A Secret of the Sea: A Novel. Vol. 2 (of 3)

by T. W. Speight

A SECRET OF THE SEA.

Mr. Byrne had been in the habit of writing a line to Ambrose Murray every few days, in order to satisfy the latter as to how matters were progressing at the house in Spur Alley. In one of his brief notes he mentioned that Van Duren had left home on business for a couple of days. Gerald Warburton happened to be at Miss Bellamy's when this note came to hand, and Murray at once proposed that he and Gerald should visit Byrne and his daughter in Spur Alley, while Van Duren was out of town. Gerald assented, and at six o'clock that evening they found themselves at Van Duren's door. Mrs. Bakewell, as she ushered them upstairs, informed them that Miss Byrne had gone out about an hour previously, but that the old gentleman would no doubt be very glad to see them.

There was no answer to the woman's knock at Mr. Byrne's door. "Poor old gentleman, he gets weaker and deafer every day," she said. "He's not long for this world, I'm afraid." Then she opened the door, and went into the room. Mr. Byrne was sitting, as he seemed ever to sit, in his great easy-chair in front of the fire. Mrs. Bakewell touched him on the shoulder, and shouted in his ear: "Two gentlemen to see you, sir."

"Ech, ech! two gentlemen to see me? Tell 'em to come in: tell 'em to come in. And shut that door as soon as you can. That draught's enough to cut one in two." And with that he turned feebly round and confronted his visitors. And then his cough began to trouble him, and he could not find a word to say till Mrs. Bakewell had gone out and shut the door behind her.

A moment later he was on his feet and grasping his visitors warmly by the hand. "Welcome to Spur Alley, gentlemen!" he said. "You could not have come at a more opportune time, except in one respect--that my daughter is not here to receive you as well as I. But the kettle is on the hob, and I've a bottle of prime Kinahan in the cupboard, together with a few choice Henry Clays, that were sent me by a friend the other day. An it please you, we will make ourselves as comfortable as present circumstances will admit of."

After a little conversation of no particular moment, said Byrne: "I am glad that you have come to see me, Mr. Murray. Had you not come here, I should have made a point of calling upon you in the course of a few days."

"Have you anything of importance to communicate?"

"No, it is not exactly that; but I think the time has come for me to tell you what I have done already, and what I hope to accomplish before I am many days older; together with my reasons for going about this matter in the way I have gone about it."

"I shall be very glad to hear anything you may have to say, Mr. Byrne; but if you would rather defer your revelation for a little while longer, pray do so. As I have told you already, I have every confidence in your management of the affair, and shall continue to have, whether you choose to-day to tell me anything or nothing."

"You are very kind, Mr. Murray, but I think that I shall feel more comfortable if I tell you everything. I want either your approval or your disapproval of what I am doing: I want to feel the ground firm under my feet."

"In that case I have nothing more to say. You know what an intense interest this matter has for me in all its bearings, great or small."

"Before beginning what I have to tell you," said Byrne, "it may be just as well to lock the door. It was only the other day that Pringle, Van Duren's clerk, opened the door suddenly and put his head into the room. I felt sure at the time that he had either seen or suspected something, and would tell his master. I suppose I was mistaken, but for all that I don't care to run the same risk again."

Having locked the door, Mr. Byrne proceeded to light a cigar, and then to brew himself a tumbler of grog with all the care and deliberation to which so important a proceeding was entitled at his hands. Gerald joined him over a cigar. Murray never smoked.

"When you first came to me, Mr. Warburton, and spoke to me about this business," began Byrne after a few preliminary puffs, "I was more surprised than I cared to let you see. And when you told me what it was that you wanted me to do, I was still more surprised. And well I might be, as you will hear presently. You came to me, Mr. Warburton, in the first place, because you thought that there might be a faint possibility of my being able to assist you to discover the whereabouts of Max Jacoby. I was able to assist you in a way that you little dreamt of. My brother, who is two years older than I am, was originally a sergeant in the detective police. He retired some years ago, and he now keeps a little country tavern in the neighbourhood of Dorking. I told my brother what I wanted; he gave me a note to a particular friend of his who is still in the force, and it was through the kindness of this latter gentleman that I was enabled to inform you that our friend Mr. Max lived here, under this very roof, in Spur Alley. Having obtained that information for you, I naturally concluded that my task was at an end; but when you told me what further you wanted from me, that opened up an entirely fresh phase of the question."

Here Mr. Byrne paused to stir his grog and refresh himself with a hearty drink.

"The point urged by both of you," resumed Byrne, "was your belief that Max Jacoby was the murderer of Paul Stilling; and the question you put before me was: By what means is it possible to bring his guilt home to him? Gentlemen, what method of procedure I might have adopted under different circumstances in order to find an answer to your question I cannot, of course, say, but the one which I did adopt had its origin in a very peculiar occurrence, which I will presently explain to you. My plan was this: to take lodgings in this house--my daughter and I. To make the acquaintance of Van Duren. To invite him to tea or supper, in order that he might have an opportunity of associating with Miriam, who, on her part, was to do her best to fascinate him--to make him fall in love with her, and, if possible, to propose to her. Of this scheme Miriam was the hinge. Everything depended upon her--upon her good looks and powers of fascination. But knowing the sort of man I had to deal with, I determined to smooth for him still further the road I wanted him to travel. With this end in view, I led Van Duren on to believe that I was rich, and I caused to be drawn up in due form a fictitious will, in which I bequeathed fifteen thousand pounds to my daughter, and of which I made Van Duren himself one of the executors. The bait took, as I expected it would take. Van Duren, smitten already by my daughter's good looks, was conquered entirely when he found that she was also an heiress. A few evenings ago he fell on his knees before her and implored her to marry him. Miriam, by my instructions, accepted him conditionally: he is to be a month on probation, and if at the end of that time she finds that she can like him sufficiently well, she is to accept him as her future husband. But before the month of probation shall have come to an end, the particular object which has necessitated all this scheming and preparation will, I trust, have been fully accomplished."

Mr. Byrne had allowed his cigar to go out while talking. He now proceeded to relight it. This done, he again paid his respects to the grog.

Both Ambrose Murray and Gerald were utterly puzzled. That Byrne should have allowed, and, by his own confession, encouraged, Van Duren to make love and propose to his daughter, was to them an altogether incomprehensible proceeding. They awaited his further revelations with impatience.

"You have certainly succeeded in exciting our curiosity, Mr. Byrne," said Gerald, "and I hope you won't send us away till you have thoroughly satisfied it."

"Never fear, sir. You shall have the whole history before you leave the room. With your permission, we will retrace our steps a little. I have already told you that I have a brother who was formerly a sergeant in the detective force. He held this position at the same time that I was confidential clerk to Mr. Frodsham. As both of you are aware, I happened to be in court on the very day that you, Mr. Murray, were tried for the murder of Paul Stilling. One of the chief witnesses at the trial was our friend, Mr. Max Jacoby. After my return to London, I called one evening to smoke a pipe with my brother, and in the course of conversation the Tewkesbury murder case cropped up. I told Dick, who likes to hear of such matters, all about the trial. Jacoby's name was mentioned, and I remember remarking to my brother that he had far more the look of a murderer than the man in the dock--meaning you, sir. Well, gentlemen, some three or four months, passed away, when, one day, I met my brother casually in the street. Says he to me, 'Peter, when next you come up to my crib, I can show you a bit of paper that may perhaps interest you a little--a bit of paper with some writing on it, I mean.'--'Is the writing by anybody that I know?' said I. 'It's a letter,' said he, 'and the signature to it is "Max Jacoby"--the name of the fellow, isn't it, who was a witness in the Tewkesbury murder case?' 'That's the name, sure enough,' replied I. 'But how did a letter signed by him come into your possession?' 'Oh, the fellow to whom it was addressed got into a little difficulty. I had to search his rooms, and I found this letter among a lot of other papers. I took a copy of it before handing over the original, as I thought it might interest you.' Well, gentlemen, I thought very little more of the matter, as, indeed, why should I? Dick, however, did not forget, and the next time I called on him he produced the letter. I read the letter, and looked upon the affair as one of those curious coincidences which so frequently happen in real life; but I speedily forgot all about it, and the chances are that I should never have thought about it again had not your visit to me brought all the old circumstances back to my mind. After that visit I made it my first business to go down to Dorking and see my brother. The question was, had he, after all these years, got the copy of Max Jacoby's letter still by him? Fortunately for us, Dick is one of those cautious souls who hardly ever destroy anything, and who have an almost superstitious reverence for any scrap of paper with writing on it. In short, gentlemen, the letter was still in existence. Dick gave it up to me without difficulty, and it is in my writing-desk at the present moment. Before reading the letter to you, I may just add that, having regard to my brother's great experience, I have taken the liberty of consulting him at each step of this affair. It is some pleasure to me to be able to say that he takes the same view of the contents of the letter that I take, and that he agrees with all that I have done up to the present time."

"You were quite right in consulting your brother, Mr. Byrne," said Murray. "It only proves still more clearly how thoroughly you have identified yourself with the case."

Byrne crossed the room, unlocked his writing-desk, and came back with the letter in his hand.

"The letter bears no date," said he, "but as it was found by my brother in the lodgings of the man to whom it was addressed only some three or four months after the murder--subsequent to which occurrence it was, in my opinion, written--the exact date is a matter of very minor consequence. The address given is simply, 'My old lodgings,' and as it was found without an envelope, there is no clue to the post-mark. But that, too, is a matter of little consequence. And now you shall hear what the letter says."

Mr. Byrne threw the end of his cigar into the fire, cleared his throat, and opening the yellow, time-worn paper, read as under:--

"My dear Legros,

"You will be surprised to hear from me so quickly after our last farewell, and to see the place from which this letter is written. Yes, I am back once more in the old spot--penniless--a beggar! I have met with a most terrible misfortune. I have been shipwrecked, and everything I had in the world has gone to the bottom. When I say everything, you know what I mean. I mean that which cost me so dear--that which I ran so terrible a risk for--that for which one man's life, and another man's happiness, were sacrificed. But the curse of blood rested on it, and it has gone. You remember that when you parted from me on board ship, I had every prospect of a fair voyage, but during the night the wind began to rise, and by daylight next morning a terrific gale was blowing. We were still in sight of land, and having sprung a leak, we put back towards a little harbour with which our captain was acquainted. But before we could reach it, the ship began to founder, and then it was every man for himself. We saved our bare lives, and that was all. I tried all I could to bribe the men to take my box with them in the boat, but it was of no avail. 'Life's sweeter than all the gold in the world,' they said. 'Your box may go to the devil, and we'll send you after it if we have any of your nonsense.' There was no use in my going abroad when I had lost the only inducement which would have taken me there. So here I am once more, the world all before me. I have just enough money left to buy me to-morrow's dinner. After that----? But I need not say more. I trust to you, my dear Legros, to send me a five-pound note by return. In fact, I must have it. I know too much of you, and you know too much of me, for either of us to decline these sweet little offices of friendship for the other.

"Thine,

"Max Jacoby."

The three men looked at each other in silence as Byrne slowly refolded the letter.

"Your familiarity with the contents of this letter," said Gerald at last, "has enabled you to arrive at certain conclusions in your own mind such as we, to whom the letter comes as an utter surprise, can no more than barely guess at. Do you mind telling us what those conclusions are?"

"The conclusions I have come to are very few and very simple," said Byrne; "simple, inasmuch as, to my mind, knowing what I know, they are plainly discoverable through the thin veil of obscurity in which the contents of the letter are purposely involved. My conclusions are these: That this letter was written within a very short time after the murder and subsequent trial. That the property whose loss Jacoby bewails in such bitter terms was neither more nor less than the proceeds of the murder, with which he was going abroad. That when the ship went to the bottom, Jacoby's ill-gotten gains went with her, and that Jacoby himself, having no longer the means of going abroad, came back to London in a state of utter destitution, as is evidenced by his begging the loan of a five-pound note from his quondam friend."

"Yes," said Gerald, after a few minutes of silent thought, "I quite agree with you that the construction which you have put upon the contents of this letter is a most feasible one, and I am inclined to think that it is also the true one. But even granting that such be the case, I confess I am still at a loss to understand in what way a proposal of marriage from Jacoby to your daughter can forward by one single step the special end we have in view--to bring home the crime to the real murderer."

"That, too, is where I am puzzled," said Murray; "for, singular as this letter is, and confirmatory as it is of the belief I have all along maintained, that Jacoby is the guilty man, I altogether fail to see in what way Mr. Byrne's late proceedings tend to fix the guilt upon him."

Byrne, looking from one to the other, rubbed his hands and chuckled. "I thought that part of the business would prove a stumbling-block," he said. "But if you will allow me, I can lift you over it very easily. You will have observed that Jacoby's letter enters into no particulars. It gives neither the name of the ship, the date of sailing, nor the port he sailed from. We cannot advance a step beyond the letter till we make ourselves masters of that information. It is quite evident that there is only one source from which we can obtain it, and that is from Jacoby himself. How are we to get out of him any information respecting this, the great secret of his life? Were you or I to question him, we should merely arouse his suspicions and shut his lips for ever. Gentlemen, no one can worm the secret out of this man but a woman--and only a woman that he loves. Gentlemen, Max Jacoby loves my daughter, and has asked her to become his wife. On my daughter, therefore, devolves the duty of making this man reveal what he has probably never told yet to any living soul. And now you understand the point at which we have arrived."

"Clearly," said Gerald; "and upon my word, I am doubtful whether the same result could have been arrived at by means other than those which you have seen fit to make use of."

Ambrose Murray did not speak, but he put out his arm, and grasped Byrne by the hand in a fashion far more eloquent than words.

"If Mr. Byrne will allow me, I will proceed just one step further in the matter," said Gerald. "Assuming for a moment that we have succeeded in getting out of Jacoby all the information we want from him; that we know when and from where he sailed, and the name of the ship--what then? The only evidence on which it would be possible to convict him will still be at the bottom of the sea."

Before Byrne could say a word in reply, there came a sudden knocking at the door, and the voice of Bakewell was heard outside: "A letter for Mr. Byrne."

Murray, his mind impressed with what had gone before, said solemnly: "Yes, it will still be, what it must remain for ever--a Secret of the Sea!"

Byrne held up a warning finger. In one minute he seemed to become twenty years older. He hobbled feebly towards the door, coughing meanwhile in a way that was pitiful to hear. "All right, Bakewell, I'm coming--I'm coming," he cried, querulously. Then, as he opened the door, Miriam's voice was heard carolling gaily as she ran quickly upstairs.

[CHAPTER VII.]

POD'S REVELATION.

Miss Lloyd pleaded a violent headache as an excuse for her non-attendance at the breakfast-table the morning after the scene between herself and Gerald in the back drawing-room. She felt as if she could not face any one for a little while; but, more than all, the possibility of meeting Gerald frightened her. To have gone in to breakfast, and have found him there, would have set her heart fluttering and have brought the tell-tale colour to her cheeks, and would almost infallibly have betrayed her secret to every one. No; she felt as if she could not meet any one just yet--that she did not want to meet anyone. She asked for no greater happiness at present than to sit alone by her dressing-room fire, and live over again in memory last night's wondrous scene. She had only to shut her eyes, and every word, and look, and tone, came back to her with the most realistic force. What a change three short minutes had wrought in her life! She seemed to have lived a hundred years since yesterday morning; or, rather, the Eleanor Lloyd of yesterday was dead and buried--dead and buried because the poor creature had not known what it was to love!

It was, indeed, like the beginning of a new life to her. "To think that I have been loving him all along, and did not know it!" she said to herself, with a little laugh. "I wonder how long it is since he first found out that he loved me. I will make him tell me all about it after awhile."

Then her cheeks flushed, and her heart beat faster at the thought of all that such a sweet possibility implied.

"How glad I am that he is poor and I am rich," she said. "All that I have shall be his. My money will lend wings to his ambition." Then came the thought, "When shall I see him again, and what will he say when I do see him?"

She felt that she dreaded and yet longed for the time to come when they should meet again. It would be trying enough to have to meet him in the company of others, but the thought of encountering him alone, while sending a delicious thrill through her, made her quake with fear.

On one point she was quite determined--she would shun a private interview with him as long as possible. She was quite aware that such an interview must take place sooner or later, but it should be altogether of his seeking, not of hers. She knew her own weakness. She knew that whenever Mr. Pomeroy should say to her, "Eleanor, I love you, and I want you to become my wife," all power of resistance would be taken from her, and that she should have no alternative but to yield. At present she had not yielded, and she would try to keep out of his way for a little while longer. When next he should encounter her, the spear of his love would smite her, and she must needs become his bondswoman for ever.

Lady Dudgeon sent some breakfast upstairs, and, by-and-by, she made her appearance in person. She wanted to satisfy herself that there was nothing seriously the matter with Miss Lloyd. It was but a simple headache, Eleanor informed her.

"But you are slightly feverish, child," persisted her ladyship; "and you look as if you had not had enough sleep."

Which statement was true enough. Some sensible young ladies there are whose healthy slumbers not even the imprint of Love's first kiss upon their lips has the slightest power to disturb; but not one of such strong-minded maidens was our foolish Eleanor.

"I will look up again about eleven," said her ladyship, "and if you are not better by that time I shall make you up a little mixture of my own."

Eleanor promised herself that she would be better by that time, as her ladyship's mixtures--she prided herself on being able to physic all her household without calling in the doctor--had the invariable property of being excessively nauseous.

She hugged herself with a little shiver of delight when she was left alone again to think her own thoughts. What a surprise it would be to Lady Dudgeon--and, indeed, to everybody! Of course, she would be told that Mr. Pomeroy had only made love to her because she was rich; but in her own heart she knew so much better than that!

All at once it struck her that there were one or two notes she ought to write this morning; so she went to her davenport, and took pen and paper. But, somehow, her thoughts would go wool-gathering, and the notes refused to get themselves written. Then she began to scribble on the sheet before her. She wrote her own name several times over, and then, without knowing it, she found that she had written "John Pomeroy." Really, it looked very nice. Then the question put itself to her--"How should I have to address him in case he were to ask me to write to him?" Then she wrote, "Dear Mr. Pomeroy;" but that would be too formal as between engaged people. Then she tried, "My dear John," and "My darling John"--decided improvements both. Then, with the tip of the pen between her lips, and her head a little on one side, she studied the general effect of what she had written. Not satisfied with that, and being quite sure that she was all alone, she tried the effect of speaking the magic words aloud--though, indeed, it was little more than a timid whisper. Every syllable spoken thus was full of hidden music. Then she took up the pen again, and, hardly conscious of what she was doing, she wrote, "My own dear husband." But this was too much. With a little cry, and a sudden blush, she crumpled up the paper, ran across the room, and dropped it into the fire. Next moment she thought she heard the sound of voices. She went to the door, opened it softly, and listened.

It was as she had thought, Sir Thomas and Mr. Pomeroy were talking together on the floor below. She could not make out what they were talking about--she did not want to do that--all that she wanted was just to hear the sound of Pomeroy's voice. How strangely it thrilled her this morning to hear that voice again, which she could already have singled out from ten thousand others, and to hear which was, for her, to hear a sweeter music than could have been distilled from all the other sounds in the universe!

The last time she had heard that voice was when it spoke to her. What were the words? "If I could only tell you how much I love you!" It was to her those words were spoken--to her, Eleanor Lloyd! But surely it was not yesterday, but long, long years ago that she had heard them! She felt already as if she had loved him all her life.

And then his lips had pressed hers, once--twice--thrice! That, indeed, was something fresh--the revelation of a new life! And then his arms had twined round her--strong, comforting--and had pressed her to his bosom as if she were a little child. And in that one timid glance which she had shot up into his eyes, had she not seen there depths of tenderness and devotion that were to be hers--hers alone--through all the days of her life yet to come? What a happy, happy girl she was this morning!

She was quite startled to hear the clock strike eleven. How quickly the morning had flown! Lady Dudgeon came up to see how she was, but with her came Eleanor's particular friend, Miss Lorrimore, who announced, in the impetuous way usual with her, that she had come to fetch Eleanor away for a couple of days. Eleanor was by no means loth to go. It was as if a door of escape had suddenly opened for her. In half an hour she was ready, Lady Dudgeon's mild opposition being overruled by the two girls without compunction.

Miss Lorrimore's ponies had been waiting all this time. As Eleanor was being driven through the avenue, her quick eyes saw Sir Thomas and Mr. Pomeroy walking together in one of the side paths a little distance away.

"I should like to stop and speak to Sir Thomas," said Miss Lorrimore.

"No, no; don't stop!" said Eleanor; "but drive on faster, if you love me."

The gentlemen raised their hats, Eleanor fluttered her handkerchief for a moment, and that was the last that she and Gerald saw of each other for some time to come.

In the first place, Eleanor's visit to Miss Lorrimore, instead of being for two days only, extended over five. In the second place, when she did get back to Stammars, she found that Gerald was away in London on business for Sir Thomas. This was a little disappointment to her, for by this time she was growing impatient to see him again. She did not like to ask how soon he was expected back, and no one volunteered to tell her.

How bitterly she blamed herself now for running away from him! What a strange, flighty girl he must take her to be! Perhaps, as she had so deliberately run away from him, he would not think her worthy of further notice, and would regard all that had happened between them as nothing more than a foolish dream. This thought was almost unbearable, and now was Eleanor as wretched as she had been happy before. But to be frequently wretched and miserable is part of the penalty incurred by all who are so weak-minded as to fall in love. Such people are not to be pitied.

Gerald, on his side, being smitten with the same disorder, was subject to the same exaltations and depressions, had his hours of fever and his hours of chill. At one time he felt sure that Eleanor loved him a little in return. Had he not seen, or fancied that he saw, a world of love and trust in her eyes during those few brief seconds when she had let him press her to his heart? At another time he felt sure that his roughness and impetuosity had frightened her: that she was staying away from Stammars on purpose to avoid him; that he had offended her past recovery. It was almost a relief to be sent up to London on business by Sir Thomas, who, being about this time confined to his room with a severe cold, was obliged to make use of Gerald in various ways. Gerald hoped that by the time he got back from town Eleanor would have returned to Stammars, in which case he had quite made up his mind that he would lose no time in deciding his fate once for all.

In his more hopeful moments, it was very pleasant to him to think that Eleanor had learned, or was learning, to love him for himself alone. As a poor man he had wooed her, and as a poor man he should win her. He often speculated as to what would be the effect upon her of the news which he must of necessity tell her before he could make her his wife. In the first place, he could not marry her under a false name. He must necessarily tell her that her name was not Eleanor Lloyd, but Eleanor Murray. Then would follow, as a matter of course, her father's story, which would, in its turn, elicit the fact that, as Jacob Lloyd had died without a will, Eleanor had no right to a single sixpence of the property he had left behind him. Next would have to come the telling of everything to Ambrose Murray. Last but not least, would come the revelation to Eleanor that the man she was going to marry was not John Pomeroy, but Gerald Warburton. One fact he would, if it were possible to do so, keep from her till after their marriage--he would not let her know that he was the heir to Jacob Lloyd's property--to the wealth which she had all along believed to be hers. It was his fancy that she should marry him in the belief that he was a poor man. All the greater would be her after-surprise.

It so fell out that a couple of days after Eleanor's return from her visit to Miss Lorrimore, and while Gerald was still absent from Stammars, Mr. Pod Piper, whom it is hoped the reader has not quite forgotten, was sent there with certain papers that required Sir Thomas's signature. Having taken the papers into the library, Pod was told to go and amuse himself for half an hour, by which time the documents would be ready for him to take back to Mr. Kelvin.

Pod was one of those people who never find much difficulty in amusing themselves. His first proceeding was to make his way to the kitchen and ask whether they had got any cold sirloin and strong ale with which to refresh a weary wayfarer. Pod was not unknown at Stammars, and his needs were duly attended to. After that he strolled into the garden, and ensconcing himself behind a large laurel, where he could not be seen from any of the windows, he proceeded to light and smoke the remaining half of a cigar which he happened to have by him. Cigars being a luxury that he could not often indulge in, Pod generally contrived to make one last him for two occasions.

When the cigar was smoked down to the last half-inch, Pod thought that he would take a turn round the conservatory, and as he felt sure that the crusty-looking old gardener had never seen him before, it struck him that there would be no harm in trying to impress the old fellow with the belief that he was being honoured by the presence of some guest of distinction--"some young swell of the upper ten," as Pod put it to himself. Accordingly, before opening the glass door of the conservatory, Mr. Piper produced from his pocket a pair of rather dingy lavender kid gloves, one of which he put on, leaving the other to be carried in an easy, dégagé style, such as would seem natural to a young fellow whose uncle was a marquis at the very least. The fact, however, was, that the gloves were odd ones, and as they were both intended for the right hand, Pod could not conveniently wear more than one of them at a time.

Pod's next proceeding was to give his hat a careful polish with the sleeve of his coat, and then to cock it a little more on one side of his head than he usually wore it. Then one end of his white handkerchief was allowed to hang negligently out of his pocket. Then, from some mysterious receptacle Pod produced an eye-glass. Many weary hours had he spent in his attempts to master the nice art of wearing an eye-glass easily and without conscious effort. But as yet his labours could hardly be said to be crowned with success, seeing that the glass would persist in dropping from his eye at awkward moments, when, by all the laws that regulate such matters, it ought to have been most firmly fixed in its orbit.

As soon as Pod's little arrangements were completed, he opened the door, and marched boldly into the conservatory. The old gardener glared sulkily at him, as gardeners have a habit of doing when any one invades what they look upon as their private domains. But Pod, caring nothing for sulky looks, swaggered up and down the flowery aisles, making believe, glass in eye, to read the different Latin labels, as though he thoroughly understood them. Presently, he caught sight of a little group of people crossing one of the garden-paths outside. Looking more closely, he saw that one of them was Olive Deane; the others, judging from their appearance, were her two pupils and some friends of theirs.

The sight of Miss Deane seemed to surprise Mr. Piper into temporary forgetfulness both of his eye-glass and the Latin labels. He sat down in a brown study, and was still sitting, deep in thought, when, hearing one of the doors clash, he looked up and saw Miss Lloyd coming slowly towards him. "Why, here she is--her very self! And isn't she a beauty!" he muttered. "No time like the present. I'll tell her now." And with that his eye-glass and his lavender gloves were next moment smuggled safely out of sight.

Although Pod had at once recognized Eleanor, it is doubtful whether she would have recollected him had he not spoken to her.

"Beg pardon, but are you not Miss Lloyd?" he said, as she reached the spot where he was standing.

"Yes, I am Miss Lloyd," she said, with a smile, for Pod, much to his own shame and disgust, was blushing violently. "Have you anything to say to me?"

"Yes, miss, something that I should have told you long ago if you had not been away in London. You don't recollect me, but I shall never forget you. My name is Podley Piper, and I'm in Mr. Kelvin's office at Pembridge."

Had Pod been an articled clerk, instead of being the office youth he was, he could not have mentioned this fact with an air of greater dignity.

"It was you, miss, who were so kind to my mother last spring, when she was ill. You sent her wine, and jelly, and coals, and you weren't above going and seeing her yourself. She would never have come round as soon as she did if it had not been for your kindness--and I thank you for it with all my heart!"

"It is very little that you have to thank me for," replied Eleanor. "I hope your mother has had no return of her old complaint?"

"She is well and hearty, thank you, miss, and she often says that if all rich people were like you, the world would be a pleasanter place to live in than it is."

"I am glad to have seen you, and to have news of your mother," said Eleanor. "But I think you said you had something to tell me."

"Yes, miss, I have. Do you know my governor, Mr. Kelvin?"

"I have known Mr. Kelvin for several years. But why do you ask?"

"Then perhaps you know a friend of Mr. Kelvin--Mr. Pomeroy?"

"I certainly am acquainted with a gentleman of that name. But I did not know that Mr. Pomeroy was a friend of Mr. Kelvin."

"Oh, yes, but he is. It was through Mr. Kelvin that he was made secretary to Sir Thomas."

"Indeed!" said Eleanor, coldly. "But that is hardly the news you have to tell me?" Despite herself, she began to tremble a little. What was this strange-looking boy about to tell her?

"I'm coming to the news presently," said Pod. "May I ask whether Miss Olive Deane is still at Stammars?"

"Miss Deane is still here."

"Of course you know that she is Mr. Kelvin's cousin?"

"I believe I have been told so."

"Well, Miss Lloyd, one day I happened to overhear a conversation in Mr. Kelvin's office between Miss Deane and Mr. Pomeroy, in which your name was rather frequently mentioned."

"My name mentioned in a conversation between Miss Deane and Mr. Pomeroy! What could they have to say about me?"

She was trembling more than ever now, and to hide it was obliged to sit down on the chair recently vacated by Pod.

"You know, miss," said Pod, with an air of self-justification, "I am not in the habit of listening to conversations that it is not intended I should hear, and it was only the mention of your name, and a certain remark that was made about you, that made me do so in this case."

"But they could have nothing to say about me--nothing, that is, of any consequence either to you or me."

"Well, I can only say this, that neither Miss Deane nor Mr. Pomeroy mean any good to you, and I want to put you on your guard against them."

Eleanor could not speak for a moment or two. What terrible abyss was this which seemed opening at her feet?

"But what do you mean by putting me on my guard against Miss Deane and Mr. Pomeroy?"

"What I say is this: beware of both of them. Both of them are snakes in the grass."

"You are a very strange young man, and cannot surely know what you are saying," urged poor Eleanor. "I am quite sure that there must be a great mistake somewhere."

"No mistake whatever, miss. If I leave my situation to-morrow, I'll tell you. Mr. Pomeroy had been away from England for some time, and when he first came to my master, about four months ago, he hadn't a penny in the world."

"Possibly not," said Eleanor, coldly. "But poverty is no disgrace."

"He came to Mr. Kelvin, who had known him years before, and Kelvin lent him fifty pounds."

"Friends should always help each other. But how came you to know all this?"

"Through the conversation that I overheard between Miss Deane and Mr. Pomeroy.

"Really," said Eleanor, as she rose, "I fail to see in what way these details concern me. I must wish you good morning, Mr. Piper, and----"

"One moment, if you please," said Pod, earnestly. "You don't know why Mr. Pomeroy was male secretary to Sir Thomas, do you?"

"That is a point about which I have never troubled myself to think: it does not concern me."

"He was sent to Stammars that he might have a chance of marrying an heiress."

"Ah!"

"And that heiress was to be you, miss."

"Me!" Eleanor sank down in the chair again.

"Miss Deane said you were worth twenty thousand pounds, and as Mr. Pomeroy was so poor, why shouldn't he pretend to fall in love with you and marry you?"

There was a dead pause. The plashing of a tiny fountain hidden somewhere among the foliage was the only sound that broke the silence: it was a sound that will dwell in Eleanor's memory as long as she lives.

"Are you quite sure that you did not dream all this?" she said, speaking very faintly.

"Every word I tell you is as true as gospel. I took down the conversation in shorthand, and I've got my notes at home now. The grand point was this: Mr. Pomeroy was to have the place of secretary to Sir Thomas, so that he might be near you and have an opportunity of making love to you. You are not offended with me, miss?"

"Offended! oh, no; but I am sure you have made some dreadful mistake."

"I thought it only right to put you on your guard against those two--Miss Deane and Mr. Pomeroy. And there's my governor, too, he's as thick in the plot as the others. It was he who found the other one the money to buy clothes with to come here, so that he might look like a gentleman. It's your money, miss, that's the temptation," concluded Pod, philosophically. "Rich people never know who are their real friends."

Eleanor did not answer. She no longer seemed to see him, or even to be aware of his presence. There was a dumb, despairing, far-away look on her white face that filled him with awe. He felt that he dare not say another word. Leaving her there, sitting on the chair, one hand tightly interlocked in the other, staring into vacancy with wide-open eyes that seemed to see nothing, he stole away on tip-toe, and presently, with a great sense of relief, found himself in the fresh air outside.

[CHAPTER VIII.]

A GLASS OF BURGUNDY.

The cold caught by Sir Thomas Dudgeon a few days after the ball at Stammars culminated in an attack of low fever, which confined him to the house for some weeks, and delayed the return of the family to Harley Street at the date first fixed upon.

While the baronet was thus shut up within doors, a certain estate was advertised for sale, of which he thought he should like to become the purchaser. Being unable to attend to the matter in person, he put it into the hands of Mr. Kelvin, who, in the course of the business, found himself, much against his will, under the necessity of going to Stammars, from which place he had kept himself carefully aloof for several months.

The day before going there, Kelvin mentioned his intended visit to his mother, mentioned it casually in conversation, and as a matter of no consequence, for the old lady knew of no disinclination on his part to go to Stammars, and had not the remotest suspicion that he had ever been in love with Miss Lloyd.

As soon as Matthew had left the room, Mrs. Kelvin sat down and penned a short note to Miss Deane, informing her that her cousin would be at Stammars on the morrow, and asking her to see him and write back her opinion as to how he seemed in health, whether better or worse than when Olive saw him at Easter.

The note reached Olive by the evening post while she was correcting her pupils' exercises. She read it through once and then put it quietly into her pocket: but she went up to her room earlier than usual, and it was long past midnight before she went to bed. She put out her candle--she always used to say that she could think better in the dark--and drew up her blinds, and paced her room for hours in the dim starlight. This visit of her cousin to Stammars might mean so much to her!

The main reason which, in the first instance, had induced her to come to Stammars no longer existed. Her scheme for bringing Pomeroy and Miss Lloyd together, that they might have an opportunity of falling in love with each other, had succeeded almost beyond her expectations. She had partly seen, and partly overheard, what had passed between them that evening in the back drawing-room. Her belief, as regarded Pomeroy, was that he was merely playing a part in order to win an heiress for his wife; but that Eleanor was really in love with Pomeroy, she felt equally sure. So sure, indeed, was she on this point, that all fear of Matthew Kelvin ever inducing Miss Lloyd to change her mind and look upon him with kindly eyes had vanished from Olive's mind for ever. Let her cousin marry whomsoever he might, there was one person in the world who would never become his wife, and that person was Eleanor Lloyd--on that point there could be no possible mistake. So far, she had cut her way clearly and boldly towards the end she had had in view from the first. But much remained for her still to do. In the first place, she must satisfy her cousin that all chance of his ever winning Miss Lloyd was utterly at an end. This there would not be much difficulty in effecting; but something much harder would remain to be achieved before she could hope to benefit in the least by all that had gone before. There was no hope of her ever being able to win her cousin's affections, no hope that he would ever ask her to become his wife, unless the opportunity were given her of seeing him and being with him daily--unless, in fact, he and she were living under the same roof. But how was such an end to be accomplished? True it was that she might, on some easily-invented pretext, throw up her position at Stammars, and go and live with her aunt for a week or two while looking out for another situation. But that was not what she wanted. Her next situation might take her a couple of hundred miles away, and so separate her from her cousin for years--for ever. It were better to remain at Stammars than run such a risk as that. True it was that she had lived under her cousin's roof for several weeks before coming to Stammars, without, to all appearance, advancing one single step towards the end she had in view. But she flattered herself that her failure at that time was altogether due to the fact that her cousin had not as yet, whatever he might say to the contrary, given up all expectation of one day inducing Miss Lloyd to change her mind in his favour. In any case, his recent disappointment sat too freshly upon him: his hurt was not yet healed, the image of Miss Lloyd was still too constantly in his mind's eye, for any real hope to exist that he might have his eyes and his thoughts diverted elsewhere. But that time was now gone by. Mr. Kelvin was no love-sick schoolboy, to go whimpering through the world because he could not have the particular toy on which he had set his mind. When once the first sharp pang was over, when once he knew for a fact that the heart he had one day hoped to call his was irrevocably given to another, pride would come to the aid of his natural strength of character, and he would school himself to forget, would school himself to obliterate from his memory all traces of so painful an episode.

Then, if ever, would come Olive's chance; then, if ever, would come the opportunity so intensely longed for. But, in order to avail herself of that opportunity, in order to put it to all the uses of which it was capable, it was imperatively necessary that she should be there--on the spot. Thus, to-night, the problem which Olive Deane had set herself to solve--the problem which kept her out of bed half the night and awake the remaining half, was, "How, and by what means, is it possible for me to make myself an inmate of my cousin's house, so that he may have an opportunity of learning to love me?"

Just as the first ghostly glimmer of daylight was beginning to creep across the sky, she sat up in bed, moved by a thought against which she had been fighting faintly all night long, but which had conquered her at last. "If only he were ill!" was the thought that at last clothed itself with definite words in her mind. "If only he were ill!" she said aloud, staring out with blank, sleepless eyes at the dawn. "Aye--if! Then I could claim to nurse him; then I could obtain a place by his side. He has no sister, his mother is old and infirm, and no one else is so near to him as I am. And why should he not be ill?"

She went down to breakfast with dark-rimmed eyes and sallow cheeks, and looking as if she had aged five years in a few short hours. Still the same question kept repeating itself like a refrain in her mind, "Why should he not be ill?" Over and over again, as though it were a question asked by some other than herself, it seemed to be whispered in her ear; and even when she was hearing her pupils their lessons, it seemed to write itself in blood-red letters across the book in her hand.

Matthew Kelvin reached Stammars about noon. Olive had asked one of the servants to let her know when he arrived. Then she wrote a little note and sent it to him in the library, where he was closeted with Sir Thomas. "Come and have luncheon with me in my room as soon as your business is over." Then she put on another dress, and laid out her bonnet, mantle, and gloves, so that they would be ready at a moment's notice. She had quite made up her mind that she should go back to Pembridge with her cousin.

Half an hour later, Mr. Kelvin was ushered into her sitting-room, where a comfortable little luncheon was already laid.

"I suppose you would have gone away without coming near me," said Olive, as she held out her hand, "if I had not sent you that note?"

"No, indeed," said Kelvin, pleasantly. "Why should you think such hard things of me? Rather a comfortable little place, this of yours," he added, as he looked round; "but I daresay you feel rather lonely and mopy here at times."

"Very seldom. You know that I am not one who cares for much society, and so long as I have plenty of books, I content myself tolerably well."

"When do you go back to Harley Street?"

"That all depends on the state of Sir Thomas's health. And that reminds me that I have not yet asked after my aunt."

"Oh, my mother is pretty much as usual, I think. Of course, like all of us, she does not grow younger. I believe she would be better if she didn't fidget herself so unnecessarily about me."

"My aunt does not fidget herself without cause, Matthew. You don't look at all well--hardly as well as when I saw you at Easter."

"There, there! you women are all alike," he said, a little impatiently. "Never mind my looks, but give me something to eat. I believe my drive through the crisp spring air has given me an appetite, and that's more than I've had for ever so long a time. You don't look over bright yourself, Olive," he added, as he sat down at table. "A little bit worried, perhaps--eh?"

"No; I don't know that I have anything particular to worry me."

"How do you and the dowager get on together?"

"Oh, pretty well. She does not interfere a great deal with me, and I keep out of her way as much as possible."

"That's sensible on both sides."

He certainly looked older and more careworn, as he sat there, than she had ever seen him look before. It made her heart ache to look at him. If she could but have comforted him! if she could but have laid his head against her bosom, and have kissed back the pleasant light into his eyes, and the sunny smile to his lips, as she remembered them in the days before the shadow of Eleanor Lloyd had ever crossed his path! But that might not be.

"Do you see much of Miss Lloyd nowadays?" asked Kelvin, presently, in as indifferent a tone as he could assume.

"I generally see her at breakfast and luncheon when she is at home. Not often besides."

"She is quite well, I suppose?"

"Quite well, so far as I know. Why should she not be?"

"Anything come of that affair between her and Captain--Captain, what do you call him?"

"Captain Dayrell, you mean. No; I believe the affair is broken off entirely. I have reason to believe that when it came to the point, Miss Lloyd would have nothing more to do with him."

"Ah! what a little coquette she is! If a man like this Captain Dayrell is not good enough for her, what on earth does she expect? I'll take a glass of wine, if you please, Olive."

He had brightened up all in a moment. He looked quite a different individual from the gloomy, careworn man who had entered the room only ten minutes before. "In his heart he loves her still," said Olive to herself, and her own heart overflowed with bitterness at the thought. From that moment any scrap of compunction that might hitherto have clung to her was flung to the winds.

She poured him out a glass of Burgundy with a hand that betrayed not the slightest tremor before she spoke.

"Is it not possible, Matthew," she said, in that icy tone which she knew so well how to assume when it suited her to do so, "is it not possible that Miss Lloyd's refusal to entertain the proposition of Captain Dayrell might arise from some other motive than mere coquetry?"

"What do you mean?" he asked, quickly and suspiciously. "When you ask an ambiguous question like that, Miss Deane, you have generally got the answer to it ready at your tongue's end."

"Thank you, Matthew," said Olive, quietly. "When Miss Lloyd turned her back on Captain Dayrell, is it not possible that she might be influenced in doing so by her liking for some one else?"

Mr. Kelvin's face grew a shade paler, and he did not answer at once.

"If you know so much, you can doubtless tell me the rest," he said, at last. "Let us have no more beating about the bush. You can, if you choose to do so, tell me the name of the person for whom you believe Miss Lloyd to have a preference. Who is the man?" His last question might have been a cry wrung from him by his own agony, so sharp and bitter was its tone.

"What will you say if I tell you that it is your friend, Mr. Pomeroy?"

"Pomeroy! Eleanor Lloyd in love with Pomeroy!" he cried, as he started to his feet. "No; I will never believe it. It is a lie!"

"A lie, Matthew? Thank you again. It is but a few evenings ago since I saw--myself unseen--the head of Eleanor Lloyd laid on the shoulder of John Pomeroy: since I saw the lips of John Pomeroy pressed without reproof to those of Eleanor Lloyd. Such is my evidence. Set on it what value you please."

He seized a knife suddenly, as though he would have liked to stab her to the heart. But her eyes met his unflinchingly, as she stood opposite to him, and presently he sank back into his chair, and let his arm fall on to the table, and so sat with bowed head for a time, without speaking.

"This is your doing and my mother's!" he said at last, speaking slowly and bitterly. "It was through you that this vagabond had the opportunity given him of doing what he has done!"

"How was either I or your mother to know that what has happened would happen?" asked Olive. She felt that the time had not yet come when it would be safe for her to tell her cousin that Pomeroy had been brought to Stammars for the express purpose of falling in love with Miss Lloyd.

"To think of Eleanor Lloyd so far forgetting herself as to fall in love with an adventurer like Pomeroy! It seems impossible."

"You seem to forget that Pomeroy passes here as a gentleman. A poor one, it may be, but still a gentleman. And if you know anything at all of Miss Lloyd, you must know this, that the fact of Mr. Pomeroy being without a shilling in the world would not influence her estimate of him in the slightest possible degree."

"We will soon strip his fine feathers off him," exclaimed Kelvin, "and expose him for what he really is--an adventurer and a vagabond. I'll go to Sir Thomas this very day, and tell him everything."

Olive had quite expected that her cousin would be angry when he heard her news, and would threaten to expose everything to Sir Thomas; but she had kept an arrow in store for such an occasion, which she now proceeded to let fly.

"How inconsistent you are, cousin Matthew!" she exclaimed. "Why has certain news been kept back from Eleanor Lloyd for so long a time? That question you can answer as well as I can. Cannot you, therefore, comprehend how much more complete will be your revenge on this woman who rejected you with contempt and scorn, if, through your agency, she is hoodwinked into marrying a penniless adventurer like Pomeroy, rather than a gentleman and a man of honour like Captain Dayrell? Cannot you, I say, comprehend all this?"

"The question did not strike me in that light," said Kelvin, in the quick way habitual with him when any fresh idea was put before him. "If I have wished once, I have wished a thousand times," he said, "that I had never hidden from Eleanor that which it was my duty to have told her the moment the knowledge came into my possession. But such regrets are useless."

"They are worse than useless," said Olive, in her cold, measured tones, as she looked fixedly at him. There was something either in her words or her look that stung him.

"You think me weak," he said; "but how is it possible for you to understand the thoughts and feelings of a man placed as I am."

"You will not go to Sir Thomas to-day, as you said you would," was all she answered.

"No, I will not go to Sir Thomas. She rejected me and she has accepted Pomeroy. Let her abide by her choice. Having kept the secret so long, I will keep it a little while longer. Let her find out, when no remedy can avail, that this man sought her for her money alone--that money which belongs to another. Had she been the beggar's daughter of Bethnal Green, I would have made her my wife."

He had spoken passionately, and he now got up and walked to the window, and stood I gazing out of it, as if to hide his emotion.

He had half emptied his glass of Burgundy when he first sat down. Olive now filled it up, while he stood thus with his back towards her, and then, quickly and deftly, from a little phial which she extracted from the bosom of her dress, she let fall into the wine three drops of some thick, dark tincture. Very white, but very determined, was the face that was turned next moment on Mr. Kelvin.

"You have scarcely tasted anything. Are you not going to finish your cutlet?"

"No," he said, as he turned from the window. "My appetite has gone. I can't eat."

"You will, at least, drink this glass of wine. If you cannot eat, you must drink."

She took up the glass of Burgundy as she spoke, and handed it to him with a hand that was as steady as his own. He took it without a word, and drank it slowly to the last drop. Then he gave her back the glass, making a slight grimace as he did so.

"Either my palate is out of order," he said, "or else Sir Thomas's wine merchant is a vendor of rubbish." Then he added, "I promised that I would give Sir Thomas another look in before I went back, but I'll go first and have a weed in the shrubbery. A quarter of an hour in the fresh air will bring me down to my ordinary business level."

"I shall want to see you again before you go," said Olive. "I have a tiny parcel for you to take to my aunt."

Her heart was fluttering so fast, that she was obliged to press one hand over it in an effort to still its wild beating.

"All right. I'll look in again for a minute before starting," said Mr. Kelvin, as he took up his hat.

He was just about to open the door, when Olive, whose eyes had been anxiously following him, saw him stagger slightly, and lift his hand to his head. She was by his side in a moment.

"What is it, Matthew? Are you not well?"

"It was nothing. Only a sudden giddiness. I shall be better when I get into the fresh air."

Then he opened the door and went out.

Olive went to the window, from which place the side-door could be seen by which her cousin would gain access to the grounds Even her lips seemed to have lost their colour this afternoon. She stood there, rubbing one thin white hand against the other, with a slow, restless motion, as though that were the only outlet she could find for the intense life burning within her.

"It begins to take effect already!" she whispered, as though she were breathing her secret in some one's ear. "He shall take me back with him to Pembridge this very day. When he gets over this foolish passion, as he must do when Eleanor Lloyd is another man's wife, then his heart will turn to me--the heart that once was mine, and that shall be mine again! With me for his wife, all his old, ambitious dreams would spring up again with renewed vigour. He should not live and die a mere country lawyer, as, with Eleanor Lloyd for his wife, he surely would do. Raby House is his already--so his mother told me. He is far richer than the world believes him to be. In a little while he will be in Parliament--and then! What wild, ambitious dreams are these! But they are dreams that shall one day become realities, if a woman's will can make them so. There he is in the Laurel Walk! He sits down and presses his hand to his forehead. It wrings my heart to see him suffer; but what can I do? How gladly would I suffer instead of him, if thereby I could charm him to my side and make him my own for ever! It is time to go and get ready for my journey."

Lady Dudgeon had just hunted up Sir Thomas in the library (he had ventured downstairs for an hour this afternoon), in order to point out to him a flagrant error of two shillings in the casting of the butcher's monthly account, when there came a tap at the door, and next moment Miss Deane entered.

"I hope, Lady Dudgeon, you will pardon my intrusion," she said, "but my cousin, Mr. Kelvin, has been suddenly taken ill, and----"

"Kelvin ill!" burst out Sir Thomas. "What is the matter with him? Where is he?"

"He is in the conservatory, Sir Thomas. A sudden attack--giddiness--nausea. I have ordered the fly to be brought round in which he drove over from Pembridge."

"It's nothing contagious, I hope," said her ladyship. "My two darling pets--where are they?"

"Safe in the schoolroom. But your ladyship need fear nothing on the score of contagion."

"I am sorry I can't go and look after him myself," said the baronet. "Is he well enough to be sent home alone?"

"I was about to ask her ladyship to allow me to go home with him," said Olive, "although, in such a case, I could not promise to get back before to-morrow morning."

"It is very thoughtful on your part, Miss Deane," said her ladyship. "You must go with Mr. Kelvin, by all means."

"Your ladyship is very kind."

"Yes, go, by all means," said Sir Thomas. "A most invaluable, man, Kelvin--so clear-headed, and all that--never seems in a muddle, you know--never messes his fingers with the ink when he's writing."

Matthew Kelvin was indeed very ill--worse, perhaps, than Olive Deane had thought he would be. But, on the other hand, had he not been very ill, no valid necessity would have existed for Olive to accompany him home. He was grateful to her for offering to go with him. It was much nicer to have Olive by his side than one of the Stammars footmen. He had no strength to talk; but they had hardly got out of the park, and well on to the high road that led to Pembridge, when he took one of Olive's cool hands in both his, and let his head droop on to her shoulder.

"Are you in great pain, dear?" she whispered.

She had never called him dear before.

"It is rather hard to bear," said he, squeezing her hand tightly.

Presently he became aware that she was crying.

"Don't cry, Olive," he said.

But she could not help it. It made her cry to see him suffer so much; but none the more on that account did she waver for a single moment in her determination to carry out the scheme on which her mind was so firmly bent.

[CHAPTER IX.]

THE STORY OF THE WRECK.

Max Van Duren was accepted on probation as a suitor for the hand of Miss Byrne.

Everything now depended on Miriam's ability to carry out the programme laid down for her by her father. The task thus set before her was repugnant to her feelings in many ways, and yet there was a strange sort of fascination in the thought that she alone had power enough over this man to draw from him a secret that he would reveal to no living soul else. But it was requisite that even she should go to work very carefully in the matter. It was requisite that not the slightest suspicion as to her motives should be aroused in Van Duren's naturally suspicious mind. Time and patience were essentially necessary. To have seemed anxious, or in a hurry, would have defeated everything.

Thus it fell out that, nearly every evening when he was in town, Max Van Duren was admitted for an hour to the society of the woman to whose love-spells he had fallen so easy a victim. It could have been no greater surprise to any one than it was to himself to find such toils woven so strongly about him--to find himself, at fifty years of age, and with all his hard worldly experience, as weak as any school boy before the foolish witchery of a pretty face.

Every day his infatuation, for it was nothing less, seemed to grow stronger. While coquetting with him, and leading him on to believe that she really did care a little for him in her heart, she was careful to restrain all lover-like familiarities within the smallest possible limits. She could not prevent his pressing her hand now and then, and she even schooled herself into letting him once and again, and as an immense favour, touch the tips of her fingers with his lips. But that was all. Never once was his arm allowed to insinuate itself round her waist. Never once would she sit alone in the room with him for even five minutes. Her father, infirm and deaf as he was, or appeared to be, was always there--a power to be appealed to should the necessity for such an appeal ever arise.

Van Duren growled a little occasionally at being so persistently forced to keep his distance; but Miriam was as obdurate as a flint.

"I don't believe you have a heart!" he said to her, rather savagely, one night, after she had refused to let him kiss even the tips of her fingers.

"I thought you told me only ten minutes ago that I was the happy possessor of yours," she said, demurely.

"Pshaw! You know well enough what I mean. In any case, you can't be possessed of much feeling."

"I pricked my finger this morning, and it seemed to me that my feelings were very acute indeed. But doubtless you know best."

"I wonder whether you have anything beyond the very vaguest idea of what it is to love."

"Are you not doing your best to teach me? And do you not find me an apt pupil?"

"On the contrary, you are uncommonly dull."

"My natural stupidity, doubtless. But then, you know, some people set up for being teachers who have no right to the name."

"In the present case the teacher's lessons are treated with contempt."

"The teacher expects his pupil to read before she has properly learned to spell; expects, too, to be paid for his services before he has earned his first quarter's salary."

Miriam's tongue had a readiness about it that Van Duren could not match, and in such encounters he was invariably worsted. He liked Miriam all the better in that she was ready of speech and quick of tongue. This bright, clever girl would be his own property before long, and it could not but redound to his credit that his wife should not only have the good looks which go so often without brains, but that she should be keen-witted into the bargain--a woman whom he could introduce to his friends with pride, and with the knowledge that they would envy him his new-found treasure.

Presently Mr. Van Duren's birthday came round, and nothing would satisfy him on this occasion but that he should drive Miriam and her father down to Greenwich, and that they should all dine together at the "Ship." As he wished, so it was agreed.

"It will be a good chance, Miriam dear, for getting out of him what we want to know," said the old man to his daughter when they were alone. "A good dinner, and a glass or two of champagne, will help to loosen his tongue and to keep his suspicions fast asleep. There could not be a better opportunity."

They drove to Greenwich in a close carriage, out of consideration for the delicate state of Mr. Byrne's health. But the old man freshened up wonderfully at the dinner-table, and proposed Mr. Van Duren's health in an eulogistic but somewhat rambling speech, he being evidently of opinion, once or twice, that quite a roomful of guests were listening to him. Miriam at last was obliged to force him gently down into his chair, and tempt him into silence with some grapes. When coffee was brought in he looked vacantly around.

"I feel just a little bit sleepy," he said "and if none of the company objects, I'll have forty winks in that pleasant-looking chair in the corner. But mind, if there's going to be any harmony, I'm your man, and 'Tom Bowling' 's the song that I'll sing."

Three minutes later he was snoring gently, with his bandana thrown over his head, although as yet there were no flies to trouble him.

"Is it too cool to sit out on the balcony?" asked Van Duren.

"I am afraid it is," answered Miriam; "but not perhaps too cold to sit by the open window." She did not want to get out of earshot of her father.

This evening she felt more nervous than she had ever felt before. It was the consciousness of what she was expected to do that affected her thus. She looked a little paler than ordinary, and, by consequence, a little more refined; and as she sat there in her black silk dress, with a little ruffle made of tulle and pink ribbon round her throat, Van Duren vowed to himself that he had never seen her look more thoroughly charming.

"I shall not feel satisfied unless you smoke," she said, as they sat down near the open window. "I have heard you say that you always like to smoke a couple of cigars after dinner."

"But that is a bachelor's vile habit, and one which I am going to learn to give up."

"It will be time enough to give it up when you are no longer a bachelor. Confess, now: did you not smuggle two or three cigars into your pocket before you left home?"

Van Duren laughed. "You must be a witch," he said, as he pulled a cigar-case out of his pocket.

"I am no witch," said Miriam. "I have only found out one of your little weaknesses."

"I wish you could discover my virtues as readily."

"A man's virtues--when he has any--don't require much discovery; he is generally quite ready to proclaim their existence himself. We women know what your sex like. We maintain our empire over you not by flattering you about your virtues, but by studying your weaknesses. But now, smoke."

Miriam struck a fusee, and Van Duren bit the end off a cigar and lighted it. A little table was between them, on which stood a bottle of sparkling hock and two glasses. The evening was closing in, but the sun had not yet set, and the broad bosom of the river lay fair and clear before them, with its steamers, and lighters, and pleasure-boats, and incoming or outgoing ships, passing to and fro unceasingly--a never-ending panorama, abounding with life, colour, and variety.

"I wonder whether you will always be as indulgent to me as you are to-day," said Van Duren, as he exhaled a long curl of fragrant smoke.

"That would depend upon whether you were always as good as you have been to-day."

"I want you, this afternoon," he said, "to tell me where you would like us to spend our honeymoon."

"As we have not yet agreed that there is to be a honeymoon, the question where we shall spend it seems to me slightly premature."

"Let us be like children for once, and make believe. Let us make believe that you and I are going to be married in a month from now, and that I have asked you where you would like to spend the honeymoon."

Miriam did not answer for a few moments, but sat with one finger pressed to her lips, a pretty embodiment of perplexity. "Really, I don't know," she said--"I don't know where I should like to go. So long as I got away to some strange place, I don't think I should care much where it was."

"How would Paris suit you?"

"Yes--yes!" cried Miriam, clapping her hands. "I should like to go to Paris above all places in the world. To see the shops, and the toilettes, and the gay crowds, and--and the hundreds of other attractions: that would suit me exactly."

"Many ladies, at such times, prefer some quiet nook either in the country or at the seaside."

"Yes, prefer to bury themselves alive, in fact. But that would not suit me, however much I might like my husband. In such a case, I am quite certain that by the end of the first week I should begin to think him a great stupid, and I am equally sure that he would already have discovered with what a shallow-pated individual he had mated himself for life. The experiment would be far too dangerous a one for me."

"A very neatly-framed excuse for preferring Paris to Bognor or Bowness," said Van Duren, with a smile.

"How cleverly you unravel my motives! But I think I told you before that I was shallow. Be warned in time!"

"I have never heeded warnings all my life. I have always preferred keeping my own headstrong course."

"In other words, you are obstinate."

"Some of my friends call me pig-headed--but that is sheer malice."

"How beautiful the river looks this afternoon!" said Miriam, a moment or two later. "I never look on an outward-bound ship without feeling a sort of vague longing to be on board her, sailing away into that strange world of which I know so little."

"The chances are that before you had been on board a dozen hours you would wish with all your heart that you were on shore again--especially if there happened to be a capful of wind."

"Oh, I quite believe that. Being a woman, it only stands to reason that I should be both ill and frightened. Men are never either one or the other." Then, in a little while, she added: "Still, nonsense apart, I believe that I should very much like to go a long voyage."

"Unless you chanced to have very pleasant companions, you would soon grow weary of the everlasting monotony of sea and sky: sky and sea."

"I'm not quite so sure on that point. I cannot conceive that either the sky or the sea is ever really monotonous. And yet you, who have travelled so much, ought to know far better than I," she added, a minute later, as if correcting herself. "You have travelled much in the course of your life, Mr. Van Duren, have you not?"

"Not so much, perhaps, as you imagine. Still, I have seen something of the world."

"And yet you never talk to me about your travels! You have never told me a single one of your adventures."

"I am not aware that I have any adventures to tell you about," said Van Duren, with an amused expression. "How can a man meet with adventures in these days of railroads and steamboats?"

"Still, you must have encountered something, or seen something, that would be worth telling about."

"Really, my life has been a most prosaic one."

"Have you never shot a lion or a tiger?"

"Certainly not."

"Perhaps you have hunted a wild boar?"

"I have never even seen such an animal."

"Have you ever quarrelled with a man, and then fought a duel with him?"

"I have quarrelled with many men, but have never fought a duel."

"Have you ever been up in a balloon or down a coal-mine?"

"Neither one nor the other."

"Have you ever been pursued by Red Indians, or by wolves, or had a fight with a bear?"

"I have never been so fortunate. I wish, for your sake, that I had."

"Have you ever been shipwrecked?" Van Duren gave a little start, but did not immediately answer.

He slowly exhaled the smoke, in a long, thin curl, from between his lips before he spoke. "Yes--I have been shipwrecked," he said, at last.

Miriam's merry laugh rang out, and she clapped her hands for glee. "Every man knows some adventure worth telling," she said. "Yours is a shipwreck. I knew that I should find out what it was at last.--And now you will tell me all about it, won't you?" She looked at him with a pretty air of entreaty, and moved her chair a little closer to his.

"There was really nothing about the affair that is worth telling," he said. He was intent, just now, on choosing another cigar out of his case, smelling at and nipping first one and then another. "It was a very trifling piece of business, I assure you."

"Still, it was a shipwreck, and you were in it," urged Miriam. "Of course, if you do not choose to tell me anything about it, I have nothing further to say in the matter."

"You are a little too hasty," said Van Duren, deprecatingly. "If I really thought it would interest you----" and then he stopped.

"I suppose I ought not to feel interested in such trifles--but I do," said Miriam, with a pout. "After all, it is not so many years since I was a child, and I daresay I have not yet got rid of all my childish tastes. I always did love to read and hear about shipwrecks."

"Then you shall hear about mine," said Van Duren, with more heartiness of tone than he had yet used. He was flattered by her evident interest in himself and his fortunes. There could be no possible harm in telling her the story of the shipwreck: it was only that the telling of it would rouse into morbid activity a snake's nest of terrible recollections, that he would fain have let sleep for ever.

The cloud that had begun to lower over Miriam's face vanished in a moment. "That is really very nice of you," she said. And then she struck another fusee and held it while he lighted his cigar. Van Duren did not speak till he had swallowed a couple of glasses of hock, one immediately after the other.

"As I said before, this shipwreck-story of mine is hardly worth telling. It is true that it seemed serious enough to me at the time, but it is associated with no thrilling adventures or hair-breadth escapes. Altogether, it was a very commonplace affair."

"Still, it was a shipwreck, and there never was a shipwreck yet that wasn't worth hearing about. So now begin, please, and remember that you must tell me all the details, and make a nice, long story of it."

Poor old Byrne, with his handkerchief thrown over his head, and his hands crossed comfortably over his stomach, was still in the middle of his forty winks, and happily oblivious of all terrestrial troubles.

"What I am about to tell you happened many years ago," said Van Duren.

"How many?--a dozen? I like people to be precise in their dates."

"Oh, more than a dozen. Nearly two dozen."

"Shall we put it down, then, that it was about twenty years ago?"

"Yes, that is near enough." There was a perceptible shade of annoyance in his tone as he spoke.

"Now, if you are going to be petulant, I won't speak to you again all the evening. If you knew more about young ladies, and their whims and ways, you would feel flattered by the interest I am taking in your narrative."

"I do feel flattered by your interest," said Van Duren. "But I did not know that you would care for such minute details."

"Little things always interest our sex--our lives are made up of petty details. And now, if you will make a fresh start, I will try not to interrupt you again."

"Well, then, about twenty years ago, more or less, I made up my mind that I would leave England for ever and try my fortune in the New World. A legacy had come to me from an unexpected quarter, and it seemed to me that I could invest my money better in America than in England, and that my chances of making a fortune were greater there than here. I went down to Liverpool with the view of selecting a ship in which to sail. Whilst staying at the hotel there, I fell in with a countryman of my own, whom I had known some years previously, and to whom I had once done some small service. He was now in the shipping-trade, and when he found that I was going to America he offered me a free passage in a vessel, of which he was part owner, that was to sail in a few days for Halifax, Nova Scotia. The offer was too good a one to be refused, and on a certain Saturday morning I found myself, and all my belongings, on board the Albatross, dropping gently down with the tide. We had hardly got beyond the mouth of the Mersey, when it began to blow heavily, and by midnight we were in the midst of a terrific gale. The Albatross was laden with a general cargo, and I was the only passenger on board. I shall never forget the magnificent sight that met my gaze when I went on deck next morning. Such a scene I never saw before, and I never want to behold again. The wind was still very high, but the sun shone brightly, and the atmosphere was so clear that the Welsh hills, although, in reality, several miles away, appeared quite close at hand. Presently the captain came up, looking very serious. 'I am sorry to tell you that we sprang a leak in the night,' he said, 'and I am afraid we shall have to put back to Liverpool, in order to have it stopped. An hour later he came to me again. The water is gaining on us so fast,' he said, 'that I shall have to make for Marhyddoc Bay, which is the nearest place I know of. I am afraid she would founder before I could get her back to Liverpool.' He then gave orders for the ship's head to be put about, and we made at once for the Welsh coast."

"What a dreadful disappointment for you!" said Miriam. "How annoyed I should have been, had I been in your place."

"My feelings were very bitter ones, I assure you," said Van Duren. "But there was no room for anger: in fact, it was becoming a question whether we should even succeed in saving our lives. Near to the coast as we were, it was doubtful whether the ship would not go down before we could reach it, and the sea was such that it would have been next to impossible for any boat to have lived in it."

"How very dreadful!" exclaimed Miriam, with a shudder.

"Those were moments of intense anxiety for all of us. One of the boats had been stove in during the night; the two remaining ones were got ready for lowering at a moment's notice. The water in the hold kept rising steadily, and at last the men refused to work at the pumps any longer. We laboured slowly on towards the land, but with every minute the ship seemed to become more unmanageable, and to be sinking deeper in the trough of the sea. We had weathered the corner of a promontory, and were within a quarter of a mile of shore, and in somewhat smoother water, when the captain gave the order to lower the boats. The ship's last moment was evidently at hand, and if we did not want to go down with her, we must hurry into the boats as quickly as possible. 'With close packing they will hold us,' said the captain; 'but it's a precious good job that, we haven't far to go.'"

"I was not overburdened with personal luggage, but one article I had that I was particularly desirous of saving. It was a small silver-clamped box, and was full of the most valuable property. In fact, I may tell you that inside that box were my whole worldly possessions. I had brought it up from my cabin and placed it on deck ready to be lowered into the boat. 'You can't take that thing with you,' said the mate, sternly, 'and if you don't look sharp, you'll be left behind yourself.' 'But I must take it,' I said; 'it holds everything I have in the world.' 'Can't help that. I tell you, it can't go. Boys, over with him.' And before I knew what had happened, I found myself dropped over the ship's side into the boat, and the remainder of the crew scrambling after me one by one. The captain and the rest of the crew were in the other boat, and had already cast themselves loose from the ship. 'Two hundred--five hundred pounds,' I cried, 'to any one who will bring that box safely ashore!' 'Hold your tongue, you fool!' cried the mate, 'or else we'll send you to fish for your confounded box at the bottom of the sea;' and with that he pushed away from the sinking ship. I said no more, but sat in dumb despair, hardly caring whether I reached the shore or not. The boat was laden to the water's edge, and I could hardly wonder at the mate's refusal to take my box. 'There she goes!' cried one of the men a few moments later. 'Farewell to the dear old Albatross!' cried a second. I lifted up my eyes. Ship and box had disappeared for ever. A quarter of an hour later I landed at Marhyddoc--a ruined man."

"Gracious me! what a dreadful misfortune!" cried Miriam. "So you did not go to America, after all?"

"I did not. It seemed to me that as I had to begin the world afresh, it would be better to do so among friends and acquaintances than among strangers. I did begin it afresh, and the result has proved far more satisfactory than I should have dared to hope."

"Your narrative has interested me very much, Mr. Van Duren," said Miriam. "It will be something for me to think about when I am sitting alone at my work. I shall think of you far oftener than I should have done had you never told me the story of the Albatross."

"Then I am indeed repaid," said Van Duren, with fervour. "To live in your thoughts is my highest ambition."

"How papa is sleeping," cried Miriam, suddenly. "He will be awake half the night if I don't rouse him."

The waiter came in with lights, and Miriam shook her father by the shoulder.

He awoke querulous and shivering with cold: so, after a hurried cup of tea, they started at once for home, Van Duren sat for a great part of the way with one of Miriam's hands pressed tightly in his. Miriam's soul shrank within her at his touch, but she was obliged to submit. She consoled herself with the thought that only for a very short time longer would the necessity for submitting to his hateful attentions exist. She had wormed out of him the great secret that he had hidden so carefully for twenty long years. The next question was whether any practical use could be made of the knowledge.

"Did you hear what passed this afternoon?" asked Miriam of her father as soon as they were alone together in their own room.

"Every syllable of it, my dear, and very cleverly you managed it."

"And now that you have got all this information, what step do you intend to take next?"

"The next step I intend to take is to advertise in the second column of the Times."

[CHAPTER X.]

GERALD'S CONFESSION.

Gerald was away from Stammars for several days, and it was during his absence that Mr. Pod Piper's interview with Eleanor took place. Gerald, metaphorically speaking, flew back on the wings of love. It seemed months ago since he spoke those few memorable words to Eleanor, and he was burning to see her again: burning to speak of the love that filled his heart, firm in his determination, when once he should see her again, not to leave her till he had won from her a promise to become his wife.

He got back to Stammers on a certain day in time for luncheon, and found Sir Thomas somewhat better in health. Lady Dudgeon and Miss Lloyd were out visiting, and were not expected home much before dinner-time. Gerald was in a restless and anxious mood, and could not settle down to anything. To wait quietly indoors was intolerable. For more than an hour he wandered aimlessly up and down the grounds, but was at last driven by a shower to take shelter in the conservatory. There he found Sanderson, the old gardener, plodding away as usual. He was rather a favourite with the old fellow, simply because he never took the liberty of plucking a flower without first asking Sanderson's permission to do so.

"Eh, sir! but I heard some queer news about you t'other day," he said, as he hobbled up to Gerald.

"News about me, Sanderson! I should very much like to know what it was."

"I'm no so certain that I ought to tell ye. And yet, seeing that there's a leddy in the case, it's perhaps only right that you should know."

"A lady in the case! You must tell me now, or I shall die of curiosity."

"I suppose I must tell ye, or else you'll no be satisfied," he said. "But let us sit down while we talk. Sitting's as cheap as standing, and I'm no so young as I have been, Mr. Pummery. It was that bit imp of a lawyer laddie," resumed Sanderson, as soon as he and Gerald were comfortably seated, "young Brazen-face, I call him, from Mr. Kelvin's. He was here t'other day, here in this very spot, and Miss Lloyd happened to come in quite accidental at the time. I'd been hard at work all the morning, and was just resting a bit behind the bushes, when all at once I heard young Brazen-face mention your name, and that made me listen to hear more."

"And what had the young vagabond to say about me, Sanderson?"

"Why, he said that you were as poor as a church mouse, and that his master lent you fifty pounds to buy your clothes with."

"There's nothing very bad in that."

"But he said the reason why you came to Stammers was that you might fall in love with Miss Lloyd and marry her, because she was worth twenty thousand pounds."

"The young scoundrel! And he told that to Miss Lloyd?"

"That's just what he did! And he said that Miss Deane knew all about it, and that it was all a planned thing between you and her."

Gerald was dumbfounded. He could not find a word to say for a little while. What must Eleanor think of him! It would not be a very difficult matter to set himself right with her if he chose to do so, but a climax was being forced upon him which he would gladly have delayed for a little while longer.

"But what was Miss Lloyd's answer to all this?" he said at last.

"She didn't seem to say much; but she may have thought all the more," answered Sanderson.

"It was enough to make her think. I am really very much obliged to you for telling me."

"I dare say you wouldn't care to have it talked about, Mr. Pummery?"

"Well, no, Sanderson, I think not. Even if this foolish accusation were true, it would be as well, for Miss Lloyd's sake, not to let it go any further. There's a sovereign for you to buy snuff with. A still tongue, you know, is a sign of a wise head."

"How did that young scamp get to know all that he told Eleanor?" was Gerald's first thought as he walked slowly back into the house. But that was a question which it was impossible for him to answer. How different was the spirit with which he entered the house from that which had possessed him when he left it but one short hour before! The summer sunshine of his love had suddenly been clouded over: the landscape had darkened: a storm was at hand.

How fortunate it was, he said to himself, that he had not met Eleanor before encountering Sanderson! He did not want to see her now; it was requisite that he should decide upon some particular line of action before meeting her again. He sat down in his easy-chair and shut his eyes, and bent himself to the task of thinking--no very easy task just now, so strangely was he fluttered by the news which had been told him. Two or three different courses were open to him: which one of them should he choose?

He sat without moving till the dinner-bell rang; then, all at once, he made up his mind as to the line of action he would adopt. Having excused himself on the plea of fatigue from going downstairs, he lighted his lamp and seated himself at his writing-table. Then he took pen and paper, and wrote as under:--

"Sir,--

"From certain private information which has reached me, I have reason to believe that a great proportion, if not the whole, of the property which my uncle, the late Mr. Jacob Lloyd, of Bridgeley Wells, died possessed of, should devolve on me as being his legal representative. As I am given to understand that you had the management of my late uncle's affairs, will you kindly inform me, at your earliest convenience, whether it is within your knowledge that the facts of the case are as stated by me, and if so, what steps it will be requisite for me to take in order to prove the validity of my claim?

"I am, sir, your obedient servant,

"Gerald Warburton."

This letter, addressed to Matthew Kelvin, was sent under cover by Gerald to a friend in London, from whose house it was professedly written, with a request that it might be posted.

Four days later, through the hands of his London friend, Gerald received the following answer:--

"Sir,--

"In reply to your favour of the 25th inst., I regret to inform you that the state of Mr. Kelvin's health at the present time is such as to entirely preclude him from giving any attention to matters of business. He hopes, however, to be sufficiently recovered in the course of a few days to be able to reply fully to the questions contained in your letter.

"I am, sir, respectfully yours,

"John Bowood."

Gerald's letter to Kelvin had been marked "Private." All letters not so marked were opened by Mr. Bray, the chief clerk. The private letters were picked out and sent upstairs. Kelvin, at this time, was so ill that Olive was deputed to open these letters, and read them aloud to him, and pencil down his remarks respecting such of them as required answering. Thus it fell out that Gerald's letter reached her among a number of others one morning. She always opened the letters and read them over herself before submitting them to her cousin, by which means she could often give him the pith of a letter without troubling him with unnecessary details.

Gerald's letter startled her not a little. It was requisite that she should have time to think it over, and to consider in what way it might or might not interfere with her own special plans; so she slipped it quietly into her pocket, and said nothing to Kelvin that morning about it.

Locked up in her own room she read the letter over and over again. After all, it was, perhaps, quite as well that this Mr. Warburton had discovered something as to the real facts of the case. Her cousin Matthew was so thin-skinned that, although he had agreed to the temporary concealment of certain facts, he evidently shrank from inflicting on Eleanor Lloyd the blow which ought to follow such concealment as a logical sequence. But should this Mr. Warburton come forward, the blow struck would be just the same, but her cousin would be spared its infliction. Eleanor Lloyd would still be deprived of name, wealth, and position, while a final sting should reach her from the hands of Olive herself, in the care she would take that, if not in one way then in another, Miss Lloyd should be duly enlightened as to the character and antecedents of the man to whom she had given her heart and promised her hand. Still it might be as well to temporise a little, to delay the climax for a week or two, if it were only that the bond of love which bound Miss Lloyd to Pomeroy might grow stronger with the lapse of time; for the more she learnt to love Pomeroy, the deeper would be the wound that a knowledge of his treachery could not fail to inflict.

When Olive had once adopted this line of argument, it was easy for her to persuade herself that the wisest thing she could do would be to keep her own counsel for a little while as to Mr. Warburton's letter. In her cousin's present state of health such a communication would only serve to worry him, and could answer no practical end. Meanwhile, she would take upon herself to have the letter replied to, but in such a way that it would be impossible for her cousin to be offended with her when the time should come for him to be told all that she had done. Not being a person who was in the habit of acting on rash impulses, she kept the letter over-night, with the view of ascertaining whether the resolve which she had come to to-day would bear next morning's cold confirmation. Next morning changed nothing; and as soon as breakfast was over she went downstairs to her cousin's private office, and sent for Mr. Bowood, one of the clerks, and dictated to him that letter which we have already seen in the hands of Gerald. All that Olive wanted just now was a little delay, and this she succeeded in securing.

But what was Gerald to do next? After what that meddlesome imp of a Pod Piper had told Eleanor, it was quite evident to him that all prospect of her listening favourably to his suit was at an end, unless he could offer a frank and full explanation of the facts. He had relied upon his letter to Kelvin bringing matters to a crisis without any further impulse on his part, but that hope was now at an end, unless he could afford to wait for Kelvin's recovery at some indefinite future time. But he could not afford to wait. He had shut himself up in his own rooms, on the plea of indisposition, while awaiting the lawyer's answer, in order that he might run no risk of meeting Miss Lloyd till he knew what that answer was. But this could not go on any longer. A meeting with Eleanor was inevitable, but on what terms could they meet, unless he were prepared with some sort of an explanation beforehand?

His most straightforward course would certainly have been to explain frankly to Eleanor who and what he was, and to tell her all his reasons for seeking to win her affections under a fictitious name. But he still shrank, with a repugnance which he seemed quite unable to overcome, from being the first to tell her that strange story which she must one day be told, but which, it seemed to him, his lips ought to be the last in the world to reveal. That story would deprive her of name, wealth, position--of everything, in fact, that her life had taught her to hold most dear. Not even to set himself right in her eyes, not even to free himself in her thoughts from a vile imputation, could he consent that from his hands the blow should come. That the blow must fall some day he knew quite well, but Kelvin was the man from whom it ought to emanate; and now, after what had happened, no matter how soon it came.

To this conclusion had he come before writing to Kelvin, but the lawyer's answer left him exactly where he was before. Something he must do himself, or else shun Eleanor altogether: but what must that something be?

Was there no middle course open to him? he asked himself; was no scheme of compromise possible by means of which, while setting himself right with Eleanor, he might be spared the necessity of becoming the mouthpiece of a revelation which, if told by him, might perchance shatter his dearest hopes for ever?

After a restless and miserable night, which seemed as if it would never come to an end, he fell into an hour's sound sleep, and when he woke he seemed to see a glimpse of daylight through the midst of his perplexities. Again he took pen in hand, and here is what he wrote on that occasion:--

"Mr. Pomeroy presents his compliments to Miss Lloyd, and having something of a special nature which he is desirous of communicating to her, he would esteem it a great favour if Miss Lloyd would allow him the privilege of a few minutes' private conversation at any time and at any place that may be most convenient to her."

An hour later, he received the following line in answer:--

"Miss Lloyd will be in the library at three o'clock this afternoon."

Poor Eleanor! What a miserable time was that which she had passed since that afternoon when Pod Piper spoke to her in the conservatory! An hour before, she would have staked her existence on Pomeroy's truth and sincerity; and now, proof had been given her that he was nothing better than a common adventurer, who had sought to win her because she was rich! Truth and sincerity seemed to have vanished from the world. Nowhere could she feel sure that she had a friend who cared for her for herself alone, who would be the same to her to-morrow as to-day, if, by the touch of some wizard's wand, her money were suddenly turned to dross. How she wished that her father had left his riches elsewhere! How she wished that necessity had driven her to earn her living by her fingers or her brain! Then, if friendship or love had chanced to come to her, she would have known that they were genuine, because she would have had nothing but their like to give in return. The poorest shop-girl, who walked the streets on her sweetheart's arm, was richer than she in all that makes life sweet and beautiful.

Sometimes Eleanor recalled certain words of warning which Lady Dudgeon had on one occasion addressed to her. "Beware lest you fall into the hands of some swindling adventurer," her ladyship had said, "of some romantic rogue, with a handsome face and a wheedling tongue, who, while persuading you that he loves you for yourself alone, cares, in reality, for nothing but the money you will bring him."

Had not her ladyship's warning borne fruit already?

But ten minutes later she would reproach herself for thinking so hardly of Pomeroy. No; notwithstanding all that she had heard, she would not believe that he was an adventurer. There was a mistake somewhere, she felt sure.

How much of the unhappiness of life is due to misunderstandings and mistakes which a few frank words of explanation would often serve to put right!

But supposing Mr. Pomeroy offered her no explanation? Supposing he persisted in his suit, and went on making love to her on the assumption that after what had passed between them he would not be repulsed? Then, indeed, painful as such a course might be, she would feel compelled to tell him all that young Piper had told her, leaving him to deny it or explain it away as he might best be able.

There were some other words of Lady Dudgeon's which she could not quite forget, and which seemed to have a more apposite force at the present moment than when they were uttered. "If you become the wife of Captain Dayrell, you will have the consolation of knowing that you have not been sought for your money alone. Dayrell is rich enough to marry a woman without a penny, if he chose to do so." She did not like Captain Dayrell, and she would never become his wife, but for all that Lady Dudgeon's words would keep ringing in her ears.

When she heard Sir Thomas mention one day at dinner that Mr. Pomeroy was back again at Stammars, she felt strangely moved. However great his offences might be, his image still dwelt in her heart, and there was something delicious in the thought that he was once again under the same roof with her. She longed and yet dreaded to see him; but as day passed after day without giving him to her aching eyes, her longing deepened into an intense anxiety. She heard from those around her that he was not very well, and that beyond seeing Sir Thomas, on business matters, for an hour every morning, he kept to his own rooms. But if he were well enough to see Sir Thomas, he was surely well enough to see her--to see the woman whose lips he had kissed, and into whose ears he had whispered words that could never be forgotten! But perhaps he held himself aloof on purpose that they might not meet. Perhaps he was desirous of shunning her--wishful that she should understand that what had passed between them had better be forgotten, and that in time to come they must be as strangers, or, at the most, as mere acquaintances, to each other. If he could forget, she could do the same: her pride was quite a match for his. It was a time of bitter perplexity and trouble.

When Eleanor walked into the library to meet Pomeroy, she had his note hidden in the bosom of her dress. She looked very cold and very proud. Her coldness and her pride notwithstanding, she had kissed his letter and cried over it; but of that Gerald was to know nothing. He bowed gravely to her as she entered the room, but he did not speak, and that of itself was enough to send a chill to her heart. Then he placed a chair for her, and she sat down, but during the interview that followed, Gerald stood with his elbow resting on the chimney-piece.

"Miss Lloyd," he began, when Eleanor was seated, "I have taken the liberty of asking you to meet me privately, being desirous of saying something to you which I could not well communicate by letter, and which, perhaps, I ought to have told you long before now." His tone was very measured and grave. Was it possible, Eleanor asked herself, that she could be listening to the same man who had pressed her to his heart in a rapture of love only two short weeks ago?

"You asked me to meet you, Mr. Pomeroy," she said, "and I am here to listen to whatever you may have to say to me."

Evidently he hardly knew how to begin what he wanted to say.

"I am here to-day, Miss Lloyd," he said at last, "to make a very painful confession, and I must ask your forgiveness if, in the course of it, I am compelled to speak more plainly than under other circumstances I should venture to do. Some three months ago I entered the service of Sir Thomas Dudgeon as his secretary. At that time I was doing nothing, or next to nothing: I was a poor man; the situation was thrown in my way, and I accepted it. But I accepted it, Miss Lloyd, not for the sake of the salary or emoluments attached to the position, but simply in order that by its means I might be brought near to you, and have an opportunity of making your acquaintance. It had been hinted to me that the only mode by which I could recoup my fortunes was by marrying an heiress. I was told that you were an heiress, and that there was just a faint possibility that I might succeed in winning your hand."

"Your confession, sir, has at least the merit of frankness," said Eleanor, with a quivering lip.

"Its frankness is the only merit it can lay claim to. I came to Stammars, Miss Lloyd, and I made your acquaintance. From that moment I was a changed man. Whatever mercenary motives, whatever ignoble ends, may have held possession of me before, they all vanished, utterly and for ever, in that first hour of our meeting. I felt and knew only that I loved you. In that love--so different from anything I had ever felt before--lay a subtle alchemy, that had the power of transfusing into something finer and purer everything base that it touched. It has refined and purified me: it has given to my hopes and inspirations a different aim: it has taught me to look at life and its duties with altogether different eyes."

He paused for a moment. Eleanor sat without speaking. What, indeed, could she say? But she had never loved him better than at that moment.

"A fortnight ago," resumed Gerald, "carried away by the impulse of the moment, and my own long-suppressed feelings, I said certain words to you which I ought not to have said--at least, not till after I had told you what I am telling you to-day, and not till I knew that I was forgiven. I am here to-day, Miss Lloyd, to crave your pardon for having given utterance to those words, and to ask you to look upon them as if they had never been said."

"Why need he do that?" whispered Eleanor in her heart.

"After the confession which I have just made as to the motives which first led me to become an inmate of this house, I dare hardly hope ever to attain again to that position in your regards which I flattered myself--wrongly enough, perhaps--was mine but a little while ago. How greatly I regret having forfeited that position I should fail to tell you in any words. But I may, perhaps, hope that my candour will meet with sufficient recognition at your hands to induce you to overlook all that has gone before, and to treat me in time to come, not as an utter stranger, but as one who----"

He paused, at a loss for words.

"No, not as an utter stranger, Mr. Pomeroy," said Eleanor, gently. "Your confession, as you term it, has been nearly as painful to me as it must have been to you. I almost forget what the words were to which you have made allusion: something foolish, I do not doubt. In any case, we will both try to forget that they were ever uttered. Good-bye."

She held out her hand as she spoke. Gerald took it, and pressed it respectfully to his lips. Then her eyes met his, while a faint smile, that was more akin to tears than laughter, played round her mouth for a moment: for a moment only--the next, he was gone.

[CHAPTER XI.]

KELVIN'S ILLNESS.

Matthew Kelvin found himself considerably better the morning of the day following that on which he had been taken ill at Stammars, but in the course of the afternoon he had a sharp return of the previous symptoms. Then it was that his mother insisted upon sending for Dr. Druce, the family practitioner, and Olive seconded the plea. Up to this time Kelvin had strenuously refused to let any one be called in, but he now yielded reluctantly to his mother's wishes. He had never been ill enough to need the services of a doctor since those far-off juvenile days of measles and scarlatina, and he was loth to believe that there was any necessity for such services now.

However, in the course of the day, Dr. Druce looked in. He felt his patient's pulse, looked at his tongue, and asked the usual questions. Then he took off his spectacles, pursed up his mouth, shook his head at Kelvin as though he were an offending schoolboy, and delivered himself oracularly. "Disordered state of stomach. Nothing serious. Put you right in a day or two. Must diet yourself more carefully in future. What really charming weather we are having."

Everybody agreed that Dr. Druce was seventy years old; many averred that he was nearly eighty. The latter people it probably was who asserted that the doctor was purblind, that his memory was half gone, that it was hardly safe for him to practise, and that he ought to retire and make room for a younger man. The doctor, however, still considered himself to be in the prime of his powers, and as he had attended Mrs. Kelvin herself for a long series of years, and was, besides, an old personal friend of that lady, it was not likely that she would think of calling in any other assistance to her son.

As soon as Dr. Druce's visit had relieved in some measure his mother's anxiety, Kelvin began to express his desire that Olive should get back to Stammers without delay. "I shall be all right in a day or two," he said, "and my mother, or one or other of the servants, will see meanwhile that I want for nothing."

"I shall wait till to-morrow, and see how you are then, before I think of going back," said Olive. "You know that my aunt can do nothing in the way of waiting upon you, and as for the servants, they are all very well in their places, but they would be quite out of their element in a sick-room."

"A sick-room, indeed! You talk as if I were going to be laid up for a month," said Kelvin, impatiently.

"I talk simple common sense, Matthew," said Olive. "Besides, Lady Dudgeon promised me a holiday a month ago, and I don't see why I should not take it now. In fact, I may tell you that I have already written to her ladyship telling her not to expect me back for three or four days."

"Cool, I must say. Not but what you are welcome to stay here as long as you like: cela va sans dire; and I am greatly obliged to you for what you have done for me already. But as for spending your holiday in waiting on me--that's pure nonsense. A week at the seaside, now, is what you ought to have."

"Which to me would mean a week in a strange place among people whom I never saw before and should never see again. I would sooner hear Sophy and Carry their lessons from year's end to year's end than indulge in such a holiday as that."

"I shall be better to-morrow, you mark my words if I'm not, and then we'll have a little further talk about your holiday."

But he was by no means better next morning; rather worse, indeed, if anything. It was nothing, Dr. Druce said. The medicine sent by him had, perhaps, had the effect of increasing the sickness, but the patient himself was no worse than on the preceding day. A little time and a little patience were needed. It was not to be expected that an evil which had been growing for months, perhaps even for year, could be put right in a day or two.

Kelvin said nothing to Olive that day about going back to Stammars. He was very ill indeed, and he could not help admitting to himself that it was a great comfort to have Olive to wait upon him. His mother, at the best of times, would not have been of much use in a sick-room, seeing that it was a matter of difficulty for her to walk across the floor, and the very fact of Matthew being so ill only tended to make her worse than usual. As for a hired nurse, Kelvin shuddered at the thought. But such a nurse as Olive made all the difference. "You might have been born to this sort of thing, from the way you go, about it," he said to her.

"You forget that for many years my father kept a chemist's shop in a poor neighbourhood," she replied, "and that I seem to have been familiar with sickness and disease since I can remember anything."

"You are a clever girl, Olive, and I believe you could doctor me a deuced sight better than old Druce. I remember when I was a lad hearing your father say that you knew almost as much about his drugs and messes as he did himself."

Olive's back was towards him as he spoke, and she did not answer for a moment or two. "That is a long time ago," she said, in a low voice; "and such knowledge as that is easily forgotten. Then, again, you remember how poor papa always would exaggerate a little."

How deft and noiseless were all her movements in the sick man's room! How soft, and white, and cool were her hands! Her dress never rustled, her shoes never creaked, her voice itself was attuned to the place and the occasion. She was never hurried; nothing seemed to put her out. She would either read to her cousin, or talk to him, or sit for hours by his side doing some noiseless stitching that would not have disturbed the slumbers of a mouse. When he was more than ordinarily restless she would bathe his head with eau-de-Cologne or aromatic vinegar, or sometimes, leaving his door ajar, she would go into the other room and play some of his favourite airs softly on the piano, and so, little by little, charm him out of his restless mood and soothe him off into a refreshing sleep.

It was on the evening of the second day that Mrs. Kelvin called Olive on one side. "You will not leave me to-morrow, unless my dear boy is better?" said the old lady, with tears in her eyes.

"I will not leave you to-morrow, or next week, or next month, unless my cousin is better," said Olive. "You may take my word for that."

"Heaven bless you, dear!" said Mrs. Kelvin, fervently; and she made as though she would kiss Olive, but the latter started back.

"I think Matthew is calling me," she said, and she hurried into the other room.

One day passed after another, and still Dr. Druce's patient did not improve.

"These cases are sometimes very obstinate, indeed," said the old gentleman, pleasantly, as he peered into his snuff-box in search of a last pinch. "And then they not unfrequently affect the liver. Now, I don't know a more obstinate noun substantive in the whole of the English language than your disordered liver. As for the increasing weakness that you complain about--why, I don't care much about that, because it tends to keep down any febrile symptoms. Of course, if you can't eat you can't keep up your strength; but when you once take a turn, you know, you'll have the appetite of a wolf--I may say, the appetite of a wolf in winter."

"What a comfort it is, dear," said Mrs. Kelvin to Olive, "to think that we are in the hands of such a nice clever man as Dr. Druce. He has had so much experience that I believe he can tell at a glance what is the matter with a patient. Experience, in the medical profession, is everything."

Sir Thomas and Lady Dudgeon drove over to see Mr. Kelvin a couple of days before their return to London. They were greatly concerned at his illness. As regarded Miss Deane, permission was given her to stay with her cousin as long as it might be necessary for her to do so. The young ladies, her pupils, were gone to pay a long-deferred visit to an aunt of theirs, and it was quite uncertain when they would return.

One of Olive's difficulties was thus smoothed away for her without any trouble on her part.

A few hours after Sir Thomas's visit, Mr. Kelvin suddenly opened his hollow eyes. "Olive, where is my mother?" he asked, abruptly.

"She was tired, and she has gone to lie down for half an hour."

"Then you and I can have a little talk together."

Olive guessed instinctively what was coming. "If what you were about to say to me is not very important, I would leave it unsaid to-day, if I were you," she answered. "You have done more talking already than is good for you."

As if to verify her words, he was suddenly taken with a severe fit of sickness which lasted several minutes and left him thoroughly exhausted.

Laying his wasted fingers on Olive's arm, and drawing her towards him, "What I was about to say was this," he whispered. "Since I have been lying here, I have had time to think of many things. But the thing that has weighed heaviest on my mind, the thing that I have regretted most, is my treatment of Eleanor Lloyd. It was you, Olive, who persuaded me to hide the truth from her, to let her live on in ignorance of her real history; to--to--you understand what I mean."

"You know what my motives in the matter were, Matthew," said Olive, in a low voice.

"Yes, I know quite well what they were, and very mean and despicable they seem to me now. Mind, I am not going to reproach you. The fault was mine in allowing myself to be persuaded by you. In any case, the past is the past, and nothing can alter it; but, so sure as I now lie here, the very first day that I can crawl downstairs, I will send for Miss Lloyd, tell her everything, and ask her forgiveness for the wrong I have done her!"

He said no more, but shut his eyes and seemed as if he were going to sleep.

Olive at this time had got Gerald Warburton's letter upstairs, and had, in fact, already answered it in the way that we have seen. For a moment she was tempted to show the letter to her cousin, but before she could make up her mind to do so, Kelvin was asleep or seemed to be. So telling herself that she did not care to disturb him, she let the opportunity go by, and as Kelvin, when he awoke, did not again recur to the subject, there seemed to be no reason why she should do so. Not much longer could the climax be delayed, not much longer could Eleanor Lloyd be kept in ignorance; of that Olive was quite aware; but she would, if possible, delay the revelation for a little while; delay it till Mr. Kelvin should have thoroughly recovered from his illness, and having got rid of all his foolish sick-bed fancies, should be prepared to carry out the scheme in all its features as originally proposed by her and agreed to by him.

But when would Mr. Kelvin have recovered from his illness? That was a question which, as yet, Olive was not prepared to answer. Sometimes it seemed to her that her plot was slowly working itself round to the fulfilment for which she so ardently longed; sometimes it seemed as if no such fulfilment were possible to her. That her cousin liked to have her by his side, liked to have her wait upon him, she saw clearly enough, and she fancied that with each day she became more indispensable to him. But was his heart touched by her devotion; was he slowly but surely learning to love her? That was a problem which at present she could in nowise solve. Time and patience might work wonders for her, and with them as her allies she saw no reason, when in her more sanguine moods, to despair of ultimate success. Having gone so far, having ventured so much, it was not likely, as she said to herself, that she should go back, that she should let herself be overcome by any childish timidity or nonsensical scruples, when, for aught she knew to the contrary, she might at that very moment be on the brink of success. She never knew what a day, what an hour, might bring forth. At some moment when least expected her cousin might put forth his hand and say to her, "Olive, my heart has come round to you again. I love you. Be my wife." If such a prize were not to be won without risk, she was prepared to run that risk, whatever it might involve.

There were times when Kelvin's mysterious malady caused him to suffer acutely. At such moments Olive was always by his side, "a ministering angel," as her cousin himself called her one day; soothing him with the gentlest attentions, anticipating each want intuitively, making herself, in fact, so indispensable to him that after a while he could hardly bear to let her go out of his sight, and if, when he woke up, she were not by his side, he would cry, fretfully, "Where's Olive? Why isn't she here?" and toss and turn restlessly till he felt her soft cold hand laid on his brow.

But even Olive's nerves of steel gave way sometimes. When, at midnight, or later than that, she would steal out of her cousin's room in the hope of getting an hour or two's sleep, sleep would not come to her. All tired as she was, she would fling herself on her bed, and, burying her face in her pillow, cry for an hour at a time as if her heart would break. To see the man she loved so passionately suffer as he suffered; to know that she had but to hold up her little finger, as it were, for his sufferings to cease, but that if she were to let her compassion so master her he would be lost to her for ever; to know that her only chance of winning him was to win him through those sufferings which she alone could soothe: to feel and know all this was at times, especially in the midnight darkness of her own room, torture unspeakable. But when, at cockcrow, the ebony gates of the realm of shadows and midnight fancies were silently shut, and when another day looked in at the windows with its clear cold eyes, the purpose of Olive Deane faltered no longer: her strong will re-asserted itself, and tears and compunction alike were for the time being thrust mercilessly out of sight.

"Oh, doctor, doctor, when are you going to get me downstairs again?" the sick man would sometimes wearily ask. "I am so terribly tired of lying here."

To which the old gentleman, tapping his snuff-box, would blandly reply: "That Mr. Liver is a deuce of a fellow to get right again when once he's really put out. So obstinate, you know, and all that. Wants a deal of coaxing. But we shall bring him to his senses by-and-by--yes, yes, by-and-by, never fear."

[CHAPTER XII.]

RECOGNITION.

Three days after Mr. Van Duren's little birthday dinner at Greenwich, the following advertisement appeared in the second column of the Times:--

"Albatross.--Should this meet the eye of any person or persons who happened to be on board the schooner Albatross when she foundered off Marhyddoc Bay on the 18th Oct., 18--, they may hear of something to their advantage, by applying to Messrs. Reed and Reed, Solicitors, Bedford Row, London."

This advertisement was repeated every other day for three weeks. At the end of that time there came a response.

As it happened, Van Duren never saw the advertisement, and there was no one to show it to him; no one who knew what a terrible fascination such an announcement would have had for him. His newspaper reading was generally confined to the money article, the City intelligence, and the latest telegrams. For miscellaneous news and leading articles he cared little Or nothing.

Now that everything had been got out of Max Van Duren that could be got out of him, the motive that had induced Miriam Byrne to play the part she had played existed no longer; and although it was needful that appearances should still be kept up, there was no longer the same strain upon her. While keeping Van Duren at arm's length, and permitting no lover-like familiarities, on the ground that as yet he was only accepted on probation, it would not have been wise, having an eye to future eventualities, to repel him too rigidly, or to have run the risk of frightening him away. He must be so kept in hand that a little coaxing--a smile, a look, a whispered word--could always lure him to her side. He would fain have been twice as loving, twice as assiduous in his attentions, as Miriam would allow him to be. "Wait," she would say, "wait till I have made up my mind, and then----!" a look would finish the sentence, a look which seemed to say, "You know very well that I shall end by accepting you, and then I won't object to your kissing me, or perhaps to kissing you in return." That, at least, was Van Duren's interpretation of it.

During the time that the advertisement was appearing every other day, Byrne seized the opportunity for obtaining a little rest and change. He and Miriam went back for a week to their old lodgings in Battersea, which they had not yet given up. Van Duren believed that they were going to the seaside, but could not discover the particular place for which they were bound. Miriam put the case to him playfully.

"No, I shall not tell you where we are going," she said, with a smile, "because that would be merely offering you a premium to run down and spend the end of week with us. I am going to leave you for seven long days. You will not know where I am, and I shall not write to you. I am going to test you--I am going to see whether you will like me as well when I come back as you do now."

"You should try me for seven years instead of seven days," said Van Duren, fervently.

"Suppose I take you at your word, and stay away for seven years," said Miriam, with a mischievous sparkle in her eye.

"Like a knight of old, I should start in quest of you long before that time was at an end; I should search for you till I found you in your hidden bower, and then I should seize you, and carry you away with me, whether you liked it or no."

"Yes, and while you were riding off with me as fast as you could go, I should be slily searching for a joint in your armour, and when I had found it, I should stab you to the heart with my silver bodkin. What a romance it would be!"

"Especially for the poor fellow who was stabbed."

"He would live in song and story ever after, and that would be far more fame than he would deserve."

At the end of a week Miriam and her father found themselves back in Spur Alley, and three days later there came a response to the advertisement. Messrs. Reed and Reed were called upon by two men who professed to have been on board the Albatross at the time she foundered. One of these men was Paul Morrell, the mate of the ill-fated schooner; the other one was Carl Momsen, an ordinary seaman. An appointment was made for the following day, when Mr. Byrne came in person to examine them. A private room was set apart for the interview, and one of Messrs. Reed's shorthand clerks was there to take notes. The men were examined separately, and out of each other's hearing, but the evidence elicited from one was almost an exact counterpart of the evidence elicited from the other. The evidence of both of them may be summarized as follows:--

The Albatross sailed from Liverpool for Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the 17th October, 18--. She was not in the habit of carrying passengers, but on this particular occasion there was one passenger on board her who was said to be a friend of the owner. He was a foreigner, but spoke very good English. He had sandy-coloured hair, and wore small gold rings in his ears. Neither of the men knew his name. The Albatross was caught in a gale off the mouth of the Mersey. Next morning she sprung a leak, and a little while after the schooner's head was put about for Marhyddoc Bay. Outside the bay the vessel foundered, and the crew had barely time to take to the boats before she went down. At the last moment the man with the earrings brought up out of his cabin what looked like a small portmanteau, it being covered with leather, but which he called a box. This box he wanted to take with him in the boat, but as the men had orders to take off and leave behind them all superfluous clothing, and as it was the merest chance whether even then the boat would not be swamped, it was quite evident that the box must be left behind. The man entreated and stormed, and offered a reward of five hundred pounds to any one who would take his box ashore. But life is sweeter than five hundred pounds, and the box had to be left behind. The man raved like a maniac about the loss, but an hour or two after reaching shore he disappeared, and neither Morrell nor Momsen either saw or heard anything of him from that day forward.

After the examination was over, Morrell, as being the more intelligent of the two men, was asked whether he thought it possible that if he were to see the passenger of the Albatross he could recognise him again.

After so long a time it seemed very doubtful to him whether he could do so, he said, but he would be happy to try.

Accordingly, next day, while Van Duren was dining at his usual tavern, Morrell was instructed to walk into the room and call for some dinner, and see whether he could pick his man out of the assembled company.

About an hour later he rejoined Byrne in a private room of another tavern close at hand.

"I picked him out in a moment, sir," said the ex-mate. "Yes, the very moment I set eyes on him I knew him again. He's stouter and older looking, of course, and he's close-shaved now, and wears no earrings; but, for all that, he's the same man."

"I think you told me the other day," said Byrne, "that you had nothing very particular to do just now?"

"Yes, sir, I did. I only got back from China a few weeks since, and, as I am getting on in life, it's just a toss up with me whether I shall go to sea again or settle down ashore for the rest of my days."

"Then you will have no objection to enter my service for a little while?"

"None whatever, sir."

"On Wednesday morning next I shall want you to go down from Euston Station to Marhyddoc, and there make certain inquiries for me."

"Nothing could please me better, sir. I've had plenty of travelling by water: a little travelling by land will make a pleasant change."

"Then meet me here on Tuesday evening at seven, and I will give you your instructions."

Before proceeding further, Byrne thought that he had better put Ambrose Murray in possession of what he had done since their last meeting, and seek his sanction to the steps he proposed taking next. Byrne accordingly sought Murray out at his lodgings, and the two men had a long consultation. Gerald, unfortunately, was at Stammars just then, and could not be present.

"Everything now hinges upon the result of Morrell's inquiries at Marhyddoc," said Byrne. "Should the report he will bring back with him prove a favourable one, then we may consider ourselves fortunate indeed--then we may take it that the best or worst will soon be known to us. But should the result of his inquiries prove unfavourable to our hopes, then all that we have done--all my toiling and scheming, all the expense you have been put to--will have been next to useless. Van Duren's guilt as the murderer of Paul Stilling may have been morally proved to the satisfaction of you and me and one or two others, but that would be of no avail whatever in proving your innocence and in bringing home the crime to him. Unless we can wrest from the sea the terrible secret which it has hidden so carefully all these years, the guilt of Van Duren will remain unproved for ever. Beyond the point now reached by us it is impossible to advance a single step till we shall have made that secret our own."

"The sea has only been keeping its secret all these years that it might yield it up when the time should be ripe for me to ask for it. That time has now come. I ask for it, and I shall have it. Have no fear, my good friend, no fear whatever. Guided by an unseen hand, we have threaded a labyrinth from which at first there seemed no possible outlet; and now that we have reached the gate, and are bidden to look for the key, can you doubt that it is there for the searching--can you doubt that we shall find it?"

"Cracked, to a certainty," muttered Byrne to himself, as he left the house. "And no wonder either, poor fellow, when one remembers all that he has had to go through."

Morrell went down to Wales in due course, and in due course he returned. His report to Byrne was of such a nature that the latter could not conceal his exultation. "We shall have him yet!" he exclaimed, much to the ex-mate's astonishment. "He has escaped for twenty long years, but the hangman's fingers shall unbutton his collar before he is six months older."

Then he went and saw Murray again, and it was arranged that they two, together with Gerald, if possible, should go down to Marhyddoc as soon as certain necessary preparations which would have to be made in London should be completed. Morrell, too, was to form one of the party.

When Byrne and Miriam got back to their rooms in Spur Alley, Van Duren could not conceal his exultation at seeing them under his roof again. His time of probation would soon be at an end now: Miriam would soon have to make up her mind to the utterance of a definite "Yes," or "No." Now that she had come back, she seemed more kind and gracious to him than before, from which fact he did not fail to draw an augury that was favourable to his own wishes.

Ambrose Murray had his little portmanteau packed ready for the journey to Wales several days before the other preparations could possibly be completed. Miss Bellamy had never seen him so elated before. He went about the house singing to himself in an under-tone, or whistling snatches of old tunes that had been popular when he was a boy. That cloud of quiet melancholy, which would sometimes oppress him for days together, without a break in its dulness, had all but vanished, leaving but a shadow of its former self behind. Miss Bellamy had asked him several times to go and have his portrait taken, but up to the present he had always declined to do so. One fine day, however, after the journey to Wales had been decided on, he astonished her by telling her that if she would go and be photographed he would follow her example.

"First of all, Maria, you shall be photographed by yourself," he said, "and then I'll be photographed by myself; and after that, what do you say to our being photographed together, eh? Such old friends as you and I are ought to be photographed together. But, above all things, Maria, don't forget to be taken with your locket."

This latter remark was a sly hit at the large, old-fashioned locket which Miss Bellamy wore round her neck on high days and holidays--at such times, in fact, as she wore her silver grey dress and her company cap, but at no other. Ambrose Murray could remember Miss Bellamy wearing this locket when she was a girl of nineteen, and she wore it still. He often joked her about it, and would offer to wager anything that if she would only let him have a peep inside it he should find there the portrait of a certain handsome cornet of dragoons, with whom, according to his account, she had at one time a desperate flirtation. But he never had seen inside the locket, and Miss Bellamy was quite sure that he never would do so with her consent; for within that old-fashioned piece of jewellery was shut up the cherished secret of Miss Bellamy's life. Ambrose Murray's laughing assertion that in it was hidden the portrait of a man was so far true, but the likeness was not that of any young cornet of dragoons, but that of Ambrose Murray himself--of Ambrose Murray at two-and-twenty, with brown hair, and laughing eyes, and no care in the world beyond that of making up his mind which one out of a bevy of pretty girls he was most in love with. He fell in love, not with Miss Bellamy, but with her friend, and Miss Bellamy's secret remained buried for ever in her own heart. With the portrait were shut up two locks of hair: one lock was of a light golden brown colour, the other was white.

"There is room for another portrait," said Miss Bellamy to herself, with a sigh, when Ambrose Murray proposed going to the photographer's, "and then it will be full." She had left orders in her will that the locket should be buried with her. How her heart fluttered, how the unwonted colour rushed to her face, when Ambrose proposed that they should be photographed together! Years had no power to weaken or alter her love, but she would have died rather than let Murray suspect for a moment the existence of any such feeling on her part. He knew it not, but it was a fact that, with the exception of a few trifling legacies, all her little property was bequeathed to him, or, in event of his prior demise, to Eleanor. In her secret heart she could not help dreading a little the coming of that time when father and daughter should learn to know and love each other. She must then, of necessity, fall into the background; she must then, of necessity, sink into little more than a mere cypher in the sum of Ambrose Murray's existence. Had Eleanor been a daughter of her own she could hardly have loved her better, and she told herself, times without number, that to see the girl and her father happy in each other's love ought to be sufficient reward for any one who thought of others more than herself. And ought she not to study the happiness of these two, both of whom were so dear to her, rather than her own selfish feelings?

However sharp the pang might be, whatever the cost to herself might be, she would so study it--she would do her best to bring them together.

That time when Ambrose Murray was, as it were, living under the same roof with her, was a very happy time for Miss Bellamy. Murray himself did not seem to know, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that he never thought how greatly he was indebted to her. Beyond a flying visit now and then from Gerald, he had no society save that of Miss Bellamy, and of the children of the two houses in which he and she had apartments. He almost invariably took tea and supper with Miss Bellamy, and spent his evenings with her, and made, besides, almost as free a use of her sitting-room as of his own. He looked upon her, in fact, as he would have looked upon a sister to whom he was much attached, and that she regarded him in the light of a brother he was fully convinced.

An agreement had long ago been come to between Gerald and Miss Bellamy by which it was arranged that Ambrose Murray should be relieved from all pecuniary cares and liabilities. No one ever presented him with a bill for the rent of his apartments. The servant would ask him what he would have for breakfast or dinner, and whatever he might order was there for him ready to the minute, but no butcher or baker ever vexed his soul with unpaid accounts. Now and then he would find a sovereign in some odd place or other--in his razor-case, inside one of his gloves, or in the folds of his Sunday cravat. He would pick up the coin, look at it curiously for a moment or two, wondering how he could possibly have been so absent-minded as to leave money there, and then put it quietly into his pocket and think no more about it.

A brief telegram from Byrne reached Ambrose Murray one afternoon:--

"Preparations completed. Shall be ready to start from Euston Square at nine o'clock on Saturday morning. Shall expect to find you on platform, unless I hear from you in course of to-day."

He was so fluttered by the receipt of this telegram that he could not eat any dinner. He at once sat down and wrote a note to Gerald, enclosing the telegram, and begging of him, if he could possibly do so, to join him in Wales early in the ensuing week. Then he said to himself, "I must write to Mary before I go. I feel sure that she is expecting a letter from me. But first the boat must be finished."

In a back room he had fixed up a lathe, and a small joiner's bench, at which he occasionally amused himself. There were various kinds of useless knick-knacks that he could manufacture with some degree of skill, and the toys of half the children in the neighbourhood were mended at his bench. As soon as he had sent off his letter to Gerald, he shut himself up in his little workshop, and set to work busily to finish a little toy boat, which was half done already. It was a very small affair--a child's boat, in fact, cut out of a block of wood, and not more than a couple of feet in length. He worked at it till late that evening, and by noon next day it was finished to his satisfaction. Then he slept for an hour, and then he sat down to write his letter. This is what he wrote:--

"My Darling Mary,

"I had a very strange dream the other night. I dreamt that I had written you a letter, and that when I had sealed it up I put it in a little boat, and let the boat and the letter float down the river with the tide. And in my dream I seemed to watch the boat till it got far out to sea, beyond the sight of any land. Then all at once the clouds gathered, till the black edges of one of them seemed to touch the sea, and then from cloud and sea together there was formed a huge waterspout, that presently drew to itself and sucked up my boat and letter. And when they vanished, the waterspout vanished also, and presently the clouds broke away, and in the heavens one splendid star was shining, which seemed to me as a token that you had received my letter.

"My darling, I have translated this dream as a message from you, telling me what I ought to do. Very often of late your face has appeared to me in my dreams; but when I have tried to speak to you, an invisible finger seemed to be laid on my lips, and my heart could only yearn dumbly towards you. But now you have shown me a way by means of which a message may reach you--for from you alone that dream could come. The boat is ready, and the midnight tide will take it down to the sea, and then at dawn of day the waterspout will come and lift my letter up into the clouds; but of what will follow after I know nothing.

"My darling, day by day the time of our separation grows shorter; soon shall we see each other again, and all these long years of waiting and trouble will seem but as a dim vision of the night, fading and vanishing utterly in the bright dawn of an everlasting day. The purpose that has held me and chained me to this life for so, long a time is now near its fulfilment, and after that I feel and know that I shall not be long before I join you. Soon the time will be here when I can tell everything to our child--our child, Mary! whom I have never seen since she lay an infant in your arms. Very precious will her love be to me, but not so precious as yours. I shall stay with her a little while, I shall tell her all about the mother whom she cannot remember, and then I shall go to you.

"To-morrow night, darling, you will come to me in my sleep, will you not? Then, when I see you, I shall take it as a token that you have had my letter.

"Soon I will write to you again--when the sea shall have given up the secret which it has hidden so carefully for twenty years. Till then, adieu.

"Your husband,

"Ambrose Murray."

This singular document Mr. Murray sealed up carefully, and then addressed it, "To my Wife in Heaven." Then leaving a message for Miss Bellamy, who happened to be out shopping, that he was going out for the evening, he took a hansom to London Bridge and started by the next train for Gravesend, taking the boat and letter with him. He had still some hours to wait; but at midnight, having made a previous arrangement with a boatman, he put off from the pier stairs, and was pulled slowly out to the middle of the black and silent river. A few stars could be seen overhead; now and then the moon shone down through a rift in the clouds. The whole scene was weird and ghostly. The tide was running down rapidly. A cold wind blew faintly across the river, as though it were the last chill breath of the dying day. They halted in mid-stream just as the clocks on shore began to strike twelve. Then Murray took his toy-boat out of its brown paper covering, and having firmly fixed his letter in it by means of a strip of wood intended for that purpose, he leaned over the side and placed it gently on the surface of the stream. On this point, at any rate, poor Murray was still insane.

"What are you after, master?" cried the boatman, whose suspicions were beginning to be aroused.

"I am sending a letter to my wife," answered Murray, as he lifted his hat for a moment. "See how swiftly it starts on its journey. And now I can see it no longer. But no harm will happen to it. How pleased my darling will be when she reads it!"

The boatman said no more, but thinking that he had got a crazy person to deal with, whose next act might be to jump into the river himself, he made all possible haste back to shore.

It happened, singularly enough, that on the Wednesday previous to the Saturday fixed on by Peter Byrne for the journey to Wales, Mr. Van Duren entered his room and announced to him and Miriam that he had been called suddenly from home on business of great importance. Byrne, as yet, had given no hint of any intention on his part to go out of town, and he now determined to say nothing about it till after Van Duren's departure.

"How long do you expect to be away, Mr. Van Duren?" asked Miriam, as she glanced at him out of her big black eyes.

"Four or five days, at the least, I am afraid," he said. "It is a source of great annoyance to me to be called away at this time, but unfortunately there is no way of avoiding it. You may depend upon my getting back as quickly as possible," he added, significantly.

"The house will seem very lonely and dull without you."

"I am afraid you flatter me," he replied, slowly. Then he suddenly drew his chair up to her side and took her hand in his. "Miriam," he said, "do you know that the time you asked for in order that you might be able to make up your mind is nearly at an end?"

"Yes, I suppose it is," said Miriam, in little more than a whisper.

"As soon as I return from the continent, I shall expect you to give me an answer."

She did not speak.

"If I only knew what the answer would be!"

She smiled, and gave him another glance out of her black eyes.

The colour mounted to his forehead.

"You won't keep me in suspense much longer?" he said. "You will let me know my fate, won't you, as soon as I come back?"

For the first time she bent her eyes on him fully and steadily. "Yes, Mr. Van Duren," she said, "you shall know your fate when you get back from the Continent."

Before she knew what he was about to do, he had seized her hand and pressed it passionately to his lips. She shuddered from head to foot as she withdrew it from his grasp. Bakewell knocked and entered. "Your hansom is at the door, sir, and you have only just time to catch the train."

Van Duren arose and made his adieux. "Your father still seems very weak and feeble," he said, in a low voice, to Miriam, as he stood for a moment at the door. "I am afraid that the warm weather has not done much to benefit him."

"Will anything in this world ever do much to benefit him," she answered. Then there was a last shake of the hand, and then she watched him go downstairs. As soon as she heard the front door clash she ran to the window, and waved him a last adieu as he was driven away. "Shall I ever see him again, I wonder?" she whispered to herself "I hope not."

"Farewell, Max Jacoby, otherwise Van Duren!" cried Byrne, as he took off his wig and flung it across the room. "When next we meet it will be under very different circumstances."

Pringle, as was usual whenever his master was from home, was left in special charge of the premises. At such times he slept in the house, and was waited upon by Bakewell and his wife. As it was necessary to give some sort of an intimation that they were going out of town, Byrne, on the Friday morning, sent Miriam downstairs to see Pringle, and tell him that they had suddenly made up their minds to take a holiday at the seaside for a week or two. Pringle was most affable and polite, and desired Miss Byrne to give his respects to her papa, and say how sincerely he hoped that the sea air might prove of benefit to him. At the same time, might he be permitted to ask for an address to which he could send any post letters that might happen to come for Mr. Byrne after his departure?

As Miriam had not mentioned the place to which they were going, this seemed only a fair question. However, she had an answer ready. She wrote down Miss Bellamy's address, to which place Pringle was requested to send all letters.

That same evening, between eight and nine, Miriam and her father went out for a little while to make a few final arrangements for their journey in the morning. They had hardly been gone five minutes when Pringle happened to find himself on the landing opposite the door of their sitting-room. On turning the handle the door was found to be unlocked and the gas only half turned down--signs that the inmates might be expected back before very long.

Leaving the door wide open, Pringle glided into the room. He was dying to know to what place Byrne and his daughter were going--in fact, he did not believe they were going to the seaside at all--and he thought that he might perhaps find a luggage label, or something else, in the room, that would reveal to him what he wanted to know.

One or two boxes, ready packed, were there, and on the table lay several loose labels, but, unfortunately for Pringle's purpose, they were still blank. Gliding quietly about the room, he next tried the different drawers and cupboards, hoping that in one or other of them he might find a clue of some kind to what he was so anxious to know, but all his searching proved of no avail. Suddenly he heard the street door open, and he had hardly time to get out of the room and round the corner of the next landing, before Miriam ran lightly up the stairs to fetch something that she had forgotten.

Later on in the evening, when Byrne and Miriam had got back home, Pringle sent Bakewell upstairs to ask at what time next morning they would like to have a cab in readiness.

"How long will it take to drive to Euston Square?" asked Miriam.

"A good half-hour, miss. Three-quarters, if you happen to meet with a block."

"At that rate an hour would be ample time. Will you kindly arrange to have a cab in readiness by nine o'clock?"

At five minutes past nine next morning, Mr. Byrne and his daughter, together with sundry boxes of luggage, drove away from Spur Alley in a four-wheeler for Euston Square. Three minutes later Pringle was following on their heels in a hansom. He had timed himself to arrive at the station within two minutes of those whom he was following. He alighted, and began to reconnoitre cautiously. It would not do to be seen by either father or daughter. Peeping round a corner of the entrance doors into the large hall, he there saw Miriam standing by the luggage, Byrne having in all probability gone to secure tickets. Pringle beckoned to a porter. "I'm from Scotland Yard," he whispered. "I want you to find out, without its being noticed, for what place those boxes are directed by which yonder young lady is standing."

"All right, sir--that's easily done," said the porter.

Three minutes later he came back to Pringle. "The boxes are labelled for Marhyddoc, in North Wales," he said. Pringle put down the name of the place in his note-book, gave the man a shilling, and took the next omnibus back to the City.

But he did not leave the station till he caught a glimpse of Byrne as he stood at the refreshment counter waiting for his travelling flask to be filled. But the Peter Byrne whom he now saw was a very different person from the decrepit, deaf old invalid of Spur Alley, The long white locks, the black velvet skull-cap, the hump on the left shoulder, and the feeble walk, had all disappeared in the cab, as if by magic, leaving behind them a brisk, pleasant-looking gentleman of middle age, who was speaking with the young person that was waiting upon him, and who seemed to have no difficulty whatever in hearing her replies.

"I thought as much," said Pringle, with a knowing shake of the head. "It's no more than I expected. I've known all along that the old boy and his daughter were up to some private little game of their own. Well, so long as it means no good to Van Duren and no harm to me, I'm not the man to spoil their sport. But what will Van Duren say when he gets back home and finds his birds flown? It don't matter: I hope to have flown too by that time."

END OF VOL. II.

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BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, SURREY.