CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE.
Margaret soon went to her own apartment and changed her damp garments, and then she went down stairs to the echoing reception-room, to wait for Lady Juliana Ducie.
At last came the sound of carriage wheels, the great door was opened, and a gentle stir ensued in the lower hall.
Margaret rang the bell, and waited in feverish suspense to hear the issue.
"Who has arrived?" she asked, as the housekeeper appeared, arrayed in stiff black satin.
"The lady you were expecting, miss, I take it, with a lady's maid and groom. She has gone up to her room, and told me to tell Miss Walsingham she would appear in half an hour."
It was ten minutes to seven when the visitor, having partaken of a hearty dinner in her own room, and gone through the intricacies of a super-elegant toilet, with the assistance of her maid, came down to the reception-room, and was met with outstretched hands by placable Margaret.
"How kind of you to come to me!" she breathed, "and to prove a ready friend."
The lissome figure approached—beautiful, radiant as ever—and, tripping quite up to Margaret, she took her pale hand and pressed it graciously.
"Are we friends?" she queried, with her head a little drooped on one side, and eyes raised inquiringly. "Are you going to forget my naughty petulance? Papa and I have been so angry at ourselves that we let you go."
"All that is forgotten, dear Lady Julie."
"You are such a good creature, to be sure! But now tell me, what is this wonderful matter of life and death?" demanded my lady, whose eyes were roving round the massive furniture and lordly size of the old room, as if they were accustomed to take stock. "I could not resist such a tragic invitation; but I was not alarmed, for you always had such a strange way of putting things. Now do tell me, Margaret, dear!—there is nobody half as much interested as I am—are you really going to marry him after all? Such is the report."
"Nothing has been settled yet," answered Margaret, quietly. "Take a seat near the fire, Lady Juliana. I expect some visitors in a few minutes, and you may as well be well warmed before you are presented."
My lady sat down, with a meaning smile, as directed.
"Does St. Udo expect to see me?" she asked, coquettishly. "Is he aware that I was to come?"
"He is unconscious of your presence, my lady."
"Ah, ha! Too jealous to tell him! Ah, ha! Margaret, my dear, so you are afraid of his old flame! Well, it isn't surprising. Everybody gets jealous of me. I am considered so very pretty, and I vow I have become so accustomed to being envied that I don't feel comfortable unless half a dozen women are glaring at me with jealousy!"
"Heartless as ever, my Lady Julie."
"Portentous as ever, my tragic muse. Well, well, don't be so stiff with me, your Julie—why should you? I am so curious to know something about you. I think you are a most extraordinary woman. Are you going to be the mistress of Seven-Oak Waaste after all?"
"I intend to retain possession of it."
"And to marry St. Udo? Heigh, ho! my old lover. Is he much enamored with you? Inconstant wretch! he might have run up to Hautville, if it was only to taunt me with my cruelty in jilting him. I don't seem to have got on much better for having been so obedient to papa; positively I am without a matrimonial expectation; without even an attache, except my snip of a cousin Harry, who cant marry anybody until his uncle Henry and three sons die. The Duke of Piermont has gone back to Ireland, and is supposed to be either mad or writing a book. My own opinion is, that he has fallen in love with some stock-jobber's daughter, or nameless orphan, and that his family have interfered, to prevent a shameful mesalliance."
My lady glanced spitefully at Margaret's inflexible face, but failed to read it.
The door was opened while she was examining her shallow reservoirs for more gossip, and the two executors were announced just as the pompous hall-clock struck seven.
"You are punctual, sirs," said the lady of the castle, pressing each hand gratefully in her feverish fingers; "let me present you to a friend, whose name is well known to you: Lady Juliana Ducie."
My lady bowed to each condescendingly and sank to her cushions again with raised eyebrows. The executors looked at each other and at their ward, also with raised eyebrows.
"You shall see my meaning in a few minutes," she breathed, passing the lawyer.
"Is London very gay just now, my lady?" asked the physician, understanding the face of affairs at a glance, and good-naturedly taking up his cue.
My lady, never at a loss for small talk, instantly plunged into an ocean of that diluted composition, and the minutes sped on.
At half-past seven, punctual to the second, came an imperative ring at the great door.
Margaret started up with a quivering face, murmured, "Excuse me," and glided out to conceal the terrible agitation of her features.
She took refuge in an ante-room and summoned the housekeeper.
"Show Colonel Brand in here instead of the reception-room," she said, "and stay with me while I speak to him."
"To act sheep-dog?" asked Chetwode, venturing on a pleasantry.
"Yes," shuddered the girl; "one can never depend on a wolf."
The colonel was accordingly ushered in, and the housekeeper, knitting in hand, took her seat at a distance, as if prepared for a long interview.
"How shall I get back my composure?" thought Margaret. "I dare not face Lady Juliana until I am calm, else she would jump at this man's name."
"I have come in answer to a kind invitation from Miss Walsingham," said the man, approaching her with an insolent bravado of manner.
"Yes, I have work for you to-night."
"For or against my cause, fair lady? I decline to stand in my own light."
His evil eyes were fastened tauntingly upon her; his hand was toying with the breast of his coat.
"St. Udo Brand should fear nothing," mocked Margaret.
His eyeballs quivered and fell; the veins grew black upon his brow.
"One of your silly women had a narrow escape from being torn to pieces," he said, sourly, changing the subject.
"Yes," retorted Margaret, "I hear you keep a dangerous dog—the sooner you stab him the safer we shall feel."
His hand dropped from his bosom as if an adder had bitten him; her meaning was unmistakable.
"Tell the woman not to venture upon dangerous ground," he growled from beneath his closed teeth. "Argus is a fierce brute, and hates a spy."
"Do not apologize for your dog's ferocity. I can well afford the loss of a cloak for the tableau I had the pleasure of witnessing."
Her pallid, daring face pointed her meaning. Colonel Brand bowed to hide his livid face as if he had received a fine compliment; those Satanic white spots were slowly disappearing when he ventured to speak again.
"Since it was my lovely hostess, and not an inquisitive kitchen-wench, who was frightened," sneered he, "Argus shall be consigned to the bottom of the mere."
"Argus knew his master Ulysses after they had been parted twenty years. Would your dog recognize you by the name of St. Udo Brand, do you suppose?"
"Sweet lady, would that my understanding could keep pace with your wit! But your prolific imagination suggested a riddle—which I have yet to find the meaning of, the word conquered!"
"Do not cry 'hallo' until you are out of the woods. But come with me—I have a riddle which waits your solving."
Margaret entered the reception-room with Colonel Brand, and preceding him swiftly to Lady Juliana, stood aside and waited meaningly for the result.
There was a moment of disconcerted silence, then my lady, dropping a deep courtesy, cried:
"Good gracious, Captain Brand, I did not recognize you!" and coquettishly gave her hand.
The man's face would have made a study for a demon-painter in its first blank stare at the blushing lady, and its instant blaze of fury at the merciless Margaret.
Intuitively he read her insulting intention to snare him before these witnesses. For a time blind rage threatened to choke him and help him into the pitfall.
But the filmy vail hooded his eyes, and he gazed with a transfixed smile at Lady Juliana, still holding her hand.
"Must I introduce Colonel Brand? Is his memory so short?" jibed Margaret, with goading scorn.
The colonel returned to present things; made a desperate effort to appear natural, and carried Lady Juliana's hand to his lips.
"Fair as ever," he muttered, so absorbed as to appear heedless of aught else. "Ah, Lady Juliana Ducie, what an impossible task it is to forget you."
He led her to a distant sofa, and seating her, bent over her in an attitude of devotion.
Margaret stood like a statue, and pale as marble, accepted her defeat.
She saw the flush of gratified pride, the entire credulity of Lady Juliana; she saw the half-pitying, half-contemptuous smile which the executors passed with each other. She saw the stealthy look of wicked exultation with which her enemy repaid her ruse, and with a quick failing of strength and fortitude, she burst into sudden tears, turned and glided from the room.
"He is armed at all points against surprise," she moaned, in terror; "he will win the game in spite of me. You wretch! how shall I escape your vengeance?"
When she returned to her guests, half an hour later, with a slight apology for her untimely illness, she found Colonel Brand and Lady Juliana improving the time by a desperate flirtation, eager and hopeful on her part, satiric and careless on his, as beseemed the character of St. Udo, when he met again the woman who had jilted him.
No one asked the cause of Margaret's illness, or seemed at all struck by it; all had their private belief on the subject, my lady being neither slow nor reluctant to assure herself that extreme jealousy at St. Udo's marked pleasure upon seeing herself, had driven the bride-elect from the room.
When the evening had passed, like a queer, grim dream to poor Margaret, and the executors bade adieu, their ward accompanied them to the room door, and clung to Dr. Gay's arm with a pitiful reluctance to let him go.
"I have failed," she whispered, sadly; "and he has the best of it. Don't be angry with me for bringing you here to-night on such a fruitless errand. I am unhappy enough without your anger."
"It is not anger, my dear girl; it is concern that we feel for you——"
"Pho! it is anger! How long is this farce of yours to last, Miss Margaret? Will nobody but Rufus Gay and Andrew Davenport do to make up side actors for your serio-comic tomfooleries?"
"Bear with me a little longer," sighed the orphan, humbly. And then the executors went away.
The colonel with great reluctance also tore himself from the side of his charmer, and prepared to depart.
"We are quite good friends?" whispered my lady, with an arch glance into his eyes.
"My Julie will pity her poor slave in his new chains?" murmured back the colonel.
Margaret, waiting with beating pulses for his departure, heard with curling lip both question and answer.
A sly invitation to come often to see papa, followed from the lady, was chivalrously accepted by the gentleman, and her hand was once more caressed by way of farewell.
"Thanks for the pleasant surprise you have given me," said he, bending down to look into Margaret's face with an air of devilish exultation; "it was so delicately planned and so kindly meant that I shall not forget it in you. Good night."
She turned away her loathing face and bowed him out, and then came drearily up to my lady and looked at her.
"Is this man whom you met to-night changed from the man to whom you were engaged?"
"Oh! Of course he is changed. He looks ever so much older and not nearly so nice looking, and he is as grave as an undertaker, except when I make him laugh—but heigh, ho! It is no wonder, with such a burden as his grandmother placed upon him. He would soon look himself again if he had this magnificent castle, and the one whom he loves for his wife."
"You would be quite willing to marry that person, would you, Lady Juliana?"
"Why do you ask? Is it only to tease me? You know that I never left off loving him."
"And yet how ignoble was that love!" said Margaret, bitterly; "how shallow, that could so mistake its object! Oh, my lady, I might have remembered your skin-deep nature when I asked you to come here and help me."
"What now," cried my lady, fearing she had said too much and becoming alarmed. "Why should you talk that way to me? I can't help my love for St. Udo Brand."
"Try to help it, then, for the man is a villain," was the cold rejoinder.
"A villain!" ejaculated the other, thoroughly startled. "What can you mean? That's a strange way to speak of the gentleman you are going to marry. I—I think it is dishonorable!"
"I am not going to marry him," returned Margaret; "oh, no, my lady—no, no!"
She burst into a wild laugh which became so violent that Lady Juliana got up uneasily and moved away.
"I must say that I am altogether mystified as to your affairs then," she remarked, sullenly; "I thought that I was summoned here to be your confidential adviser, or bride-maid, or some such thing. It seems I have come here to be laughed at."
"Pardon me," said Margaret, putting a violent strain upon herself. "I am not laughing for amusement; indeed, I am scarcely in a gay mood. I summoned you here, Lady Julie, because I hoped, through you, to settle a certain question; but I now see that it is not within your power."
Lady Juliana looked at her with intense curiosity. She had a vague idea that she had allowed something to slip through her fingers by her carelessness, and she determined, vindictively, that it should not be St. Udo Brand.
"I'll have him fast as ever bound to my sleeve," she inwardly vowed: "and I am very much mistaken if this eccentric creature does not give us Seven-Oak Waaste."
My lady drove away next morning from gloomy Castle Brand, had a coquettish half-hour of farewell at the station with Colonel Brand, who was lounging there casually, did as much mischief as she could to Margaret's cause, and went back to London, her head full of new ambitions.
And that was the end of Margaret's experiment.
It was some time after Lady Julie's useless visit, and Margaret was walking on the Waaste with Mrs. Chetwode.
She had discontinued her solitary walks since the evening by the mere, and invariably begged the housekeeper's company, or had a man-servant to keep her in sight whenever she took the air.
They wandered aimlessly over the frosty snow, side by side, and scarce speaking a word, a lowering sky overhead, and a bleak wind in their faces.
Margaret had mused over her next step until her thoughts were madness to her; and, as yet, no solution had come of the way out of her position. She had not gathered bravery enough to set another snare for her enemy, and had nervously avoided seeing him since her last discomfiture; and, too, she had heard that he was away in London, basking in the smiles of Lady Juliana. But, while revolving the next step to be taken, she was doomed to meet her enemy face to face at a time she imagined him in London.
At a turn of the path the two women came full upon the colonel, shuffling along, with his head bent, and his eyes on a book.
He thrust it hastily in a breast-pocket of his overcoat, and accosted them with an insolent leer.
"How is the fair lady after her week's seclusion?" snarled he.
"Nothing bettered by this interruption to it," returned she, coming to a dead stop from sheer inability to support herself.
"Permit me," said the colonel, forcing Margaret to lean upon his arm, "this attack of agitation is so severe that I who have caused it should render my poor services in removing it."
He bent with an ogreish smile to look into her eyes.
"Leave me," breathed the wretched girl, attempting to wrench her hand from his grasp. "How dare you molest me sir?"
"Dear Margaret," sneered the man, bending near her dead white face, "why will you hold your slave at such a distance? I who hope to be co-heir of that goodly pile beyond us before this year is out? Ten days, my dearest—only ten days to wait, and then the month is out."
She could only look at him silently; her lips moved in haughty protest, but no words came to her aid; she walked by his side dumb as death.
The good old housekeeper kept by her other side and held her passive hand, comforting her in her kindly fashion by patting and pressing it, or the poor girl's terror would have overcome her altogether.
Suddenly Margaret ceased the struggle of attempting to draw her hand from his arm, and turned her averted face toward him.
Her eyes stole over him attentively, she marked his dress and his manner with a fixed intensity—an idea bad taken possession of her which she could not drive away.
Again and again her eye returned to its scrutiny of the man, and the hand which Mrs. Chetwode was caressing, closed itself convulsively as if it held something it must keep, come life or come death. Her hand which lay upon his arm quivered against his heart as if there was something there she longed to seize.
When they reached the griffins now squatting on their snow-covered pedestals, Margaret broke her bitter silence by a forced request.
"Honor me by an interview, sir."
"Whom have I to meet this time?" he asked, with a boding smile.
"No one sir. Are you afraid of meeting strangers, Colonel Brand?"
He bowed sardonically, and followed her into the hall.
John came forward to relieve the colonel of his overcoat, and Margaret remained for some moments giving some directions to the housekeeper. When the visitor was ready she accompanied him into the library, where before a glowing fire the lonely girl was accustomed to read through the long evenings, and bade him wait her return from her chamber.
"What a home-paradise we shall have," said Colonel Brand with ironical gallantry; "I know I shall be delighted by some new and strange side of my charmer's character. I always am."
"You may," answered Margaret with a strange look.
She went out, shutting the door carefully between her and the colonel, and looking round about the vast old hall.
There stood John, still hanging up the hat, cane, and coat of the visitor.
"Carry this light up to the third hall," said Margaret, pointing to a lamp in a bracket.
He took the lamp and ascended out of view. What a transformation came over the girl's countenance then.
Her eyes lit up with triumph—she sprang to the overcoat and thrust her eager hand into the breast-pocket.
She was right. The book she had seen him reading was the green morocco note-book he had referred to when she had tried to trip him in his knowledge of St. Udo Brand's letter to her—and she had it in her hand now.
She drew it forth, and fled like a phantom to her room, just as Colonel
Brand, recalling his blunder, started up and hurried to remove the damning evidence of his own imposture.