed!" the other echoed again.

"You found her like this?"

"Yes. Except that—she was almost on her face. I—turned her over to see—to find out—if she were dead, or only——"

"I understand, sir. What a ghastly, what an unbelievable thing! I don t believe it now. We shall wake up, sir. It must be some dream."

"Would to God it were," said Sir Ian. "I would die the same death she has died, a hundred times over, if I could bring her back to life. But I can't. That's the horror of it."

"It's enough to drive a man mad, sir," stammered Barnard. "But bear up. At least we'll have revenge on the brute who has done this thing."

"Revenge!" the other man repeated bitterly.

"Oh, I know that won't give her back to you, sir, but flesh and blood is flesh and blood, and it would ​be a satisfaction. What beast, what maniac is there vile enough to murder her ladyship, good to every one, loved by every one? It's beyond reason. It's the act of a monster. Why, sir"—and Barnard stooped lower—"did you see—did you notice—her ladyship's rings are gone, the beautiful rings she always wore, and her brooch——"

"Yes, I saw," Sir Ian answered, his voice breaking as if at the recollection of that first awful moment when he had seen what there was to see.

"Then it was a robbery——"

"It looks like it."

"Some tramp—hiding here in the Tower. The brute—the unspeakable brute! I hope to heaven they'll catch him. I wish I——"

The muffled sound of feet on the carpet of pine-needles outside broke short Tom s sentence. The doctor had arrived at the same time with a superintendent of police and a constable.

CHAPTER VII

Teresina Ricardo and her cousin's wife did not see each other after Terry came back from Friars' Moat to White Fields, until they met in the drawing-room just before dinner. Maud had been lying down trying to sleep off a headache, when her visitor returned; and Terry, after inquiring for Mrs. Ricardo's health, had gone straight to her room. Thus she had had more than two hours and a half to herself, when precisely at eight o'clock she descended the stairs to the drawing-room. She knew that Mrs. Ricardo was already there, for a message to that effect had just been sent her.

Terry was glad that Maud was so much better; nevertheless, instead of hurrying down to give the news of the afternoon, she kept her room till the last minute. Dinner was at eight; and if Maud's were a punctual household, there would be no time for any private talk before the two must go into the dining-room, and be waited upon by several discreet-looking but sharp-eared footmen.

As it happened, however, it was not a punctual household. Norman Ricardo, a captain in the Navy, away at present in command of his ship, when on leave ​enjoyed the luxury of being late for everything. Maud, an American, and a native of New Orleans, was always behind hand on principle. People who knew her invited Mrs. Ricardo to come to their houses at least twenty minutes before they wanted her, by which means she often arrived not more than half an hour late. Such habits did not make for punctuality in kitchen and servants' hall. As the cook was well aware that eight o'clock meant half-past at White Fields, she arranged matters accordingly, to suit herself; and though Terry—only just arrived—had not found it out yet, Mrs. Ricardo's guests, if prompt in assembling for meals, were quite accustomed to converse among themselves in the drawing-room for long before their hostess appeared.

For a great wonder, however, Maud had dashed down to-night at five minutes to eight, and had sent to ask if Terry were ready. She pretended to think that dinner would be announced soon, but as a matter of fact, the two ladies were likely to have half an hour together before being summoned to the dining-room, as the cook had not counted on this promptness.

"You might as well sit down, Terry," Maud said, when Miss Ricardo came in and trailed her white India muslin to an open window "It may be three or four minutes yet before dinner; and you must be tired."

"I'm not tired," Terry smiled. "Besides, if I had ​been, I've had lots of time to rest. How good that you've got over your headache, dear."

"It always flies away at sunset, if I rest. But I was disappointed not to go with you this afternoon. Do tell me what happened."

"Nothing happened," said Terry, after an instant's pause. She bent over a great bank of pink and white roses, heaped into a bowl. "Friars' Moat is a beautiful old house—so quaint and interesting, though not huge. I like it all the better for that. Milly didn't come home. Something must have kept her. They'd been lunching with Mrs. Forestier at Riding Wood House. Sir Ian seemed to think that Milly might probably have gone to the village to visit some of her numerous protégés."

"Oh! So you didn't see her?"

"No. But I daresay she'll be over here soon."

"Norman says you and she were the most tremendous friends, when you were a young girl. And Nina Forestier, who knew Milly ages ago, says so, too."

"So we were. Milly was very good to me. I loved her dearly. But you see I went out to India when I was eighteen, and all my real life has been lived there. We wrote to each other often at first, of course; but you know how difficult it is to keep up a correspondence, as years go on, between two people so far separated—whose interests are separated, too."

"I don't know. I love writing letters. I've always ​been good about it, haven't I, ever since Norman took me to India on our wedding trip, and introduced me to his fascinating cousin?"

"Thank you for the adjective!"

"You needn't. You know everybody calls you fascinating. It's the word that describes you best, I think. I told Norman so the first day I met you."

Thank you again." Teresina smiled affectionately at her cousin's wife, whom she liked, though she was not drawn to her as to a congenial spirit.

Maud had the soft charm of many Southern women. She was dark and thin, but not angular, and had pleasant lazy ways which made people feel comfortably restful in her society. No woman in the county dressed more beautifully than she. Her face, pearly pale with the powder which Southern women love, looked extraordinarily young, almost childish, though her curly hair was as white as if it, too, were powdered. She was very proud of that hair of hers, and also of her remarkably long eyelashes, which she used with great effect. Maud had several qualities shared with children and monkeys, one of which was an inordinate but perfectly innocent curiosity; and she caressed or flattered people into doing or saying what she wanted them to do or say. Terry, however, was rather harder to manage in this respect than most of Maud's friends, it appeared; perhaps because she had all her life been used to flattery, or, at least, to receiving compliments.

​"Well, what do you think of Sir Ian after these many years?" Mrs. Ricardo went on.

"He has changed, of course. He was a young man when—I saw him last."

"Oh, not so very young, surely. He must have been twenty-eight. You aren't so much more, now, dear."

"I'm thirty-one. And what a difference between a man and a woman! Besides, Ian—Sir Ian had hardly begun to live then. Like mine, his real life has been lived alone."

"I suppose all this means that he's gone off."

Terry laughed, quite naturally. "Does one talk of a man's going off? Anyway, Sir Ian hasn't. He's improved in some ways. He looks very strong and brave; a thorough soldier."

"Do you think him handsome?"

"Ye-es. He might pass for handsome. It's a pity he's out of the Army."

"Milly would have him give it up, when he came into the title and place. I suppose she wanted him all to herself. She's perfectly devoted to him."

"I'm glad. I'm sure he deserves it."

"He shows his feelings less than she. I'm thankful Norman isn't so cold. I couldn't stand it. I'm too impulsive myself."

"I shouldn't have thought Ian so cold," said Terry, and then a slight shade of vexation passed over her face, as if she were annoyed with herself.

​Maud caught up the words.

"Wouldn't you? Perhaps that is part of the change in him since you knew each other. I've known him ever since they settled at Friars' Moat, and he always struck me as being very cold and reserved. No doubt he's fond of Milly in his way, though. They're always together. That I envy her."

Terry did not answer. She was not hungry, but she was wondering if dinner would never be announced.

"You knew each other awfully well in India, didn't you?" asked Maud.

"Only for a few weeks."

"Norman believed that Sir Ian was desperately in love with you. Oh, you don't mind my saying that, do you? Norman told me that everybody thought so."

"Everybody! I suppose one person said that."

"I think it was Major Smedley, among others."

"That horror! The worst gossip and tabby-cat who ever lived."

"Perhaps. But there's no harm in saying a man's in love with a girl. Sir Ian wasn't married then."

"I should think not! He hadn't even seen Milly—that is, not since they were both children. He fell in love with her at once, when he was ordered back from India to England, and they met in some romantic way, I suppose. They were engaged a few weeks after, and married within three or four months."

​"Yes. It must have been love at first sight, and Milly's charming, of course. I can imagine her being a lovely girl."

"She was. Rather like a young Madonna."

"She's like a Madonna now, and doesn't look a bit more than thirty, though I believe she's older than Sir Ian, if the truth were known."

"A woman's as old as she looks."

"Then you're not more than twenty-four."

"Thank you. I feel a hundred."

"I wish you could have seen Milly to-day."

"Perhaps she'll come over to-morrow. What a beautiful girl Miss Verney is."

"Oh, you saw her? She isn't looking her best now. The course of true love hasn't run smooth."

Terry did not tell Maud that Nora Verney had evidently been crying. She remarked that Sir Ian had said Miss Verney was in sorrow or trouble of some sort.

"Nobody knows what the exact truth is," Maud explained, with relish, "but—I wrote you about Ian Barr, old Sir Ian Hereward's son?"

"Yes. When Sir Ian inherited the title. Yes, it was a strange, sad story. You said he was about twenty then, so he must be twenty-seven now."

"About that. Sir Ian thought it a very hard case, and would have done a lot for young Ian if the boy would have let him. But he wouldn't accept ​anything except a place as steward, and quite a pretty cottage, where the mother lived with her son till she died. It was good of Sir Ian to make him his steward," Maud went on. "But about six months ago he apparently fell in love with Miss Verney, a girl as friendless and even poorer than he. We thought they were engaged soon after, but suddenly Ian Barr threw over his situation and went away. Nora Verney hasn't been the same girl since then—that is, for the last two months."

"Life is rather tragic, isn't it?" said Terry Ricardo, more to herself than to Maud.

"It's awfully mixed up, anyhow. I wish everybody could be happy, I'm sure—as happy as Nor man and I are. You ought to marry some nice man, Terry."

"I'm too old to marry," answered the smiling woman, who looked scarcely more than a girl.

"You didn't—of course I oughtn't to ask—but your brother-in-law—it was common gossip that he——"

"So much nonsense is common gossip especially in India."

"You know he was half mad about you!"

"He's old enough to be my father."

"As if that mattered—with a man! If the law had been different——"

"That wouldn't have made any difference with me. ​The children are the dearest things, though! I could almost have married him for their sakes, rather than leave them. But they're growing up, now. And he's married quite a sweet woman, who isn't interesting, but will be a good chaperon for the girls, I'm sure."

"They say he married her in despair, because you——"

"Oh, Maud, what shall I do to you? I shall call for help! Here comes a footman."

"To say dinner's ready."

"Thank goodness!"

"Are you so hungry?"

"I think I must be."

CHAPTER VIII

Maud Ricardo invariably enjoyed her dinner after a headache had worn off, and to-night there were all the things she liked best to eat. She talked to Terry about the different dishes, and how nice it was to be able to choose what you liked without fear of growing fat. She did not notice that the butler and footman looked very pale, exchanging fearful glances and even a whispered word now and then; but Terry noticed, and wondered if there had been a domestic crisis. Perhaps, she thought, the cook had had a fit, or one of the servants had fallen downstairs. At all events, there was something strange afoot.

The two ladies went back to the drawing-room after dinner, and Maud suggested the terrace for coffee. "We shall see the moon rise," she said; "and, do you know, we can look across from our hill to Friars' Moat, and get a glimpse of the lights twinkling there. One could signal across, if one liked."

It was the butler who brought the tray, not a footman, as usual; and when Mrs. and Miss Ricardo had each taken a tiny old Dresden cup and drunk her coffee, he still hovered vaguely.

"What is it, Dodson?" Maud asked, at last awake ​to the fact that all was not as it should be in the servants' world.

"Why, madam, as a matter of fact I hardly know how to tell you." Dodson swallowed drily. "But I thought, if we kept it till dinner was over, it would be best, and then——"

"Are any of you ill or dead?" Mrs. Ricardo inquired in a slightly injured tone, for it was bad luck enough for one day that she should have a headache. Nobody else in the house had a right to have anything.

"None of us, madam. But—a dreadful thing has happened. One of the grooms got the news, and brought it to the house, just before dinner, madam."

Maud grew pale. She was rather a selfish woman, but she loved her husband.

"Not not an accident to the Formidable?" she stammered.

"Oh, no, madam, not so bad as that. It's Lady Hereward. She's dead, madam—murdered."

Mrs. Ricardo's head began to ache again, as if it had been struck by a hammer. She gave a little cry, which sounded almost as if she were angry.

"It's impossible," she exclaimed. "You can't know what you're talking about."

"I only wish, madam, it was a mistake," said the butler. "But I'm afraid there s no chance of that. Her ladyship was found dead this afternoon in Riding Wood, up by the Tower. I believe she had been shot."

​Maud felt sick, as if she were going to faint. Her weak nature reached out for help and comfort to some one stronger than herself. Like a frightened child, she turned to Terry, but Terry seemed transformed into a marble statue. Her face was drained of blood, and an expression of horror had frozen upon the clear features. As well seek comfort from a dead woman!

"Terry!" cried Mrs. Ricardo. Terry, do you hear what he says. Milly Hereward—murdered! Shot in the woods where I walk nearly every day. Oh, it can't be true! Such things don't happen—not to people we know. Milly couldn't be murdered. Why don't you speak? Terry—I believe I'm going to faint."

Then Terry did rouse herself. Her gaze came back from a distance, where it had been held by a terrible picture. She was very cold, and it was an effort to move, as if, even to stir a finger, she had had to break a sheath of ice which encased her body like armour. But she did move, going swiftly to Maud, and sitting down on the sofa beside her.

"Bring brandy," she said to the butler, as she slipped an arm round her cousin's wife, and clasped a hand that groped for hers.

"It's too much for me," Maud murmured. "I've been so ill all day."

"I'm very sorry, madam, if I broke the news too abruptly," said Dodson. "We all thought you ought ​to know, and would wish to be told, and I hoped by waiting till after dinner——"

"Yes, yes; I'm sure Mrs. Ricardo will think you did right," Terry reassured him. The brandy, please, as quickly as possible."

By the time the butler had returned with a decanter, Maud was so much herself again that curiosity had conquered horror. She thought it rather hard-hearted of Terry to take the hideous news so quietly, for long ago she and Milly Hereward had been intimate friends. Poor Milly! Dead! She could not make it seem true, and said so. Milly was not at all the sort of woman to be murdered. And that afternoon! No, it couldn't, couldn't be true. It was hardly decent.

"Drink this, dear," said Terry, so gently that to Maud her voice sounded cold. After all, she thought, Southern women felt far more than others. The mellow old brandy did Maud good. Her heart grew warm again, and her tongue was loosed.

"Tell us everything, Dodson," she directed, as the butler lingered uncertainly, not sure whether it was desirable to go, or wait to be dismissed. "Are you sure some one hasn't made up a horrid cock-and-bull story?"

"Only too sure, madam. Everybody knew already. Jennings heard the news at Riding St. Mary. He'd taken some letters to post, from the servants' hall——"

"I don't care why he went. Who told him?"

​"It was all over the village, madam. Mrs. Barnard, from the home farm at Riding Wood, had sent a man on her bicycle for the doctor and the police."

"Why Mrs. Barnard?" asked Maud, who had no idea of fainting now.

"It seems, madam, that Sir Ian Hereward himself found the body, and came down to the farm looking for Barnard, who used to serve under him, if you remember, madam——"

It struck Maud that Terry's arm round her waist became suddenly rigid, like a slim bar of iron, then relaxed and fell limp; but she was too intensely excited to think much about Terry just then.

"Sir Ian found her—dead! How dreadful!"

"I believe he got anxious because her ladyship didn't return from a walk, and went out to look for her."

Mrs. Ricardo leapt into the loosened girdle of Terry's arm, and turned to stare at her.

"Oh!" she gasped, shuddering. "You were at the house, waiting for her, and all the while she was lying murdered. Now you mustn't faint, Terry!"

"I won't faint," the other answered, in a dull, tired tone. "Don't think about me."

"I can't think about anybody or anything but Milly," said Mrs. Ricardo, entirely unconscious that she was thinking mostly about herself. "Oh, how it frightens one! It makes one feel as if we were all murdered. Dodson, have they an idea who did it?"

​"No, madam," Dodson answered reluctantly. There was robbery. Her ladyship's jewelry was taken, I understand; her rings, and a brooch, all her money, and a little gold case she was in the habit of carrying——"

"Oh, poor Milly! her vanity box. She always had it dangling from her wrist. I suppose some wretched tramp must have seen it."

"Tramps don't generally have revolvers, madam, that's the queer part; and from what Jennings hears, her ladyship met her death from a revolver shot. They're saying in the village already, it would appear, that there's more than meets the eye."

"Oh, it must have been a tramp!" exclaimed Terry. It was the first time that she had broken out impulsively, since the news came.

"In any case, the police are searching the woods," announced Dodson. "It will go hard if they don't hit on some clue."

"Sir Ian must have gone to look for her, after you left Friars' Moat," said Maud, turning again to Terry, to be once more repelled by the frozen, far-away look which she could not help resenting as selfish.

"Yes," Terry replied, as if mechanically.

"What time did they find out?" Mrs. Ricardo went on.

"I don't know exactly, madam. Between five and ​six, I believe; but they say the poor lady had been dead more than an hour then."

"What have—they done with her—with the body? But oh, how awful, Terry, to be speaking of poor Milly as a 'body!'"

"They would have carried her home, I should say, madam," the butler volunteered an opinion.

"Poor Sir Ian!" mourned Mrs. Ricardo. "It will almost kill him. And to think of his being there with—with his murdered wife, alone. How he will miss Eric Forestier! He has no intimate friends since Eric died. I wish Norman were here."

"Yes," said Terry.

Maud stared reproachfully. "You hardly seem to sympathize at all!" she cried. "I suppose you're numbed by the shock."

"I suppose I am," the younger woman answered.

"We shan't sleep to-night," wailed Mrs. Ricardo. "I dread the long hours. Oh, how my head aches again. I feel as if there were a horrible tramp hidden under every bed in this house. If only they had caught the man, it would be a little better. Have they no suspicions, Dodson?"

"Well, madam, to tell the truth, Jennings brought in a very queer report from the village," the butler replied, half fearfully, half with a kind of gruesome joy in having something further of mystery and horror to report. There's a vague rumour that young Mr. ​Ian Barr returned to-day, and was seen going into the woods, but no one saw him come out again. The tale is that it was her ladyship who lost Mr. Barr his place as steward, and everybody knows that he was the only person she seemed to have a dislike for. Mr. Barr was always a young gentleman with a high temper, madam, and they've been saying in the servants hall to-night, what if, in a sudden fit of temper——"

"No, no!" Mrs. Ricardo cut him short. "I like Mr. Barr. I won't believe it of him. And yet—ah, but it must have been a tramp!"

"Let us hope so, madam," the butler responded solemnly. He had no sympathy for tramps.

CHAPTER IX

Maud said that she would die if left alone that night, and her maid would be worse than no one as a companion; Josephine was a coward, and had such bloodcurdling ideas. Terry must come and lie in the bed by Maud's side—not to sleep, of course, because it would be impossible for either to sleep; but to talk—to talk of poor Milly Hereward, and of what to write to Ian in the morning, when they had heard more details, and could tell better what to say.

They did talk: or rather Maud talked, and Terry answered, a night-light making gray twilight in the curtained room, because Maud could not bear the dark. But soon after one, silence began to punctuate straggling sentences; silence at first short, then long; and presently slow, regular breathing told Terry that she was left to watch alone.

At least she was free to think, to ask herself questions and to try and answer them. Lying by Maud's side, tensely alert in mind, she reviewed each minute of the afternoon, from that of her arrival at Friars' Moat, to that when she had bidden Ian Hereward good-bye.

Only—it was difficult to think clearly. One thought would rush in upon another before the first ​had time to travel to its logical conclusion. She went back to the moment when the footman had opened the door, and she had asked for Lady Hereward. "Her ladyship went out to lunch with Sir Ian," the servant had said. Then just as she had refused to wait, and was starting away, Ian had come. At first glance she had found him little changed; but by and by, when a slight flush had died away from his face, the illusion of youth faded with it. She had thought he looked worn, and haggard, not as happy as so fortunate a man ought to be.

There was no real reason, she told herself, why the sight of her should have made him sad. As she had said to him, "it was all so long ago." If he had felt no remorse then, why should he suddenly feel it now? He had fallen so desperately in love with Milly that he had thrown all other considerations but that love under his feet and trampled on them. Yet—and yet—what anguish had been in his eyes and tone to-day! His groan when he had broken out with, "Oh, God, Terry!" sounded in her ears still. Never since had she ceased to hear it echoing, alone in her own room, at dinner afterward with Maud, and—more despairing yet through the telling of the butler's story. Could it be possible that Ian's marriage had not proved a success, after all he had sacrificed to make it? Miss Ricardo could scarcely believe that it had been a failure, for as a young girl she had worshipped ​Millicent Latham, and could easily imagine that a man could adore her. Once Terry had heard some one say, "Milly Latham is an acquired taste, but once the taste is acquired, it's bound to last." She had recalled that speech when she heard of Sir Ian's engagement to his distant cousin; and she recalled it again now.

Milly had seemed to forget all about Terry in the midst of sunshine and marriage; but, in the peculiar circumstances (of which Terry believed her one-time friend to have remained in ignorance), it was better that she should forget. Things being as they were, their intimacy could not have gone on. But now Terry's heart yearned over the dead woman.

"Poor, poor Milly!" She wondered if she had ever thought of Ian's wife unkindly or unjustly? She trusted that she had not. To harbour harsh thoughts would indeed have been unjust, for nothing had been Milly's fault. Ian no doubt had been silent about the past, and Terry herself had kept the secret well. A few hints she might have given in letters at the time, perhaps, before she had known Ian would be leaving India for England. She had mentioned meeting a "cousin of Milly's"; Milly had written back to know "what he was like," and Terry had described him rather enthusiastically, as she had seen him then. That was all. Poor Milly! Ian had been swept off his feet at first sight of her; and Maud said now that ​they were devoted to each other. Yet that "Oh, God, Terry!" What did it mean, that stifled cry of the heart?

Teresina Ricardo would have given a great deal if she had been able to stop her ears and shut out the echo of that cry; but it was inside her head, and could not be shut out.

Her imagination, whose vividness was a curse as well as a blessing in her life, clearly sketched a woman's figure walking under great trees in a wood. Then, another figure grew out of shadows, and followed. Whose figure?

Terry had a horrible feeling, born of over-wrought nerves, that if she looked long enough at the picture, she would see whose the shadowy figure was, and know the awful secret of the murder. But she dared not know. She did not want to know. Justice would find out in time. She would not be in the secret if she could: and she thought with a strange pang of Miss Verney. That girl had been in the woods. She had said so. What had she seen? What did she know? Something had happened to blanch her cheeks, to redden her eyes, and give her the look of a hunted deer. What thing? At all events, Miss Verney's agitation and her confession—no, no, not that word in this connection!—her statement, rather, that she had been in the woods, made up a mysterious coincidence. If she had met her lover there—if it were ​true that he hated Lady Hereward—but Terry broke the thought almost fiercely in her brain. She was angry with herself for letting it steal in. Maud's description of Sir Ian's namesake—his cousin in blood—was not the description of a murderer, it seemed to Terry. She had liked what Maud said of him; the young man, bravely if obstinately waging his tight against the world which denied him a place; yet here she was suspecting him, vulgarly, just like any inmate of the servants' hall. Besides, no one could really hate Milly. She was always kind, always unselfish, even to those she did not like; so Maud said.

Thus the night passed; a white night for Terry Ricardo, and a white night for the world, bathed in moonlight. Yet in the forest, whose Gothic aisles were paved with ebony and ivory moonshine and shadow, there were sounds other than the whispering of pines and beeches, or the rustling of tiny wood-folk among the feathery bracken. Dark figures of men moved under the trees; lanterns flashed like the yellow eyes of spying cats; low voices murmured solemnly, or broke out in exclamations at the sudden bell-note of dogs baying; for the police had brought bloodhounds to Riding Wood, and were trying to trace the murderer of Lady Hereward.

CHAPTER X

Next afternoon Miss Ricardo received notice that she would be called as witness at the inquest, which would be held at Friars' Moat the following day. The police learned from a footman that she had called there to see Lady Hereward, and had had tea with Sir Ian and Miss Verney, not very long after the time when the murder must have been committed. A coroner's officer appeared at White Fields and Terry had to answer some questions.

It was dreadful to her that she must go to the inquest, but she was hardly surprised at the summons. She had half expected and greatly feared that it might come. Maud was horrified, and inclined to think it an insult to the whole Ricardo family that one of them should be called upon to give evidence about a murder. "What can you know?" she asked. "Do they suppose you can tell who killed that poor dear? I should refuse to stir a step if I were you. But if you do go, I shall go with you, and we will both wear black, of course."

Mrs. Ricardo seemed somewhat surprised that Terry did not appear to think it mattered what she wore. She had no black dress, so Maud chose a gray gown for her to put on, and a black hat, which was almost ​too becoming for such an occasion. "Poor Milly would have admired you in it. She had such taste!" Mrs. Ricardo sighed. "And she was fond of gray. She had a gray-embroidered voile this summer that—oh, perhaps she was wearing it on Saturday at Nina Forestier's. I suppose Nina will be a witness too."

Maud and Terry Ricardo drove away from White Fields in a closed brougham, very new and smart, as everything was, or appeared to be, at White Fields, which was a handsome modern house without individuality.

It was but a short distance to Friars' Moat, yet the two places were centuries apart, and as the carnage stopped before the door, Terry thought sadly what a pity it was that this beautiful old house should become hateful forever to its owner, the last of his name. She had told herself, fancifully, day before yesterday, that somehow the place was like Ian; and she felt this still; but both man and house were very tragic now.

Here Ian lived happily with the woman he loved for seven years. Here her murdered body had been brought home, blood-stained and terrible. Here, in some room which she had perhaps helped to make homelike and charming, that body now slept. Here Ian Hereward must go through another agonizing ordeal to-day, only less dreadful than that he had endured when fate led him to find his dead wife in the woods.

The day was one of those perfect days in June, ​which come often after rain. Last night there had been a heavy shower which had sent the temperature down, and the air smelled of a thousand flowers, whose perfume mingled with the sweet scent of new-cut grass and the freshness of moist earth. It seemed a day made for youth and happiness. The heavy sense of oppression was gone from the atmosphere, and the lawns and flower-beds shining in the gay summer sunlight were so beautiful that it was almost impossible to believe in the tragedy behind the drawn window-curtains of the old house. But once inside, it became easy to believe. A door at the left of the oak-panelled hall was kept by a policeman in uniform. It was the door of the library; for in the library the inquest was to be held. Mrs. Ricardo, as a relative of a witness, was allowed to go in, and though she shuddered, and was very pale under her powder, it would have been a bitter disappointment to miss the great drama about to be enacted. She had heard comparatively few details of the murder, for people contradicted each other, and there were the wildest rumours afloat. Some said that a gypsy had been arrested, others that no arrest had been made, but that the police had "something up their sleeve" which would come out through witnesses at the inquest. Maud Ricardo sincerely believed that she was very sad, heavily oppressed by the tragedy which had fallen on the house, but in reality all that was primitive in ​her—and there was much thrilled with a delicious, painful curiosity. She had written a letter of sympathy to Sir Ian Hereward. Now she would soon see how he bore his trouble.

Miss Ricardo did not shudder; but she, too, was very pale and there were dark circles round the hazel eyes which had made Richard the footman disloyal to Miss Verney's beauty. Terry knew no more than Maud knew, of what an inquest would be like, and she feared everything, but her face and manner were as composed as if she had come to hear a lecture. As they were admitted into the library, her eyes travelled round the room, searching for Sir Ian and Miss Verney, but neither was there. She had been foolish, Terry told herself, to think that she might see them. They were both mourners; the husband and the trusted girl-companion of the murdered woman. Doubtless they would be spared as much as possible, and would only be called in when the time came for them to speak.

Terry had not seen the library before, but she knew that its grim aspect of to-day was not its aspect of other days. In itself, it was a pleasant room, lined with old books and new, the top shelf displaying rare pottery, and a few marble busts that stood out against the dark oak wall. There were many, many books and the two mullioned windows, with their quaintly fashioned crests on panes of painted glass, looked out on ​the lawns, one with a sundial rising from a bed of roses, one with a marvellous cedar of Lebanon. But to-day the library was a dreadful room. In the middle was a long Tudor table, on either side of which were ranged chairs for the coroner, his clerk, the chief constable of the county, the deputy chief constable, a superintendent of police, an inspector from Scotland Yard and a detective inspector. A long row of seats for the fifteen jurors stretched in front of the window which looked out upon the Lebanon cedar; and before the fireplace was a table with chairs for eight members of the press. Near the corner was a chair for the witness while being examined.

The jury having been sworn, their foreman was elected and then, on the order of the coroner, the fifteen men went out to look at the dead body of Lady Hereward. When they filed back again into the library, their faces, grave enough before, were masks of solemnity. A light like anger smouldered in some men's eyes; for it would have been hard to find fifteen jurors in the neighbourhood of Riding St. Mary, none of whose families had received kindness from Sir Ian Hereward and his wife. Having gazed upon all that was mortal of the fair Lady Bountiful, the fifteen men realized fully that they were here, in this house which had been her home, to solve—if they could—the mystery of her death; in other words, to find the murderer and help the hangman to put a noose round his neck.

CHAPTER XI

Colonel Sir Ian Hereward, the first witness, was called by the police sergeant who guarded the door.

Probably there was not a person in the room who did not sympathize deeply with the man who had been so tragically bereaved; yet as the door opened and he walked in, curiosity was the emotion upper most in every heart. People who were acquainted with the man, or knew him by sight, vaguely expected to see him changed by the horror which had broken his life; but Ian Hereward had not been a soldier in vain. He did not totter in as if staggering under a load, nor was his head bowed, nor were his shoulders bent. He looked as he had looked many times when he had gone into battle—grave, composed, expressionless, as a man who faces an ordeal should look when watched by many eyes.

He took his place in the witness's chair. The room was very still, and the rustling of papers which the coroner rather uneasily sorted before beginning his catechism sent a sharp little thrill through highly keyed nerves.

Then the usual questions were put at the start. How old was Lady Hereward? How long had they ​lived at Friars Moat?—questions which most persons present could have answered as well as the witness. Catechised, Sir Ian told how he and his wife had been in Paris for a fortnight, and how, the day before yesterday, which was the day after their return from the Continent, they had walked together to lunch at Riding Wood House with their friend Mrs. Forestier. They had taken the way through the woods, intending to walk home also.

"Were you accustomed to walking through the woods together?" asked Mr. Samways, the coroner, who, having once been a doctor in Riding St. Mary, still lived there, and in his private capacity as a man and neighbour, knew perfectly well that Sir Ian and Lady Hereward were in the habit of walking through Riding Wood. His mind gave him the answer "Yes," before it came from the witness's lips.

"What time did you and Lady Hereward start to return to Friar's Moat?"

"About a quarter past three—or a little before."

"Have you any particular reason for remembering the time of your start?"

Sir Ian hesitated for an instant. "The weather was oppressive, and my wife preferred not to walk fast," he replied.

"Did you wish to arrive at home by a certain hour?"

"Soon after four," said Sir Ian, rather shortly.

"Was there something that Lady Hereward or you ​intended to do when you got back?" the coroner went on, and those who listened began to take a keen interest in his line of questioning, as it was evident that he had a point to make.

"We usually had tea between half-past four and five," Sir Ian said.

"Were you expecting any visitor or visitors to tea that day?"

The witness's face changed, ever so slightly; but it did change, as if the question had not been among those put to him previously by the police. The more sharp-sighted of the jurymen noticed this, and wondered if Sir Ian had perhaps not intended to mention the fact that a visitor was expected. All waited eagerly to hear a name or names, which were sure to come out and must be of interest.

"We thought it possible that there might be visitors." (Was there reluctance in his tone?)

"Several?"

"Two."

"Will you kindly give their names?"

"Is that necessary?"

(There was no longer any doubt. Sir Ian had not wished to mention the expected visit!)

"Yes, I believe it to be necessary."

"Mrs. Forestier said at luncheon, she understood that Mrs. Ricardo of White Fields meant to call with a cousin of hers, at Friars' Moat, some time after four."

​He answered quite freely now, making the best of a business which he thought bad, for he would have given much to have kept Teresina Ricardo's name out of this terrible affair, and had indeed tried to do so. But seeing that, in spite of his deliberate concealment, by some means or other the coroner was already informed of Miss Ricardo's visit, Sir Ian realized that harm rather than good would be done by refusing to answer with apparent frankness.

"You and Lady Hereward, then, started home in time to meet these ladies, should they call?"

"We did."

"Would it not have been quicker to go by carriage or motor along the road?"

14 Yes, but we had not ordered ours to come for us, and though Mrs. Forestier offered to send us home, so that we might stop a little longer, my wife said that she would like to walk."

"It was her express wish to walk?"

"Yes."

"What way did you take through the woods?"

"The path that leads by the stone Tower."

"Is that the shortest way?"

"No, it is a slight detour. It means going rather higher along the hill than there is a need to go."

"Why did you choose to make that detour, if you were in a hurry?"

​"It takes only a few minutes longer, and there is a finer view."

"Was it, then, because you desired to see the view, that you went by the upper path that leads past the Tower?"

"My wife said that she wanted to go by the Tower."

"When you reached the Tower, did you and Lady Hereward walk on together?"

"No. I went on alone."

Every eye in the room was fixed on the ex-soldier, and it seemed strange to no one that his face should pale to the ash-gray which is the only pallor a colour less, bronzed skin can show.

"Why did you leave Lady Hereward?" the merciless-seeming voice of the coroner continued. It was merciless only in seeming, however. There did not live a more kindly-natured man than little Mr. Samways, and never had he disliked doing his duty as coroner more than he disliked it to day. He knew how agonizing these memories must be to Sir Ian Hereward, whom he respected and admired. He knew how this hero of many battles must be reproaching himself because, though all unwittingly, he had gone away and left a beloved woman undefended, to meet a ghastly fate.

Again there was a slight pause before the witness answered. When he did speak, he spoke slowly, and in a low, though clear voice.

​"I left my wife because she asked me to go. She wished to be left there by herself for a little time."

It was now the coroner's turn to pause. He seemed to be thinking this response over, or else to be giving time for the jury to do so.

"Was the door of the Tower open when you were there with Lady Hereward?" was the next question that he asked.

"Not that I know of. I didn't notice. We didn't go in," replied Sir Ian.

"Do you know whether the door is usually locked

"I believe it is supposed to be locked."

"Are several people in possession of keys which fit the door?"

"Mrs. Forestier has one, of course, as the Tower is on her estate. Possibly two or three persons in her employ have them. Mrs. Forestier gave us one some years ago, with permission to have tea there if we ever cared to, knowing that my wife was fond of the view."

"Did you often use the key?"

"Hardly ever. I haven't even seen it for a long time."

"Do you think it likely that Lady Hereward had it with her, when she went out to lunch ?"

"No, not likely but possible."

"Could she have had it, without your knowing?"

"She could have kept it in a little bag she carried with her handkerchief and purse—quite a small bag, ​embroidered in beads. She sometimes put her gloves into it, too."

"Why do you think the key was not there?"

"Because—the bead bag was found, empty, and the key of the Tower door has since been discovered, here in the house."

"Where was it discovered?"

"In a room my wife used as a sitting-room."

"Her boudoir?"

"Not exactly a boudoir. She attended to all business there, as well as a sitting-room, saw the servants, indoor and outdoor servants, when necessary, and poor people who used to come and tell her their troubles, expecting her to help them. The key has been found in the drawer of her writing-desk."

"Who found it?"

"I did, with the inspector of police."

"What led you to look for it there?"

"I thought it would have been in one of those drawers if anywhere. Besides, I was obliged to—we were looking through my wife's papers."

"You have no reason to think that any one else knew where she kept this key, or could have replaced it after the murder?"

"I have no reason to think anything of the kind."

"Where exactly did you leave Lady Hereward, on parting from her in the wood?"

​"On a seat shaped out of an old tree-trunk on the left side of the Tower."

"Did she say she would soon join you ?"

"She didn't say; but I supposed she wouldn't be very long."

"Because of the expected guests?"

"Well, yes."

"Did you think it strange that she should wish you to go on and leave her alone ?"

"No. I thought it natural, in the circumstances."

"What circumstances?"

"My wife was exhausted. It was—very warm, you will remember."

"Had she ever before asked you to leave her alone in the woods?"

"She may have. She occasionally went alone to this seat near the Tower, with a book."

"May other people besides yourself have been aware of this habit of hers ?"

"It hardly amounted to a habit."

"When you arrived at Friars Moat, had your expected guests arrived?"

"Yes—that is——"

"The two ladies?"

"Only one."

"Which?"

"Miss Ricardo."

"Is she an old friend of yours and Lady Hereward's?"

​"We both knew her, years ago, when she was a very young girl, but hadn't seen her since."

"Where did you know the lady—in England?"

"My wife knew her in England, before our marriage. I met Miss Ricardo in India, when I was stationed there. Her cousin, Mrs. Ricardo, our neighbour, was to have called, but was ill with a headache, and sent Miss Ricardo alone, rather than put us out, in case we had been told that they would come."

"Did you have tea with this lady, on returning home?"

"Yes, when Miss Verney came in—my wife's companion."

"Had Miss Verney been out?"

"I believe so."

"Did you know where?"

"I think—in the woods."

"Did you ask her if she had met Lady Hereward?"

"Yes, but she said she had not."

"Did you feel anxious when Lady Hereward did not return?"

"I thought I would look for her, when Miss Ricardo had gone, and I—did so."

"You went back to the place where you had left her?"

"Yes."

Now, once more, the eager curiosity with which every one had listened to the story, as given in question ​and answer between the coroner and the witness, was overcome by a wave of sympathy for the pale man, thus led to the most terrible point in his narrative.

"Did you meet any one on the way?"

"No one."

"Or see any one at a distance?"

"I noticed no one."

"Were you absorbed in your own thoughts?"

"Perhaps."

"Could any one have passed at some distance with out your attention being aroused?"

"Possibly. I don t know."

"What did you first observe on reaching the knoll where the Tower stands?"

"When I saw that my wife wasn't on the seat where I left her, I noticed rather to my surprise that the door of the Tower stood a little way open. I thought that she might be in the room—that she'd found the door unlocked, and gone in."

"You didn't think she had unlocked it?"

"I didn't think of that, at the moment."

"What did you see when you went in?"

Sir Ian' s nostrils quivered. He tightened his lips, as if to keep them from quivering too. Then, for the first time he bowed his head, and told the story of what he had seen, with a voice that broke more than once. He told what he had seen, and what he had done; how he had run down to the home farm of ​Riding Wood, to fetch Tom Barnard, and all that had happened there. As to the details of the sight he had had to look upon in the tower room, as few questions as possible were put, for other witnesses could paint that picture. Only, at the last, the coroner desired Sir Ian to tell the jury whether he had touched the body of his dead wife, or whether he had in any way disturbed the arrangement of the tower room as he found it on entering.

"I put my hand on her breast, to see whether her heart beat," the witness answered dully, looking older and more haggard than when he had been called into the room. "I thought perhaps she might be living still. And when I found that her heart had stopped, I touched her hand. It was cold. I knew, then—there was no hope."

"Did you notice anything about her hand?"

"I noticed that her rings were gone—rings she constantly wore. And that made me look to see if her other jewelry were missing. Her bracelet-watch was gone, and a brooch she had been wearing."

"Anything else?"

"I didn't think of it then, but afterward it was discovered that a gold case, like a cigarette-case, which my wife always carried, had disappeared. Ladies call that kind of thing a vanity box."

"Could she have dropped it in the woods on the way to the Tower?"

​"She might have, but I don't think it likely, for though it used to slide off her lap sometimes, in the house, or she would leave it on a table, she always missed it instantly; and when she was walking, it hung from her wrist by its chain. It wasn't very valuable, I think; not worth more than twenty or thirty pounds, but she was particularly attached to it, for some reason."

"Had you ever seen the inside of this case, or vanity box?"

"Never."

"Could papers have been kept inside?"

"Only very small ones, if any."

"Could it have been possible that Lady Hereward had a reason other than the one she gave you, for wanting to be left alone near the Tower ?"

"Other than the one she gave me?" Sir Ian repeated this question with a very slight yet peculiar emphasis, as if he wished to mark it in some way, in his mind. "No, I do not think so."

"She could not have expected to meet any one?"

"I feel sure she did not."

"Is there any one who, to your knowledge, had a grudge against her?"

For the third time when giving an answer, Sir Ian paused. His eyes were raised, and introspective, with an expression of distress, as if he saw some ugly image in his mind. "No," he said, at last.

​"There is no one whom you could possibly suspect of having such a grudge?"

Sir Ian's pale face reddened with a sudden rush of blood which flowed over it, to the roots of his dark hair. "I do not think that a fair question," he said, "and I refuse to answer it. It ought to be enough that I know of no person who, even with a grudge, I should believe capable of murder."

"I am afraid I must insist on your answering the question," said the coroner, feeling miserable, and looking as miserable as he felt.

"Very well, then, I suspect no one," said Sir Ian.

"Remember, you are on oath."

"You have my answer." And the soldier-face was very stern and grim.

Greatly as Mr. Samways liked and admired Sir Ian Hereward, heartily sorry as he was for the ex-soldier's tragic affliction, and deeply as he regretted the official necessity of asking disagreeable questions (some of which had become necessary because of discoveries just made), he would not have been human, he would not have had a proper respect for his own calling, if he had not found himself slightly nettled by the attitude his chief witness now took. It defied him, set him at naught both as man and coroner; and as he had tried his best to be considerate throughout the whole examination, he thought that he had deserved a different tone from Sir Ian. Several details into ​which he really ought to have inquired, if only as a matter of form, he had let slide, rather than distress the bereaved husband; and there was one query in particular which he had felt bound, yet dreaded, to put. Perhaps, had Sir Ian spoken less brusquely, and looked less haughtily obstinate, he might have decided to waive it, with others, questioning later witnesses instead, as the whole county had always praised the devotion of the Herewards to one another. But as it was, feeling himself ill-used, suddenly he discovered that it was no longer so disagreeable a task to throw a certain question at Sir Ian s proud head.

"Were you invariably on affectionate terms with Lady Hereward?" he bluntly inquired.

Then, to the surprise of every one present, Sir Ian went from dark red to ghastly white. He looked as if he had been struck to the death. Not a man in the room but felt his nerves jump under the shock of a new and astounding suspicion.

CHAPTER XII

They hung on his answer. But when it came, it was entirely commonplace.

"We were always on the best of terms, during thirteen years of married life."

There was no quaver of his voice, no flinching of the gaze to account for the sudden rush and ebb of blood. It had seemed a tell-tale change of colour, following as it did upon such a question, which in some form or other he must have expected, and was like the silent revealing of a black secret guessed by none. Yet what could be made out of the reply? There was a ring of truth in it and the query appeared to be fully answered. Yet—there was a dim impression of something wrong, something hidden, something in the words more or less than met the ear. "On the best of terms during thirteen years of married life." What could any coroner or juror ask beyond that?

The coroner, at all events, did not intend to ask anything further of importance for the present. He let Sir Ian Hereward go, after putting a few questions concerning the theory of the robbery, and called Mrs. Barnard, frightened and anxious, but more at ease than she would have been in the hands of any other ​questioner. Before Mr. Samways became coroner, he had been the favourite doctor of the farming community, and had brought Poppet into the world.

Clearly and truthfully Rose gave the history of her afternoon—the afternoon of the murder. How she had been in the arbour, with her little daughter, and Kate Craigie had come, and at about four o'clock they had heard two shots, which Kate had thought sounded queer. How Kate had gone home a little later, and after tea—oh, a good while after—when she was washing up the dishes, Sir Ian had made Poppet scream out by suddenly appearing, covered with blood. No, not covered; she hadn't meant that. To say "covered" was a great exaggeration. She had spoken impulsively, as women will. Sir Ian had been very much agitated, stammering out some thing about her ladyship being in the Tower, dead; and he wished to find Barnard, who used to serve under him in the Army before Sir Ian came into his title, and got Tom his present position through his influence with Mr. Forestier. Why, yes, of course Barnard owed Sir Ian a big debt of gratitude, and would do anything for him, so it was natural enough the poor gentleman should go there before going any where else. Besides, the farmhouse was near. But unfortunately Barnard was away, so she had to do the best she could. And Sir Ian wouldn't wait for Tom. He would rush back to the woods, where her poor ​ladyship was lying, though it seemed an awful thing to Rose that he should have to be there with the dead body of his wife, all alone, and nobody to help him bear his grief and horror.

Kate was called, after Rose, describing her impression of the two shots, and inclining to be somewhat sensational, as servants will. She had been fond of her mistress, in a jealously passionate, ill-regulated way, yet she thoroughly enjoyed giving evidence. She felt herself of immense importance, and the wish to be first with every one she approached was almost a mania with Kate Craigie, though she was unconscious of this peculiarity in herself.

When asked on what terms Sir Ian Hereward lived with his wife, she knew that all eyes were fastened upon her. She wished ardently to say something which could hold the interest she was arousing, some thing more than she had already said to the police.

"I think her ladyship was more in love with Sir Ian, than he was with her," Kate replied, half frightened at her own temerity. Still, she reminded herself, it was not only her duty to tell the truth, but the whole truth.

"What do you mean by that?" inquired the coroner sternly.

Now indeed, Kate must justify herself! She replied that her ladyship thought of nothing but to look well in her husband's eyes, and pleasing him with her style ​of dress, and way of doing her hair. If he didn't like a thing she wore, that was the end of it forever. Liane, her ladyship's French maid, into whose place she (Kate) had stepped ten weeks ago, was very clever about that sort of thing, and took advantage of her mistress's peculiarity in her own interest. If Liane fancied a hat, for instance, she would say, "Miladi, I am sure from the way he looked at you in it, Sir Ian detested you in that hat, though he is far too polite to say so. He only turned his eyes away." That was enough for her ladyship. Liane would get the hat; and the same with dresses and blouses. Her ladyship would begin to hate a thing if she had the idea that it made her look old; for she really was a bit older than Sir Ian, and extremely sensitive about her age, though very few would have guessed her feeling. Liane used to order creams and things for the complexion, or to keep the neck firm, in her own name, but they were really for her ladyship; and it was because of this, as well as little tricks about doing the hair, that her ladyship valued Liane so much. In Kate's opinion, Liane was a sly, worthless creature, but she couldn't say the French girl had any grudge against her mistress. Liane disappeared, it is true, but not on account of a "row," so far as Kate knew, and her ladyship was forever quoting Liane, saying nobody else could do as well as Liane could, no matter how they might try. Liane had probably had a love affair, and had wanted to ​leave her place for that reason, as her ladyship didn't much like such things going on in the house. As for Sir Ian, he had always seemed very pleasant with his wife, but he didn't have quite the same air of thinking the sun rose and set in her ladyship, that she had for him. He was absent-minded, sometimes, and fond of reading in the library by himself; but they were on very good terms indeed, and in Paris he took his wife everywhere, shopping, and to the theatres, and bought her several handsome presents. On the last morning of her ladyship's life, Sir Ian had come into her room while she was polishing her nails, and Kate was putting away a few things. They had talked to each other as pleasantly as possible, and made plans for a few days stay in town by and by. She had never heard the slightest dispute between them. Her ladyship did not appear to have any trouble or secrets, except some little ones of the toilet, which did not count seriously. If she had had secrets, Kate would have been likely to guess, or would have heard something from Liane, who used to talk rather freely about her mistress in the servants' hall. But Kate believed that Lady Hereward had been a very happy woman, up to the day of her death, and was, on the whole, a lady easy to get on with. The only person Kate had ever heard her scold was Miss Verney, her ladyship's companion.

Had Kate seen Lady Hereward in the woods, on her ​way to visit Mrs. Barnard? No, she hadn't, nor had any idea her ladyship was there, though she left the farm sooner than she would have liked, perhaps about a quarter after four, in order to reach Friars' Moat by teatime, thinking that her mistress might be back and wanting something then. She had seen nobody in the woods but Miss Verney. No, not on the way back, but when going to the farm she had seen Miss Verney. On the way back she had met no one—that is, only the footman, from Friars' Moat. He had perhaps guessed that she (Kate) would be returning through the woods. No, she and Edward were not exactly engaged, though they had been near it once. They often had quarrels. Edward was of an odd disposition, and Kate was not sure whether she would do well to marry him or not. Her ladyship had advised her not to encourage him.

Here was another little detail not elicited by the first questioning of Kate Craigie by the police. She had not then mentioned the fact that her ladyship was against the match between her maid and the footman, or that she particularly disapproved of love-making in the servants' hall. But it was easy to believe that this might have been true, as it was well known that Lady Hereward, despite her many charities, held certain rather strict (some people called them "narrow-minded") views.

The coroner looked frowningly at Kate. Too many ​unexpected issues seemed to be developing in this case. He felt himself ill-used, in that he had not been sufficiently prepared.

"Did the footman, Edward, know that Lady Hereward wished you to give him up?" was the next question; and it showed Kate the mischief done by her loose way of answering. She had not needed to say that about her mistress and Edward, and she could have boxed her own ears for her carelessness, because, whatever Edward might be, he loved her only too well. Blushing painfully, she said Edward had perhaps guessed at her ladyship's disapproval, but it did not discourage him. He was always hopeful, and as long as he wasn't discharged, there was not much for him to be cross about.

Had Kate ever heard Edward say anything about Lady Hereward, as if he were angry at her attitude toward him? Well, he might have said little things, like any quick-tempered young man would, in the circumstances, but nothing of any importance. She had never thought anything of what he said. Did he refer to the subject when they met in the woods on the afternoon of the murder? Oh, as to that Kate could hardly remember. He might have just mentioned it, no more than a few words. What words? Kate was sure—flushing deeply—that she couldn't repeat them. Such words went in at one ear and out at the other.

​Had Edward been excited, when she met him in the woods?

Dear no, not particularly. He was a bit emotional and always got worked up, on one thing and another, when talking to her, that was all, indeed.

Another new suspicion flung at the heads of the jury! Hardly had they recovered from the shock of the first, when there came a second; but after the first, it was a relief to have a second to fall back upon, of so little importance was poor Edward, a footman, compared with his master, Sir Ian Hereward.

Next after Kate came Teresina Ricardo. Thus far, the witnesses had followed each other in order, according to the bearing of their evidence upon the case. Sir Ian's testimony had naturally been taken first, since he had been in his wife's company for some hours before the murder, and had left her in the woods, close to the Tower where she met her death. Rose Barnard and Kate Craigie had together heard the shots; one of which, in all probability, had killed Lady Hereward. Miss Ricardo, it had been ascertained, was one of the first persons who saw Sir Ian after his return through the woods, where he had parted with his wife, therefore her testimony fitted in at this point which had been reached.

If Terry had needed a warning, Kate's experience in the hands of the coroner would have given it. "Nothing can be asked of me that wasn't asked by that ​policeman yesterday," she tried to be sure, yet she called upon her soul to stand firm.

As she rose to go to the witness's chair where Sir Ian had sat, and Mrs. Barnard and Kate Craigie, the door was opened by the guardian policeman outside. A visiting-card with something written upon it in pencil was passed in, and up to the coroner. A whispered discussion followed among the officials assembled at the table, and presently an answer went back to the door. Some one was admitted, and the questioning of Miss Ricardo was delayed until the slight disturbance should be over. Terry did not turn her head to look at the door. She stood, ready to go to the coroner's table when she should be wanted, but that would not be quite yet, for the coroner's clerk had got up, and was talking to the person who had come in. Then the clerk returned, and spoke with the coroner, handing him a piece of paper, which might have been a leaf torn from a note-book. There was a little more conferring, and then Miss Ricardo was requested to take her place in the chair by the coroner. As she obeyed, she saw the face of the newcomer, who had been given a seat. He was looking at her, and their eyes met. His were of yellowish brown, like the thin hair and stubby moustache, which was turning gray—a dirty, unattractive gray. His complexion was yellowish too, and there were baggy wrinkles under the cold eyes.

​"Alligator eyes!" Terry said to herself, as she had said before of the same eyes. It was many years since she had seen the man, but she knew him at once, for he had changed little. He was one of those persons whom it is impossible to imagine as ever having been much younger, or as ever growing much older. It was Major Smedley, the man at whom Terry had cried out as "the worst old gossip and tabby-cat that ever lived," when Maud had mentioned his name, just before news of the murder came to White Fields.

The armour of strength which she had girded on seemed to loosen at the joints.

She was afraid of Major Smedley.

CHAPTER XIII

Terry's examination by the coroner began exactly as she had reason to expect that it would begin. But by and by fell the blow she had been dreading since she had recognized Major Smedley.

It fell in the form of a question, following upon one which concerned her early acquaintance with Lady Hereward, then Miss Millicent Latham.

"Did Miss Latham introduce Captain Hereward to you?"

"No," said Terry. "But the first time I ever met him I happened to find out that he was a very distant cousin of my friend Miss Latham."

"Did you correspond with her about him?"

"I wrote that I had met a cousin of hers whom she hadn't seen since they were children."

"How long did your acquaintance with Captain Hereward last before he left India?"

"Only a few weeks."

"Is it true that Captain Hereward wished to marry you?"

Now Terry could guess very well what had been written on that bit of paper which the coroner had read and discussed with the chief constable and the ​detective-inspector from Scotland Yard. She bad known, the moment she saw Major Smedley, what would happen. "How like him," she thought, "to come here and mix himself up in this awful business, just because of the prominence it will give him in his clubs! He has volunteered to come and bear witness and he has put them up to ask me things that without some horrid hint from him wouldn't even have seemed of importance."

Suddenly, in her disgustful anger against the man, she ceased to be afraid. She knew that when Major Smedley had a grudge against people he made a boast of "paying them out," if it took half his life; and he had had a grudge against her for thirteen years. She had been a very popular girl in Indian society, and had snubbed him with all the frankness of youth, when he tried to be "nice to her." Many women would have liked to do the same, but did not dare. He knew too much about them, and to have a weapon was to use it, with Major Smedley. But there was nothing which a girl of eighteen need fear to have known about herself; and hating the character of a malicious male gossip more than most others, she had taken some pleasure in being disagreeable to the "horrid old tabby." Ian had snubbed him, too; for Captain Hereward had little more to hide from the world in those days than had Miss Teresina Ricardo, the débutante; and even if he had secrets to keep, he was not the sort of man ​to keep them at the price of a cowardly civility to a person he detested. Now after all these years, evidently, it had seemed to Major Smedley that his time had come at last to scratch in good earnest. Nothing on earth would delight such a creature more than a chance to throw suspicion on Sir Ian Hereward through Miss Ricardo.

But Miss Ricardo determined that he should not succeed. She would not let Ian be hurt through her. No matter what she might have to say, she would not hurt Ian.

The calmness that blew like a cooling breeze upon the heat of her excitement was strange to Terry, but she was thankful for it.

After a scarcely perceptible pause, she said in response to the coroner's question: "I do not think that Captain Hereward ever wished to marry me." And almost she would have been glad if Ian had been there to hear her answer. "Within three months after our first meeting," she went on, without waiting for another question to come, "he had fallen desperately in love with my friend Miss Latham, and was engaged to her."

As she spoke, she allowed her eyes to move about the room and rest for an instant on Major Smedley's face. She hoped that she could read disappointment upon it, and a catty annoyance that the question had been put in a way to give her this chance of wriggling ​out. If he had been the coroner, it would have been different. He would have known exactly what to say.

"Was there never anything serious between you and Sir Ian, then Captain Hereward?" the coroner went on, looking relieved.

"Captain Hereward never thought of me at all seriously," Terry returned courageously. "Never. We saw just enough of each other for some people to fancy there was a flirtation, I suppose."

Again a cold glance at Major Smedley. He looked, she thought, like an ugly Burmese idol.

"You never met Sir Ian Hereward again till the day before yesterday ?"

Terry replied that she had not.

"Did you correspond with him in the interval?"

"Oh, no. Miss Latham—Lady Hereward and I wrote to each other occasionally. Not very often." Miss Ricardo did not think it necessary to state that the letters had ceased after Milly Latham's marriage.

"You were always on good terms then, with Lady Hereward?"

"Of course. She had been very kind to me when I was an insignificant little girl, and she was a charming young woman, with hosts of important and interesting friends."

Miss Ricardo was doing her very best for Sir Ian Hereward, though never had that mysterious cry of ​his—"Oh, God, Terry!"—rung more confusingly in her ears. And whatever came, she meant to go on doing her best.

"Did you expect Lady Hereward to be at home to receive you the day before yesterday, when you called at Friars' Moat?"

Terry's raised eyebrows expressed precisely what she wished them to express. "I really wasn't sure whether she knew that we—my cousin Mrs. Ricardo and I—meant to call or not. I thought Mrs. Forestier might tell her. But I wasn't surprised not to find her at home."

"You didn't take that for a sign that—er—a visit would not be welcome to her?"

"Oh, not at all. We had been far too good friends for that, in the past. And there can never be a past in real friendship."

"Were you going away when the footman told you Lady Hereward was out?"

"I was."

"Did Sir Ian's arrival stop you?"

"Yes."

"Did he seem to you to be perfectly calm when he appeared?"

Terry's face did not change at all as she answered; "Perfectly." But her heart gave a great throb. It was fortunate for her, again, that the question had shaped itself so, for it would have been harder to answer, ​except for the last three words "when he appeared." It was true that he had seemed calm then. If not, she knew she would have perjured herself and become a false witness rather than bring a new trouble worse than the first upon him. Terry Ricardo, whose father had been half Italian, half English, had had a wholly American mother, and she was loyal in every beat of her blood, but she could not help remembering several things. She remembered how Ian had stammered when he spoke of parting from his wife in the woods. Not only had he betrayed painful embarrassment, but a deep distress. She had then attributed it to some kind of late-springing remorse for the past, though it had seemed intense beyond all reason, but now — why, still she attributed it to that!

"Oh, God, Terry!" he had cried to her; and she had hushed him back to conventionality. If only she could stop seeing his eyes as they had looked then, hearing his voice as it had sounded then!

But her thoughts would escape control and buzz round the forbidden subject as moths rush to the flame of a lighted candle.

"How did Sir Ian explain his wife's absence?"

This was a little harder, but Terry did not flinch.

"I believe he said that she wanted to linger in the woods for a little while, but he thought she wouldn't be long; and I had the impression that he fancied she ​might have gone to the village, when in the end she didn't come home."

So it went on; question after question; answer after answer; pens scratching; notes going down on paper at the coroner's table, and journalists writing swiftly, perhaps some of them secretly sketching. But the worst was over. Terry felt that she had acquitted herself well; that if suspicion had been creeping into people's minds, she had perhaps been able to catch the ugly little snake by its tail, and crush it before it could grow to formidable size.

"I am glad — glad — glad," she said to herself, "if I have been able to help Ian."

She believed in him; believed him to be honourable as he was brave (though once long ago he had failed in highest honour to her); believed that he had adored his wife. And yet — Terry had grown in the last two days to hate these words "and yet."

She walked quietly and steadily back to her place beside Maud; but no sooner had she sat down than she began to feel sick and faint. The room whirled before her eyes. The coroner's table and the men seated on either side seemed to rise from the ground and float up toward the ceiling, in a bluish haze. Major Smedley's face turned into that of a Cheshire cat, with great cold eyes like enormous agates looking at her, staring at her.

If it had not been for those eyes and their stare she ​probably would have fainted; but the malice in them was like a douche of cold water. If she fainted, all she had said might go for nothing. People, seeing her emotion, would misread it. They would think she had lied to save Sir Ian. And she hadn't lied, hadn't lied. She would have lied, perhaps, but it hadn't been necessary.

Maud slipped a tiny bottle of smelling salts into Terry's hand, but she would not use it. By and by she grew better. Some one came to ask, politely, if she and all the other women witnesses would prefer to go out before the farmer, Thomas Barnard, and the doctors, should be called, for details unpleasant to the fastidious feminine ear were apparently expected to come out. There would be talk of blood and other disagreeables.

Suddenly it occurred to Miss Ricardo that Miss Verney had not yet been called; and this somewhat surprised her.

CHAPTER XIV

Maud read The Morning eagerly next day. She wanted to see how Sir Ian's and Terry's evidence would look in print; what the witnesses had said, after she and Terry had left Friars' Moat; and whether anything new had been discovered since yesterday.

"Oh, the inquest is adjourned. So that's what happened!" she exclaimed aloud to Miss Ricardo; for they were breakfasting together when the paper came. "Lots of perfectly horrid details of the murder itself—just the sort of things poor Milly would hate to have people saying about her. I don't know if you'd care to read them, or if you'd rather not?"

Terry felt cold in the sunny warmth of the day, but she answered that she wished to read everything. She did not explain that she longed to find some bit of evidence which would free Sir Ian from suspicion forever, even if it did not clear up the mystery; but in truth that was her feeling.

Presently she read what Tom Barnard had to say. He was questioned more minutely than Sir Ian had been on the appearance of the body, and the room in which it was found. He described the Tower, and the iron staircase which ran round outside, with a balcony ​landing on each of the three stories above the ground floor. He mentioned the four rooms, one on each floor, and the locked door which led to each room from the staircase. He said that it was one of his duties to visit the Tower from time to time, to see if repairs were needed, and to make sure that no tramps had broken in. Seven years before, when he first came to the Home Farm, the Tower had been left unlocked, as there was nothing of value in it; but it was discovered that tramps were sleeping there, and since those days, keys had been made. Barnard was in the habit of inspecting the Tower once every month or six weeks, and had made his last call only ten or twelve days before the murder. Everything had been right then, the doors locked, and no sign that any one had been inside. On the day of the murder, when he was summoned to go to Sir Ian, he had seen the door of the room on the ground floor standing open. At first he had not thought of examining the lock, but later he had done so, and found that it was unbroken. Therefore a key which fitted it must have been used, by whom he could not guess. He knew only that his own key was at the farm, in its usual place. He would not swear that his key might not have been, at some time or other, taken from that place, and copied; but if so, he had no idea when, or by whom. He did not know any one who might have wished, for any reason whatever, to get into the Tower. There was very little ​furniture there. In the ground-floor room, a table, and four chairs of a simple and cheap description, brought there many years ago: a rough dresser, with glass doors behind which a tea-set, also simple and cheap, was kept; and in each of the other rooms, nothing more than a chair and a wooden bench; with the exception of the top room of all, which had, in addition to a chair, a desk such as school children use, and an old couch. Most of these things had been placed there by Mr. Forestier in his youth, so Barnard understood; but in his opinion there was no temptation to enter the Tower except for those who wished to see a fine view: unless it were for tramps; and as he had said, he had found no trace of occupation when he searched the rooms a few minutes after seeing the dead body of Lady Hereward.

Tom told how he had noticed her ladyship's gloves folded, or rather rolled neatly up together, lying on the table with her empty bead bag, and explained how in his opinion this proved that she had entered the room quietly, before dreaming of any cause for fear. But it was Doctor Unwin who had most to say about the appearance of Lady Hereward's body.

He deposed that, when he arrived at the Tower toward six o'clock, she had certainly been dead for some time, probably about two hours. The unfortunate lady had been fatally wounded in the throat, by a bullet undoubtedly fired from a revolver of small ​calibre. Another shot had been fired, but with such deficient aim as to glance off from a whalebone on the left side of a very heavily boned French corset, inflicting no wound, though the dress was cut, and the flesh underneath slightly bruised. When asked if the wound in the throat could have been self-inflicted, the doctor thought probably not, and a colleague who had been called later to view the body, agreed with him on this point. It would be barely possibly, perhaps, for a woman to commit suicide by shooting herself in the left side of the throat, an inch above the collar bone, or clavicle; but it was practically out of the question that she would do so. The natural thing was to aim at the breast, in the hope of reaching the heart; or at the temple; or occasionally a would-be suicide pushed a revolver into the mouth.

The most reasonable hypothesis was that Lady Hereward had been shot by a person who aimed at her as she stood, partly turned from him, unaware of his presence near her. The expression of horror frozen on her dead face might be accounted for by the fact that she had not died immediately after falling, but had remained conscious, and had seen the assassin bending over her. The eyes being open and raised would tend to bear out this supposition, and would seem to show, also, that she had not caught sight of her murderer before the shots were fired. Had he not hidden himself, and aimed at her from a place of ​concealment (very likely behind the open door), Lady Hereward's eyes would presumably have been closed, in horror of the danger she saw menacing her. But if she had been shot at from the side by a person using the door as a screen, and if she had fallen before the murderer showed himself, she would have died staring up, horror-stricken, into the assassin's face.

Following the medical men, the superintendent of police and the constable who had accompanied Doctor Unwin to the Tower, were called. Their evidence went to substantiate the theory of the surgeon, that the two shots must have been fired from behind the door, probably just after Lady Hereward—surprised at seeing the door open—had entered the room, and laid her bag and folded gloves carefully on the table. In order to put down the gloves in the place where they were found, she might have stood in just such a position as to receive the bullet in the left side of the throat, especially if she had turned slightly, after the first shot grazed her side. Also, the table was near enough to the door to account for the blackening of the skin, which showed that the weapon had been aimed at close quarters.

The police evidence having been taken, and Major Smedley called as witness, some information had reached the coroner from outside, which caused him immediately to adjourn the inquest for two days; and the general impression was that startling developments ​might be expected at any moment. The rumour ran that an arrest had been made, or was likely to be made; but it was no more than a rumour, as the coroner and the police were extremely reticent.

If they refused to enlighten the public, however, the correspondent of The Morning was ready to do his best to satisfy the curiosity of readers. Not only did he give a graphic account of all that had happened at the inquest, describing the principal witnesses, but he added, for what they might be worth, the theories he heard put forward in the neighbourhood. He announced that the eyes of Lady Hereward would be examined by a great expert in the hope of finding "photographed on her retina the image of her assassin." He believed that the bloodhounds employed in the search for clues to the mystery had come upon some important piece of evidence; though whether it was the missing revolver which they had brought to light, or some other trace of the murderer in his flight from justice, was not yet known. The theory of the police (according to the newspaper correspondent) was against robbery as the true motive of the crime, although several rings and other valuable articles of jewelry, as well as a sum of money, had undoubtedly been stolen, presumably as a blind. It seemed to be generally thought that Lady Hereward had had a special reason for wishing to be left alone in the neighbourhood of the Tower, though certain signs made it seem not so clear ​that she had originally planned to enter the Tower herself. It was supposed that she might have made an appointment to meet some one who, perhaps, had written begging for charity, or a hearing for some pitiful story, from the well-known Lady Bountiful. There were other theories, of course, the journalist went on to say, some of them extraordinarily sensational in character; but these were the suppositions most in favour; and the murderer was almost certainly no common thief. If Lady Hereward had not been so greatly loved for her generosity and kindness of heart, it might be taken almost for granted that this vindictive crime was one of revenge for some fancied injury; but it was difficult to believe that any man could have imagined himself aggrieved by so gentle a lady.

"What do you think of it all?" asked Maud Ricardo, when Terry put down the paper. "And why do you suppose they suddenly adjourned the inquest?"

"I don't know what to think," Terry answered, helplessly. And if she had a secret supposition of her own, Maud was one of the last persons to whom she would have confided it.

"If only Sir Ian hadn't been such an angel to Milly, of course people would be saying——"

"Oh, don't!" exclaimed Terry.

"I wouldn't, to any one else but you," Maud excused herself.

​"Not even to me." She had nearly said, "Not to me, of all people."

"Well, I can't help feeling that if your evidence had been different——"

"It couldn't have been different," Miss Ricardo cut her short.

"Why, no, I suppose not, or you wouldn't have given it," Maud said, glancing at the other with a kind of childlike slyness, from under her long eyelashes. "Strange, how we were speaking of Major Smedley before we knew that Milly was—dead. And then, that he should have come down."

"Wicked old busybody!" Terry could not help exclaiming.

"You believe he volunteered his evidence just to get himself mixed up with a cause célèbre."

"Of course. And in the hope of doing Ian—Sir Ian—harm, in some way or other. When he saw that I was in the room, he thought of a way." Terry spoke half to herself.

"Has he a grudge against Ian?" All Maud's curiosity was awake.

"Oh, merely the grudge he has against every man who isn't a coward. Cowards are civil to him, because they re afraid of what he may do or say, just as people fear a vicious cat. Men and women who aren't cowards can't be civil to creatures like that. It only encourages them in their blackmailing career."

​"I suppose, then," said Maud thoughtfully, "that you weren't nice to him in India."

"No, I was as horrid as I knew how to be. I dare say I kept him from being asked to a few houses where he would have liked to go. And naturally he was never asked to ours, as I was mistress of it socially in those days."

"That explains things!"

"Yes. That explains things."

"He s remembered, all these years."

"He wouldn't be Major Smedley if he hadn't."

"Fancy!" murmured Maud. "As soon as he got into the room, he sent a scrap of paper to the coroner, suggesting things about your having been engaged to Ian. Then all those men consulted a lot, and at last decided to question you. He did it to put hateful ideas in their heads, and he would have quite succeeded, if you hadn't been too clever for him."

"Don't call it clever," Terry protested, almost irritably. "It's not clever to tell the truth."

"The clever thing is to tell the truth in the right way," Maud argued subtly, with another of her long-lashed glances. "And you did—quite wonderfully. You turned the tide for Ian—and you were so quiet about it, too! It was your manner as much as your words that did the trick."

"Oh, Maud, you make me almost hate you, when you use such expressions!" Terry broke out, her nerves ​tried beyond self-control. "I wonder if you do it on purpose?"

"That's your quick-tempered American mother," said Maud. "If I'm slangy I've learnt it from Norman. I'm awfully imitative without meaning it, you know. And I seem to feel what people are thinking about, in the most curious way, when I'm excited. It's like telepathy—or the way a blotting-pad absorbs ink. I felt how your testimony turned the tide of suspicion which had begun to set in against Ian, after that curious exhibition of his—and the things Milly's maid said and the questions they began asking you. But, of course, we can't hope that the idea won't be discussed—that people won't talk. It would be so dramatic, you know, if——"

"If what?" Terry asked defiantly.

"You said 'don't, even to you,' when I first wanted to discuss it."

The blood rushed to Terry Ricardo's face. "How can you, Maud?" she cried. "When he has been your friend for years."

"I'm doing nothing, saying nothing, and believing nothing against him," Mrs. Ricardo defended herself, vexed with her companion. "I'm only glancing at what other people will say—for they will, you know. One might as well look facts in the face. At least, I should think that would be your way, as you pride yourself on your courage—which I don't, at all. ​There s no use disguising it; Ian Hereward will have to stand some disagreeable gossip, as well as Ian Barr."

"I hope to heaven it may never reach his ears," ejaculated Terry.

"Probably that's just what Nora Verney is wishing for Ian Barr. But neither of your wishes will be granted. It's rather queer, isn't it?—in this case there are three young women, outside it, as far as they themselves are concerned, yet each trying to protect a man from being suspected. You; Nora Verney; and Milly's maid, Craigie; though, of course, those two girls may not be entirely outside the case themselves, as you are."

"What do you mean?" asked Terry.

"I hardly know. But you can never quite tell, in an awful affair like this, how evidence may turn. Craigie's testimony simply gave it away that she didn't like her mistress, though I don't suppose the woman fully realized what she was saying either about herself or that lover of hers. As for Miss Verney——"

"She hasn't even given her evidence yet," broke in Terry, impelled to defend the beautiful girl who was so unhappy.

"No. But wait till they go on with the inquest. There's evidently a mystery about that adjournment. They've found out something, and have got to wait to find out something more. Which one is it going to concern, do you feel, Terry? Sir Ian Hereward; ​or Ian Barr; or Edward the footman? Or some stranger?"

"I feel nothing," Terry answered.

Which was true only if to have a lump of ice instead of a heart, were to feel nothing.

And Terry's breakfast had consisted of no more than a few sips of tea, and a crumb or two of toast. But Maud was far too deeply absorbed in the exciting puzzle she was setting for herself, to notice her guest's lack of appetite, since her own was good.

CHAPTER XV

The next day the secret was out. The inquest had been adjourned because there was new evidence. During the absence of Mr. and Mrs. Barnard from the Home Farm, at Friars' Moat, a detective had interviewed their daughter Margaret (left in the care of a neighbour), and had picked up information of such importance that the child had to be summoned as witness. Mrs. Barnard was recalled, and her little girl was minutely questioned as to the conversation which had taken place in her presence between her mother and Kate Craigie, Lady Hereward's maid.

Who would have dreamed that a tiny being, scarcely more than a baby (in a mother's eyes, at least), would notice so much, and remember so many details of talk between grown-up people? Other mothers, on hearing the story of Poppet, took the affair as a warning not to talk before their children, and recalled the adage, "little pitchers have large ears." Some of Kate Craigie's friends said that Poppet was a sly young minx. But Poppet was not a minx, and so far from being sly, she was almost embarrassingly honest when she spoke out her childish thoughts. She was, however, a reserved, as well as a thoughtful, little ​girl, who kept things to herself, and brooded upon them, unless questions drew forth her small opinions and ponderings.

In her memory she had stored several rather odd sayings of Kate's, and when a very nice man came to the house, appearing to be surprised that her mother was out, Poppet was far too polite not to answer his questions. She had often been told not to ask too many questions herself, because speech was silver, while silence was golden; and little girls should be seen and not heard. But nobody had ever suggested that a "grown-up" had not a right to put as many queries as he pleased, and to have them answered.

Besides, the man was a particularly kind, agreeable "grown-up." He happened to have a beautiful picture-book in one pocket, and a small box of wonderful sweets from London, in another. Both of these, he said, should be for Poppet, if she were a good girl, and talked to him prettily.

So Poppet talked as prettily as she knew how; and by the time the book and the box were earned, the kind man knew that Kate Craigie had said horrid things about Lady Hereward—poor Lady Hereward, whom (Poppet had been informed) she would never, never see any more. Kate had told Poppet's mother that she would like to shake Lady Hereward, and box her ears, because she was always saying how much better the vanished Liane was than any other ​maid ever could, would, or should be. And Kate had mentioned to Mrs. Barnard that Edward the footman "hated her ladyship" and often felt as if he could do her a mischief, because she tried to make Kate think he was too far beneath her to make a good husband.

During the adjourned inquest, Kate was recalled, on the strength of this evidence, and, for her lover, made a far worse witness than she had made the other day. She stammered, and contradicted herself, and drew attention ostentatiously to the fact that Miss Verney had been in the woods, near the Tower, not so very long before Lady Hereward was shot, "looking ready to die of fear, or shame, or something." And before Kate could be interrupted and forbidden to touch upon a subject irrelevant to her evidence, she had blurted out the gossip about "Mr. Ian Barr having been seen in the neighbourhood on the day of the murder."

Of course, the coroner and the policemen from Scotland Yard and the neighbourhood already knew perfectly well what the gossip was; but either they could not prove the truth of it, or else they had not been able to lay hands upon Mr. Barr, for he was not among the witnesses summoned to testify at Friars' Moat. Nevertheless, Kate's words, spoken desperately when she was at bay in defence of her lover and herself, probably did some harm to Ian Barr in the minds of jury and journalists, while Edward's statement, ​later, though rambling and practically valueless, did more.

Major Smedley had his chance to give evidence, at last, and got himself thoroughly disliked by every one present for trying (or apparently trying) to damage the character of Sir Ian Hereward. He said that he was an old friend of the Latham family, that he had known Lady Hereward before her marriage, and her husband both before and afterward, "more or less well," and that there was a "mystery about their coming together." Her people had never thought that he loved her. There was some other reason for the marriage. Sir Ian (then Captain) Hereward had had at least one desperate love affair in India, just before his sudden engagement to his distant cousin, Miss Latham; and people who had known him before he was ordered home to England said that he had never been the same man since. Altogether, if Miss Ricardo were right in believing that Major Smedley had a bone to pick with Sir Ian Hereward, he certainly picked it clean. To all appearances, he produced little or no impression on the minds of the jury, but such insinuations as he made under cloak of answering straightforward questions, could not easily be forgotten, especially when repeated far and wide in the newspapers.

Miss Verney, pale as if she were ready for her coffin (like her dead mistress upstairs), but exceedingly lovely to look upon, denied on oath that she had gone out to ​meet Ian Barr in the woods on the afternoon of the murder, or that she had met him. And the person who had started the story that the young man had been seen on that day could not be unearthed. Inquiries at the railway-station had drawn blanks; and Miss Verney professed not to know where Ian Barr was at the present moment, though she admitted that, for a short time, she had been engaged to him, and that they still wrote to each other occasionally. Beyond this she would admit nothing, and she gave her answers like a mechanical doll. She swore that the breaking of her engagement was not due to Lady Hereward's expressed wish, but to "private reasons." She vowed that, as far as she knew, Lady Hereward had not made things so unpleasant for Mr. Barr that he had resigned his stewardship, nor had the lady forbidden him to visit his fiancée under her roof. There was not, she said, a word of truth in the stupid story that Ian Barr had disliked Lady Hereward. He wished to leave Friars' Moat because he hoped to better his position, in order to marry; and he preferred to make a home in some distant place where his parentage was not a matter of gossip. But there were those in the room, among others Mr. Samways, the coroner, and several members of the jury, who thought that beautiful, pale Miss Verney did not look as if she were telling the truth, or at all events the whole truth. To their searching eyes, she had the air of a culprit, rather than that of a ​straightforward witness, with no secret knowledge to keep back. And though few people had the heart to blame the girl if she dared risk her soul by perjury for her lover s sake, nevertheless, after her evidence had been taken, many persons were more than ever inclined to believe that Ian Barr had good reasons for keeping out of the way.

Sir Ian, summoned to testify again, to a certain extent confirmed the statements of Miss Verney, though his well-remembered hesitations suggested a different opinion. If his wife had disapproved of Mr. Barr, she had not asked her husband to discharge the young man. Mr. Barr had resigned his stewardship quite of his own accord, rather against Sir Ian's advice than in accordance with it. However, he had gone, on very short notice, and Sir Ian had heard nothing of him since, except that once, several weeks ago, on speaking to Miss Verney of Mr. Barr, she had mentioned that he had some idea of sailing for America. Then Sir Ian went on to state that he had always had the highest respect for the young man's character; that Barr had behaved extremely well, on the whole, in exceptionally trying circumstances, and if he had a fiery temper, Sir Ian had never seen any disagreeable exhibition of it.

Again, on the second day, matters did not appear to be much further advanced, after all, than they had been before, and once more the inquest was adjourned, ​this time for a fortnight. The dark curtain of mystery had not been lifted an inch when the day came for the murdered Lady Hereward to go to the family vault in Riding St. Mary Church.

A few intimate friends, who desired it, were allowed to bid her a last farewell before her coffin was fastened down, and those who did said that never had they seen her so young and fair and sweet as she appeared pillowed on her favourite white roses. The expression of horror had faded from her face; the pearly flower-petals and green leaves hid the wound in her neck; and she was dressed, not in a stiffly made garment suggestive of death, but in a filmy tea-gown of white chiffon which she had brought home from Paris, the day before she died. People whispered it about that with hands clasped lightly over a loose bunch of roses (she had been vain of her beautiful hands) and the half-smile into which her lips had mercifully relaxed, she was like a statue whose name might be "Mystery."

If only the dead lips could have spoken, just once! But it seemed, so those who saw her said, as if she rejoiced in her silence, as if she would not speak if she could. And since no more was heard about the experiment which was to be tried upon her eyes, the world which talked of her constantly took it for granted either that it had failed, or that the experts had decided it would be useless, for some reason, to attempt it.

​So she went to the old, old vault in the old, old church where many generations of Herewards lay; but perhaps none of the name had ever taken with them into the grave such a secret as hers. A word from her would have freed two men, at least, out of three, of suspicion, and perhaps a woman. For Kate Craigie was under that ban as well as her lover now, thanks to her freedom of speech before Poppet. She could not have killed Lady Hereward, since she had been sitting with Mrs. Barnard when the shots in the woods were fired; but she might—so thought some people—have been expecting those shots, because she had encouraged Edward to pay a grudge of hers as well as his own.

Meanwhile, Scotland Yard was busy, in a quiet way. Nobody knew exactly what the police were about, or what clues had been found; but in spite of The Morning's correspondent, it soon began to be rumoured that the exhaustive search of the woods had, after all, resulted in disappointment. The bloodhounds had followed several trails, but they had been misleading ones, or at best had ended in mystery as impenetrable as the thick bracken in the forest. The revolver with which Lady Hereward had been shot was not forthcoming, though it was hunted for with skill and diligence; and no traces of the murderer were visible in the Tower, notwithstanding the fact that a clever detective had examined each of the four rooms, ​inch by inch. Still, the police were undiscouraged, and though the journalists were certainly not in the confidence of Scotland Yard, each day paragraphs appeared in the newspapers hinting that the murderer was being tracked down, and that "an arrest was imminent."

"Why does not Mr. Ian Barr come forward?" asked one morning paper, in a big black headline; and it was a question which repeated itself in every town and every county of England. But Mr. Barr did not come forward. And when the murder of Lady Hereward was a week old, some other great sensation claimed the most important column of the morning papers, which up till then had been filled by the latest news of the latest theories in the "Tower Mystery"; and the tragedy of Riding Wood had second place for a few days.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article  Metasyntactic variable, which is released under the  Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.