WAITING AT THE LAKE HOUSE.
DURING the time that his mother was so kindly persuading Ruth to accept a home with her, Richard Storms was pacing the Lake House to and fro, like a caged animal waiting for its feeder.
The triumph of his revenge and his love seemed near at hand now. Before Jessup's death his power was insufficient, his influence feeble, for no one was in haste to take up a wrong which the sufferer was the first to ignore. But now the wound had done its work. A man had been shot to death, and any subject of Her Majesty had the right to call for a full investigation before a magistrate. This investigation the young man had resolved to demand.
All that the man wanted now, to complete his power of ruin, was the letter which Judith Hart had found drifting through the shrubbery on the day she had visited "Norston's Rest," at his own suggestion, in order to get a foothold in the establishment and become his willing or unconscious spy, as he might be compelled to use her.
That letter was so important to him now that he was ready to do anything, promise anything, in order to get possession of it, and prowling around and around the old Lake House, he racked his brain for some power of inducement by which he could win it from her, and perhaps other proofs that she might find in the cottage.
Thus urged to the verge of desperation, by a thirst for revenge on young Hurst, and the craving love which Ruth Jessup had rejected with so much scorn, the young man awaited with burning impatience the coming of his dupe; for up to this time he had failed in making her entirely an accomplice.
Judith came down to the lake in great excitement. Storms saw that, as she turned from the path and waded through the long, thick rushes on the shore, without seeming to heed them.
"You have found something! I see that in your face," he said, as the girl darkened the Lake House door. "Give it to me, for I never was so eager to be at work. Why don't you speak? Why don't you tell me what it is?"
Judith pushed her way into the house and seated herself on the bench, where she sat looking at him with an expression in her eyes that seemed to forbode revolt.
"Tell me," he said, sitting down by her, "tell me what you have discovered. I hope it is something that will clear the way to our wedding, for I am getting impatient for it. Nothing but the want of that paper has kept me back so long."