The Vanity Box Part 2

CHAPTER XVI

The day of Lady Hereward's death, the wife of the vicar at Riding St. Mary invited Miss Verney to make her a short visit. Those were the exact words used: a "short visit."

It was not comme il faut that a girl like Nora Verney should remain in the house alone with a comparatively young man, like Sir Ian Hereward, now that her "occupation was gone," and the lady, whose paid companion the girl had been, was dead.

Mrs. Haynes was a kind, if extremely conventional woman; but she was middle-aged, and looked years older than her slim, attractive husband the vicar, who was almost too soft-hearted where women were concerned; and naturally it was not expedient to keep such a beauty as Miss Verney too long under the same roof with such an admirer of beauty. Nora knew from the beginning that she could not remain many days at the vicarage, even if she wished to do so, which she did not. And after the second inquest, she could not help noticing a difference in her hostess's manner. Who would like to have as a guest a young person about whom all the world was talking, and at least half the world blaming?

​Nora knew as well as if she had been told, how people were asking Mrs. Haynes, in lowered tones: "Hasn't she said anything even to you?" Don't you think she really knows where Ian Barr is?" "Do you suppose he was with her in the woods that day?" and "How awful if a clergyman's daughter should have borne false witness!"

The girl did not want to stay in the vicarage of Riding St. Mary, and did not mean to stay. But—she did not know where to go, or what to do. She guessed, even though no one had said such a thing to her, that, to a certain extent, she was under surveillance. She was supposed to be aware of Ian Barr's whereabouts, and wherever she went she would be watched by the police. She had very little money, because she had been using most of her very generous salary as Lady Hereward s companion, to pay off some debts of her dead father's; yet she was determined not to accept any, if offers of charity should be made to her. As for finding another situation, in the present position of affairs, it would be almost impossible. Nobody, or at least "nobody nice," as Nora put it to herself, would want to employ a girl who had had such notoriety thrust upon her. Even if people did not believe that she had perjured herself, they would scarcely like to take "that Miss Verney of the Hereward murder case" as a companion for themselves, or a nursery governess for their children.

​"Nobody would have me, even for a servant," she thought. "And I should be a very stupid servant, anyhow, just to begin with."

By and by happy days might come, even to her, but there was no chance of happiness now, or for a long, long time, if ever.

One day, soon after Lady Hereward's funeral (to which she had not gone), Nora Verney was in her room at the vicarage, when Mrs. Haynes sent up a servant with a message. Would Miss Verney kindly come down to the drawing-room at once?

Miss Verney went, and found Sir Ian Hereward with her hostess.

The girl hung back in the doorway, her flower-like complexion betraying her distress. She looked like a hunted thing, wondering where to find a hiding-place.

"Come in, Miss Verney," said Mrs. Haynes, rising and drawing her guest into the room. "Sir Ian and I have been having a long talk about you. I have told him that my husband and I are delighted to have you with us, while you are looking about, but he——"

"Oh, I am going away in a day or two, thank you," Nora said hurriedly. "You've been most kind, you and Mr. Haynes, but I must go up to London——"

"I don't think that will do, Miss Verney," cut in Sir Ian. "You have no friends in London, have you?"

​"I can apply to an agency," replied Nora, very cold and white.

"My wife wouldn't have liked you to do that," Sir Ian said kindly. "And I shouldn't like it, either. I am going abroad," he added, "and I couldn't leave Friars' Moat without trying to arrange something for your future—something of which my wife would have approved."

"Oh!" exclaimed Nora, and then broke off, biting her lip, her large eyes full of tears. "I—I would rather not have—anybody arrange anything for me," she stammered on.

Mrs. Haynes was somewhat surprised at the girl's manner. She had always found Miss Verney most gentle, most amenable; and now, instead of being grateful to Sir Ian for the interest he took in her, despite his horrible trouble, she seemed almost to resent his having come to inquire and to plan for her welfare.

"I will just run away and leave you to discuss things together," suggested the vicar's wife, with the spasmodic cheerfulness rather irritatingly characteristic of her.

"No!" implored Nora. But Mrs. Haynes looked at the girl reproachfully, raising her eyebrows, and went out, with a slight warning shake of her incredibly sleek head.

Nora was left alone with Sir Ian. It was the first ​time they had seen each other since the murder of Lady Hereward, except at the inquest.

The girl had not sat down, but stood with her eyes fixed on the ground, as if she did not wish to meet Sir Ian's. They were fixed upon her sadly, for he was thinking how different she had been when first she had come to live at Friars' Moat.

"Won't you sit down and talk to me—or rather, let me talk to you?" he asked.

Nora shook her head, still not looking up. "I like standing," she said.

"How changed you are!" he could not help exclaiming.

"Yes," she admitted.

"What a cruel thing it seems that other people's sorrows should trouble your life! But thank Heaven, you're young. You will forget before long—when you begin to lead your own life."

The girl did not answer, but from under the down cast lashes two tears rolled.

"Poor child!" said Sir Ian. "I haven't come to question you, about anything—or any one—you don't want to speak of. But I have had you very much on my mind since—for the last few days."

"You need not," Nora protested.

"I should be a strange man if I hadn't," he said. "My wife was fond of you. Perhaps you didn't ​think so, lately; but she was—in her way, very fond of you. She didn't mean to be cruel, ever."

"I have no hard thoughts of her. On the contrary——" But Miss Verney could not go on.

"I know what you would like to say, I think," said Sir Ian, very gently. "She left no will, but if she had dreamed that—she might go suddenly, she would have wished to leave a legacy to you. You must let me——"

Suddenly the girl looked up, her blue eyes dark and bright. "Don't!" she broke out. "Don't, Sir Ian. It's no use. I couldn't possibly take one penny from you."

"It wouldn't be from me," he argued. "She——"

"All the same, I can't take it," Nora repeated.

"But let me persuade you——"

"I tell you I would rather die!"

He stared at her in pained amazement. She looked hard and desperate. He had never seen the beautiful young creature in such a mood. But she had gone through a great deal. No wonder her nerves were strained almost to the breaking point.

"You used to like and trust me a little, I thought," he said.

"Used! Oh, Sir Ian, please go, and leave me, before I say anything which I shall regret all my life—and you will regret too."

He looked at the girl strangely, in silence. Then, ​a light as of comprehension, flashed into his eyes, and his face reddened deeply.

"Good-bye, Miss Verney," he said. And as if on a sudden thought, he held out his hand. "If I come back here it will be only for the inquest. Otherwise I may be gone a long time. Will you shake hands?"

Impulsively, she put both hers behind her, twisting the small, cold fingers together. Then, turning her shoulder to him, she covered her face with her hands and began to sob.

Without another word, Sir Ian went out, and shut the door behind him. He had forgotten all about his hostess, and would have left the house without seeing her, if she had not caught sight of him, passing the half-open door of the study where she sat with her husband. Instantly she pounced upon him, with the beaming smile which was intended to "cheer him up."

"Well?" she said. "I hope you had a satisfactory little chat with that poor dear child?"

"She is very proud," Sir Ian answered evasively. "I'm afraid none of the ideas I had are of any use. I must think of something else. She's in rather a hard position, just now."

"I wish we had a larger house," sighed Mrs. Haynes.

"It's large enough for that poor, pretty little creature to find shelter as long as she likes——" the vicar began; but his wife hastily cut him short.

"My dear, you don't understand," she exclaimed. ​"Men can't. We must have several spare rooms, otherwise we could show no other hospitality. Besides as dear Sir Ian says, Miss Verney is proud. I think, if we ask her to stop a week or two longer, it's all we can do in justice to others."

"I will arrange something, and let you know at once," said Sir Ian. "But whatever we decide to do, my name must be kept out of the thing. Neither Miss Verney nor any one else must know."

"I quite understand," Mrs. Haynes assured him, wisdom and sympathy beaming from her rather bald looking eyes. "And are you really going to leave us shortly?"

"Almost at once," he said. "I—feel I must go, for a time at all events."

Again Mrs. Haynes quite understood and sympathized. She was sure that a change would do Sir Ian worlds of good, but she hoped that it might not be so very long before he felt able to come back to live in his own home and to the friends who had never valued him more than they did to-day.

"I don t know—I don't know," said Sir Ian. "Just now, I feel as if—I could never think of Friars' Moat as home again. But perhaps some time——" he broke off, and held out his hand. "Good-bye. Good-bye to you both. I will write—about Miss Verney—before night."

Out of doors he walked with his head held high, as ​of old, but there was an unseeing look in his eyes. The brown soldier-face was leaner, and less brown than it had been a week ago. Certainly he needed a change.

The vicarage was on the outskirts of the village, far back from the road. A brook ran through the meadow into which the gate opened, and before reaching the lawns and gardens which surrounded the pretty, low-built old house, pedestrians and carriages had to cross a rustic bridge. Sir Ian was on foot, and as he neared the bridge, he was obliged to step aside for an approaching victoria. When he saw that Maud Ricardo and Terry were in it, he stood with his hat off, pale and unsmiling.

If he had hoped that the two ladies would pass on with a bow, he must have been disappointed, for Maud stopped her coachman instantly.

"Oh, Sir Ian," she said, "I'm so glad to see you. Have you heard from Norman?"

"Yes," he returned. "He wrote me a good letter. I haven't answered it yet, but I will."

"He won't expect that. No one does expect answers—to such letters. Is it true that you're going away?"

"Yes," said Sir Ian. "I am going."

"Will you be gone many weeks?"

"I don't know," he said. And then his eyes met Terry's, in a long gaze, which seemed to say something which she yearned to understand, yet could not. It ​was as if he could not look away; but at last he did. He bent his eyes to the ground, and stood prodding the grass with the ash stick he carried.

"I meant to write before I went," he said. But he did not say which one of the two was to have been the recipient of the letter.

"I—I suppose you wouldn't come and dine—just with Terry and me?" Maud hesitated. "You know how glad we should be if——"

"You are very good," he answered, with gratitude which struggled against constraint, "but I—can't. I'm not fit—you'll understand. You'll both understand."

"Yes, we understand," said Terry, speaking for the first time, her eyes very gentle and sweet. He looked up at her again, once more with a desperate appeal which she could not interpret. But it so stabbed her heart that she would not let him go with his message to her unread and unanswered. "Is there nothing I—we—can do for you?" she asked, stammering a little, for perhaps it would seem to him a strange question.

Thank you many times, no," he began, but stopped on a sudden thought. "Yes, there is one thing you could both do, if you would," he went on. "I've just been to see Miss Verney at the vicarage. If you could interest yourselves in her—if you could try to find her a home—a situation of some sort, it would ​be more than kind—to me, as well as to her. You see, she is all alone in the world, and——"

"Isn't she—I thought at one time she was engaged to Mr. Barr," ventured Maud, unable to restrain her curiosity.

Sir Ian's face stiffened. "I am not in her confidence," he said. "In any case, that can't help her much now."

Terry was furious to find herself blushing. A strange, new thought sprang into her mind. Could it be possible that Sir Ian cared for Nora Verney more than he wished any one to know?

The instant after this thought had bored its sharp gimlet-point into her brain, it began to seem not so strange. After all, what more natural? Such things came to pass every day. Miss Verney was young, and beautiful. She had lived in the same house with Sir Ian for months. He had begun by being sorry for her and admiring her, of course. No normal man could help admiring such a pretty girl. The other day, he had said in answer to a question, "Yes, she is very important, anyhow in this house;" or something like that. Nothing that Terry had known of him in the past prevented her from thinking him fickle—nothing, at least, except a curious, irrepressible instinct which existed in spite of reason, and with nothing to feed upon.

A horrid, unworthy jealousy of the lovely young ​girl turned a leaden screw in Terry Ricardo's breast. She hated herself for it; but it was there, and ached dully, with the same grinding ache which had banished all the joy of life and youth from her girlhood. She would conquer it soon, she told herself, and said aloud: "I promise you that Maud and I will do something for Miss Verney. We are on our way now to return a call of Mrs. Haynes, and we will ask for Miss Verney."

"She may refuse to see you," said Sir Ian, anxiously.

"1 won't take no for an answer," Terry assured him, accepting the responsibility for herself alone, whatever Maud might do. "I promise you to be her friend, and not to be discouraged if she doesn't want my friendship at first. I will find a way to get at her, and to help her: trust me to do it."

"I do," he said. And then, impulsively, "You are a very noble woman. I have more than I can ever thank you for."

After that, as if he half regretted, or were ashamed of this outburst, he shook hands with them both hastily, pressing Terry's fingers so hard that her rings ground into them under her gloves; and then walked away with long strides, as if he were hurrying to catch a train.

"Poor Sir Ian, he looks haunted!" exclaimed Maud, when she had told her coachman to drive on.

Terry shivered a little, but did not speak.

"I shouldn't be surprised if he never came back ​to live at Friars' Moat," Mrs. Ricardo continued, with interest.

Still Terry did not answer.

"I wonder where he will go?" the elder woman pondered aloud.

Terry was looking at the vicarage, which made a pretty picture now, in the midst of its old-fashioned garden. As she looked, Miss Verney came out through a long window, and turned toward the left, not seeing, or not appearing to see, the approaching visitors.

"There she goes now!" exclaimed Maud. "I don't see what we can do for her, do you?—unless she'd accept a present of money."

"I don't think she would do that," Terry said. "But I have a plan. It's growing in my mind now. Perhaps I'll ask her to go abroad with me for a little while. Maybe she would like that."

"Go abroad!" Mrs. Ricardo repeated, her eyes very wide. "Why, you have only just come to England. You are visiting me."

"I know," said Terry. "And if I go, I'll come back to you—if you'll have me. But—this horrible thing that has happened seems to have done something odd to my nerves. You said Sir Ian looked 'haunted.' Well, I feel haunted. I can't sleep. And I'm such a fool—I look under my bed every night, and into the wardrobe. That isn't like me. I've been thinking ​for two or three days that perhaps I might run over to France for a fortnight, until the inquest comes on again. Even that would be a change. Don't you think it would be a good way of keeping my promise to Sir Ian, if I invited Miss Verney to go as my companion? Afterward I would find her something else."

"I should like to go with you myself," sighed Maud, "only I can't, because a dull but rich aunt of Norman's is coming for a visit, and she's the kind that alters her will if you alter your plans."

"I'll broach the subject to Miss Verney to-day," Terry said, as the carriage stopped at the vicarage door.

"Perhaps she won't go," suggested Maud.

"I will get her to go," said Terry.

 CHAPTER XVII

Miss Ricardo kept her word.

When Mrs. Haynes heard the plan, she would have bustled out into the garden to search for Nora, but Terry asked if she might go and try to find her. Permission granted, and a hint given as to Miss Verney's favourite lurking place, the quest was soon ended. The girl sat in a little Virginia-creeper covered summer-house overhanging the brook, which formed a boundary for the garden. She had a book in her hand, but she was not reading it. Her lashes lay on her colourless cheeks, but she was not asleep, for as Terry's light step set the fine gravel tinkling she opened her eyes and gave a quick glance about, as if for a way of escape. But it was too late. She was caught, and made the best of it.

The other day—the dreadful day—at Friars' Moat, she had felt Miss Ricardo's charm, in the midst of the misery with which she had been half dazed. The stranger's face had seemed to her then like a star, shining clearly through torn black clouds; still, the girl would have escaped now, if she could. In a moment, however, the same sweet yet powerful influence routed her wild desire to go. Terry sat down on the ​wooden bench beside her, and came straight to the point.

"This country is dear and beautiful, and my cousin Norman Ricardo's wife is very kind to me," she said; "but I have gone through so much in the short time I've been here, that I want to change the current of my thoughts. I've made up my mind to go to France for a little while. Will you go with me?"

"To France!" exclaimed the girl, her face lighting up with a sudden glow of joy and surprise. "I? Do you mean it?"

"Yes," said Terry. "Would you care to?"

"Better than anything I thought could ever happen to me. Oh, it would be salvation!" replied Nora. "But why should you take me? You hardly know me at all, and——"

"No, but I should like to." Terry smiled at her, a rather sad but very charming smile. "I'm not in a mood when travelling by myself has attractions. Maud couldn't go with me, even if I wanted her. And to tell the truth, I don't. I'm fond of her, but I want you. I don't quite know how long I shall stop; whether I shall return after coming back for the inquest, nor exactly where I shall go; but there is one place I want to visit—a tiny place. I was there when I was a little girl, and loved it. I've always wanted to see it again, ever since, just as when one is interrupted in the ​middle of a delicious dream, one always wants to get back into it again. You know the feeling."

"Oh, yes, so well!" sighed Nora.

Then come and help me get back into my dream. The tiny place I'm talking about is St. Pierre de Chartreuse. It's in Dauphine. A kind of fairyland, it seems to me, as I remember it. And if you, too, have a dream-place in France, I'll take you to it."

Nora shook her head. "I've never been out of England. We were always too poor. But to go to France—now, even for a few days! It makes me feel almost alive again, just to think of it."

"Poor child!" said Terry kindly. The dull ache had not left her breast, but her heart was very warm for the girl. She remembered vividly how things could hurt at eighteen, and how life could seem at an end. Not only was she willing to help this young creature for Sir Ian's sake, but for Nora's own sake as well.

Then there is no place where you would like particularly to go?" she inquired.

The girl's face seemed suddenly to sharpen. "Why do you ask me that?" she wanted to know, almost suspiciously.

An idea jumped into Terry's mind, but she did not look at Miss Verney, though she knew the big turquoise eyes were fastened upon her. She played with a bangle on her wrist, and answered calmly that most people who had not travelled treasured some glittering ​spot on the map of their imagination. Paris, for instance——"

"I should hate to stay in Paris," said Nora, but added quickly, "unless, of course, you wanted to be there."

"I don't," said Terry. "I should hate to stay there as much as you would. Paris is a place to stop in only when you are gay and happy, and want to be amused. You and I both need just now to be near to nature, and away from the things we have been seeing and thinking about."

"Oh, yes, if anything could make me better, it would be that," breathed the girl. "But—" she looked at Terry strangely, as if she tried to read her soul. "I daren't go with you if—unless I'm sure——"

"Sure of what?"

"I hardly know how to say it."

"I think you may say almost anything to me."

"Almost anything! But this—why, it is only that, if I go away with you, I mustn't be expected to talk about Friars' Moat or—or——"

"You needn't," broke in Terry.

"And—that isn't all. If you are asking me to go with you, just because you were a friend of—hers, and because you want to please Sir Ian, then I mustn't go on false pretences."

"False pretences?" echoed Terry. "I don't understand."

​"How could you? I mean that I—can't be taken for their sakes."

"I will take you for your own and mine," Terry answered.

"Then I will go, so thankfully, for as long or as short a time as you like. But no—one more thing. I'm not fit to be with you, because you are a kind of angel, and I—I am a very wicked girl. I think I must be the wickedest that ever lived in this world, and the unhappiest. Now you won't want to take me for my own sake, will you?"

"Yes, I will, just the same," said Terry, smiling the smile that made people love her. "How old are you, my poor little child?"

"Nineteen."

"Not twenty, yet already the wickedest and the unhappiest girl in the world! Well, I'm not afraid of you. I'll risk the wickedness, and try to make you a little happier."

"You don't believe me, Miss Ricardo."

"I believe you think yourself wicked."

"Would you think yourself wicked if you had sworn to a lie?"

Terry's pulses quickened a little. She could not help guessing at the girl's meaning, though she would rather not have guessed. She paused before answering, knowing that Nora's eyes were fixed upon her. It was a painful pause, though brief, for all the woman's ​early training and convictions warred against her sympathy and pity for a girl sacrificing truth to protect her lover. At last she said, laying her hand on Nora's hand: "I think it would depend a great deal upon circumstances. I hate lies. As a rule they're mean and cowardly, and debase one's moral nature even if they do no harm to anybody but oneself. Yet—there might be exceptions, perhaps. I'm not sure that I wouldn t lie, to save a friend. Indeed, I'm afraid I would do it. I'm afraid most women would."

"Oh, thank you for that!" Nora's voice broke, but she caught back a sob. To hear you say it, is like—like being lifted off the rack. Of course, I've put myself in your power now. But I trust you. I know I can.

"Yes, you can," said Terry. "I believe we shall do each other good, by being together. And Sir Ian——"

"You're not being so good to me, to please him? You said it wasn't just that, didn't you? Because if it were, I simply couldn't accept your kindness, I can't explain why."

The dull ache in Terry's breast was heavier and harder to bear for a moment, at this hint of Miss Verney's, for something seemed to whisper in Terry's ear: "You see: you were right. He does care for her, and she knows it." But the woman's higher nature fought against the jealous pain, and tried to ​ignore it. "What is it to me?" she asked herself angrily.

"Sir Ian has nothing to do with it, now," she said, and then began to speak of the journey; when they would start; where they would stop on the way to St. Pierre de Chartreuse; what sort of clothes they would need to take.

"And you must have a salary, you know," she told the girl, "because you will be my companion, and——"

"No—no!" cried Nora. "I don't want money from you!"

"But you must take it unless you wish me to be very uncomfortable," Terry insisted. "I wouldn't dream of engaging a companion unless I gave her at least three pounds a week. I love to be exacting, and I couldn't be, conscientiously, unless I paid."

They both laughed a little: and when it was settled that they should start for France together the very next day, Terry rose, saying she must go back to the house. Mrs. Ricardo would be ready to say good-bye to Mrs. Haynes by this time. She took the girl's hand and pressed it cordially: then, when she would have released it, Nora clung to her. Evidently there was something she desired, yet dreaded, to say.

"Are you afraid of me again, after all?" Miss Ricardo asked.

No. But there's a question I—Do you suppose the—the police will let me go out of England?"

​"Why, of course they will," Terry assured her. "They would have no right to keep you, even if they wanted to."

"You're sure? You know—you must know—they didn't believe what I said at the inquest."

"Granting even that that were so, there's no suspicion against you which gives the police a right to detain you."

"I hoped not. But I haven't dared to ask anybody till now, or mention the subject at all, except to you. It's such a comfort to speak! Still—supposing they should have me watched—even in France. Would they do that?"

"I don't think so," said Terry. "You mean—on account of——"

"On account of Ian," Nora answered frankly. "My Ian. They want to find him, you know, as—as a witness, because they believe I lied, and perhaps bribed people who saw him, to say they might have been mistaken. That's why they adjourned the inquest again, I'm sure. They think I met him in the woods—that day, and that I'm trying to shield him."

"Possibly some people do think something of the sort," Terry admitted. She did not ask, or even wish to ask, whether the theory were justified or no.

Yes. And so it came into my head that they might hope to find him through me, if I were watched. They might fancy that—we'd try to meet."

​"It seems very probable to me, that if they are anxious to find Mr. Barr, they are looking for him now, and wouldn't wait to try and get at him through you. They would know that you would be very careful—in case, I mean, that there were any reason why he didn't wish to be found."

"There might be reasons which weren't bad ones at all," said Nora, quickly. "Ian is not a coward. I won't let you believe that. He is the bravest and strongest man I ever knew. Look" (with nervous fingers she unfastened two or three buttons of her muslin blouse, and pulled out an open-faced locket, on a thin gold chain)—"that's his portrait. Don't you think he seems worthy of all the love and all the sacrifices a girl could make?"

She held out the locket, and Terry took it in her hand. She had thought a good deal about Ian Barr and his story, trying to call up a picture of the young man and now she looked at his photograph with great interest. Somehow she felt pleased to find that he was not unlike what she had imagined him to be.

He was evidently very dark, with black hair which would have been inclined to curl, had he not kept it cut very short. Black, clearly marked brows were drawn straight and low over the large dark eyes, which, even in the photograph, seemed passionate and full of fire like those of a Spaniard. The face was clean shaven; the nose fine and aquiline, not unlike Sir Ian ​Hereward's, the mouth and chin singularly firm. Ian Barr's Irish mother had had little to give a son except her beauty, and of that she had given much. There was no legacy from the Herewards in the dark, handsome face, except the shape of the nose and the firm set of the jaw.

Teresina Ricardo felt a new stirring of sympathy in her heart for the young man. Sometimes, in spite of herself, she had wished that Ian Barr's guilt could be proved, because in that case his cousin Ian Hereward would be exonerated, freed from the dreadful slavery of suspicion. It was a terrible wish, cruel, and selfish, too, in a way. Terry knew that, and hated it; yet again and again it had come, notwithstanding her interest in Nora Verney and her puzzled pity for the girl. But looking at Ian Barr's picture, in the gold locket warm from the warmth of Nora's bosom, Terry felt the cruel wish exorcised as if it had been a wicked bewitchment. Barr might be guilty; but a man with a face like that would kill only in a moment of blind passion. It was impossible to believe that he could commit a premeditated crime.

"Yes, you are right," she told Nora. "He is brave and strong."

"I love him," exclaimed the girl. "And there is nothing I wouldn't do to help him."

CHAPTER XVIII

Sir Ian Hereward had replaced Barr, after the young man resigned his situation and went away, by another steward, a very different sort of person—so different, in fact, that Barr's cook-housekeeper and only servant had not cared to accept an offer to stay on.

This fact made matters rather troublesome for the police, when there arose a reason for finding out things about Mr. Barr and his way of life while steward for his cousin. Miss Maunsell was a peculiar woman, a spinster of more than a certain age, and a dour nature. She was not a native of Surrey, but had come from London to act as Mr. Barr's servant, and had made no friends. How Mr. Barr had got her, whether he had known her before, or had selected her from an agency, nobody could tell. Ian Barr "kept himself to himself," as the saying was. He was sensitive about his position, was too proud to seek friends, or to respond warmly to overtures of friendship; and to his few acquaintances he never talked about his own affairs.

All that could be learned of Miss Maunsell in the neighbourhood, therefore, was that she would not consent to work for the new steward (a nervous, ​"finickin" little man), but that she had gone to London the day after Mr. Barr gave up his stewardship. The man in the booking-office at Redeshall, one of the two stations which served Riding St. Mary, remembered selling, on the date of her departure, a third single ticket for Charing Cross to a woman answering the description given of Miss Maunsell; but nobody could be found who remembered seeing her at Charing Cross. This was not surprising, because the elderly spinster was not in any way interesting to look at, nor did she differ very noticeably in face and figure from hundreds of other female holders of third-class tickets who had poured into the great London rail way-station that day.

When the police began to be surprised by the elusiveness of the young man whom they had expected to find with ease, their attention naturally turned toward Miss Maunsell, who, besides the master, had been the only inmate of the steward's house. It was thought that she must know a great deal about his habits, and even that she might be able to give some special information that was much wanted. But application was made to all the employment agencies in London and the suburbs in vain; and eventually, after various other means of unearthing the woman had failed, recourse was had to a discreet advertisement in several of the daily papers: "If Miss Sarah Maunsell, lately employed by Mr. Barr, of Surrey, ​will apply in person to Messrs. Kipling & Beecher, Solicitors, of Bedford Row, London, W. C., she will learn something to her advantage."

This appeal was repeated for several days before Messrs. Kipling & Beecher heard from Miss Maunsell. At last they received a letter from Harrogate, signed "S. Maunsell," stating that, as the writer was in the position of cook-housekeeper to an invalid, she could not leave her place to visit London. She had just happened to see the advertisement, not being in the habit of looking at the papers every day, and she would be glad to hear from Messrs. Kipling & Beecher.

Scotland Yard was, of course, responsible for the advertisement, but it had not been considered wise to risk alarming the woman, who might have a horror of the police. When the letter arrived, however, a detective from the Criminal Investigation Department was detailed to travel to Harrogate and interview Miss Maunsell. He was an ambitious fellow whose name—Richard Gaylor—was already favourably marked at headquarters, and he was the "nice grown-up" who had beguiled Poppet Barnard. He was about thirty, but did not look more than twenty-one, at most, in face or figure. "Cupid" was his nick name, and it was not inappropriate to the blue-eyed, curly-haired young man, who had deep dimples in pink cheeks, like a girl's.

The address given in Miss Maunsell's cramped and ​prim hand-writing was "Care Edwin James, Esq., Hedge House, Aylwin Road, Harrogate," and the detective found the place without difficulty. It was a rather desolate-looking villa, set at some distance from other houses, and it had an air of decayed gentility and "stand-offishness." The high gate was locked, and, having rung, Gaylor was obliged to wait outside in a drizzling rain for some moments. He was just about to pull the old-fashioned bell again when he saw the front door open, and a thin old woman came with mincing steps down the path. The upper half of the gate had a square of lattice, and through this he was able to form some judgment of Miss Maunsell's character (if it were Miss Maunsell who approached) before she opened the gate. She had a high, prominent forehead, tight-drawn, sallow skin, a rat-trap of a mouth, the eyes of an incipient fanatic, and sparse gray hair pulled tightly back in an uncompromising way under a cap like a half-baked bun. Used to face-reading, Gaylor made up his mind in a flash as to the right way of managing the grim old creature.

"Is this Miss Maunsell?" he asked, politely, but not gushingly. To gush at a person of her type would be to court disaster.

"It is," she replied shortly.

"I'm here on the business of Messrs. Kipling & Beecher's advertisement," announced the detective.

​If Miss Maunsell felt surprise, she did not show it. "You can come in," she said. Then, being evidently economical of speech, she led the way into the house. It was old-fashioned, but uninteresting. "Gloomy as a sarcophagus," was Gaylor's mental comment as he followed the stiff figure down a narrow corridor to the back of the house. She opened the door of a moderate-sized room like a servants hall. "My sitting-room," she remarked. "We will not be disturbed, for I am the only servant. Mr. James is a paralytic. Take a seat."

Gaylor obeyed, subsiding upon a hard, high chair by a clumsy dining table. Miss Maunsell sat opposite him, on a chair of the same depressing description.

"What have you got to tell me to my advantage?" she inquired, wasting no time in getting to the point. She had the whining twang suggestive of the cockney, which is characteristic of the lower middle classes in some parts of Yorkshire; and Gaylor made up his mind that the woman had returned to her native county. She had all the hardness of the North at its worst.

"I have to tell you that if you will answer a few questions I've been sent to ask, possibly it may save you from being called as a witness in the second adjourned inquest of the Hereward case, which will come on in a fortnight's time."

"I can't leave my place here to be a witness in any case," rasped Miss Maunsell, "and I wouldn't be of ​any use if I could, for I never heard of the Hereward case."

"What! Never heard of the Hereward murder case over a week ago!" exclaimed Gaylor, surprised that a human being could have existed in such cloistered ignorance.

"Are you talking of the Herewards of Friars' Moat?" asked the housekeeper.

"Yes."

"Who was murdered?"

"Lady Hereward. Is it possible you haven't seen in the papers——"

"Why should I see the papers? 'Tain't likely I'd spend my money on 'em, and Mr. James, my master, cares for nothing but old books, the older the better. I'm no woman to gossip with butcher, baker nor candle stick-maker; and I wouldn't have come across your advertisement if it hadn't stared me in the face, wrapped around a fish. When was her ladyship murdered?"

Gaylor told her.

"Who did it?" was the next question.

That's what we don't know yet, otherwise I wouldn't be here," said the detective.

"I suppose you don't think I did it, do you?" Miss Maunsell demanded with scorn. "Lady Hereward was a Christian woman; that is, if she was as good at heart as what she seemed. But the better she was, the better off she is in the next world.

​"If you respected her so much, you'll be all the readier to bring her murderers to justice."

"Not by going as no witness to no trial. My duty is here. Besides, her ladyship was too fond of wearing rich jewelry. She had the name of being charitable, but she'd have done more wisely to sell her precious stones and give the money to missions. Maybe her murder by some thief was a judgment from heaven on her vanity. We all of us have faults, but vanity is a crying sin. And Lady Hereward put powder on her face, and pink paint on her lips. Tisn't many would have seen that, perhaps, but my eyes are sharp for such things, though I'm not as young as I was, and I can't abide 'em, on Christian or no Christian. That's all I know about her ladyship, though I was servant to the steward of her husband's estate, so it's no good summoning me. You've got all I can tell out of me now."

"It isn't so much Lady Hereward I'm here to ask you about," said Gaylor, "as Mr. Ian Barr."

"Oh, indeed, do they think he killed her? Well, I'm not surprised. I always thought his temper would be his undoing one of these fine days."

"There's certainly ground for suspicion," replied the detective. "Mr. Barr has disappeared, and so far can't be found."

"Who's trying to find him?" inquired Mr. Barr's late housekeeper. "Those folks that advertised for me, Kipper & Beeching, or whatever their name is?"

​"Scotland Yard is trying to find him, and will before long," said Gaylor, thinking to awe the woman; but her face did not change, unless to grow more grim.

"By that do you mean the perlice?"

He bowed, looking about eighteen.

Her thin lips curled. "And are you a policeman?"

"I am a member of the Criminal Investigation Department."

"Why didn't they let you finish going to school?"

"I am nearly thirty," the detective informed her, laughing.

"Hm! I suppose the Kipper & Beeching men were dummies of the police, then?" She was sharp enough, in her way.

"We employ the firm occasionally. But it is in the name of Scotland Yard that I come to question you."

"How am I to know that? You might be anybody, in that gray suit and them brown boots of yours. And anyhow, I consider you got hold of my address on false pretences. You made me think I might be coming in for a legacy. I don't see why I should answer your questions."

Gaylor took from his pocket an important-looking wallet, and produced his credentials.

Miss Maunsell was convinced, though not impressed.

"Well, all I can say is," she remarked, "that Scotland Yard must be hard put to it to find grown-up men. And I don't approve of their methods."

​"If you're summoned as a witness a fortnight from now, you will have to go, you know," Gaylor assured her, slyly. The police have power to subpœna you, and force you to obey if you refuse."

"You can drive a horse to water, but you can't make him drink," said Miss Maunsell, with a kind of dreary nonchalance.

"You wouldn't like to go to prison—a respectable Christian woman like you?"

"A good many respectable Christians have been in prison." And the housekeeper cited several famous scriptural examples.

That s true. But if you went there it would lose you your present place, nor would it help you to get another. And I'm here to save you trouble. That's where your 'advantage' comes in. If you answer freely and truthfully all my questions, the chances are I may get you off from being called. Besides, your conscience can't counsel you to obstruct justice. You believe in the Old Testament, I'm sure: 'An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth.'"

"I'll hear your questions, and if I think right, I'll answer them," replied the woman, after a moment's reflection. "If I don't think right, I'll go to prison for twenty years rather than speak. So there you have my mind."

Gaylor believed that not only did she mean what she said, but would stick to it "through thick and thin," ​and perhaps find a fearful joy in martyrdom. He therefore chose his words with care, suiting them tactfully, as he hoped, to the nature with which he had to deal. He began simply, by asking if Miss Maunsell had had any acquaintance with Mr. Barr before entering his service. Was she by way of being a friend of his family?

"Not I, indeed," she answered scornfully, to the detective's satisfaction. "I didn't know anything about him, until, against my will, I overheard part of a conversation between Mr. Barr and Lady Hereward herself, the day he gave up his stewardship. When I want to get a place I advertise. No agencies for me! Mr. Barr answered my advertisement. I thought the work would suit me; and so it did, as far as that goes, though I can't say I entirely approved of him. In fact, I didn't, though he was always what he should be to me, or else I wouldn't have stopped an hour. My initials only were signed to the advertisement, and the same way when I advertised again after leaving him, and got the place here with Mr. James. I stay near Barnes when I'm out of a situation, with an old blind aunt of mine, who's glad enough to have my help when she can get it, instead of the charity girl off the parish she has when I'm in a job. That's why all your policemen couldn't have found me, if I hadn't been silly enough to be caught by a newspaper trap wrapped round a fish."

​Judging from Miss Maunsell's expression when she delivered this statement, she would never taste fish again.

"Were you always on good enough terms with Mr. Barr, in spite of not quite approving his conduct, or did you ever give him a piece of your mind?" inquired the detective, in a friendly way.

"We never had any words," said Miss Maunsell. "And it wasn't so much his conduct I disapproved, as his character. I consider myself something of a judge; and from the first moment I ever set eyes on Mr. Barr, said I to myself, Here's a young man might do anything, if in a passion. He had eyes like—like wells of fire, if there could be such things; and when he frowned, his eyebrows, that were drawn straight across his forehead as though by a pointed piece of charcoal, used to come together across the bridge of his nose. I've seen him when he was angry, with his nostrils quivering as if he was a vicious horse."

"Did you often see him like that?" asked the cherubic Mr. Gaylor, more and more interested, more and more glad that he had been sent to Harrogate.

"Well, no," the housekeeper reflected aloud. "I can't say I did. Two or three times, perhaps. Twice in particular. I shall never forget either of those occasions."

"I should be very glad if you would tell me about them," the detective suggested, mildly.

​"The first time was maybe a month before I left him, when a letter had been delivered to Mr. Barr by hand. I don't know who wrote or sent it. I only know it was brought by a boy I never saw before or after. I opened the door myself. Mr. Barr was just finishing his dinner—about eight o'clock in the evening, it was—and I was busy about the table when I had to answer the knock. The boy said there was no answer wanted, and went away quick, before I had a good look at him; and when I'd handed the envelope to Mr. Barr, I kept on about my business in the dining room, which was the only sitting room he had. I heard him give a kind of exclamation, as if against his will, and I looked up. He'd torn the envelope open in a hurry, as if he'd been expecting the letter, and impatient to find out what was in it. But, my heavens, what a face I saw! I should have been sorry if the writer of the letter had walked into the room! Mr. Barr looked as if he was in a mood to kill at sight. He was livid, and his eyes like live coals. Not a bite more dinner would he eat, though I'd just put on the table a tart he was very fond of. He jumped up, and walked about the room, with the letter in his hand. Once or twice I spoke, and he didn't seem to hear me. But at last he thundered out 'No!' so fiercely that I started; though I will say he appeared to be sorry, and said he didn't mean to be cross. He was a good deal worried about something serious, and didn't want ​to be bothered with trifles. I made up my mind to let him alone and not speak, if the sky fell; but a few minutes later, I remember very well, that young woman from Friars' Moat came knocking at the door, asking for Mr. Barr, in her affected-sounding, foreign voice."

"What young woman?" questioned Gaylor, with suppressed eagerness.

That French maid of Lady Hereward's. I don't recall her name. Something outlandish."

"Did she come often to see Mr. Barr?"

"Not to my knowledge. I saw her only two or three times. But there were other times when I thought I heard her voice in the house. I wouldn't swear to that, though. I never was a woman with an evil tongue against my sex, even foreigners. Mr. Barr says to me, when I first arrived, that he hated gossip, and I told him, so did I. I never exchanged a dozen words with the tradesfolk, and I made no friends. I kept myself to myself, as usual, and that I know was pleasing to Mr. Barr, though it was for my own sake I did it, not for his."

"What about the evening when Lady Hereward's maid came, and found Mr. Barr so angry?"

"All I know is, that I told him she wanted him for something important, and he said: 'Let her in.' So I did. And afterward I heard her crying and taking on as no English woman would. By and by he went to the door with her himself, and must have walked ​a bit of the way home with her, for it was raining, and he came in very wet, looking more furious than ever. Whether with her or not, who can say? I never saw the girl again. And it wasn't many days after that, the butcher's boy, trying to get up a conversation, mentioned that the young woman had vanished, and there was a great to-do up at the big house. Now, you tell me Mr. Barr's disappeared, too."

"He seems to be making himself a bit scarce," facetiously replied the detective. "The story at Riding St. Mary was that he'd been seen on the day of Lady Hereward's murder, not far from the woods where she was killed; but the odd thing is, we can't find out where the story started; and, of course, it may or may not be true. Wherever he is, though, Mr. Barr must know he's wanted, and why. Don't you think that looks a little queer for him? If he has nothing to hide, and no reason to keep out of the way, why doesn't he turn up, or send word where he is? Don't you, as a straightforward woman, feel that?"

"Perhaps," said Miss Maunsell, non-committally. "But Mr. Barr was a queer young man."

"Do you think he was in love with that French maid of Lady Hereward's?"

Miss Maunsell tossed her prim gray head, and replied stiffly that she knew nothing about such things. But the girl, in her opinion, was a designing minx. She had the look of it—and being that pleased with ​herself! No doubt Frenchwomen were mostly hussies, and above their places, with their fussed-up hair and their squeezed-in waists.

"Lady Hereward thought there had been a flirtation, anyhow," remarked Gaylor.

"I abominate that word," snapped the spinster. "I don't call it decent. But it's no news to me that her ladyship thought the worst of Mr. Barr, for I heard her give him her opinion of him in plain words. I told you I was obliged to listen to a conversation between those two the day Mr. Barr resigned; and that conversation was certainly the cause of his doing so."

"I was going to ask if you knew what terms they were on. Now, if you tell me a few more things of this sort, I may really be able to save you from being summoned as a witness."

"I don't mind repeating as much as I can remember of that conversation," said the old woman, "though I can't recall the exact words. But to explain how I overheard, I must mention that Mr. Barr's house was no more than a cottage, and an inconvenient old cottage, at that. My room was over his sitting and dining-room, and my only way of getting down stairs was to pass through it. A little narrow stairs led down directly into that room, and close by was the kitchen door. Any one talking in a fairly loud voice down stairs, I was bound to hear, up above, if I happened to be there; though mumbling would not reach my ​ears. Well, after I washed the luncheon things, I used generally to go to my room for a bit of a rest, if there was time, and to get dressed; for you see, Mr. Barr seldom or never had people coming to see him at that time. One day, I'd got off my frock and slipped into a dressing-gown, for a ten minutes' snooze before changing into my afternoon dress, when I heard Mr. Barr come in from out of doors, bringing somebody with him. There was a woman's voice, but as I'd never heard her speak before, I shouldn't have known it was Lady Hereward, if he hadn't called her by name.

"'I have come here to see you because I want to talk to you alone,' says she. Those were the first words I caught, and he answered: 'Come indoors, then, Lady Hereward.' I thought of making it known to them that I was in my room; but it would have been awkward for Mr. Barr, and as he ought to have remembered how it was my habit to be there at that time of day—it was about three o'clock—I said to myself it wasn't likely there'd be any talk between them which they'd mind my hearing. It would only be business that Lady Hereward wanted to discuss, thinks I, with her husband's steward.

"In a few minutes I knew better; but it was too late then. If it would have been awkward calling out at first, it would have been ten times as bad then, for every one concerned.

​"'Mr. Barr, I want you to tell me where my maid is,' says her ladyship, sharp and short, mentioning the French girl's name, which I can't pronounce."

"Liane," suggested the detective, who was well primed in every detail of the Hereward case.

"'I can tell you nothing whatever about her,' says Mr. Barr in an angry, surprised voice.

"'You know very well where she is!' says Lady Hereward. And to that Mr. Barr wouldn't make any answer. His keeping silence threw her ladyship into a rage, and it was then she told Mr. Barr exactly what she thought of him. She'd been against Sir Ian engaging him as steward, or having him about the place in any capacity. It was 'most unsuitable,' to her idea, and she'd warned her husband, said she, that it would turn out badly. But he would have his way, out of 'mistaken kindness of heart,' and now see the consequences! 'Bad blood will out, like murder!' said her ladyship. Those words I do remember. And little did she dream then she'd be murdered herself! Mr. Barr took that as an insult to his mother, and he just about ordered her ladyship out of the house. 'I'm your husband's servant,' said he, 'but this is my house while I'm in his employ, and no one shall defame my dead mother under my roof while it's still mine.'"

"Did Lady Hereward go when he said that?" inquired the detective, greatly interested in this story, which he could have heard from no other living ​person than Ian Barr's housekeeper, save Ian Barr himself.

"Not she. She stopped where she was, and insulted him more. 'Put me out by force, if you choose,' says she. 'You'd be equal to that, I dare say; but unless you do, I won't go till I've finished telling you what I think. You're a villain,' says her ladyship. 'You made that poor French girl love you. Then you turned to another and very likely drove her to death.'

"'I deny it absolutely, said Mr. Barr. 'It is shameful that I should be obliged to deny it. Does Sir Ian believe this against me?'

"'I will make him believe,' says my lady. And then she was beginning something about Miss Verney, a young person Mr. Barr was engaged to marry. But that was too much for him. 'Stop!' he shouted. 'I won't stop!' cried her ladyship. 'Very well, then, I'll go, and leave you to babble calumnies to the four walls,' says Mr. Barr—or words like those. And he must have gone instantly, for I didn't hear his voice again. About five minutes afterward a door slammed; so what I supposed was that Lady Hereward waited a bit, thinking he might change his mind and come back, or else she rummaged about to find papers which might explain what had become of the French girl; and then she got discouraged and went away. It was the same day Mr. Barr warned Sir Ian to look for another steward."

​"That is most important," said Gaylor, "and you have told the story well; nobody could have done better. You see, I've taken down everything you've said," and he held up his notebook, several pages of which were filled with shorthand jottings. "Now, to trouble you just a bit more, and then I've finished. Do you know whether Mr. Barr had a key to the View Tower in Riding Wood?"

The old woman looked thoughtful. "There was a big key that lay on his desk at one time," she replied. "I don't know what it unlocked, but it certainly wasn't any door in the house. And that's what it was like; a door-key. I noticed it lying on the desk one morning, when I was dusting, and wondered where it came from. It had an old-fashioned sort of shape, yet for all that it seemed to be quite new. It lay there for a bit and then it disappeared again, never to come back. I don't know what Mr. Barr did with it after that."

"How long was this before he gave up the stewardship?" asked Gaylor.

"I can't say exactly, but several weeks at least," returned Miss Maunsell.

The detective took a key from his pocket. (He was not a man to neglect anything.) "Was the key on Mr. Barr's desk at all like this one?" he inquired.

The housekeeper examined it gingerly. "Exactly like, if I remember right," she answered.

Gaylor thanked her, and pocketed the key.

​"Was Lady Hereward killed in the Tower?" the woman wanted to know.

"Yes," said the detective.

"That looks rather queer against Mr. Barr, hating her as he did," Miss Maunsell reflected aloud. "Well, well, if he has committed a murder, the sooner it's brought home to him the better, say I. I wouldn't put out my hand to save a brother, if I had one, from justice, so be that he was guilty."

"Had Barr a revolver?" Gaylor asked.

"Oh, yes; he used to keep it in a drawer of his writing desk. Not that I was one to pry; but he didn't try to hide the thing. Sometimes the drawer was left half open, and I couldn't help seeing what was in it, when I was putting the room to rights."

At this, the detective produced a small, new revolver. It had been obtained for this very purpose; that it might be shown to the late housekeeper of Ian Barr. The bullet which had killed Lady Hereward had been extracted from her dead body, and another exactly like it had been found embedded in the wall of the Tower room. As yet, it had not been discovered by whom these cartridges had been sold or bought, nor had the revolver been found, despite diligent search. But the bullets exactly fitted the weapon purchased and brought to Yorkshire by the detective; therefore, it stood to reason that the missing revolver was of the same calibre and of more or less the same description.

​"How does this strike you?" he asked Miss Maunsell.

She did not shrink away foolishly as many women do at sight of a weapon.

"That's about the size I should say," she remarked. "And it's very like, too; but Mr. Barr's wasn't so shiny and bright as that."

"What became of the revolver when he went away?"

That I can't tell, because I went before he did. He was to leave a few hours later."

"Well, was the revolver in the drawer when you left?"

"So far as I know. I hadn't seen the drawer open for some days, and he packed for himself, but I suppose it was still there. I don't suppose he took it out."

"Did Miss Verney ever call at Mr. Barr's house?"

"Once, when she'd been walking with him, and was caught in a storm, she came in and had tea. Mr. Barr says to me: 'Miss Maunsell, I've brought in the young lady I hope will be my wife some day—Miss Verney. Please give us the nicest tea and toast you can'; which I did. Other times I used to see Miss Verney occasionally, passing. Perhaps she'd speak to Mr. Barr at the gate, or come for a minute or two into the garden; but never did she show her face our way, I'm sure, after the day that French girl disappeared. Whether she believed anything against Mr. Barr or not, I don't know; but so it was."

​"Mr. Barr never said anything to you about Liane?"

"Not he. He would have known better."

"Nor about his reason for leaving Friars' Moat?"

"Not a word. But coming on top of what I'd overheard, I could make a pretty good guess."

"Well, then, that's all I need trouble you about," said the detective, shutting up his note-book. "And I'll do my best to see you're not summoned to the inquest; but of course I can't promise."

"Anyhow, I shan't go," snapped Miss Maunseil.

CHAPTER XIX

A Surprise was awaiting Gaylor when he returned from Harrogate and handed in his report. A gun-maker in London had called at Scotland Yard and stated that he had sold a Smith & Wesson revolver, calibre .32 with a box of 50 cartridges, to Ian Barr in the month of August, two years before the tragedy in Riding Wood. The man, whose name was Jonas Sailes, and whose shop was in the Strand, was in a small way of business, and had no assistants except his young son, who had but lately been taken from school to serve customers while the father was laid up after a slight operation. This operation had been upon the eyes, and Sailes had been kept in a dark room for a fortnight. During that time he heard no news from the outside world, and his son, who had no great interest in life except sport, paid no particular attention to the details of the Hereward murder. On his recovery, seeing the name of Mr. Ian Barr in connection with the affair, the elder Sailes remembered the name, consulted his books, and found the purchase of the weapon and cartridges recorded.

This was a strong piece of evidence against Barr, and together with what Gaylor had learned from ​Miss Maunsell, things began to look black against the wanted man. All the evidence so far was purely circumstantial, but there was a good deal of it, and it vas necessary that Sir Ian Hereward's late steward should be found before the inquest, which had been adjourned again for a fortnight in the hope of unearthing him at home or abroad.

"Cupid" Gaylor had done rather well in the case so far, and he meant to do still better. He had a rooted idea that, if he had been on the spot immediately after the tragedy, the murderer would be already in the hands of the police; but it would be a still greater score if, after others had done their best in vain, the brilliancy of his detective talent should throw light into dark places.

No objection had, or could have, been made to the going abroad of Colonel Sir Ian Hereward, or Miss Verney; but they were both pledged to return for the inquest in a fortnight's time. After that, it would depend upon circumstances, over which those two important witnesses might or might not have control, whether they left England again immediately, or remained there.

Meanwhile Scotland Yard did not intend to lose sight of the ex-officer and the late companion of his murdered wife. Sir Ian's movements were more or less "under observation," but it was considered essential to observe those of Miss Verney more minutely. A young man, a friend of Gaylor's, with some French ​blood in his veins and a perfect French accent at the tip of his tongue, was detailed to "shadow" the young lady. He was to follow her everywhere; to know what visits she received and what excursions she made; and as the English police was in touch with the French, the post-office authorities wherever she went would be accommodating. This espionage was to be conducted in such a way, however, as to leave the girl under the impression that she was free as air until her return to England for the inquest.

As a matter of fact, she had expected and feared that she might be watched, and though Miss Ricardo's arguments were consoling, Nora had determined from the first to be ceaselessly on guard. She felt that eyes would be upon her always; yet for certain reasons the prospect of going to France, of all countries, filled her with joy. She would be careful; nevertheless, a thing which she desired greatly to happen might somehow happen, without bringing harm to any one, but only good.

The dreaded word "police" was constantly in her mind, yet the "police" was for the girl a vague, looming monster, Argus-eyed, and with the many hands of a Briareus. She did not think of separate entities; and though Nora was aware that a detective had wormed from little Poppet Barnard information which had brought Kate Craigie and her footman-lover into ugly prominence, it did not occur to her that the same ​man might assume vast importance in her own life. If she had heard Gaylor's name at the inquest in connection with Poppet, she had forgotten it, and all her fears as well as her hopes were for the moment transferred to France. With Miss Ricardo she stopped in Paris for one night only, and then went on to Chamounix. The quaint little place, with its vast white background of Mont Blanc, was beautiful to them both—to Terry, who had lived for years in India; to Nora, who had never been out of England—and they stayed there two or three days longer than they had intended. But this change of plan was not wholly on account of their delight in Chamounix. Terry had the idea of driving by pleasant stages to St. Pierre de Chartreuse; and, having received an answer to a letter posted in Paris, Nora Verney asked a great favour of Miss Ricardo. It was largely because of the granting of this favour that the two were delayed in Chamounix; and meantime Gaylor was exceedingly busy at Riding St. Mary.

He arrived there the day after his return from Harrogate, and made no attempt to disguise the fact that he was a detective, engaged upon the business which filled the minds of every one in the neighbourhood. But he did try, with his agreeable manner and pleasant looks, to hypnotize people into the belief that detectives were not the repulsively cunning creatures pictured in penny fiction.

​He looked like a good-natured, happy boy, and it was his métier to impress upon all those with whom he associated that he was precisely what he seemed, and no more. His dimples and blue eyes were worth a great deal to him, in creating this impression; and soon the villagers and peasants of the neighbourhood began to regard it as a huge joke that such a jolly youth as Gaylor should be a member of the London police force. They liked talking with him, and spoke out their opinions and theories more freely than they would to a person whose age and dignity they had need to respect.

The first thing that Gaylor did on coming down to pursue his investigations near Riding St. Mary, was to go straight to the Home Farm of Riding Wood and call on Mrs. Barnard. It was about tea time, and Tom Barnard was in the house. Both looked at the detective with cold disapproval, as he presented himself at the door, for they recognized him at once as the man who had cajoled their little girl, behind their backs, into making statements which had got friends of theirs into trouble. They had seen him on the second day of the inquest, when Poppet's evidence had been taken; and now Tom's first words, gruffly spoken, were: "Well, what's up now, Mr. Detective?"

"I've come to tell you that I'm sorry if you think me a sneak," said Gaylor frankly. "I had to do it, you know. Once you're in my line, it isn't what you like doing, but what it's your duty to do. And now ​I've been sent down here again, to see what I can find out."

"You've found out all there is to find out in this house," replied Rose, quite sharply for her.

"Oh, I know that," "Cupid" assured her. "It isn't business that's brought me to you, though it has to the neighbourhood. I want nothing more nor less than to make my peace with that dear little girl of yours. I thought she was just about the best thing in the shape of a child I'd ever seen. Look what I've brought her—with my humblest apologies for the past, and hopes of making up for it in the future."

Then he opened a long box wrapped in paper, which he had been carrying under his arm, and revealed to the eyes of Rose and her daughter Poppet such a doll as few country-bred children have ever seen.

It lay asleep in its box, its golden head on a silk pillow trimmed with lace. Not only had it real hair, waving and curling to its waist, but the dark eyelashes on its shut lids were real, too. Its smiling red lips were slightly open, showing several tiny, even, white teeth, and as Gaylor lifted it up, at the same time manipulating some spring or string hidden under the dress of pink silk, muslin and lace, it said "Papa," "Mamma," as it opened large brown eyes.

Poppet, who had not dared to speak to the "nice grown-up" whom she had heard reviled by her family, could not restrain a cry of wonder and delight. Even ​Rose gave a little unsophisticated "Oh!" of admiration for the Parisian beauty; and when the detective held out the box and doll to Poppet, as a peace offering, she had not the heart to deny the child the possession of such a treasure.

The little girl, lost in joy, clasped the glorious beauty to her bosom; and Gaylor's appealing, dimpled smile chased all animosity from the breasts of father and mother. It was true, as he said, he had acted in the pursuance of duty, and he did appear to be a kind-hearted, agreeable young fellow. He was enchanted with Poppet's pleasure, and vowed again that this time he had no "ulterior motives." He was so engaging and boyish, that Rose offered him tea, and both she and Tom enjoyed the chat into which he drew them, without their knowing that they had been drawn. He told the Barnards that he would have to remain in the country for some time, very likely till the inquest came on again, and asked their advice, in a simple, friendly way, as to lodgings. At present he was staying in the village inn, but it was hardly worthy the name of inn, and he was not very comfortable. Where would Mrs. Barnard advise him to apply?

Rose mentioned several cottages where lodgers were occasionally taken in the summer, but there was some objection to each one, the most desirable rooms being already occupied. At last, when the list was exhausted, Gaylor ventured: "I suppose you couldn't possibly ​have me here? Any sort of room would do for me, and I'd promise to make as little trouble as possible. I've taken the greatest fancy to Poppet, and to the place, and I should be as happy as a cricket in any corner you could give me. Besides, Mr. Barnard being a friend of Sir Ian Hereward's, you might both feel as though in a way you were helping the police on in their search for the murderer, if you allowed one of them to do his duty from your house. I should have some good games with little Miss Poppet here, in my spare moments."

Rose was completely taken aback, and Tom would have refused at once, if Poppet had not flown to the young man, and nestled between his knees.

"Oh, shouldn't I love to have you live in our house!" she exclaimed. "You'd play with me, and tell me stories, wouldn't you?"

That I would; and I know some grand stories, too," Gaylor boasted. "Mrs. Barnard, do say 'yes.'"

And somehow, Rose did eventually say "yes," why, she hardly knew, any more than Tom knew why he did not object to the decision. The young man certainly had a way with him!

That same evening, the detective became a member of the Barnard's family circle. His "corner" was a pleasant, oak-beamed room, with dimity-curtained, diamond-paned windows. His meals he took with the Barnards, and was so gay and good-natured that ​no one less grim than Diogenes could have hardened his heart against him. He was always ready to help Rose, when Tom was engaged in farm work, or to take Poppet for a walk in the woods, a pleasure Rose had no time to give the child on most days, until after the tea hour. Catechisms after these excursions assured Poppet's mother that the "nice grown-up" had been putting no more sly questions, but that, instead, the child's companion had told her fairy stories, or taught her how to spell words and do amusing little sums in arithmetic. Even Poppet's unfriendly little fox terrier, which invariably barked at strangers, and had objected to Gaylor, as to everybody else, on his first appearance, yielded to the charm, and became the detective's devoted adherent. Jacky made the third in all the woods walks, and enjoyed himself hugely, nosing into rabbit warrens and other private dwelling-places of retiring forest folk. To any one who had watched these excursions with curiosity, it might have seemed that there was some method in them. The young man took the child and the dog a different walk each day; and the walks were in concentric circles, leaving very little ground in the woods uncovered. Whenever Jacky excited himself over a rabbit-hole or other object of interest, Gaylor was all sympathy. If the fox terrier were inclined to dig, "Cupid" helped him, telling a fascinating tale to Poppet the while; the story of a fairy Jacky had seen disappearing into a burrow, ​having hastily assumed the form of a bunny—or some other fancy equally alluring to an imaginative little being like Margaret Barnard.

One morning, not very far from the top of the hill where the View Tower stood, the emotional Jacky bored his sharp nose, in a state of great nervous excitement, among the gnarled roots of a tree, exposed by the cutting away of thick masses of bracken, which had been done by order of the police immediately after the murder of Lady Hereward.

No creature less energetic and keen of scent than a fox terrier would have suspected the existence of a rabbit-hole under the low arches of the beech tree's gray roots, but Jacky was certain of its existence, and Gaylor encouraged him, as usual.

"Good dog! Have him out!" he cried, as Jacky wildly clawed, and pawed, and nosed his way through the labyrinth of root-barriers. "He knows," the young man explained to Poppet, "that a stolen fairy treasure-chest has been buried there by a wicked gnome, for fairies talk to dogs in dreams. Now, I'll just see if I can reach that treasure-chest with my hand."

"You've never found anything of the fairies yet," Poppet said, reproachfully, "except some of their jewels, which they'd turned into stones before you touched them."

"Even those were better than nothing," argued ​Gaylor, "and you never know what you ll have the luck to come across next time."

"I'm always afraid, when you stick your hand into places like that, that a snake will jump out and bite you," said Poppet.

"Snakes and rabbits don't live together so far as I've heard," returned Gaylor. "Jove! I ve got hold of something this time, for sure!" He began extricating his arm from the twisting embrace of the tree-roots, and an instant later Poppet saw that he had pulled out of the hole a metal thing, caked with earth; quite a small thing which he could almost hide in his hand. "Oh, what's that?" she asked eagerly.

"Nothing that would interest you much, I'm afraid," replied the detective, slipping the thing into one of his coat pockets, and carefully covering it over with the flap, as he pushed the thwarted fox terrier gently away.

"But you have turned quite pink, as if you were interested," said the child. "You might tell me what it is. It looks like one of Dad's tools."

That's all it is; a kind of tool," answered Gaylor. "But I'm fond of tools, and you're not. That's one of the differences between us, you see. Perhaps it was a tool of the wicked gnome's, that he opened the fairy chest with, and left when he'd got all the treasure." Gaylor pulled out his watch and looked at it. "Why it's time we were trotting home!" he exclaimed, as if surprised at the lateness of the hour. "And if you ​like, when we get back, I'll sketch you a picture of the gnome at the bottom of the rabbit-hole, opening the treasure-chest; only you must leave me alone in my room while I do it. I never could make pictures with any one watching me."

So they walked down to the farmhouse, the man and the child, with Jacky trotting at their heels or darting ahead on some quest or other; and Gaylor told Poppet the best story he had invented yet, which was saying a good deal, as he had a magnificent talent in verbal fiction. But all the time he was thinking of what he had found, and congratulating himself on the success of his plans. He had remembered the fox-terrier, and the innocent tales of its cleverness in finding rabbit holes, told by the little girl during their first conversation together; and it was the recollection of that childish boasting which had given him the idea of lodging at the Home Farm. Known, as he already was in the neighbourhood, a marked man since his evidence given at the inquest, he could not have wandered freely about the woods with a strange dog, had he continued to stop at the inn in his own character, as Gaylor, the man from Scotland Yard. He would have been followed and watched by curious people, and any discovery he might have made would have been known to others almost as soon as to himself. Or, if he had adopted some disguise, his actions as a stranger would have been regarded with suspicion.

​From the first, Gaylor had said to himself: "If I were the murderer, and had any fear that for some reason or other I might be eventually suspected, I wouldn't try to get rid of the revolver at home, or near home. I'd hide it in some place as close as I could to the scene of the murder, before I'd gone far away. And if I had my wits about me, I wouldn't just trust to the bracken to hide it. I'd think that it would be looked for there, and found when the bracken was cut down, as it would surely be. I'd fear bloodhounds, too, and try to put the thing in a place where my trail, if once they got on it, would be crossed by some other strong scent. What could be better for such a hide than a rabbit warren, if I could find one, or knew already where to find one? And if I were a person familiar with the woods, I might very likely know where to find one."

Gaylor had argued in this fashion, and he had begun with the opinion that a terrier would be a useful companion. To this theory and its later development, little Poppet Barnard owed a great many pleasant hours and delightful stories which she would never forget.

On reaching home, after the adventure of the rabbit hole, the child told Rose all about the fairy chest stolen by the wicked gnome, and prattled on about something unearthed by Gaylor, which he had said was not at all interesting. But Poppet, eagerly awaiting the sketch promised at dinner time, made so little of the ​discovery that Rose attached no importance to it, not guessing that, locked in his bedroom upstairs, Gaylor was at that very moment engaged in examining the weapon which, in all probability, had put an end to Lady Hereward's life.

It was a small neat revolver of .32 calibre, and only two of the six cartridges had been discharged. Four were left, and caked round the muzzle was something of a dark reddish colour, which looked like dried blood. Particles of pale brown earth adhered to this mass, as if they had stuck to it while it was still comparatively fresh and semi-liquid. But the fact that the revolver should be bloodstained was singularly suggestive to the mind of the detective. Evidently the murderer, having fired the two shots, and seen his victim fall, had either dropped his weapon, and her blood had stained it, or else he had coolly laid it on the floor near the body while he stripped the dead Lady Hereward of her rings, her bracelets and her other jewelry.

The next step for the detective was to learn whether this revolver which he had found was the one sold by Sailes to Ian Barr; and after the Barnards midday dinner, which he shared with them, he went up to London with his treasure, carefully wrapped in paper, in his pocket. The gunmaker recognized the weapon as that which Mr. Barr had bought from him; and, as Gaylor expressed it to himself, there was "one more nail in the coffin" of Ian Barr.

CHAPTER XX

Though Gaylor had the air of idling away most of his time at Riding St. Mary, and never seemed seriously to catechise any one in the neighbourhood, somehow he picked up an extraordinary amount of information, particularly concerning the habits of most of the persons connected closely or remotely with Friars' Moat. Among the most important of his gleanings was the fact that Ian Barr had at one time been in the habit of using the upper room in the Tower as a kind of study. A year ago, or not much more, he had been writing a series of articles on the Roman camps in Surrey; and as there were finely marked traces of an encampment on the hill of the View Tower, Sir Ian Hereward—interested in the young man's work—had suggested his writing in the Tower. He had offered to ask permission from Mrs. Forestier; she had granted it freely; and Sir Ian had lent Barr the key which was very seldom used by any one at Friars' Moat. When Barr had finished the articles, he was known to have returned the key of the Tower. All this Gaylor learned from the butler at the Moat, who had heard of the matter in talk around the table at the time; had forgotten it, but remembered distinctly ​when his recollections had been baited and played, with the skill of a true fisherman, by the detective.

Thus it was established that Barr had at one period gone every day, or nearly every day, to the View Tower, beginning a habit which he might have chosen to keep up secretly, after having ostensibly dropped it. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for him to have Sir Ian's key copied, as he had certainly had it for weeks in his possession; and it was not unnatural that he might have wanted to keep the run of the place. At his own cottage, which was more picturesque than convenient, he had but one sitting-room, where he must do his work, write his letters, see his callers and eat his meals. Besides, the situation of the housekeeper's room just above made it practically impossible to hold a private conversation in that sitting-room, if she were overhead or likely to go. It seemed almost certain to Gaylor that Barr would have had the key copied, in order to use the Tower when he chose.

He must have known that neither Mrs. Forestier nor any one else, with the exception of Barnard, opened the Tower doors twice a year. As for Barnard, he went only once every few weeks; and it would have been possible for Barr to find out which days were chosen by the farmer for his inspection. Even if Tom had come upon the steward there, no harm would have been done, for it might be supposed that Barr retained permission to go when he liked.

​Through Kate Craigie, Gaylor discovered that Lady Hereward had believed her French maid Liane kept tryst with Ian Barr at the Tower. Why Lady Hereward had held this belief Kate did not know, but supposed she "must have heard something." Possibly Liane had been seen going to the Tower; in any case Kate knew that "her ladyship," who disapproved of Mr. Barr from the first, "because he was a dangerous socialist," suddenly became bitterly prejudiced against him, on account of an alleged flirtation between him and Liane.

Each day it began to appear more and more important to find Ian Barr, and the theory of the police was that he would be found through Miss Verney. Nevertheless, Nora had contrived to thwart the vigilance of her "shadow" on arriving in Paris, by posting a letter which he could not identify as hers.

He was there, on the spot, and watching, when she slipped something into a letter-box at the Gare du Nord. He had been given specimens of her handwriting, before he left England, and was granted the privilege of seeing each letter which the box contained. But not only was there no envelope or card addressed to Ian Barr, but there was no handwriting which resembled Miss Verney's. The half-French detective had an aggravating conviction that, if he could only open each of the many letters, he would find one from Nora Verney to Ian Barr; but he could not do that, ​and he had to acknowledge himself defeated for the moment. Barr had doubtless taken another name, and Miss Verney had asked a friend to address her envelope, or had used a typewriter.

Michel examined the contents of the letter-box, in company with a postman instructed by the French police, while Miss Ricardo and her travelling companion dined. He "shadowed" the two ladies in Paris for the short time they spent there, and journeyed with them to Chamounix, where he put up in a cheap room at their hotel. They did nothing that repaid his watchfulness, but when they had been at the mountain village for several days, he learned that they proposed a driving tour. They were not engaging a carriage and horse at Chamounix, but had sent elsewhere, which struck Michel as odd, though he did not quite see how it bore upon the business which had brought him to France.

He could not find out for some time whence the vehicle would come, but at last heard from some employé of the hotel that it was to arrive from St. Pierre de Chartreuse, whither it would return with the ladies. This was disappointing to Michel, because it ceased to appear strange. It was natural enough to engage a conveyance of the hotel at which they intended to stop, where the landlord might make a better price for incoming guests than would one about to lose his clients.

​Michel was on hand when the carriage arrived at the Chamounix Hotel, and saw Miss Ricardo and Miss Verney go out to look at it. There were two good horses; the vehicle was a well-appointed landau, with a rack for light luggage behind; and the driver was a noticeably smart young man. He had a clean-shaven face, as dark as a Spaniard's, but rather long, wavy black hair, which fell from under a broad-brimmed hat over the collar of his coat. He was tall, with a fine slim figure, and was dressed like a peasant.

Miss Ricardo and Miss Verney seemed to be very much interested in the carriage, which arrived toward evening, and they asked the picturesque young man a number of questions in Italian, of which Michel understood only a few words. They were answered in the same language—and it surprised the detective that the driver from St. Pierre de Chartreuse should be an Italian. He reflected, however, that "Ricardo" was an Italian name, and this expedition was Miss Ricardo's affair. That might explain the seeming mystery, yet he resolved to find out all about the matter, when he had followed the ladies to St. Pierre de Chartreuse, as he not only intended to do, but to be close upon their heels. Even apparently unimportant details were of interest when connected with this case, and nobody could tell what bearing they might have upon it.

​That night the coachman put up his horses and slept at Chamounix. Next morning early the ladies were ready to start; and Michel, who had engaged a vehicle for himself, started also. Other driving parties, as well as automobilists, were leaving the hotel at the same hour, and there was no reason why he should be remarked by Miss Ricardo and Miss Verney.

The ladies were evidently not in a hurry to reach their journey's end, or they would have chosen to travel by train or motor. The first day, having started early in the morning, they reached La Grande Chartreuse in time for luncheon. Paul Michel was not far behind them. He too stopped to eat, and saw the great monastery, like most other travellers who toured in this direction, and several times encountered Miss Ricardo and Miss Verney, who scarcely glanced at him. Once, in the vast, deserted monastery itself, they condescended to show their Italian-speaking driver something of the place, or else he, being already familiar with it, was playing guide. Michel could not be sure which was the case, but the young man walked respectfully by Miss Verney's side, while Miss Ricardo wandered ahead, with a volume of Murray in her hand.

"I wonder?" Michel began to ask himself, in response to a striking idea which was knocking at his mind.

He had no portrait of Ian Barr as a grown man, ​for the reason that, if any had been taken, Scotland Yard had not been able to learn where or when. Michel had, however, an old picture of Sir Ian Hereward's young relative, as a boy of thirteen, made in Barr's school days, and discovered at a local photographer's since the murder. The detective slipped it between the leaves of his guide book, glancing from it to the face of the long-haired coachman, and comparing the features. But he could not be sure that they were the same. If this dark peasant in the wide-brimmed hat were Ian Barr in disguise, that disguise was a good one. The only thing was to watch and wait. If Ian Barr were really conducting his fiancée and her friend, he would betray himself sooner or later.

The party took three days on the way to St. Pierre de Chartreuse, though they could have accomplished the distance in less time. Perhaps they lingered on the road only because it was beautiful; perhaps because a pair of lovers dreaded to part. Michel was a vigilant spy, but he could not discover, so far, that any private interviews took place between the coachman and Nora Verney.

About five o'clock on the third day the carriage containing the two ladies and their light luggage drew up before one of the best hotels in the beautiful little village of St. Pierre de Chartreuse. Michel was near enough in his following conveyance to see them received by the landlord. No look of recognition passed between ​the proprietor of the hotel and the man who had brought his guests from Chamounix. This was odd, for if the fellow really came from St. Pierre de Chartreuse, he would almost certainly have been sent by the hotel at which Miss Ricardo meant to stay.

When the two dressing-bags and suitcases had been carried into the hotel, the young man still stood by the horses' heads. On the wide balcony at the top of the steps Miss Ricardo and Nora Verney consulted together for a moment in low voices. Then Miss Ricardo took an envelope out of her guide book, and gave it to Miss Verney, who ran down with it to the driver. She put it in his hand, and said a few words to him with an appearance of earnestness. Then he touched his hat (which Michel had never seen him remove), mounted to the box of his vehicle and drove off.

Meanwhile the detective had descended, without waiting for the first carriage to make the way clear. Having paid his coachman and seen his luggage carried up the steps by a porter, he reached the balcony himself just in time to witness a somewhat dramatic little scene, which he would not have missed for a great deal.

The two ladies, whom Michel admired extremely, were chatting with the landlord, a lesser personage having been sent to welcome the newcomer, when in the doorway appeared Sir Ian Hereward.

Michel had never seen Sir Ian in the flesh, but he had studied his features in many newspaper ​snapshots and sketches, during the last ten days, asking himself whether or no the face was the face of a murderer. Now he recognized it instantly, leaping to the startling conclusion that this meeting, at a remote village in France, had been arranged between Sir Ian and Teresina Ricardo.

Here was something better than he had dreamed of expecting, and he was delighted. The fact that this man and this woman journeyed so far from their world to meet each other, seemed to prove that Miss Ricardo had perjured herself in swearing that Ian Hereward had not loved her, long ago, in India. They had been separated for years, these two; and as they had apparently met in private only once (on the afternoon of the murder) since the old days in India, there must have been something between them, or they would not be keeping this tryst now.

"At last the wife is out of the way, and they aren't losing much time in profiting by it!" Michel said to himself.

This put a rather different complexion on his business. He had been sent after Nora Verney in the hope of running down Ian Barr. But since Ian Hereward came to St. Pierre de Chartreuse, Michel's theory of the murder was shaken. What if, after all, the elder Ian knew more about it than the younger, and Barr were but a scapegoat?

Of course, it would soon be known at headquarters ​that Sir Ian was here, if it were not known already, since the ex-officer was under observation; yet some kudos might be gained, in spite of that fact, if Michel played his cards well. He intended to let not the smallest chance slip, and the eyes which flashed from Sir Ian to Teresina Ricardo and Nora Verney were the merciless eyes of a lynx.

Michel saw Sir Ian start as if with astonishment at the sight of the two women; saw him hesitate in the doorway as if he were minded to beat a retreat; saw Miss Ricardo turn scarlet, and Nora Verney grow as pale as if she were faint, and heard the elder woman exclaim: "Sir Ian!" Still, the detective's conviction that this encounter was a "put-up job" did not waver for an instant. He thought that Sir Ian was a creditable actor, and that perhaps Miss Ricardo had not wished the first meeting to take place like this, on the hotel verandah, in the presence of half a dozen people. (It would be like a woman to have planned out something more romantic, and to be disappointed!) It struck him as probable that Nora Verney was not in the secret. The two most concerned would naturally wish her to believe that they met by accident; but, thought Michel, she would be a little idiot to be deceived, considering what kind of place was St. Pierre de Chartreuse. If it were Aix-les-Bains, for instance, where all the world passed and repassed, it might be different.

​Miss Ricardo's faint cry of recognition put an end, of course, to Sir Ian's hesitation. He took a few steps forward, and held out his hand to her.

"This is indeed a great surprise!" he said.

"It is indeed," she echoed.

They shook hands, looking straight into each other's eyes for a second or two, as if in spite of everything it was a joy to meet, a joy which would not be denied. They had the air of thinking that they two were alone in the world, just for an instant; and then, as though with the birth of the same thought, they dropped hands and turned to Miss Verney.

"Nora! How very strange, isn't it?" almost stammered Terry, as if she were afraid that the girl did not believe in her surprise. And if she were afraid of this (thought the detective), it at least was not as strange as some other things.

"Yes," said Nora, in a low voice. "It is strange." She looked frightened, almost horrified, it seemed to the detective, who had some sympathy for her, as she was, in his opinion, the prettiest girl he had ever seen. She did not put out her hand, and neither did Sir Ian. Michel noticed that the ex-officer gazed at her somewhat sadly and that she appeared to turn her eyes distastefully from his.

"Can that girl have found out anything about Sir Ian Hereward which has made her hate him?" the detective wondered, in a kind of professional ecstasy.

CHAPTER XXI

"What an extraordinary thing that you should come to St. Pierre de Chartreuse!" Terry Ricardo said to Sir Ian, elaborately unconscious that Nora had walked away, and gone into the house.

The two stood alone, together on the hotel balcony, for the landlord seeing that they were old acquaintances who had something to say to each other, vanished discreetly, to hurry after the young lady and show her the rooms which had been reserved on receipt of a telegram from Chamounix.

"Do you think it extraordinary?" Sir Ian asked, with an odd wistfulness in his tone.

"Why, yes. It is such a little village," said Terry. "So few English people have heard of it."

"I heard of it more than thirteen years ago, and never forgot," answered Sir Ian, looking over the hills into the sunset. "A girl described it to me once in India, and said she loved it. Since then I often thought I would come, if I needed peace and rest. From the description it seemed that kind of place."

"You mean—is it possible you remember a talk we once had?"

​"I don't easily forget. It was at Major Raine's dinner party, and we——"

"Yes—yes, I know."

"I've felt just lately as if I should go out of my mind if I stayed in England. I had to get clear away. The thought of putting the Channel between me and—and—— But you understand."

"Oh, yes."

"And the idea of this little place which you had loved kept floating in my brain. I said to myself that, if I liked it as much as I expected to, I would have it to return to again after—you know, of course, that I must go back to Riding Wood for a few days."

"I know. So you mean to stay for awhile at dear little St. Pierre de Chartreuse?"

"No," said Sir Ian. "I don't mean to stay."

"Don't you like it, then, after all?" Terry's face fell.

"I've grown to love it, though I've only been here three days. I have taken some beautiful walks. I should think you could find a new walk every day for a month."

"Why, that's what I used to say!"

"I know you did."

"Yet, you don't mean to stop?"

"No."

Terry looked up at him searchingly. "Please tell me truly. Is it because we have come?"

​"Yes," Sir Ian answered.

"We spoil the place for you!"

"You know that isn't the reason," he said, "and it would be cruel to pretend you think it is. But I mustn't stop here, now you have come. Terry," (he seemed to speak her name unconsciously, and then start at the sound of it in his own voice)—"that old fox Smedley has taken it upon himself to play detective, and is following me about, delighting in the fact that I know what he's after. He wears a sort of defiant 'Cat may look at a King air,' if I run across him in a railway-station or a hotel corridor. I've dodged him, or he's letting me hope I have, since Grenoble, but he may turn up at any time. I don't know what his object is, unless to annoy me, and yet——"

"I know," said Terry, flushing deeply, but with eyes frank and unashamed. "No doubt he made it his business to find out that I was coming abroad too, and he wanted to see if——"

"Probably," Sir Ian drily asserted, as she paused. "Well he mustn't see what he wants to see. By Jove, shooting would be too good for a beast like that!" When these words had broken from him, Sir Ian winced. After such a tragedy as had just darkened his life, a man does not speak lightly of shooting. For a second he had forgotten; but now he was sorely conscious again of the weight of his burden.

​"You are going to let the thought of Major Smedley drive you away from this little abode of peace!" Terry exclaimed.

Sir Ian looked at her, but didn't speak. He would not say, "It is for your sake." It ought not to be necessary to say that.

His look calmed Terry, who was always ruffled to the point of extreme irritation by the very mention of Major Smedley's name. It was infuriating that so mean a creature should have power to obtrude himself upon her life, or Ian Hereward's; but an instant's reflection showed her that Sir Ian was right.

"It is a pity," she said. "I think it would have done us both good to have a few friendly talks together in a place like this, for I want to keep your friendship, Ian; and I have given you mine. But at such a time, with Major Smedley spying upon us with his hateful cat's eyes, everything would be spoiled. I see that. But it's a pity—a pity!"

"I've had three peaceful days. He can't rob me of those," answered Sir Ian, with a tired smile. "I feel better for them, and for even this short talk with you—this sight of you. I take it as a blessing. Besides——"

"Besides—what?" she asked, when he stopped.

"Why, you seemed to be with me here, before you came, before I dreamed you might come. Your old self, showing me the walks you told me about, so long ​ago. I am glad I've been able to see the place—you don't mind."

"Why should I mind, Ian?"

"I hope there's no reason. Since Smedley hasn't turned up, no harm is done."

"He is here!" said Terry quickly, in a changed voice.

They both glanced down the road. A carriage was driving up. In it sat Major Smedley, old-looking and yellow in his gray flannels and travelling-cap. Even as they saw him, he saw them, standing there together on the hotel balcony. A flash of intelligence darted from his eyes. He half smiled; and then bit his lip. As he raised his cap to Miss Ricardo, she turned her shoulder, cutting him deliberately.

"Too late!" she whispered. "Well—it was to be!"

"Wiser not to have cut him like that, Terry," Sir Ian said quickly. "It will make him more venomous."

"Nothing could make him more venomous! This has happened, and I'm not going to be afraid of the creature. Ian, you mustn't go away from St. Pierre de Chartreuse now. You see, it would only look as if he had caught us, and we were ashamed. There is nothing in the world for either of us to be ashamed of."

"No, I won't go at once," Sir Ian answered.

The landlord came out again from the hotel, which was one of those simple inns where patron and manager are one and the same. As he prepared to welcome the ​latest arrival, Terry spoke with him in English. "Has Miss Verney registered her name and mine yet, monsieur?" she inquired, with the intention of quietly letting Major Smedley know, without delay, that she had just come to St. Pierre de Chartreuse. (He would soon find out that Sir Ian had been several days in the hotel.)

The landlord replied that the young lady had already signed the necessary papers, for herself and her friend; and as Miss Ricardo had apparently no more questions to ask, he was free to give his attention to the new guest.

Then when Terry had been answered, she began talking to Sir Ian as if nothing had happened; but her heart was beating fast, and she had not longer any joy in the thought of her well-loved St. Pierre de Chartreuse. It might have been pleasant to meet and associate with Ian Hereward as a friend, if there could indeed be any joy in life for either, after the ordeal through which they had passed, and had still to pass; but of course, everything was spoiled now. She hardly knew what she said to Sir Ian, after Major Smedley had gone into the hotel with the landlord, and she was glad though surprised to see Nora Verney appear at the door.

"Oh, Miss Ricardo!" exclaimed the girl. "If you won't think me rude, may I beg you to come inside for a few minutes?"

​"I was just ready to come," answered Terry. "Au revoir, Sir Ian."

She smiled at him in her sweet and friendly way, leaving him at once, and going in to Nora, who had already vanished from the door.

The girl was standing at the foot of the stairs, looking anxious and excited, her beautiful eyes very bright.

"I don't want to take you away from him," she apologized. "Only—if I might speak to you about something—something important to me, and then you could go back——"

"I don't need to go back," said Terry. "I would like to look at our rooms with you. Perhaps you ran down to tell me they weren't nice? If there's anything wrong, I can ask the landlord——"

"Oh, no, the rooms are very nice," replied Nora. "You'll be angry, I'm afraid, but I got thinking after I went in and left you talking to Sir Ian; what if you would speak to him about my Ian, and——"

"I didn't tell him," Terry broke in. "But suppose I had? Sir Ian was always his friend. You don't dream that his knowing would make the slightest difference?"

"Sir Ian wouldn't tell. I don't mean that," Nora explained. "But I'm sure Ian would hate to have him know he was here, and how. I thought perhaps you mightn't think it any harm to tell him—so I flew down, as soon as the idea came into my head, to beg you not."

​"Of course I won't say a word if you don't wish me to," returned Terry. "It's your secret. But really your manner with Sir Ian is very strange. You didn't shake hands, and you rushed away as if you hated the sight of him."

"I do!" the girl panted almost weeping; then she drew her breath in sharply, as if she had said something she ought not to have said. "I can't explain," she went on piteously, "any more than I could explain before about not accepting kindness from you, as if it were given for his sake. If you are angry with me, you must just send me away. I can't help it."

"I'm not angry, but I'm very sorry," said Miss Ricardo. "I don't pretend to understand how you feel toward Sir Ian, or why you hate to see him; but I don't want you to explain, since you find it so hard. In any case, perhaps it would be better not. But I'm sorry, because (though I hadn't the remotest idea of this meeting, you may be sure) for some reasons it is best for him to stop on here instead of going away. Now it's my turn not to explain; but I think you will take my word. We must stay; and he, too, must stay, for a day or so at least."

Nora bowed her head and did not answer. They went up stairs together, and looked at the rooms; two bedrooms adjoining, and a sitting-room, with a charming view from the windows. Terry professed to be delighted with everything, and they talked no more of ​Sir Ian, or Ian Barr; but even as they chatted about the exquisite grouping of the mountains, and the prettiness of the flowers with which the little suite was generously decorated, their thoughts were not with their words, which came mechanically, as women s words can.

That evening they dined in their own sitting-room; but this was not because Terry feared the prying eyes of Major Smedley. It was because she would not dine below without asking Sir Ian Hereward to sit at her table; and with Nora Verney behaving so strangely toward him, a meal together would be agreeable to no one concerned. Terry pitied Nora deeply, knowing that she suffered, and that perhaps there was no help for her suffering; but, womanlike, she could not push a certain resentfulness out of her heart. She had brought Miss Verney abroad because she was sorry for her, and because Sir Ian had asked her to be kind. It did seem a shame that the inexplicable moods of an undisciplined girl should blacken the sky already clouded by Major Smedley's hateful presence.

Terry began to pity herself as well as Nora, and Sir Ian had a great deal more than either; yet into the midst of her pity for the man would dart a sharper stab of pain sometimes. Why had Nora turned against him? If he had been a man of different nature, dark thoughts might have flitted across her fancy; but—no, she could not, would not, believe anything vulgarly base of Ian Hereward. She would believe ​that he loved his wife; that he had been true to her in thought and deed; that he passionately regretted her death, for which he had been in no way responsible; and that whatever Nora Verney's reasons were for disliking him, they were childish or unjust.

It had been easy to say that she did not want to know them, but Terry could not control her curiosity, nor could she prevent her imagination from wandering downstairs to the salle à manger, with its one long table, at which the guests who dined in public must assemble. She pictured Sir Ian at one end of the table, and the self-appointed detective at the other; but she was far from guessing at the presence of another detective, appointed by Scotland Yard.

Paul Michel, neat, inconspicuous, very like a middle-class French tourist, was at the table d'hôte enjoying the dinner which he felt that he had well earned. Also he was enjoying the thought of the play upon which he would presently ring up the curtain. That which was going on now, he said to himself, was no more than a prologue; but it was rather a brilliant prologue.

Since arriving Michel had accomplished a good deal. He had ferreted out the fact that the driver who conducted Miss Ricardo and Miss Verney from Chamounix, was not of St. Pierre de Chartreuse or of the neighbourhood, though the impression had been created in the Chamounix hotel that the ladies' carriage was coming from St. Pierre. No one at the latter ​place knew anything about the fellow, except that he was a stranger; and Michel's suspicions amounted almost to certainty now. A warrant was out for Ian Barr's arrest, in England, therefore Michel could get an order for the man's extradition by the French police; but the thing was, to prove identity, and the detective knew that he would be laughed at, rather than pitied, if he were unlucky enough to make a mistake.

Having discovered that the driver was a stranger, Michel went immediately to the local police, with a letter from high authorities in Paris. He stated his suspicions concerning the dark young man who spoke Italian, and gave his theory regarding the adoption of that language. It would be difficult for a foreigner to pose as a Frenchman in France, whereas a doubtful accent in another tongue might not be criticized; and a lucky knowledge of Italian, shared by two ladies, had given their conductor a great advantage in carrying out a disguise.

Michel's new colleagues, deeply interested, agreed with him in thinking that, if there were delay in confirming his suspicions, the man could easily be trapped without awaiting further developments. He could be asked to show his driving licence, and if—as it seemed probable he had hired the carriage and horses from some person not above accepting a bribe, he would be caught. If he had borrowed his licence, it would tell ​whence he had come, and the real name of the coachman. The fellow would then be called upon to prove his identity; and if unable to satisfy the police, he must remain in their hands until Michel had tightened the cords.

All being settled between the men, it was arranged that the first step should be taken the following morning, unless the detective from Scotland Yard made a fortunate coup meanwhile; but of doing this he had few hopes.

He said to himself that the sight of Sir Ian Hereward at St. Pierre de Chartreuse had given Miss Verney a shock. Evidently Miss Ricardo had not told her that she expected him; for that the meeting was pre-arranged between the two, Michel had not a doubt.

He thought the girl was evidently alarmed for the safety of her lover. She would now fear to have Sir Ian see the Italian driver lest, knowing him well, he would recognize Ian Barr. If this theory were correct, what was her first act likely to be? Michel asked himself. Naturally, she would communicate with Barr as soon as possible, perhaps making an excuse to send for the driver, and give him instructions for next day. Once with him, she would warn him that Sir Ian had arrived.

Michel was sure that this was what would happen, and that it would happen before midnight. He did not believe that Miss Verney would bring Barr into ​Miss Ricardo's sitting-room for a talk. Probably the girl would secretly smuggle a note to the small inn, where the coachman had put up, and she would arrange to meet him at some quiet spot near the hotel.

The detective could scarcely have eaten his dinner in peace if, before sitting down, he had not ascertained that the ladies were dining in private. Sure of this arrangement, he caused the door of Miss Ricardo's sitting-room to be watched by a servant of the hotel, who believed him an admirer of the younger woman, Miss Verney. If either of the ladies should go out, or receive any one, or send a note, he was to be informed at once.

It was not until after he had comfortably finished his meal, that word was brought to him of something which had happened. A waiter who served dinner in the private sitting-room had been told by the younger lady to give a letter to a porter who could run out with it immediately. The chambermaid who had earned Michel's bribe had seen the envelope. It was addressed to Guiseppe Verdi, Hotel des Bons Amis.

"Hotel des Bons Amis" was the name of the little inn at the other end of the village, where the long-haired driver was staying.

And all this was as Michel had expected, but he was not pleased that the coachman should be called Guiseppe Verdi. He was just as sure as before that ​it was Ian Barr, who had adopted the Italian name; but if he had borrowed the licence of a real Giuseppe Verdi, and the licence were an Italian licence, there might be trouble and delay unless it could be indisputably proved to-night that the man was no other than Ian Barr.

CHAPTER XXII

Miss Ricardo," Nora said after dinner, "I want very much to speak to Ian at once. I must speak to him."

Terry looked doubtful. "But if you're so afraid of his being discovered——" she began.

Nora cut her short. "I know. You will think I'm never sure of my own mind. And of course when I begged you to let me carry out this plan, I told you I didn't mean ever to see him alone. You were simply an angel to take pity on me, and allow us this chance of being near each other for a few days, so that we might try to arrange for the future, and I oughtn't to take advantage of your goodness. You mustn't be drawn into trouble through us, whatever comes. Ian says that, and I feel it as much as he. But—I must talk to him alone to-night."

"Would it do if we sent, and had him come to the door here as if taking orders for to-morrow?" Terry asked. "Or perhaps he might come inside for five or six minutes, without its being thought odd, even by curious persons. I could go into my own room while you spoke together."

I thought you would be angelic enough to suggest ​something like that," said Nora. But you see that might involve you, if harm came of it, and I don't believe Ian would consent, even if I would. While you were in your room—just while the waiter was clearing the table, I scribbled a few words in pencil, and sent them off. I told Ian to meet me in the garden at the back of the hotel, at a quarter past ten."

Then I think you were very imprudent," exclaimed Terry. "As for involving me, that doesn't matter." She was tempted to add that her complicity in the plan of disguise had already involved her almost as deeply as she could be involved in the affair; but she would not point this out to the girl, who did not realize it fully.

"Oh, wait, dear Miss Ricardo, before you've made up your mind, until I've explained a little more," Nora pleaded. "I thought I could run down soon and sit on the balcony. Then, after awhile, say about ten, I could go into the garden and walk about as if to take a little exercise before bedtime. You see, it will be just too late for many people to be about, and too early for it to look odd that I should be out of doors, especially if I'd been sitting for awhile on the balcony already. Then, I don't need to speak with Ian more than three or four minutes. I've thought it all over, and there can't be any danger, can there—in a place like this? I begin to feel now that there's nobody watching us. I believe we've thrown off suspicion."

​"There's probably no real danger. Still, I don't like it," said Terry.

"Neither do I like it," answered the girl. "But it's a choice between evils. And it's too late to change. Ian must have had my note a long time, and he may not be in his hotel. I shall have to go, you see."

"I suppose so," agreed Terry.

"Have I abused your kindness?" asked Nora, looking so lovely and so miserable that Terry's heart melted completely.

She had been caught by the romance of the strange plan the girl had proposed. And because her own first and last love had been broken abruptly and cruelly, when she was about Nora Verney's age, her sympathy with Nora in her tragic separation from her lover was almost morbidly intense. Terry had not received many confidences from the young girl; but she had been told that Nora was forced to part from Ian Barr; that their engagement had never been ended, nevertheless; that they had hoped to marry some day, "until that dreadful murder changed everything." With tears, and hands that clung to Terry's, the girl had sworn her certainty of Ian Barr's innocence. "All his motives in everything he had done were the noblest and bravest, and most unselfish," she had sobbed to her friend. "Because he is noble and unselfish, both our lives may be ruined, his and mine. ​But we've had no time to plan things. Do help us. Do give us this one chance."

So Terry had given the one chance, hardly knowing whether she were right or wrong, or what was her position morally and legally. Sometimes she regretted what she had done; but as Nora asked, "Have I abused your kindness?" she was conscious of no regret. She and the girl kissed each other; and, wrapping a lace scarf round her head and shoulders, Nora Verney went down to sit on the balcony.

Hardly any one was there. Though a number of people were stopping in the hotel, they mostly sat in the reading-room, for fear of the night air, glancing at the papers or playing games, or else they went to bed in default of something more amusing to do.

Nora glanced about hurriedly, and was glad not to see Sir Ian Hereward or Major Smedley. Two German ladies were talking very fast and both at the same time about their babies and servants at home; and there was a young man, whom Terry and Nora had noticed once or twice following their road since Chamounix. If he had not been such an inoffensive, fussy little fellow, apparently a Frenchman of the bourgeois class, the girl might have regarded him with some anxiety; but she and Miss Ricardo had decided that he was a consumptive Frenchman who had been ordered to travel for his health. He had never appeared to take the slightest interest in them, or their ​movements, and when Nora came out on to the balcony, he had apparently gone to sleep over a book, or else the high-hung electric lights had tired his eyes, for he had covered them with a plaid silk handkerchief such as—Nora thought pityingly—no human being except a very common foreigner would use.

She sat down under an electric light and pretended to read. The German ladies glanced at her, and then returned to their harrowing tale, that of a cook who had selfishly indulged in the measles. The young man did not wake up. Altogether, it seemed fantastic to trouble about taking precautions; nevertheless Nora faithfully carried out the programme she had detailed to Terry. She read for a while; then feigned to tire of her book, and leaned back, gazing over the hotel garden with a dreamy air. At last she rose, laid her book on the chair as if to keep her place, and began sauntering up and down the balcony. No one paid the slightest attention to her, but she continued to act her part, and presently seemed to hesitate at the top of the steps, whether to descend or stop where she was. Eventually she decided to descend slowly, rather listlessly, and to hover about below, examining the flowers, and smelling a rose here and there. Then she saw a path which pleased her, and strolled along it, disappearing from the sight of any one on the balcony who might happen to be observant.

The garden of this little hotel at St. Pierre de ​Chartreuse was not walled in. It was a mere green setting which added charm to the house. There were flower beds all round, back and front, under the verandah, and the rest was lawn, intersected by a few paths, and furnished with three or four cheap rustic seats where scarcely any one ever chose to sit. Nora walked to the seat farthest from the house, which was placed behind the shelter of a small buttress of rock, over which nasturtiums ran in gay riot.

The sky was sown with stars, otherwise the night was dark, and when Nora had sat down on the seat behind the rock, trees and bushes even at a short distance were blurred in shape, forming mere masses of black shadow. She was sure, however, that Ian Barr would find her, and he did, three minutes before the time appointed.

Neither spoke at first. The young man held out his arms, and the girl slipped into them. Still in silence she lifted her face, and he kissed her.

"Darling—precious darling!" he murmured.

"Oh, Ian," she breathed. "It's like Heaven to be in your arms again. The first time since—that awful day."

"Still, to have seen each other is something," he said. "It has been much to me. You can't realize how much."

"Yes, I can, by what I feel myself," she answered in a low, soft voice.

"These last three days have been worth years of life," he whispered.

"Yes—years of separation," she said. "But Ian, ​we can't be separated. I can't live without you. I always thought so. I know it now. That's one thing I wanted to tell you again to-night—but it's not why I sent for you. Sir Ian is here."

"Here, in this hotel!"

"Yes. It was a surprise to Miss Ricardo, and to him to find us. But here he is. It can't be he has found out anything about you, and has been following?"

"Impossible," said Ian Barr. "Besides, he would do nothing."

"He might. How can we tell? He knows you are suspected. Anything to save himself, perhaps!"

"You don't know him!"

"Do you know him, Ian? After that day——"

"Mr. Ian Barr, I believe," said an English voice, with a slight French roll of the "r's," speaking close to the lovers.

They started apart, and saw a small, slight figure step out from the shelter of the flower-draped rock.

"It's useless saying you're Giuseppe Verdi, for everything's known, and the game's up," went on the voice, that had a note of triumph in it. "You'd better not——"

"Run!" advised the girl, sharply.

"If he does I'll shoot," said the little man. "S'il vous plaît, Messieurs!" He raised his tone, and two men in the uniform of French police appeared at the turn of the path.

​As he remarked, "the game s up"; abandoning pretence, or any thought of escape, if he had had it, Ian Barr stood firmly by Nora s side.

"Who are you, and what do you want?" he asked.

"I am Michel, of Scotland Yard," returned the other, shortly; and with a pang Nora recognized him as the fussy little French tourist, "travelling for his health." "I have been following you for some time."

"You have been following me!" she exclaimed. "You coward—you sneak!"

"We get called hard names occasionally, but they break no bones," was Michel's nonchalant answer. "I'm very sorry, though, Miss Verney, to cause you annoyance."

"Please leave us, Nora," said Ian Barr.

"No, I can't. I couldn't bear it! Please don't send me away yet," she implored him, and for the moment Barr yielded.

"I suppose you want me as a witness in the Hereward case," he said to the detective. "Is that it?"

That's what you were wanted for at the time of the first inquest," replied Michel. "It's more serious now. Owing to certain circumstances, there's a warrant out for your arrest in England."

"This isn't England."

"No. But you are charged with the murder of Lady Hereward; and you must know there's extradition for the crime of murder.

​"All the same you have no power to arrest me on French soil."

"If you choose to make trouble for me, these gentlemen will ask to see your licence to drive in France. If you can't produce satisfactory evidence that you are entitled to any licence you may hold, they will arrest you for breach of French law."

Ian Barr laughed. "I see," he said. That is well thought out. You are clever. If I wanted to fight, I could knock all three of you into cocked hats, and I think you must know that; but——"

"You don't want to fight, first for the lady's sake and then because it would only make things worse for her and you afterward."

"Exactly."

"Oh, Ian, this is all my fault!" Nora cried, her voice agonized.

"No," he said, "it's the fault of Fate. Remember what I said about what the three days were worth. And remember all you promised me."

"What is going to happen now?" she asked.

"I am not arrested, but I am going to do whatever they want me to do, till I'm extradited. Afterward—well, I wish them joy of me!" Again he laughed, a strange laugh that had something of desperate courage as well as bitterness in it. And to Nora Verney it was like the knell of hope.

CHAPTER XXIII

Sir Ian Hereward had been out walking alone in the purple darkness, bareheaded, the breeze from the mountains spraying coolness against his hot forehead. He raised his face to it, as if to receive balm upon a burning wound.

A church clock struck somewhere in the distance. It was eleven. He thought that the hotel doors might be closing, and told himself dimly that he had better go back, unless he wanted to wake the tired concierge. He turned and, ten minutes later, as he was about to mount the steps of the deserted balcony, Nora Verney ran down to him.

"I have been waiting for you," she announced. "They said you were out."

"I hope you are going to tell me of some way in which I can serve you," he replied, kindly, yet with a slight constraint.

"If I dared to tell you!" she almost groaned.

"I think you may dare anything you can wish to dare with me," he answered.

"Oh, it isn't for fear of you I hesitate!" The words rushed from the girl's lips like a flood breaking down some barrier that had held it back. "It isn't that ​at all, and I wouldn't have you think so. I don't dare talk to you about the only way in which you could serve me, because I have promised not. I've promised Ian Barr, beside whom you are a coward, Sir Ian, a coward."

She was beautiful in her fierce young defiance, under the stars, and Sir Ian looked at her pitifully, as he might have looked at an angry child. "By and by you will tell me why you waited," he said. "It was not for the pleasure of calling me a coward, I think."

"Ian—my Ian—has been arrested."

"Arrested—where?"

"Here. He was with me, in the garden."

Sir Ian remained silent for a few seconds, thinking. "Impossible to arrest him in France," he said at last.

"It wasn't exactly an arrest, but they laid a trap for him, an English detective and two French policemen—and he didn't resist. If it hadn't been for me, perhaps he could have escaped. I haven't told Miss Ricardo yet. I was afraid if I went in I might miss you."

"You want me to try and help Barr."

"Sir Ian, I can beg nothing of you. If I did, I should be breaking the most solemn promise. Ian trusts me, and would never love me again if I broke it; otherwise I would break it now."

"What can I do for him?"

​The girl's eyes blazed. "You ask me—me—what you can do for him? Oh!"

"I don t understand you," Sir Ian said more coldly. "You have conceived a great horror of me. I quite see that. But if there is something I can do, you had better restrain your dislike enough to tell me clearly what it is."

"You know what you can do," Nora answered. "You can save Ian."

"I tried to do what I could that first day at the inquest, when—"

"You call that 'doing all you could,' when you know he is innocent—when you know who is guilty?"

Sir Ian turned on her in surprise tinged at last with anger, for she flung insult in his face, with tone and words.

"If you will have it," he retorted, "I do not know that Ian Barr is innocent."

"How dare you?" she cried, aghast. "You make me forget my promise to Ian. Now I know you don't mean to help, perhaps I shall be driven to break it to all the world. He will never forgive me—but at least I shall have saved him; and if I kill myself, what will the rest matter? Sir Ian Hereward, I warn you, if you try to harm instead of help your cousin, who gives himself for you, I will tell everything, in spite of my promise."

​The soldier-face stiffened. "What do you know?" Sir Ian asked.

"We were together in the Tower," she answered. "We heard."

"Good God!" the words seemed to burst from him.

"Now you can guess what I think of you, when you say that you don't know if Ian is innocent."

"You swear to me that you were there together—Barr and you?" The man caught her hands, and held them, looking her in the eyes, though she struggled to free herself.

"I swear it to you. It depends on you, whether I swear it to others, or keep the silence I promised."

"If this is true, you perjured yourself at the inquest."

"Yes. Because Ian and I agreed to know nothing."

"Good Heavens! If Ian Barr was there with you, Nora, you don't know the difference it makes."

"What do you mean by the 'difference'?"

"I can't tell you what I mean. But you will know sooner or later. As you hope to save your soul—no, as you hope to save your lover's life, answer me this: Was he with you in the Tower until after the shots were fired?"

"As I hope to save Ian's life, he was with me in the Tower till after the shots were fired."

"Where were you both?"

"In the first floor room, first above—the other. ​We couldn t hear every word that was spoken, but we heard—enough."

"My God! Then it was as I feared."

"I don't know what you mean," the girl said anxiously.

"Tell me the whole story," Sir Ian insisted. "How you got the key; why you were there, why Barr chose that day—everything."

"Yes, I will tell you. I may as well, now," she returned. "Ian had been making plans to go to America. He had heard of a chance. I wouldn't let him write to me at your house. I was afraid—that I'd never get the letters."

"You thought we would intercept them? How childish—and sensational!"

"Life is sensational. You ought to know that now! I didn't think you would stoop to such a thing. I liked and admired you very much, then; and Ian adored you for what he called your immense goodness to him, in spite of adverse circumstances and opposition from the one nearest you. But I did think Lady Hereward might do something. Even that she might have left instructions when she went to Paris, with one of the servants, to watch if I had letters. She detested Ian. She had the cruellest suspicions against him. He could have proved that she was wrong, I'm sure, if he would, though even to me he never told the truth about—about Liane. He only said that ​he was innocent, and I believed him, but I have my own theory of what really did happen, and I believe I'm right."

"I am not asking you to tell me that," said Sir Ian, with a certain impatience. "I want to know why, and for how long, you and Barr were in the Tower together."

"He wrote me letters to the post-office in the village. Only the postmistress knew, I think. As a girl she was in my father's parish, and he was very good to her and her family. She was grateful; and Ian and I owe it to her that the gossip about his being seen the day—of the murder, was hushed up. Her daughter saw him, but afterward the mother induced her to forget, and it never could be found out where the rumour started. He wrote me that he would come and say good-bye. It was a long time since we had seen each other. We'd only met once before, since he gave up the stewardship. That time it was in the Tower, too, and we chose that place because it was so quiet and remote—hardly any one ever went there—and because it was the best for us, in many ways. Ian had the key."

"Oh! How did he come to have one? The key that was lent him once, he gave back when he finished his work."

"He had the key for a very simple reason. He told me all about it. One day he lost the borrowed ​key, and was vexed with himself, so he ordered another one made. He got a locksmith to go up to the Tower——"

"No doubt the police have learned that by this time."

"I suppose so. Anyway, after he'd had the new key a few days, he found the borrowed one, somewhere about the house. When he returned it, he kept the other, which used to be in the desk, he says, until he thought that some one was using it; after that he put it out of sight; but when he moved, he took the key away with him, thinking to use it, as he did, afterward—to open the Tower door, and meet me."

"Was it he who unlocked the door of the ground-floor room?"

"Yes. Because we had talked there, the first time we met; and he was in that lower room, waiting for me when I arrived, that second day—the day. But it smelt musty and damp, for the sun never gets in; so we went upstairs, and sat in the room above instead, where it was pleasanter. I'm sure, though, we did not leave the door open. We shut it after us, and I supposed then that Ian locked it; but it seems he forgot. We were making plans for his going to America, and sending for me, when we heard voices. You know whose."

"Well?"

​"From the first the conversation was so very terrible that we couldn't let it be known that we were there. We looked at each other, and Ian whispered to me that we must just bear it and try to forget afterward. He said almost anything would be better than she should know who had heard such secrets. She would hate her life, only thinking that we knew. And of course we meant never to tell—never to even speak of it again to each other. Sometimes there would be blanks—sentences we didn't hear, sometimes silence, and then those most awful, awful sobbings. At last—came the two shots, one right after the other. I felt as if I should faint, and I did almost. I felt myself falling, but Ian caught me in his arms and held me up. For a few minutes I think I wasn't wholly conscious, but I never quite fainted, for I know Ian had me in his arms all the time; and when I came back to myself he was holding me still."

"What then?" Sir Ian's voice was hoarse, as if his lips and tongue were dry.

"I listened for a while, and there wasn't a sound. It seemed a ghastly kind of silence, after what had happened. At last I whispered to Ian, and asked what he thought of the shots. He answered that he was afraid they could mean only one thing, but he would go down and look. I said if he went I would go too. He must not go alone, because, if any one else had heard the shots, and came to see, it might be ​thought that he—had had something to do with the thing. That idea came to me even then, because everybody talked about the way Lady Hereward felt toward Ian, and how it was through her he gave up his place. I begged him to take me, and said I couldn't stay upstairs, alone. I told him I could bear whatever we might have to see. So I went down the stairs behind Ian, and we found the door of the ground-floor room a little open. Ian said, 'I must have forgotten to lock it!' You see from what we heard, we weren't quite sure whether the voices came from the inside of the Tower or outside. We couldn't have seen from the one window in our room, anyway, even if we had looked out, which of course we didn't. It was bad enough to hear such things; but as there was no glass in the window, which had been broken a long time, we couldn't shut out the sounds. When Ian pushed the door wider open, I peeped over his shoulder, and—I saw her. Oh, the look in her staring eyes! It was too agonizing. I forgave her everything, and I hated you. I have hated you ever since."

"You can't hate me more than I hate myself," Sir Ian groaned. But the bitter anguish in face and voice waked no pity in the girl's heart, full of gentle compassion for others.

"We saw at once she was dead. There couldn't be any mistake in an expression like that. I pulled ​Ian back, and begged him not to go into the room. He too, thought there was no need, indeed that it would be best not, for every one concerned. We didn't see anything that had been stolen, or think about a revolver. Ian said we must go away, and he must get out of England at once to avoid being called as witness—for whatever came no one must know as long as ever we lived, that we had heard and seen. It wasn't himself that he thought about. It was you. But I thought of him as well, and I knew if we weren't able to explain by telling the real truth, he might be in great danger. I began to say something of that sort to him, but he broke in and made me promise that I wouldn't tell, even to shield him if he were in trouble. Then, in his turn, he promised that he would not go as far from me as America—not for a while, anyhow. He would try to get to France, and keep out of the way there, till perhaps it might be safe to sail for America later. He realized that both our lives might be ruined; that—he might be suspected—hunted—even for years; but for your sake he didn't hesitate. We planned quickly that he should get his bicycle, on which he'd come from London, and wheel it through the woods, as you know one can do there, for miles, until he'd gone far beyond Riding St. Mary, or any place where he was likely to be recognized. Then, at Godalton he would catch a train for Southampton; and unless an alarm had been raised already, ​he believed he could get to St. Malo in a fishing-smack from close by Southampton, at a tiny place where he used to stay with his mother, as a boy, sometimes. He knew a family of fishermen there, who would help him. Ian was sure he could trust them not to tell, even if there should be a hue and cry; and they never did tell. He said he would take his mother's name, O'Reilly, and I must write him, Poste Restante, Cherbourg, where he hoped to go eventually, and would disguise himself as best he could, if things came to the worst. He saw all that happened, in the papers of course, but I couldn't write him till Miss Ricardo and I reached Paris. I told him in a letter I posted then where we meant to stay, and he went to Aosta, and bribed a man named Guiseppe Verdi to let him a carriage and horses, and lend his licence, so that he could be with me for a little while, driving our carriage. Now you know the whole story. Through my fault he will be taken back to England, and tried for murdering Lady Hereward—since you are so cruel and so cowardly."

"Judge not," said Sir Ian.

"What does it matter to you whether I judge or not?"

There are others of more importance than you, in this," he admitted, his eyes far away.

"If only you were not a coward!" she continued to taunt him, hoping to goad the man, perhaps, to ​the course she longed to see him take. "Of all things, I never thought you a coward, in old days."

"You, at least, are no coward," he said. "After what you tell me you saw and heard, you came back to Friars' Moat, and poured tea for us in the drawing-room."

"You forced me to come in," she protested. "I felt as if I should die. It seemed then as if the world had come to an end."

"Yes," Sir Ian repeated dreamily. "Yes. It seemed as if the world had come to an end. I wish it had."

"It would have been better for you!" Nora exclaimed. "Will you go to England, and at least do what you can for Ian, without endangering yourself?"

"Yes, I will go to England," he echoed, "and do what I can for Ian. As you say, there may be—something."

Before she could answer, Terry Ricardo's voice called her from the balcony above. "Is that you Nora, with Sir Ian?"

"Yes," replied the girl, startled.

"I'm thankful!" cried Terry. "I was anxious about you, Nora. You were so long away. Is all well?"

"No. All is not well," Nora returned, her voice breaking sharply.

"Oh! Aren't you coming to tell me?"

"Yes, I'm coming." The girl turned to Sir Ian, ​and almost hissed at him, in a sibilant whisper, "Don't be afraid, coward! I am not going to tell your part."

He drew away from her, standing very straight and tall, his head up. But when Terry had bidden him "Good night," and both women had gone in, his chin dropped, and a long sigh came shuddering from his breast.

CHAPTER XXIV

The day "Cupid" heard that Ian Barr had been trapped in France, he made a "find" in the View Tower.

Although the police had reported at first that nothing was visible there which could afford a clue to the mystery, except in the room on the ground floor, Gaylor had never been satisfied. He wanted, if possible, to have a clear case against Barr, whom he now believed to be the murderer of Lady Hereward; and if he could come across any proof that Barr had been in the habit of using the Tower just before the tragedy, it would be a score. Consequently he searched, with the idea ever before him; and from far down between the seat and back of the battered, couch-like sofa in the upper room, he prized out a hairpin.

This was on the afternoon of the day when the news had come from France; and the best thing about the trophy, from the detective's point of view, was that the hairpin appeared to be a new one.

If it had been old, it might have fallen from some woman s head months or years before, and worked its way down into the sofa; but it was new; and it had a certain individuality of its own. As no woman had ​entered the Tower since the murder, it was clear that one must have been there, in the upper room, not very long before the day of Lady Hereward's death, if not on the day itself; and the question arose in Gaylor's mind: Was it a woman whom Barr had gone there to meet?

Naturally, he thought of Miss Verney, whose statements at the inquest had been so unsatisfactory. Now, as he had just heard, Barr had been caught with her in France, and it seemed more than ever probable that she and the young man had been together on the afternoon of the murder. It occurred to Gaylor that the girl might even be an accomplice, for Lady Hereward had separated her from her lover, temporarily at least, and caused Barr to forfeit the means of supporting a wife.

The hairpin, Gaylor thought, might very well be hers. She had red-gold hair; and this was not a common, black hairpin, but a golden brown one, wound with fine brown silk, so as to resemble the texture of hair. No woman with dark hair would choose to wear such a thing.

He put it in his pocket; and when he went back to the farmhouse for tea he brought out the hairpin, and showed it to his hostess.

"I suppose this isn't yours, is it, Mrs. Barnard?" he inquired.

"Well! Wherever did you pick that up?" Rose ​wanted to know, with an eagerness which instantly convinced Gaylor that she had seen such hairpins before, and was surprised to see this one now. He replied, teasingly, that he would tell her where he had found it, when she told him whose it was.

Mrs. Barnard temporized. "Was it in this room?"

"What do you think?" questioned the young man, with his innocent, dimpled smile.

"Well, it would be the strangest thing if it were here, considering never a morning goes by but the whole place is swept."

"Ah, then it's several days since the person has been to see you?"

"You do catch one up quick," said Rose. "Neither of the persons has set foot in this house for weeks, then, since you put it that way."

"Do two ladies of your acquaintance use this sort of silky brown hairpin?" asked Gaylor, not hiding his astonishment.

"One of them's not what you'd call a lady," said Rose, "but the other was."

"Was? She is dead, then? Do you mean Lady Hereward?"

"Yes. She used always to have hairpins like that. She would not let her maid put any other kind in her hair. These just matched it."

Gaylor was as much astonished as it was in his experienced soul to be. He had not once thought of Lady ​Hereward. Could it be, he asked himself, that she had gone to the upper room of the Tower the day she was murdered? Or had she perhaps been in the habit of going there, unknown to her husband and other members of the household at Friars' Moat? This idea upset his theories, but he could fit it in, in several different ways, doubtless, when he had had time to think the puzzle out. Lady Hereward might have been induced to visit the tower by a letter from Ian Barr, either signed or anonymous. Or it might still be that Miss Verney was the other who used the brown silk hairpins, in spite of the fact that Mrs. Barnard described that person as "not what you'd call a lady."

"Has Miss Verney a fancy for the same sort of pins?" the detective asked, with boyish slyness which was engaging rather than repulsive.

"Dear me, no, they'd be the wrong shade for her hair," replied Rose, scorning his masculine ignorance. "I don't know what sort of hairpins she wears, I'm sure, but she wouldn't choose this sort, anyway."

"How do you know about Lady Hereward? Did you ever notice them in her hair?"

"No, I can't say I did, though she came here fairly often, to leave some little present for Poppet. She was very kind to Poppet, yet the queer thing is, the child never cared for her. Her ladyship seemed to know that, and have a kind of pride in trying to gain the little thing's affection. But she never could."

​"Poppet isn 't the type of child whose love could be forced," remarked Gaylor, to Rose's delight. "About this hairpin, though. You might as well tell me who is the 'other person,' if not Miss Verney."

"Why, if you must know, it's Kate Craigie. I hope you haven't got any horrid, secret reason for wanting to find out? You see, it's just not impossible that a hairpin dropped here by Lady Hereward or Kate might have stuck in a rug, in spite of all the sweepings; but Kate was so cross with my little Poppet for letting out things to you that she's never been inside the house since the afternoon her poor ladyship was done away with."

"I didn't say I'd found the hairpin here," Gaylor remarked. "But I'm sure those hairpins don't match Kate Craigie's hair, since you say women are so keen on a match in such things. Hers is almost black. Why should she choose them, if Miss Verney wouldn't?"

That s different," Rose informed him. "Miss Verney's hair is one of her greatest beauties, and she must know that, though she's not a vain young lady. Gilt hairpins are as cheap to buy as dark ones. She'd either be careless, and get black, or else she'd have yellow of the right shade, nothing in between; do you see? But Kate, being about her mistress's room a great deal, if she was wanting a hairpin would stick in one of her ladyship's, or even help herself to a handful if she'd forgotten to buy her own sort. No harm ​in that. All ladies' maids do it, I expect. It was Kate who told me of Lady Hereward's being so fond of her brown silk kind. One day here Kate was trying a new way of doing her hair, after a picture in a fashion book I had, and Poppet—observing little puss!—noticed those lightish, silk-covered hairpins among the common black sort, on my dressing-table."

"No harm, of course," said the detective, consoling Rose, who looked anxious. But he was disturbed in mind. All his calculations trembled like a card-house built too high, at the thought that Kate Craigie might have been secretly in the habit of visiting the View Tower. What if, after all, the evidence against Ian Barr should come to nothing, and the wind of suspicion should veer back to Edward, the footman, lover of Lady Hereward's maid and enemy of Lady Hereward? At best, the evidence against Barr, black as it looked, remained even now entirely circumstantial.

Gaylor had been working industriously up to the point he had reached, and it was partly due to his advice that Barr had been so successfully trapped in France. The late steward of Friars' Moat would be "extradited" back to England in a day or two, and Gaylor had expected to have an almost impregnable case built up against him. It would be a blow to find, just before the arrival of the prisoner, who owed his arrest largely to Gaylor's discoveries as well as suggestions, that the case was not so strong after all.

​This contingency had to be faced, however, and the detective faced it. If there were to be new developments, he wanted to be the one to develop them, and spring them upon Scotland Yard and an eager public, instead of having them sprung upon him.

As he sat thinking, lost for the moment to all consciousness of Mrs. Barnard's presence, a knock sounded at the door. Rose went to open it, Gaylor scarcely hearing. A moment later she came back to him, a telegram in her hand.

CHAPTER XXV

Gaylor tore open the brick-coloured envelope, without eagerness, for he received as well as sent many telegrams, and he was expecting an answer to one of no vast importance. But as he read the cipher message, the blood rushed up to his ears, tingling.

"Gold case answering description of Lady Hereward's missing vanity box at Ebbitt's, pawnbroker Brownell Street, Westbourne Grove. Call headquarters and receive instructions. Immediate.

"Burrows."

This was news indeed!

Burrows was at the head of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard; and Gaylor felt he might consider it a compliment to his previous work that he should be sent for in haste. What the "instructions" might be he could not guess; but he was glad the discovery of the brown hairpin had been made before he was obliged to leave for town.

He had a bicycle which took him to the nearest railway-station, and in half an hour he was in a quick train, on his way up to London. Another twenty minutes, and he had in his hand a gold case like a cigarette-case, set at the left upper corner with a small ​sapphire, round which rays as of a star were indicated, in tiny brilliants.

There was a chain attached, and inside the case was a mirror, behind which was a thin bit of ivory for memoranda, and a little claw of gold to hold a film of handkerchief. On the other side was a receptacle for a powder-puff, another for lip-salve, and a third for pins, or what-not. The powder-puff was faintly stained with pink, and there were traces of pale rose-coloured paste in the miniature box intended for lip salve.

The story of the finding of the vanity box redounded more to the credit of an honest pawnbroker than to that of the police; for, though all Europe was being ransacked for Lady Hereward's lost jewels—the rings, the brooch and the gold case which had disappeared at the time of her mysterious murder—until now no news had been obtained of any of the missing valuables. All pawnbrokers had an exact description of the jewels and the vanity box, but it was only to-day that one of the number had sent a communication to Scotland Yard; and unfortunately the statement Ebbitt of Westbourne Grove had made was so mutilated as to be far from satisfactory.

Ebbitt, it seemed, had been away on a honeymoon, of three days' duration. His principal assistant had been suffering from toothache, and the vanity box was pledged to a youth new to the business. This ​young man had been duly shown the description of Lady Hereward's jewelry, when it was first supplied by Scotland Yard; but this little gold case being so like many others of its kind, he had failed to associate it with the Hereward affair. Nothing was thought of the matter in the office until Ebbitt, the principal, returned, early in the afternoon of the day on which Gaylor received his telegram from Scotland Yard.

Ebbitt, acquainting himself with the business transactions which had taken place during his absence, at once saw the resemblance between the vanity box in his safe and the description of that which was "wanted" by the police. He lost no time, therefore, in sending to Scotland Yard; but the only information concerning the person who had pledged the gold case was the fact that she was a woman, rather tall, rather slender, rather well dressed in something black or very dark, and wearing a thick motor veil. The youth who had received the vanity box, at the busiest hour of the day, had "not had time" to think much about the woman. He had, however, taken her for a lady in reduced circumstances, who wore a thick veil because she did not want her face to be seen when she entered a pawnbroker's. There were many such! She had willingly agreed to a loan of five pounds, and had spoken as little as possible, in a low tone, almost a whisper. That was usual also, in the circumstances. If she had been frightened or anxious ​to get away, he had not noticed, though on being questioned, he thought that the lady had tried to disguise her voice. Exactly why this impression—if it really amounted to an impression—remained in his mind the young man could not be sure. He did not remember any marked peculiarity in the woman's voice, more than in her manner. Still, there must have been something—if he could only recall it. So far as he could say, the woman had never been in the place before. She had given the name of Mrs. Bayneson, and an address, Deodar Crescent, Westbourne Grove. But no such street as Deodar Crescent existed in Westbourne Grove or its neighbourhood, and up to the time of Gaylor's arrival at headquarters no one of the name of Bayneson (spelled as the client of the Brownell Street pawnbroker spelled it) had been discovered. Of course, however, it was not to be supposed that a person disposing of Lady Hereward's property would give her true name and address; the police had not expected to find her by means of such a simple clue as that. Gaylor had been sent for, to tell whether his latest discoveries in the neighbourhood of Riding St. Mary would tend to throw light upon the mystery of the pawned vanity box.

Suddenly a blinding flash seemed to illumine the detective's brain. But the twilight of bewilderment could not thus have been made bright without the finding of the brown silk hairpin, and the conversation ​which had followed with Mrs. Barnard. Gaylor could have shouted with joy, for the inspiration he believed had come to him would but incriminate Ian Barr the more hopelessly. He adored himself for unearthing that precious hairpin, and for every question he had put to the farmer s wife. It was providential that the summons to London had not come two hours earlier.

"I'll tell you exactly who pawned that little gold box—if it is Lady Hereward's," said he to his superior. "It's the late wearer of that hairpin," and he took from his pocket a handkerchief, in an end of which he had carefully wrapped the trophy of the View Tower.

"That comes from the upper room of the place where Lady Hereward was murdered," he added, proud of the light of interest in the great man's eyes, which complimented the coup he was about to describe.

"I can tell you, too," Gaylor went on, "the first name of the woman: Liane."

The lady s maid who disappeared!"

Burrows remembered at once the connection which the name of Liane had already with the Hereward case. "By what line exactly do you reach that conclusion—for I see what's in your mind?"

Gaylor was only just assembling his battalion of deductions and arguments; but he responded promptly. "Why, in the first place, I know that the maid who took Liane s place was in the habit of using her ​mistress's hairpins when she wanted any. Although they didn't suit the colour of her hair, they saved expense and bother. All lady's maids, it seems, do the same thing, without thinking it dishonest. To how much greater extent would a French girl be likely to take advantage of any such little opportunities to save her purse and her legs, than a sturdy Englishwoman? Besides, when I first went down to Riding St. Mary, I once had the curiosity to get Liane described to me by Mrs. Barnard, my landlady. The girl had big black eyes she said, that looked all the blacker in contrast with the chestnut-coloured hair which she dressed very becomingly, and which many people thought bleached from a much darker shade. This sort of pin wouldn't be out of the way in chestnut hair, no matter how fastidious the young woman might be.

"Secondly, the cause of the open quarrel between Lady Hereward and Barr, was Liane. Lady Hereward accused him of flirting with the French girl, causing her to leave the place where she was valued and generously treated. The question in my mind up to now was, whether or no Lady Hereward was right; for apparently soon after Barr fell in love with Miss Verney, who is much handsomer than Liane, besides being a lady. However, a man can love two women at once, as has been proved times without number; and I begin to think that her ladyship knew what she was talking about. Barr certainly was in ​the habit of going to the View Tower, and maybe it was to meet Liane, who most likely dropped this hairpin on one of her last visits there. If he was in communication with her, and feared suspicion falling on him after the murder (we know he did fear that or he would not have got out of the way so smartly), what more natural than he should hand the jewels over to the girl—maybe confiding the whole story to her? No doubt he has ordered her to hang on to everything like grim death, or she would probably have pawned some of the things before this. But if she was in difficulties, she might have been tempted to get rid of this vanity box—the least remarkable piece in the lot. And the curious quality in the veiled woman's voice, which the assistant couldn't clearly remember, must have been a slight French accent, which she would have tried to disguise as best she could. And it would have been slight, as I believe Liane had lived a number of years in England. Friars' Moat wasn't her first place."

"You make your points," said Burrows.

"Another thing, if another was needed, to make me think the woman at the pawnbroker's must have been Liane," continued Gaylor, "is the name and address she gave. Now, I m fairly observant, I hope. I went down to Riding St. Mary on purpose to observe, and I observed a lot of little things which didn't seem to have any particular bearing on the case. They went in with the rest, like a 'mixed lot' at a sale. I noticed ​names of places and streets and people. Below the village, and the house Barr occupied as steward on the Friars' Moat estate, is a small house, a sort of cross between a villa and a cottage, standing in a garden on the highroad. Liane must have passed it constantly. It's called Deodar Lodge; and the man who lived there, up till a short time ago, was named Ernest Bayne—a writer for socialist papers, and an intimate friend of Ian Barr's. You see the likelihood, don't you, that a Frenchwoman—unused to pawnshops, afraid or being caught, yet nerved by necessity—would snatch at anything familiar that sprang into her head, when hearing that she was obliged to give name and address? The fact that she wasn't English herself would make her cautious to choose something she felt sure was quite English, lest she should make a mistake, and rouse suspicion. She suddenly found herself thinking of Bayne and Deodar Lodge; so she changed Bayne into Bayneson, unconscious that she'd hit upon a weird sort of combination. And as she's very likely living in lodgings in some Crescent, in Westbourne Grove, she tacked that on to her Deodar."

"That hangs together plausibly," said Burrows, pleased with the young man's building up of one deduction on another. "I suppose you think she's in Westbourne Grove because she went to a small place like Ebbitt's, of whose existence she wouldn't have known unless she'd happen to pass it."

​"Exactly," replied Gaylor.

"Can you get this Liane's photograph?"

"I shouldn't wonder if Mrs. Barnard of the Home Farm, or some one among the servants at Friars' Moat has it—if she ever had any taken; and it's likely she did, as she was said to be vain. Possibly she may have sat to the local photographer. In this case, he'll have the negative."

"When the girl disappeared some months ago, apparently neither Lady Hereward nor her husband applied to the police."

"No, I don't think they believed it a case for police interference. Lady Hereward may have said some hasty things to Barr, when she was in a rage with him, but there was no real idea that the French maid had met with foul play. Barr may have helped her with a little money, until after the murder, since when I should say he'd had his hands full—and perhaps his pockets empty. If supplies from him were stopped, that would account for the girl's pawning the vanity box."

"Of course we aren't absolutely certain yet that this thing's the one we've been after," remarked Burrows, indicating the little gold case in his desk. "It hasn't been identified by any one who knew Lady Hereward, though it answers the description. Unfortunately, there's nothing very distinctive about it. But Sir Ian Hereward arrives this evening, seven o'clock, Victoria ​Station. I thought of sending you to meet him; but the best thing you can do is to get on the track of Liane. Menzies can meet Sir Ian."

"My name isn't Gaylor if I don't find her by the time they've landed Barr at Dover," said the young detective, who was now in such good spirits that he couldn't resist the temptation to boast a little. "I think you can rely on me."

"You can have any help you want," suggested his superior.

Thank you, but I should like to do it on my own."

CHAPTER XXVI

Terry Ricardo was curiously anxious about Sir Ian.

Her anxiety amounted to a presentiment of evil; but what kind of evil she could not define.

The morning after her arrival with Nora Verney at St. Pierre de Chartreuse, he bade her good-bye, saying that he must return immediately to England. And she did not remind him that he had said, because of Major Smedley, he would remain at St. Pierre for a day or two longer.

Of course, everything was different now, on account of Ian Barr. Sir Ian did not say that Barr's fate had anything to do with his change of plan, but Terry was sure it had, just as much as it had to do with hers.

The annoyance that they had both suffered from Major Smedley's arrival appeared as nothing now, looked back upon after the sensational incident of the evening. It did not seem to matter much, somehow, Terry thought, what Major Smedley thought or did; so it could hardly be fear of trouble from that quarter which had altered Sir Ian's looks for the worse since the night before.

He had been haggard then, but he was more haggard now, and it was far truer of him to-day than it had been ​when the thought first came into her mind, that he had the air of a man haunted.

In saying farewell, his eyes lingered with a kind of anguished longing on Terry's face—the face that he had once pronounced "fascinating rather than beautiful"; the face whose resemblance he had been wont to seek in the old portrait at Riding Wood House.

"Why, you look at me as if we were never going to meet again!" she exclaimed, on a frightened impulse, as he wrung her hand.

"Perhaps we never shall," he answered. "One can't be sure, can one?"

"But I have promised Nora to go back to England at once," said Terry. "Fate is against my staying more than twenty-four hours at dear St. Pierre de Chartreuse, it seems. But never mind! I have seen the sweet little place again—and talked to you here. I shall have another good memory. And we shall meet in England soon. You know, Ian, I want to be your friend."

"I could never be your friend, Terry," he protested.

"Nonsense! You said 'nonsense' to me once. I say it to you now. Please tell me where you will be in England. Not at——"

"Friars' Moat? Oh, no! I can't bear the thought of the place. I don't know where I shall go."

"Oh, how dreary not to know! You have many friends, who must have asked you to their houses ​because they wanted you to be with them, and let them comfort you."

"No one can comfort me."

"Not yet. But by and by it will be different. Won't you stay with some friends—near Riding St. Mary?"

"I couldn't do that. I think I shall go straight to a London hotel."

"Which one? I want to know," Terry persisted, "because I might wish to write to you."

His face brightened faintly. "Would you write to me?" he asked. "I—should like to have a letter from you."

"What about?" Terry inquired, smiling.

"Anything! Just to hear from you. To have a letter."

"You shall have one," she assured him. "As good a letter as I know how to write. The letter of a friend to a friend."

"Will you write it on the boat, or in the train between Dover and London, and post it when you get to town?" Sir Ian pleaded anxiously.

"Why on the boat or in the train?"

"Because I should like to have the thoughts almost warm from your hand, when they reach me."

"I could write it after arriving in London, if you want them so very fresh."

"No," said Sir Ian. "Please post the letter ​immediately on your arrival. I might be gone from the address I shall give you, if you didn't do that."

"Very well," Terry consented, "I will post it immediately, or send it by messenger."

Thank you with all my heart for the promise. Address me at Harland's Hotel, Charles Street, Pall Mall."

"I never heard of it," said Terry. "Is it a new hotel, since my day?"

"No, it's very old, I believe. But it's small and insignificant. Comparatively few people know of its existence. It's not a very bright or gay place; but for that reason it will suit me the better now. And you? Shall you go to Mrs. Ricardo?"

"I am not sure," Terry replied. "I haven't talked it over with Nora yet; but as I've taken charge of her for the present, I must arrange for her welfare. I expected to have stopped over here longer, and there seemed plenty of time to settle about the future. Now there's none. I think of wiring Maud to ask if she will invite Nora to White Fields. I'm almost sure that if I do, she will. Meanwhile, though, I may put up at an hotel in town for a night or two."

"Don't," Sir Ian said quickly. "I hope you won't do that."

She looked surprised. "Why? Are you so old-fashioned that you dislike the thought of women being in a hotel alone?"

​"No—yes," he answered disjointedly. "Couldn't you promise not to stop in town, but to go at once to the country?"

Bewildered, Terry replied that, to please him, she would do as he suggested, if she possibly could, though she was unable to imagine what his reason could be.

"You'll hear later," he began, then changed his sentence. "I will give you my reason later," he amended. "I know I've no right to dictate, or even to ask a favour but if you would do me this last one——"

"This last one?" she echoed.

"I mean," and he smiled faintly, "that I'll try not to ask others."

Terry lightly responded that she liked her friends to ask favours of her, and took it as a compliment. But when Sir Ian had gone, and she tried to analyze the anxious feeling she had, these words of his, and other somewhat strange expressions he had used in their conversation, came back to her.

She and Nora Verney did not leave St. Pierre de Chartreuse till that night, twelve hours after Sir Ian Hereward. They shared a compartment in a wagon lit, but neither slept. The mind of each was tenanted, almost to the exclusion of other thoughts, by the image of a man; and the two men were of the same blood and the same name.

"Why doesn't he want me to stop for even one night ​in London, where he will be?" Terry asked herself. She wondered if it could possibly be on account of Major Smedley, who chose to take his departure from St. Pierre de Chartreuse at the hour when Sir Ian went; but she could scarcely believe it was because of the old mischief-maker. London was a large place. Even Major Smedley could not find fault with them for being in London at the same time; and in any case he could say no worse things than he was prepared to say now.

At Paris Nora was so ill with a terrible nervous headache that Terry feared congestion of the brain for the girl. It was not possible to go on; so, thinking of Sir Ian and the letter he would be expecting, she telegraphed him that she was unavoidably delayed. "Will wire again after seeing doctor, when we shall be able to start," she added.

Next day Nora was better, and, though very weak, insisted that she was able to travel, grew feverish at the suggestion of being detained longer, and at last forced the French doctor, called in by Miss Ricardo, to consent to her wish with a shrug of the shoulders. "She may grow worse if we compel her to wait. She is a true woman," he said to Terry, with the smile of a much-enduring, much-experienced medical man.

Accordingly, the girl had her way, and they left Paris on the eleven o'clock train. Terry was by this time almost as anxious to get on as Nora herself, ​though she had tried conscientiously to resign herself to the necessity of stopping. She wired again to Sir Ian, and thought of him continually, with the same heavy presentiment of—she knew not what. Again and again she accused herself of foolish superstition, but she could not put away the feeling that he was calling to her. It was as if she could hear his voice crying out of a great darkness, "Terry! Terry! Good-bye!"

Any observant person, a student of life and human character, would have noticed the two travellers with a particular interest, sharpened to curiosity. An unobservant person would merely have seen a young woman and a girl journeying together; the woman gracious and distinguished in appearance, with supreme charm of individuality; the girl brilliantly beautiful, with cheeks like roses and blue eyes like stars. He would have seen that they were well but simply dressed, that they did not trouble to talk to each other much, though they seemed on friendly terms, and that both were rather tired of travelling, or impatient to reach England. The observant person, however, would have seen far more. He would have seen that the woman's pallor and the girl's roses were caused by the same almost unbearable anxiety; that their quiet manner was retained only by desperate efforts at self-control. He would have guessed that each wished to hide her excitement from the other, and that they ​talked little because there was a tabooed subject, to which each one gave her whole thought. He would have guessed at a moving romance or tragedy which shaped the lives of both, and drew them toward a common goal.

By this time Ian Barr was in England, and Nora's great desire was to find out what had happened to him there. Her own conduct was to be determined by Sir Ian Hereward's. Her Ian would be silent to the end, whatever it might be, she was only too sure. But if Sir Ian Hereward kept silence, she would not. She would speak, even though the breaking of her promise meant the end of Ian's love.

"They shan't kill him—they shan't kill him!" the panting of the engine said for her, in train and boat.

She could hardly wait to get to Dover, because there they would see the evening papers. There might be news of some sort, good or bad, in them. She felt there would be news. Big black headlines danced before her eyes: "Sir Ian Hereward Confesses to the Murder of his Wife." And, as a hideous alternative: "Evidence Piles Up Against Ian Barr. Damaging Statements by Sir Ian Hereward."

What if, with the best will in the world to break her promise, to tell all the truth as she had told it to Sir Ian, his word should be believed against hers, with ​Ian Barr silent, refusing to corroborate her, refusing to defend himself at Sir Ian's expense.

The girl shivered as if with ague, when this thought crawled into her mind, cold and sly as an adder. It might be so! It might be so! She would want to kill Sir Ian. But that would not save her lover. Perhaps nothing could save him, after all.

CHAPTER XXVII

"Evening papers! Standard! Globe!" called a shrill little voice along the platform at Dover, where the long train was filling with passengers from the Channel boat.

Terry was dominated by her vague fears for Sir Ian, and she did not realize that the evening papers might be of unusual importance to her or Nora Verney. She was thinking what she should say in her letter to Sir Ian, which she intended to begin as soon as she was settled in her place in the train. She had a stylographic pen and writing-case in her dressing-bag, and was anxious to put her thoughts on paper. She meant to say kind and cheering things to Sir Ian; and to save delay she would send the letter by messenger from somewhere near Victoria.

A porter put the ladies small luggage into a first-class carriage, spreading it about, as clever porters will, in the hope of keeping out other passengers.

"Come, Nora," said Terry. "He's got our places. Would you like tea?"

But Nora did not move or answer, because she did not hear. She had bought a paper and was standing on the platform, in everybody's way, eagerly reading ​something on the middle page. Terry had to touch the girl on the arm to rouse her. Then she started and, crumpling the paper in her hand followed Miss Ricardo to the door of their compartment with a bewildered air.

"What is the matter?" Terry asked, when the porter was paid and dismissed.

"The paper," said Nora dazedly. "They've found Liane, and arrested he—this morning."

"Oh!" cried Terry, with a quickening of her tired pulses. "Arrested her? Does that mean—will it save your Ian?"

"I don't know," answered Nora. "Perhaps I'm stupid. But I can't see that it will help him much. Please read, and tell me what you think."

Forgetting the letter which she had been so eager to begin, Terry took the paper from Nora's hand. It was open at the middle, most important page, and in the most conspicuous position appeared two columns under a sensationally large double heading:

"Another Startling Development in the Hereward Murder Mystery. Pawning of the Lost 'Vanity Box.' Arrest of Vanished French Maid. Her Extraordinary Confession."

The blood began to knock at Terry Ricardo's temples. She plunged into the news as Nora had, oblivious of everything else, as the girl had been. Nora watched her anxiously, as she read on.

​Liane Rodache had been found by the "smart young detective, Gaylor," living in lodgings in Moreton Crescent, Westbourne Grove, and arrested on suspicion of complicity in the murder of Lady Hereward. She had confessed to pawning the gold vanity box which had led to her discovery; and it had been identified by Sir Ian Hereward on his return from France, as the property of his late wife. Liane had been run to earth by Gaylor with the help of a photograph made at Havershall, Surrey, although her appearance had greatly changed since the portrait was taken. Her hair, auburn formerly, had been allowed to resume its natural dark brown. Her complexion was sallow, rather than brilliant, as it had been. She was thin to the point of emaciation, and showed signs of having passed through a severe illness. Her story was elaborate, and if true, exonerated Barr from one charge, at least; that made against him by Lady Hereward. Denying that Barr had ever been her lover, Liane accused his intimate friend, a young socialist author and newspaper writer, named Ernest Bayne, late of Deodar Lodge, near Riding St. Mary.

This young man had French blood in his veins. His mother, a French girl of good birth, had married an English commercial traveller, who, losing his position through illness, had become impoverished during the son's boyhood. The youth had been clever, had conquered many difficulties, and succeeded as ​a writer. When about twenty-four, two or three years before the meeting with Liane, he had brought his mother, an invalid, to live in the country, taking Deodar Lodge which was then to let. Political opinions had drawn the two young men together, and they became intimate friends. Liane had made Bayne's acquaintance one day in the train, on the way to London, where she had to carry out a commission for Lady Hereward. The French girl had been late and would have missed her train, if Bayne had not opened the door of his compartment and pulled her in. They had conversed in French, and from that day were on the most friendly terms, though their acquaintance was kept secret, even from Barr. Later, however, Barr had found it out by accident. Bayne was ill, and Liane, anxious for news of him, called one evening to make inquiries at his house, though forbidden to go there, as he was not proud of his engagement to a girl in service, no matter how fascinating. Barr was looking after his friend, and had opened the door. Liane knowing of their intimacy, excused her anxiety by saying that she was engaged to Ernest Bayne. Afterward Bayne had denied the engagement; but Barr had strongly advised him to be brave and keep it, since they loved each other. A difference of opinion had somewhat disturbed the friendship, and Liane had several times called after dark, at the steward's to tell him of her troubles, and beg him to use all his ​influence with Ernest. Before this time Ernest's mother died and when he suddenly left Deodar Lodge, without warning Liane of his intention, she implored Ian Barr to say where his friend had gone; but, apparently with reluctance, he refused, pleading that to do so would be a betrayal of confidence. Certain that he corresponded with Bayne, Liane went to the steward's cottage when she knew he was out, and making a hurried search in his unlocked desk, found a letter to Barr from her lover. Forgetting to look first at the address, she read how a small fortune and a little estate in the country had been left by an aunt provided he took for his wife a distant cousin, whom she had practically adopted as her daughter. Ernest had seen the girl, liked her, and married her immediately, only letting his friend know when it was too late to give advice or reprove him about Liane.

While the girl was in the act of looking at an enclosed photograph of a pretty young woman, and before she had made sure of Ernest's address in France, Barr had come in and found her with the letter in her hand. He had taken it from her, and in pity for her despair had refrained from reproaches, and said it was too late to do anything now. Ernest was married and no good could come of reprisals.

Liane listened as if convinced, but though there were no promises of marriage in the letter she had, there were enough professions of love to distress the ​bride if they could be brought to her eyes. Revenge of some sort Liane was determined to have, and though the letter had been taken away before she had time to fix the address in her mind, she knew that Ernest's property was in the district of Loire, and felt sure she could find him, if only she had plenty of money to carry her through the search. Unfortunately she had been extravagant, and had saved little or nothing. Desperate, the idea came to her that she might get leave for a day from Lady Hereward, take a diamond chain of her mistress's to London and have the stones replaced with paste. The brilliants were cut in such a way that they could easily be copied, and soon after Liane had fifty pounds in her possession. Lady Hereward's manner, however, changed toward her at the time, or she fancied it did; and, her guilty conscience making her fear that her mistress might be planning to have her arrested, she determined to "disappear," instead of giving a week's notice as she had intended. Arrived in France, she was not able after all to find Bayne, who had perhaps taken a French name, to put her off the track, in case she pursued him. Some of her money was stolen in a hotel, and the rest she spent in vain searchings for Ernest. Eventually she was driven to pawn her clothes, and, at the end of her tether at last, she tried to end her life with a dose of laudanum. She took too much, however, and recovered to find herself very ill in a hospital at Blois. ​One of the doctors interested in her case (she having given a false name) believed that she had well-to-do relatives in England, and lent her money to buy a third-class ticket.

After reaching London she had but a shilling left, and started to walk the thirty miles to Riding St. Mary, hoping to sleep in a barn on the way, and expecting to get help from Barr at the end of the journey. On the way, between Havershall and Riding St. Mary, she was amazed and overjoyed to see Ernest Bayne on a bicycle. Standing directly in his path, she motioned him to stop, and he did so before recognizing her, changed as she was. Rather than make a scene and have her "go screaming after him," he listened to the story of her sufferings, pretended remorse, excused himself as well as he could, and said that, as he now loved his wife, he would do anything rather than she should hear of his treachery to another woman, one "so much below him socially." He had heard from Barr (who had by this time resigned his stewardship and gone away) that "Liane had disappeared," otherwise he would not have ventured to return to Surrey, necessary as it was that he should settle various matters and try to sublet Deodar Lodge. He admitted that he was on his way to the house, which was in charge of a caretaker, and swore to Liane that if she would "forgive and forget," and burn his letters, he would make her a present of three thousand ​francs. Liane said that she would remain in the neighbourhood till she got the money, which he promised to give her as soon as he received three months' rent in advance for the furnished villa, which he expected to have next day, from a man who wanted the house. Ernest wanted her to go back to London, but when she refused, he suggested her staying at the old View Tower, where she could remain secretly, and would not be too uncomfortable for a short time.

The Tower had been a favourite trysting-place with them in the days of their love-making, when Ernest—a socialist only in name—had been ashamed of his humble sweetheart. He had taken a key lent by Sir Ian Hereward to Barr, who supposed that he had mislaid it, had it copied, and returned the old key to Barr's cottage. Often Liane had met him there, and they had talked of future plans (which Ernest probably never meant to carry out) sitting in the upper room; and he still had the copy of the original key. Having persuaded Liane to lodge there for one night, he left her in the shelter of the woods, cycled to Deodar Lodge, found the key, took her to the Tower, and as it was then evening, told her he would come next day with the money. She in her turn promised not to show herself for his sake, because of the talk there had been after her disappearance; but in reality she was anxious not to be seen on her own account, fearing Lady Hereward had discovered the substitution of the ​paste for diamonds. Ernest brought food, when he brought the key, but Liane felt too tired and ill to eat, after her weary two days' tramp, in broiling weather.

The next morning passed, however, and Ernest did not appear. Nevertheless Liane did not despair, as he had seemed sincerely repentant, and warned her that there might be some delay in obtaining cash, if he received a cheque for the furniture. Lying on the old couch in the upper room of the Tower, just under the roof, Liane had felt "too tired after her two days' march to care what had happened." Exhausted and faint for lack of food, she slept a good deal, expecting that Ernest would put off coming till after dark. Suddenly she started up from a doze, on hearing two shots, one after the other. They had sounded very close, though she could not be sure whether they had been fired in the Tower or outside. She was so frightened, and her heart thumped so terribly that she was unable to move for a few minutes; but at last she could bear the suspense no longer, and summoned up courage to go downstairs and see what had happened.

After the shots which waked her, she had heard nothing; but the window of the upper room, unlike that on the first floor of the Tower, was unbroken, and closed, therefore she knew that there might have been sounds which failed to reach her ears.

She descended cautiously, and at the foot of the stairs saw the door of the room on the ground floor slightly ​open. This surprised her; for she had tried it before going up to the top of the Tower the night before, and it was then locked. She peeped in, and was horrified to see the dead body of Lady Hereward lying at full length, with a pool of blood on the floor at her side. At first, Liane's only thought was to get away from so terrible a sight; but "something seemed to speak in her brain," reminding her of the beautiful jewelry Lady Hereward was in the habit of wearing. She assured herself it was not unlikely (as afterward proved to be the case) that Ernest intended to play her false. If he did, she would be penniless. Since Lady Hereward was certainly dead, and would never again want her jewels, it would not be like stealing to take them; and the person who killed her, whoever it was, would be suspected of the robbery.

Then Liane had tip-toed into the Tower, had tremulously taken Lady Hereward's rings, her brooch, and a bracelet, finding the body still quite warm. On the point of going away, she had spied a bead bag, and a gold case which "Miladi called her 'vanity box' lying on the table, with a rolled-up pair of gray suede gloves. In the bead bag was a little gold chain purse containing four sovereigns and several shillings. Liane put this purse and the vanity box into her pocket, with the jewelry, but of course she had no reason to touch a revolver which she saw lying on the floor. It was a small revolver, and Liane had seen it at Mr. ​Barr's some months before she left Friars' Moat. He had said, when she remarked it, that he had promised his mother, before her death, to keep a weapon of some sort always loaded in the house while living in the country. Once during the mother's lifetime, a thief had broken in, during the night. She had never quite got over the fright she suffered then, and because of it she exacted the promise from her son.

Having secured the jewels and money, panic overtook Liane, and leaving the door ajar as she had found it, she hurried away very fast, in spite of her exhaustion. In order not to be seen, she kept always to the shelter of the woods, selecting little by-paths, and met no one. An idea came to her that she might call at Deodar Lodge, and see if Ernest was there, or had been there, but she dared not, lest some one should catch her coming out of the forest.

She walked a very long distance, she did not know exactly how far, but at last had the courage to show herself in the village of Defford, and go to the railway-station.

The people she passed paid no particular attention to her, and she grew braver. She took a ticket to London, and went to Westbourne Grove, because she had had lodgings there before; but she did not venture back to the same street. She went to a house in Morton Crescent, where she saw a bedroom with attendance advertised, and gave the name of Madame Ernest. ​She told the landlady that she was married to an English husband, a commercial traveller, who was away from her at present on business. She had paid, with Lady Hereward's money, for a week in advance, and the next morning had got her luggage from Charing Cross Station where she had left it on arriving in England some days before. When she read the paper, and saw what a sensation Lady Hereward's death had made, she was afraid to sell the jewelry, even the stones picked out of their gold settings, as she had intended to do. She lived on the money remaining of the four sovereigns, paying her lodgings in advance, by request, until all was gone. Then she resolved to pawn the little gold case, which was so like many others of its kind that she hoped it would not be remarked.

This, then, was the story of Liane Rodache, and the finding of the vanity box.

CHAPTER XXVIII

"Well" Nora Verney asked in a choked voice, when she saw that Miss Ricardo had read to the end of the two columns. "Will this help or harm him?"

The train had started, though the two women had been almost unconscious of slamming doors and the confusion of departure.

"Let me think," said Terry, still forgetful of the letter to Sir Ian, which by this time should have been begun.

"It was wicked of Liane to say that about the revolver," Nora exclaimed, unable to obey. "After all he had done for her, to say that it was his, when she might so easily have kept that to herself. No one would have supposed she knew anything about it, if she hadn't volunteered the information. And—yet——"

She checked herself suddenly, biting her lip. It had been on the tip of her tongue to say: "Since Liane saw the revolver lying on the ground, after Ian and I had gone away from the Tower, that ought to prove he wasn't the murderer."

She had forgotten, for an instant, that Terry did not know what Sir Ian had known, since his last night at ​St. Pierre de Chartreuse. But in the shock of remembering, Nora remembered something else as well—something which she, in common with all the world, had known since the first day of the inquest. No revolver had been found lying beside Lady Hereward's body, by the police. The murderer, who had thrown it down where Liane had seen it, must have returned later, taken the weapon, and hidden it.

There was only one name in her mind which coupled itself with murderer. She pictured Sir Ian going back to the Tower, where his dead wife lay staring into eternity, bending down over her to pick up the revolver—blood-stained, maybe—and hiding it where (Nora had read only yesterday in a French quotation from a London daily) Gaylor the detective had lately discovered it: thrust deep down in a rabbit-hole.

"Perhaps he had just decency enough in him not to want Ian suspected of his crime," she thought, "since it seems it really was Ian's revolver. And yet, if he didn't deliberately throw suspicion upon Ian to spare himself, why choose Ian's revolver?"

Her brain worked quickly, following the line of this question. How came Sir Ian to have the weapon? Had he actually taken it from Ian's house, long ago, meditating the murder, when opportunity should arise? Yet that could hardly be, she thought, remembering words which she had heard, trembling icily in the first-floor room of the Tower, that hot afternoon in June.

​No. Here was a mystery she could not solve. Perhaps Ian Barr could solve it. But she would not be allowed to ask him. If Sir Ian Hereward continued to screen himself behind his incredible cowardice, she would have to speak. Yet speaking might create some new danger for Ian which she could not foresee, while such mysteries as this of the revolver existed even for her. She remembered the inquest, and shuddered at the thought of cross-examination. If she should ruin Ian, while sacrificing his love to save him?

"I think Liane's arrest must do Mr. Barr's case good," said Terry at last. "Of course, they may think she made up this tale about Ernest Bayne to help the man she really loves—don't look like that, dear! The truth can surely be proved. But if he's got blood in his veins, Bayne will come forward now, to exonerate his friend, who so nobly kept silence to spare an innocent girl from dreadful sorrow. There ought to be a great revulsion of feeling in Mr. Barr's favour. He is a loyal friend!"

"He is indeed!" answered Nora. "More loyal than you know," she added in a whisper drowned in the roaring of the train.

So they talked on, and Terry found no chance during the journey to write her letter to Sir Ian. Excited by the news of Liane s arrest, and by the discussion of probabilities with Nora, she lost sight of the importance which, till the moment of entering the train, ​she had attached to finishing the promised letter between Dover and London. The moment, however, that she stepped out at Victoria Station, it came back to her again, more pressingly than before. She had a sharp sense of guilt and treachery in having let the opportunity pass by.

To be sure, she could stop at a District Messenger Office, scribble a few lines and send them off to Sir Ian's obscure hotel; but that would not be at all the same thing to him. He would know that she wrote in a hurry, that she had put him off because she had been thinking of some one or something else, until too late to carry out her promise fully. She could put no such "thoughts" as he had begged for into a hastily scribbled note.

Never in her life had Terry Ricardo failed a friend. This man whom she now called "friend" had failed her, as few men have failed women once loved; but all the more for that reason, perhaps, would she not fail him in return. What a base, even common, thing was revenge! Women like poor Liane Rodache took revenge upon men who had injured them. The Teresina Ricardos of this world acted otherwise.

Yet, what could she do? Terry asked herself.

She had kept her word to Sir Ian, about remaining in London, and had telegraphed to Maud, begging an invitation for Nora Verney. The invitation had promptly come back by wire. Then, from Paris, ​Terry had been obliged to send off news of Nora's illness and consequent delay. This morning, in the haste of getting off, after the doctor's grudging permission, Terry had neglected to telegraph again, and Maud would not be looking for them to-night. She would expect to hear once more.

This, if they liked to take it so, would give Terry and Nora an excuse to remain in London after all; and Nora did wish it ardently. She had a dozen wild plans, one of which was to enlist some famous barrister on Ian Barr's side. She wanted to see one, the first thing in the morning. Would not Miss Ricardo be very good to her, and consent to stay the night in town?

This request gave Terry a new idea, at which she grasped eagerly. It seemed to her that she might go herself to Sir Ian's hotel, and speak to him. He was almost sure to be in, waiting for her letter, since he had appeared so anxious to receive it at the earliest moment, and she had half promised to send it to him by messenger. If she saw Sir Ian she could explain how she had failed to write, and surely he would rather see her, than have "thoughts" warm from her hand, set down on paper? Besides, she could tell him of Nora's wish, and ask him for the girl's sake to absolve her of her promise.

"At any rate, we will go to Brown's hotel and dine," she said to Nora. "I used always to be taken there as a very young girl, if we came up to town, and it's quiet, ​I know. You must rest, and have something to eat before another journey, even a very short one, for you've scarcely touched anything to-day, and you begin to look white as a ghost. I will take you to Brown's, and then consult a friend about staying the night, or going on. Afterward I can telephone Maud, one way or the other, to White Fields, and if necessary, we can go down by the nine-fifty train."

"Why should it be necessary, dear Miss Ricardo?" Nora complained. But Terry did not answer.

They went straight to Brown's, and as Nora refused to dine without Terry, they had a hasty dinner immediately on arriving in a private sitting-room which Miss Ricardo engaged. There she left the girl surrounded with all the "extras" and "extra specials" obtainable, while she flashed off to Charles Street in a taxicab.

CHAPTER XXIX

It was true, as Sir Ian Hereward had said, that Harland's Hotel had no air of brightness or gaiety.

If the swift motion of the motor-cab, and the exciting thought that she was about to see Ian, had lifted for a few moments the load of oppression from Terry's breast, she felt the weight again, heavy and mysterious, as she stopped in front of the grim, unwelcoming facade.

The house had the look of an old private mansion turned into a hotel. The door was closed, and there was no smiling porter to fling it open as the cab drew up at the pavement. Terry pushed an electric bell; and somehow, as she touched it, the memory of her call at Friars' Moat swept suddenly over her, making her feel faint, almost sick. She had rung at the door then, and asked for Lady Hereward, who at that moment was lying dead in the View Tower. The footman had said "her ladyship was out, lunching at Riding Wood." Now, she would ask for Sir Ian. What would the answer be?

After a long moment, a discreet elderly servant came to the hotel door. Terry's voice sounded strangely in her ears, as she inquired if Sir Ian Hereward was in. The old man did not seem to notice ​anything peculiar, however, and she was glad. He replied sedately that he would find out; but Terry was sure, from the reserved expression of the pinched face, that he knew Sir Ian to be in the hotel.

She followed the lean figure to the door of a moderate-sized reception-room, furnished clumsily in mahogany of mid-Victorian date. Though it was a warm July night, the crimson rep curtains were drawn, and there was a stuffy smell of ancient upholstery in the air.

"How can Ian choose such a place to stay?" she wondered, with the irritation of growing nervousness. If she had known the reason it would not have allayed her anxiety. Sir Ian was here because he had first met the woman who was to be his wife in this house. It had seemed suitable to him to return here now.

"What name, madam, if the gentleman is in?" the servant wished to know.

Terry started slightly. Ian would not like her to send up her name, which had figured beside his in the newspapers of late.

"Tell him that the friend who was to have written him a letter this evening, was obliged to call instead, and is anxious to see him for a few moments," said Terry, slightly emphasizing the last words, lest Sir Ian should think she meant to pay a long visit.

"Very well, madam."

The old man moved a few papers and magazines ​on a white marble centre table, indicating occupation for the lady during his absence; and to humour him Terry sat down on the alleged easy-chair which he pulled into place. The gas lights in a huge gilt chandelier throbbed over her head, blazing in white globes; and a mirror in a gilt frame, over a hideously draped mantel, reflected the inappropriately graceful figure of the woman, as she subsided into the arm-chair by the table. Terry could observe her own image in this glass, as she sat mechanically turning the pages of an old Illustrated London News, and the crude overhead light was singularly unbecoming. It threw heavy shadows, and made hollows and lines where none existed. "I look as if I were dying," she said to herself; and then, glancing down at the open page, she started to see a portrait of Lady Hereward, as she had been many years ago, when Terry knew her first.

Involuntarily she drew her breath in sharply; and a sound at the door caused her to look up, as if guiltily.

"Ian!" she exclaimed, springing to her feet. As she rose, an inadvertent push sent the newspaper off the table to the floor. It fell as she had opened it. Both stooped confusedly to pick it up, and Sir Ian saw his wife's picture.

"Oh, God, Terry!" he cried out, as he had cried to her that first day, when she had gone to his house and asked for the woman who lay dead in the woods.

She snatched the paper from him. "It opened ​like that," she stammered. "I didn't mean—but you know, Ian, I had to come and see you. We must talk, just for a few minutes. Have you a private sitting-room? If you have, take me there. We can't talk here. People may be coming and going."

"Very well," he said, in a dull, almost conventional tone, not unlike that of the servant who had called him to her. His eyes were dull, too. There was no light of joy in them kindled at sight of her.

"Oughtn't I to have come?" she asked, suddenly embarrassed. "Are you sorry I have come?"

"No, no," he said. "I am surprised, that's all. I am—thinking what to do."

"I know what to do. Take me out of this room to some other," she said, her voice quivering with the nervousness she had been restraining all day. She glanced at him anxiously. Perhaps it only was the crude light, as it had been with her, but he, too, looked ill, ill enough to die.

"If you won't mind," he answered apologetically. "I have a sitting-room on this floor—not far off. Only I've been writing letters in it all day. Papers are scattered everywhere."

"As if it mattered!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Ian, if you don't take me at once—if I have to stop in this awful room one more instant, I believe I shall have hysterics."

Alarmed at her loss of that gracious self-control, ​

"To humour him Terry sat down
on the alleged easy-chair which he pulled
into place"

​characteristic of her, something of his old manner came back. He guided her quickly along the corridor, and opened a door.

Thank Heaven, there was not so much light here, though the room was ugly enough. Terry sighed with relief in the dimness that toned soberly with olive-green walls and curtains.

"I think it was partly the horrid crimson in there, which got on my nerves. Blood colour!" she said with a little shiver; then regretted her words, and was stabbed by the answering look of pain in Sir Ian's death-weary face.

"Oh, Ian, whatever I do and say to-night seems wrong," she cried impulsively. "But my heart is right, and it brought me here to you. It has been all to-day and yesterday exactly as if you were calling me. I could hear your voice."

"The voice of my soul has been calling you," he said. "Yet I would not have brought you here to me, in body. I am not quite so selfish as that."

"If you had not wanted me—or needed me—your soul would not have called, nor mine answered as it has."

They looked at each other. Spirit spoke to spirit, from her eyes to his, from his again to hers. She read his thought, as she might have counted shells far down under water, clear as glass.

"I know now why you asked me to write you, as a last favour, and not to stop a night in London. You ​were going to kill yourself," she said. "Isn't that true, Ian?"

"Yes," he answered. "It was the only thing to do."

"If you kill yourself, then you kill me also. For if you take your life I shall take mine. I have borne a good deal, but I couldn't bear that. I wouldn't even try to bear it."

"You don't know what you are saying, Terry!"

"Ah, yes, I know!"

"But you don't, I tell you, because you believe you are speaking to an innocent man. You are not. I am guilty of Millicent's death. In the sight of God I am her murderer."

"Ian!"

"You see! You did not know. Now you do know—you'll give me my freedom!"

"Not to die."

"To die, because by dying I can atone."

Terry shook her head. She hoped that he had merely worked himself up to a belief in his own guilt, through nights and days of torture beyond physical and mental endurance. But she felt that everything depended upon her, in this crisis. If God kept her brave and strong—above all, very calm—she might save him. But through God alone, she told herself with inward trembling, could she know how to do and say only the right things, now.

"Help me, God!" she prayed. "Thou hast ​sent me to him for a purpose. Help me to carry it out, whatever it may be."

"One doesn't atone so easily," she said aloud. "You hurt me once, dreadfully, Ian. I have got over that—won past it. Surely you wouldn't hurt me so much more cruelly, in the end? What have I done to you that you should?"

"That is all but the most terrible part of it. You have done nothing," he groaned. "I thought always that you had, till that day—the day of her death. Then she confessed. I knew the truth for the first time—the truth about you in the past."

"She—confessed? Oh, but, Ian, it's the weaker side of me that questions you! What does the past really matter, between you and me?" Terry spoke so gently that her words, as they fell, were like balm. Yet for some wounds there is no balm.

The past came up that day between my wife and me—and killed her," Sir Ian answered. He turned to the table under a green-shaded gas lamp, and pointed to a quantity of sheets of paper, closely covered with his fine, rather scholarly handwriting. "I was writing out my statement," he went on. "You will be surprised, perhaps, that I didn't do it at once—after her death. But—Terry, until a few days ago I thought it more than possible that Ian Barr was guilty. I loved the fellow and wanted to save him."

​"I saw that, at the inquest," she half whispered in her suspense and the anguish of her great sympathy.

"I wasn't sure what had happened. If I had told all, I couldn't have saved him unless he were able to produce an alibi; for, with circumstantial evidence strong against him, nothing I had to say could prove his innocence. And, as I said, I thought, in a passion of rage against her he might have—caused her death. Afterward, I could guess by what I suffered myself, he would have repented bitterly, when it was too late. Will you read my statement, Terry? You will see that, though I had to refer to the past, to explain what occurred between my wife and me, I didn't bring in your name."

"It wouldn't have mattered to me if you had, dear Ian," she answered. "And besides, if you had told everything it would perhaps only make things better instead of worse for me, after the stories Major Smedley has spread, and is spreading."

"The beast!" Ian muttered. "But, because of him, this confession of mine has not cost me what it would if there were no such person as Smedley to be reckoned with. If people name the woman I have referred to in my statement, putting two and two together, from Smedley s tattle, I think it can do you no harm. Will you read?"

"I would rather hear it all from your lips, letting ​the story come in talk between us now," she answered, "unless you want me to read."

"I will tell you, then," he said. "I meant to write you a separate letter, the—last thing of all; posting it myself, so it shouldn't be found here. And don't think I should have left your letter, if you had written it, for other eyes to see. I would have——"

"Don't talk about what you would have done!" she begged. That's all over now. You have changed your mind for the better."

"If I had changed, it would not be for the better," he insisted. "When you hear all, Terry, it is you who will change. You'll admit, if you are as brave and frank as you always were, that if atonement is possible for me, it can only be through quitting this world. My confession, with what Nora Verney knows and can tell, will save Ian Barr. There can be no possible doubt of that—no fear of ultimate danger for him, or for this unfortunate Liane. Nora and Ian will be happy together, and forget their black days. I have made my will, and left Friars' Moat to him, as is only fair, considering his parentage, since I die without children. To you I've given nothing which can be put in a will, Terry. Yet I leave you my undying worship. It was yours unwaveringly, even when I believed you cruel and faithless. I could not take it from you. And it must live, it seems to me, even when I am in my grave. When I have finished the confession—it's ​almost done—and told you what's in it, on my soul I believe you will bid me God speed out of this world."

Tell me, then, and let me judge," Terry said, with the calmness which can dominate the soul only in supreme moments. "Sit down by me, on this sofa, and I will listen quietly, I promise."

She had felt in danger of collapsing, but she showed no sign of weakness. When they sat facing each other on the sofa, she held out her hand to him, as if to make a bridge of sympathy between their spirits; but he would not take it. "I'm not worthy of that sign of your trust," he said. "You would perhaps be sorry and drop my hand as the story went on. I couldn't bear it. It would be a sword in my heart—and, though I deserve the sword, I don't want the thrust to come from you. I told you that in God's sight I was guilty of her murder and I am."

"Begin at the beginning of the story. That is not the way," Terry said, with the gentle firmness which calmed him.

Sir Ian reflected for a moment. "I think the beginning of the story is at Mrs. Forestier's lunch. She told us you were in England, and that Maud was planning to bring you to call, as a surprise to us both. Millicent looked as if it wouldn't be an entirely agreeable surprise to her; and, Terry, it was far from agreeable to me. I worshipped you in spite of myself. I'd fought against that worship for thirteen years ​and more, because—because—but I'll come to the reason later. I won't say more about it now.

"Millicent and I were going to walk home. She refused Nina's offer to send us back. She wanted to walk, she said; and when we'd left the house, she explained that she had something to tell me. When she added that it was very hard to tell, and I saw that she looked pale and distressed, I asked if it couldn't wait till another time, as we had to go home to see you and Maud. No, she answered, the thing must be said before we saw you. Then she suggested that we should walk by way of the Tower. She would be thinking over all the details of a story she had to tell, and the plateau of the Tower would be a good place to tell it, for it was so quiet there, one never need be afraid of meeting anybody.

"She was sometimes a little moody and morbid, so I didn't pay very great attention to her forebodings, even when she said that perhaps when I'd heard all I would hate her. She often asked me to repeat that I was really fond of her, making me say it over and over, and I could do so with truth. I'd never made any pretence from the first, of loving her as a man ought to love his wife, but I was genuinely fond of her, and the rest couldn't be helped—as she'd known long ago, from the day we first spoke of marrying. She was staying in this hotel with her mother then. It is where I met her first. Now you know why I'm here now.

​"When we got to the Tower she looked horribly tired. I never saw her look so tired, but she said it was the heat, and she would be better after she had told me everything. She sat down on a seat—a seat made out of a log, and I stood close by. Neither of us dreamed that there was any one in the Tower, yet there—in the upper room, we now know, lay Liane asleep. And in the room on the first floor were Barr and Nora Verney."

"Ian! They were there!"

"Yes. Nora told me at St. Pierre that she and Barr had heard everything. That is why he left England, rather than bear witness against me; for there's just one thing they don't know. They didn't see me go away. They think I—but I have not come to that part yet. You see, it s hard to put all this straightforwardly and connectedly, as if into paragraphs."

"Go on from the time when Milly began to tell you her story."

"That's the hardest of all. She—well, to make it as brief as I can, Terry—she confessed then and there, that she'd lied to me when I first knew her in England—lied most hideously—about you. She started by saying she wouldn't have the courage to confess, even now, after all these years, if she weren't afraid that I might find out the truth in a way worse for her than telling it with her own lips. In other words, she feared it might come to me through you. ​You see, she'd hoped and believed that you would spend the rest of your life in India. It was a great shock to learn you'd come home, and she'd have to meet you at once, or else perhaps rouse some suspicion that she wanted to avoid you. She had very little time to decide what to do; but, as she explained before I understood what was coming, she trusted to my affection for pardon. Her great love for me was to blame, but I could hardly reproach her for that. And we had lived for thirteen happy years together. I must remember these years, and what she had tried to be to me always, and so not to be too angry, but forgive her.

That was the preamble, and I had no inkling yet of what was to come. Only, I said to myself: 'Poor girl, she little knows how far from happy those years have been to me. At best (though I've none but the kindliest feeling toward her) my life by her side has been just endurable. There's all the difference between happiness and resignation that there is between a dull gray sky and a blue one, radiant with sunshine.'

"I thought that, but I meant to keep the thought from her, as I always had. A few minutes later, however, I blurted it out, with tremendous consequences. God forgive me! I can never forgive myself."

"Go on from the place where you left off," Terry's gentle voice soothed him again, like rain as it falls upon a parched desert.

"Well, we were by way of being distant cousins; ​and I knew, all those years ago, when I had to leave you, and go back to England, that she was your most intimate friend, although you were much younger. I couldn't resist talking of you to her, after we met—she and I—and she soon guessed how the land lay. One day she asked if I were really in love with you, and I answered 'yes,' but that you didn't want our engagement announced till your nineteenth birthday. Millicent seemed to hesitate, on hearing this, but presently said there was a thing it was her duty, as my cousin, to let me know, rather than that my life should be spoiled. Before I could answer, she warned me that you had no intention of marrying me. You had written her all about the affair, she said, and she couldn't help being indignant about the way you had acted. You were her friend, but I was her cousin, and blood was thicker than water. 'Terry was only playing you off against some one else, my poor Ian,' Milly explained. 'She wanted Lord Hatherley, and was trying to bring him to the point of making him jealous of you.'

"Of course I answered that she must be mistaken. I had perfect faith in Miss Ricardo. 'In justice to me, you must read Terry's letter,' she exclaimed; and with that, before giving me time to think, she whipped a letter out of her pocket. I could have sworn on my life that it was your handwriting—your writing that made my heart beat to see, even on an envelope. I ​oughtn't to have read one word, but she gave it to me open in the middle and I couldn't help catching sight of my name and Hatherley's, close together. That's no excuse, I know. But hardly conscious of what I was doing, I read on and on, until sentence after sentence seemed branded on my brain in letters of fire. Apparently you were telling Milly all about our acquaintance, and saying it was so 'silly of Captain Hereward to be taken in by my nonsense, that really he'll deserve all he gets.' The letter went on to explain that you were going to 'let me down lightly,' by allowing our correspondence to fizzle out slowly. You put me off by one excuse or another, which I was green enough to take seriously, not realizing that you were bored to death by my solemn face and puritanical ways. It was always a great effort to keep from shocking me, I was such a grim old stick. Fool that I was—I believed then—believed what I thought were your own words. My miserable vanity was wounded to the quick. I had always heard you were a flirt. It was true, I said to myself. You should never be bored by hearing from me again. And that same day I proposed to Millicent."

As he finished the story, he covered his face with his hands, his breath coming hard and fast. Terry touched him softly on the shoulder.

"I don't blame you, Ian," she said, "if it seemed to be my handwriting."

​"I could have sworn to it," he groaned. "I never doubted from that day, till the afternoon when Millicent confessed that she had written the letter herself—imitating your writing after much practice—'to disgust me with you,' as she said, 'because she loved me, and felt she must die if I didn't belong to her.' Well," and Sir Ian laughed bitterly—"the rest was easy, for she was a clever woman, and I was a mad fool in those days. After that, she had her way. Nothing mattered, I thought. You know what happened. I never wrote to you again. I sent back two letters unopened, and—I married my cousin Millicent, as soon as I could. I fancied her a sweet, saintly sort of being, and I told myself I ought to think I was lucky if she liked me enough to take me as I was, burnt up with love for a girl I believed unworthy. She realized that I didn't care for her in the right way, but she said she would do her best, and win my whole heart. What true happiness could we have expected?

"She told me everything, sitting there by the View Tower, breaking down and sobbing, begging me to hear her excuses, and how she had been dying for me, how she had been tempted—when I interrupted. I don't know what I said, but I remember crying out that she had done a thing no man could forgive—that she'd made me a dishonourable brute to the one woman I ever loved; that I'd never cared for her, never been happy with her for a moment, and that now I ​loathed her from the bottom of my heart. I think I said my life had been without a single ray of joy; but that now, knowing what I knew, it would be worse than hell if I went on living with her. I couldn't do it, I warned her. 'For God's sake, don't make a scandal,' she implored. 'Anything but that! Spare me that.'

"'We can remain under the same roof, if you choose,' I said, 'though I'd rather go away and never see your face again. But whatever you decide, nothing can induce me to live with you again as your husband.'"

"That seemed to strike her to the soul. 'Kill me, if you like!' she moaned, sobbing the most agonizing sobs. Even then I ought to have been sorry for her, outraged as I was. But my heart seemed seared. I could feel no pity.

"'You deserve to die,' I answered. And then I turned and went away, leaving her there alone. How I could do it, I don't know, but I did. I was hardly human. Those were the last words we spoke to each other. I walked home mechanically, not caring where I went, or what I might do, until—I saw you. You know now what I was suffering, Terry. To come on you like that, just after I had found out the truth—such a truth! But even so, there is no excuse for me—none."

"We're not seeking excuses, Ian, you and I," Terry said. "I knew you were suffering. But of course I ​could not guess. I, too, had suffered. I am glad, now, that I suffered—because I can better understand you."

"You are an angel," he answered, dry-lipped. "I never deserved you. Well, so much the worse for me! We talked, you and I, at the house. Millicent did not come. As your influence slowly humanized me, I began to feel—a little a very little—remorse for my harshness to her; for, after all, as she said, her sin had been for love's sake. I asked myself what I would do, if I were a woman, and in her place. The answer came quickly. I would take my own life. I thought that was what she would do, and when I grew obsessed with the idea, I went to look for her at the Tower. She had opened the door, somehow, and gone in. As I expected, she was dead. Her face was awful to see. Never have I ceased seeing it for an instant since. I remembered her words, 'no scandal!' and I decided that it would be better for her sake—for yours, too, since any true explanation of the scene which had brought about her death would involve telling our story—I decided it would be better to hide the revolver, which was lying near her hand.

"My only idea then was that she had killed herself because of my words. I didn't recognize the revolver as Ian Barr's, but I knew I had seen it, and fancied she might have owned the thing, without mentioning it to me. Now, I am sure she must have taken it from his ​house, since it seems certain it was his—how long ago, I can't say. She went to see him, I know, and accused him of villainy to Liane. Perhaps she took it then, Heaven knows why."

"Maybe with a good motive," suggested Terry. "She must have spoken very hardly to Mr. Barr to induce him to resign his place—which meant his postponing his marriage indefinitely, if not giving it up. No doubt she thought she was doing her duty. But maybe, seeing the revolver, she feared, as he was a passionate man, he might end his life with it, and it would be partly her fault. Then, afterward, very likely she carried it about on the lonely walks which Maud says she often took."

"Possibly you are right. She could have had it in that hand-bag with her handkerchief and purse. I saw the bag, and her gloves, lying on the table. I thought she had laid them there deliberately before taking her life. I didn't notice then her jewelry being gone, or think about it at all. The look on her face was my punishment—though not enough, not enough! I didn't believe, as others did afterward, that she had seen her assassin after falling. I thought she had looked up, as if to Heaven, with a last prayer for mercy, as she died there alone, knowing herself hated by me, whom she loved; and I think so still. But, when things began to come out at the inquest, I half changed my mind. I fancied that, after all, Ian ​Barr might have come while she was in the Tower. And I kept that idea in my head, till Nora Verney swore to me the other night that she and Barr were together till long after the shots were fired. Then I went back to my old opinion again. And I know that I am right. Millicent died by her own hand, because I had crushed her desire to live. But, because I crushed it, I am guilty of her death, and I am not fit to live. I must atone. Am I not right?"

"You are right. You must atone," Terry answered.

"Thank you for your courage. I trusted you to tell me the truth."

"But you must atone by a life of repentance for a moment of madness—not by dying. If you die, you will be guilty of my death and your own, even more than Millicent's. For her you did not mean to kill. I could not live if you took your own life, Ian, because I love you, even as you have loved me. I have always loved you, in spite of all, in spite of myself."

He bent down and kissed the hem of her dress. "I am not worthy to do this," he said. "Oh, Terry, I am haunted, haunted. If I don't die, how shall I lay her ghost?"

"Live, Ian, for me; and by God's aid, I will help you to lay that ghost," Terry promised him, inspiration in her eyes, and a love stronger than death or sorrow. "Milly has forgiven you," she said. "And I—have never had anything to forgive."

CHAPTER XXX

EXTRACT FROM A LETTER WRITTEN BY MAJOR SMEDLEY TO HIS FRIEND MRS. EARLE, IN CALCUTTA.

. . . Amateurs are so foolish about such things. Look at Ian Hereward, a man of intelligence in some ways. He actually seemed to suppose that by that famous "statement" of his, which aroused such a sensation, he was freeing Barr from all possible suspicion, and tearing away the veil of mystery from Millicent Hereward's death. Why, a young and inexperienced boy might have known better! But that shows, when a thing comes very near to you, you lose the "point of view," so to speak. It's like holding the palm of your hand close in front of your eyes. Not only are you prevented from seeing it clearly but it shuts out everything distant from your sight.

They say Wilbraham, who was one of the best legal minds in England, advised Hereward that he would do harm to himself as well as fail to clear Barr, if he made the statement, but Hereward obstinately persisted. The gossip is that Miss Ricardo urged him to take the course, and I for one believe the story, as it would be like her, don't you think? Not that I ​wish to speak against her to you, especially now that you have become the wife of her brother-in-law, over whose household and children she ruled for so many years before you were chosen to reign as queen over the fortunate kingdom. But I know at one time, whether or no you may now have changed your mind in her regard, we agreed pretty nearly in our opinion of that (more or less) young lady. And in any case you'll admit that at best she is inclined to be quixotic and dramatic in her views of morality and conduct generally.

They say "two heads are better than one." Personally I think that would depend on the heads. If Hereward and Miss Ricardo put theirs together over this statement of his, it's not much to the credit of the conjunction that they didn't see certain points of objection, unassisted by the lawyers. I should have put my finger on them at once, if they had asked my advice.

You see, where Ian Barr is concerned, the statement could do him little, if any good, in a court of law. Bringing out the fact that he was in the View Tower at the time of Lady Hereward's death, indeed, was likely to tell against him. To be sure, there was the girl Nora Verney to swear that she was with him, and that they were together in an upper room when they heard the shots. But as she had perjured herself the first day of the inquest, her evidence wasn't much ​good to Barr. There was no proof but their own word that Barr didn't go downstairs and shoot Lady Hereward, when he had heard her voice and knew she was alone in the Tower. He, unassisted, couldn't have proved that she had taken his revolver, and was in the habit of going about with it in a handbag when she walked in the woods. Was the jury likely to believe that Barr left England with the one object of screening his late employer, Sir Ian Hereward, and that it was entirely for Hereward's sake, not at all for his own and Nora Verney's, that he intended to keep silent when arrested and brought back from France? Not they. Circumstantial evidence was strong against him.

On the other hand, there was no proof except Sir Ian's word that he had gone out of the Tower before the shots were fired. In his statement he actually called attention to the fact that neither Barr nor Miss Verney heard him go, and that they both believed him guilty of murder.

As he made the case stand, it was simply a question for the jury to decide whether his word should be taken or not. If not, which had killed Millicent Hereward, her husband, or the young man whose prospects in life she had tried to destroy?

As for the suicide theory, if it hadn't been for what happened afterward, it would have been very difficult if not impossible to establish. As you know (for I sent you the papers with that passage marked), two ​doctors gave it as their opinion on the first day of the inquest that it was unlikely the poor woman had killed herself. Eventually, after all these new developments, when they were recalled, they did agree in saying that a vain and self-conscious woman might put an end to her life by placing the revolver in the position indicated by the wound. That, a first shot aimed at the side having been deflected by a steel corset, a would-be suicide might have feared to try the same spot again, and have chosen a spot between the throat and the chest, sparing the face and the throat itself from disfigurement. Still, who was to prove what might or might not have gone on in Millicent Hereward's mind? Some of her women friends, Mrs. Forestier for instance, did volunteer evidence that she had been exceedingly vain, or words to that effect, doing all she could to keep her looks as she grew older; and her maid, Kate Craigie, testified to the same peculiarity. But all that was in the realm of supposition. And my firm opinion is, and will continue to be, that if this Anglican Priest Father Tennant hadn't come forward, with what to my idea was equivalent to violation of the confessional, either Ian Hereward or Ian Barr would have had to suffer for the crime of murder. Even if a jury hadn't dared to convict, there would always have been whispers.

As for me, I am asking myself whether there could ​have been collusion between Sir Ian and this priest; whether Hereward had heard from him, and knew what he was likely to do, before he ventured to take the course he did. I can't so far persuade any one else to take this view, however, I confess, though I have had some interesting discussions on the matter with men of importance, at my clubs.

Father Tennant is fortunate in being revered by men and worshipped by women. You know the type? It is particularly successful nowadays. Fashionable women love to hear their own follies denounced. They flock to this man's church; and his conduct in giving Millicent Hereward away (that is what I call it), when she is in her grave, is condoned by his admirers. They uphold his defence, that, not being a Roman Catholic, there is no "seal of the confessional." They say that he was justified in revealing her confidences on the plea that everything she had told him was already known to the world, from her husband's statement, except the fact that she threatened, if ever found out and not forgiven, to put an end to her life. Also because she would "herself have wished it," since it was to free the innocent from suspicion.

Well, all I can say is that it's lucky for both Barr and Hereward that poor Millicent's remorse had forced her to open her heart to a priest. Lucky for them, too, that in opening it she didn't forget to hint at her own intentions in the event of certain ​contingencies, and even to add obscurely, "I have secured the means, if I ever need to use them."

The two are safe from the clutches of the law, thanks to Father Tennant (who will in the future be burdened with fewer confidences from his female adorers, I prophesy), but they will never be safe from gossip. Wherever they go, whatever they do—unless they change their names, they will be marked men. I don't envy them! Indeed, I am sorry for young Barr and the girl who, I hear, intends to marry and go to America with him, to "begin over again." But as for Hereward, he hasn't much sympathy from me, and so I tell every one. His cruel repulse of that unfortunate creature when she pleaded to him for pardon undoubtedly caused her death. I wouldn't have that on my conscience. But I never thought him a man of deep feeling, and I have known him since his youth. He always was a haughty, arrogant fellow, and certainly has nothing to be proud of in the way he treated Miss Ricardo. As you say in your letter, he did not, to be sure, mention her name in his statement; but every one knew to whom he referred. Their engagement years ago was an open secret, as I have told you before—and have told others. Nevertheless, she seems to bear him no grudge. If I could see her, I would try to find out of what she was supposed to accuse herself in the forged letter which poor Millicent Latham showed Hereward, in the hope of ​alienating his love from the fair Teresina. It would be interesting to know. Also, whether the letter was really forged. I am mooting that theory now, and it is exciting interest among my friends.

The latest gossip is, that in spite of everything there is an understanding between Miss Ricardo and Hereward, which eventually may end in marriage. I wonder? Nothing is too strange to be true. But if this is not the exception which proves the rule, Miss Ricardo must be a brave woman.

THE END

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THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

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