THE IMPOSTOR FOILED.
At ten o'clock of the morning Mrs. Chetwode was knocking at Miss Walsingham's bedroom door.
"Excuse me, miss, for disturbing you, but the colonel is here, and wishes most particular to see you."
"Oh, please leave me alone," answered the young lady from within, weakly and plaintively: "I am ill and can see no one."
The housekeeper returned to Colonel
Brand, who was pacing about in the gallery, under the long lines of dead Brands, among which was not the face of the latest dead, and informed him with a lugubrious face that Miss Walsingham was wild yet as she had been last night, and seemed afraid to open the door, which was one of her meagrims, poor dear, to have it locked, and her not well.
"Keep her quiet," answered the colonel, with that crafty smile of his behind his long and stealthy hand, "she is going to have a serious illness. Keep her very quiet. Poor lady, she shows signs of insanity; keep her perfectly quiet."
Then, to be on hand, in case the young lady should consent to see him, as he informed Mrs. Chetwode, he made himself at home in a quiet way at Castle Brand, sauntering, with his hands in his pockets, through the wide rooms; smoking on the front steps, eating lunch in a room which commanded a view of the stairway, with his ugly companion by his side, whose dripping fangs and blood-shot eyes were his master's admiring study, and often slapping his own chest with an angry malediction, because a certain rawness, or hoarseness, had got into his windpipe.
No adoring lover could have expressed more anxiety concerning the lady of his heart than did the gallant colonel for Miss Walsingham. He sent up a bulletin in the shape of John the footman every hour, to listen at the young lady's door whether she was moving—not to disturb her, only to listen, and bring back word to this anxious well-wisher.
Thus passed the morning below stairs.
How fared it with poor Margaret?
Nature had suffered a complete collapse. The horror of the night was telling upon her pale, drawn face, her bloodless lips, and nerveless hands. Utter exhaustion was weighing her down.
If her enemy had been making a bonfire of Castle Brand beneath her, profound exhaustion would have compelled her to lie there and doze, even while she perished in the flames.
She lay in bed with half-closed eyes, tossing from side to side as the piercing light from the hole in the shutter worried her; dozing heavily, often waking to murmur some feverish thought, starting up and listening—sinking back in her weakness to sleep again.
Toward the middle of the afternoon she roused herself, came to a completer sense of reality than she had done yet, and sprang from her bed. She had to sit for several minutes upon the side of it, with her hands tightly clasped upon her brow, before she could come to a decision as to what her next move could be.
"I am mad to waste the few hours of grace in sleep, instead of putting myself, under the protection of my friends!" she said.
"I must not lose another hour."
She rang the bell, and began to dress herself as hurriedly as weakness would admit of.
"Are you up, Miss Margaret, dear?" said the housekeeper, anxiously, from the hall.
She unlocked the door, held it opened fearfully, and beckoned her to come in.
The old lady's first look was at the girl's face, at which she gasped.
Her next was at the window, from which a blinding ray and a cold current of air assailed her; at which she shrieked:
"Lord ha' mercy! How came that there?"
"Ask me nothing," shuddered Margaret. "I am going to have the affair sifted to the bottom."
"But why didn't you raise the house? Wasn't it a burglar?"
"No. I can tell you nothing about it until I have put myself under the protection of Mr. Davenport and the doctor."
She spoke quite evenly, but there was a suspicious wildness about her eyes which struck a new vein in the prolific brain of the housekeeper.
"Miss Margaret, deary! you didn't surely make that hole yourself?"
Margaret burst into vehement laughter. Her brain was so tried and over-strained that a touch might turn it. To ask her if she had done it!
And then, on the other hand, to think that Mrs. Chetwode should seem to be distrusting her sanity, like the others!
Down came the tears in a rushing torrent!
"My! She's in hysterics!" shrieked Mrs. Chetwode, catching the poor girl in her arms. "Don't, dear, don't!" shaking her vigorously. "Be quiet now, deary, love! Whisht! whisht!"
Wilder grew Margaret's sobs, shriller her laughter. She writhed herself out of Mrs. Chetwode's arms, and pointed to the door.
"You have left it open!" she gasped, "and the colonel will shoot me! Shut it, for heaven's sake!"
Mrs. Chetwode locked the door, with a glance at her mistress, which said, as plain as eyes could say it:
"Poor thing! She is crazy!"
"Miss Margaret, dear, go back to your bed. You're not fit to be up at all to-day. When you feel better, we'll find out about this shutter business. Or may be you'd better come into my room. There's a dreadful draught here."
"I must go down to Dr. Gay," said Margaret, still hysterically. "Tell Symonds to have the carriage ready."
"Miss Margaret, lovey! I don't know that the colonel will like you to go out. I—I'm not sure that he'll let you.
"Is he in this house?"
"He's waited from ten o'clock, until now, nigh on four o'clock to see you when you should get up. He told me you weren't well."
"Mrs. Chetwode—oh, dear Mrs. Chetwode save me from that man! I must escape from Castle Brand without his knowledge."
"Let me send for Dr. Gay to come to you," she answered, uneasily.
"No, no!" moaned the over-tried girl. "My life is not safe here another night. I insist upon leaving Castle Brand."
Mrs. Chetwode walked to the window and employed herself in opening the shutter.
What she saw when the shutter was opened struck her dumb with surprise for some minutes.
A complete pane of glass had been removed, and set against the balcony railing. A glazier's diamond lay beside it; a chisel was dropped upon the farther end of the balcony; deep foot-prints were in the snow, and a blackened place before the window showed where the midnight watch had been kept.
"Good Lor'!" ejaculated the old woman, "must have been a bold thief."
"It was Colonel Brand!"
Mrs. Chetwode gasped, eyed her suspiciously, backed a few steps, and took hold of the door handle.
"Poor thing!" she whispered to herself.
"Mrs. Chetwode, I told you last night to see that all the doors were locked. Did you?"
"Yes, Miss Margaret, dear! Yes."
"The library glass door?"
The housekeeper looked disconcerted.
"It went clean out of my mind, sure enough."
"Ha! That is how the watch was placed at my door."
"Good gracious! A watch at your door?"
"The colonel's sleuth-hound."
The housekeeper unlocked the door, rushed out, and went straight to Colonel Brand.
"Well, my good woman, you look disturbed," said that amiable thug, taking his cigar out of his mouth to blow a spiral curl of smoke at her; "have you been with Miss Walsingham, and is she as wild in her manner as she was last evening when I had the honor of escorting you both home from your walk?"
"Worse, sir, far worse; she's out of her mind complete as you may say. And she's had a dreadful fright through the night."
"Ah! What is that?"
"Some rank rascal has tried to break in. It's an attempt at burglary, which didn't succeed, but it have made her wild like."
"An attempt at burglary? How very extraordinary!"
"And she is raving about it, poor soul. Oh, dear me, we must send for Dr. Gay."
"Yes, you had better send for Dr. Gay instantly, Chetwode. What may the nature of her ravings be?" inquired the colonel, blandly.
"All sorts of things: that your dog there was at her door all night, and—and other fancies."
"Ah!" in a tone of sympathetic interest; "unfortunate girl! Here, Argus, good dog, speak up for your character, my boy!"
The dog blinked his small blood-shot eyes, and rose to shake himself, as if he meditated a spring upon his traducer.
"Oh, Lor', don't show me to him," exclaimed Mrs. Chetwode, shrinking out of view.
The colonel showed his long, hungry teeth, by way of grim smile, and gave the animal a kick. "Don't be afraid. Are you going to send, then, for Miss Walsingham's friends?"
"Would you say so, sir?" said the anxious creature, wavering between the desire to humor her young mistress, and the fear of disobeying the colonel.
"I would say so, certainly. The affair of the attempted robbery should certainly be followed up for one thing; her state of mind attended to for another."
Margaret's bell rang, and Mrs. Chetwode went up stairs, almost afraid to venture near her again.
"Has Symonds got the carriage ready?" cried Margaret, the instant she appeared.
She was sitting with her bonnet on, dressed for her drive, with a satchel in her hand.
"Lor', you're not fit to go out," ejaculated Chetwode, in amazement. "We're going to have Dr. Gay up to the castle, since you want him so, my deary."
"Did Colonel Brand say I was not to leave the house?" demanded Margaret.
"He thinks you're not well enough, that's a fact."
"I defy him, or any one to keep me prisoner here. You must disregard him, Mrs. Chetwode, and get me driven down to Regis."
"I'm afeard to do it, Miss Margaret."
"Then I shall defy him, and go before his eyes. Get Symonds ready silently, that there may be no opposition. As you value my life, go."
Mrs. Chetwode, torn between two influences, and always subject to the latest, bounded out of the room as if the limbs of twenty years ago had been miraculously granted her, and went stealthily enough down the long stairs to the servant's quarters.
In fifteen minutes she ventured back with a bottle of wine under her apron.
"He's ready, miss, and at the lower door. You needn't meet the colonel at all; he's just gone into the library, and shut himself in. Now, my poor miss, you must drink something before you go to strengthen you, and eat a bite."
"Nothing in this house—no!" cried Margaret, shuddering; "I cannot be sure of even the food!"
"Don't let them put you in a hasylum, deary love; be careful what you say, now won't you?"
"No fear of that with these papers," replied Margaret, holding up the satchel exultingly.
By dint of perseverance the housekeeper prevailed upon her to drink a glass of wine.
It is doubtful if she could have walked down stairs, and borne the ordeal of her terror, but for this stimulant. But she reached the lower door, and entered the carriage safely.
The colonel, after all his watching, was strangely derelict now, when he had most cause for vigilance, and seemed quite unconscious that his enemy was escaping to her friends, out of his reach.
Margaret's eyes traveled once over the towers and battlements of gloomy Castle Brand, as they left it behind. They seemed to look a long farewell—perhaps a farewell which would last forever; and then a turn in the narrow stable-road brought a grim brick wall between her and her castle, and she sank back upon the carriage-seat.
Ten minutes after her departure Colonel Brand came out of the library, with his slouching dog at his heels, and called the housekeeper.
"Here's a note to Dr. Gay, informing him of Miss Walsingham's state. Can you send a messenger with it to the village immediately?"
Chetwode turned livid and then gray; held out her hand for the note and drew it back again.
The colonel's eyes scintillated in a way that made her blood run cold, and his boding smile was a failure as far as reassuring her went.
"What's the matter, woman? Have you the presumption to refuse to send a messenger at my request?"
"I couldn't help it," stammered the old woman, bursting into sobs; "she wouldn't hear to one word, and she—she's off to Regis."
"Who? Miss Walsingham? Have you let her leave the castle after all?"
"Lor', master, she was set to go. I thought it wouldn't make much difference whether she was took from Dr. Gay's to the mad-house or from here."
"You are right," muttered the colonel, grimly. "It makes no difference."
He tore his note in two, pushed the housekeeper rudely out of his way, and strode out to the solitary Waaste.
The Brand carriage stopped opposite Lawyer Davenport's office door, and Symonds dismounted.
"Why," exclaimed Miss Walsingham, opening the window, "I do believe the door is locked. Surely he has gone away very early in the morning."
Symonds rapped and tried the door—peeped through the dusty window, and found that Miss Walsingham was right.
"We shall go up to his house," she said, pulling up the window.
Arriving at Mr. Davenport's neat and commodious bachelor's abode, Symonds, after inquiry, reported that the lawyer had left on "sudden business this morning for Wales; they don't know where or when he's coming back, but you will hear all about it from Dr. Gay; which was the message left for you."
Again Margaret leaned back in her seat. A look of bitter disappointment and even terror was depicted upon her face.
Once more they rolled into Regis over the slushy snow, and paused at the doctor's house.
Former disappointments had made her so nervous and fearful that she dropped the window and bent forward the better to hear the report.
"Here's Miss Walsingham, to see Dr. Gay. Is he in?"
"No," answered the boy in buttons, "he's away."
"What hour will yer master be at home?"
"Dunno. He was called away very sudden, on a journey; mistress knows."
"What?" cried Margaret, shrilly.
"He says the doctor was called away, on a sudden, too, and that he don't know where."
"Heaven help me, what does this mean?" said the poor girl, alighting and confronting the boy like a pale ghost risen out of its grave.
"When did he go—you surely know that?"
"I'll call mistress," said the boy, backing. "Come in, miss, and wait."
In a few moments the doctor's wife joined her, melancholy as usual.
"Oh, Mrs. Gay, it cannot be possible that the doctor has gone away without letting me know?"
"I do not know, my dear young lady, but it is quite certain that he went away somewhere without letting me know. I had precisely fifteen minutes to pack his valise in."
"Don't you know where he has gone?" asked Margaret, the gloom of death descending upon her heart.
"Not exactly; he vouchsafed to mutter 'Wales,' as he ran down the steps, without even a farewell to his boy, far less to his wife, and for what, or what he can mean by it is a mystery to me."
"Did he leave no message for me?"
"I believe he did. I do seem to recall that he said you were to go to Mr. Davenport for explanations. Yes, that was the message."
"Good heaven! And Mr. Davenport left word that I was to come to your husband for explanations! They must have gone away together! And I am left alone to fight for my life and to stem the tide of fraud!" moaned poor Margaret, bursting into tears; "and oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?"