Miss Hildreth: A Novel, Volume 3

by Augusta de Grasse Stevens

"She had carried out her project to a certain limit, and then it would seem had capriciously abandoned it; for they must not lose sight of the fact, that, though Mr. Tremain believed himself to be addressing his proposals to Mdlle. Lamien, it was in reality Miss Hildreth who received them. On this point he would make no comment, he was not in a position to do so.

"A good deal of stress had been laid upon the two handkerchiefs, the one found in the drawing-room at the Folly, the other left in the apartment of the murdered Stevan Lallovich, both of which bore the same embroidered initials. To his mind there was nothing incriminating in this, the coincidence was a strange one, but nothing more. What was more likely than that during one of the frequent visits paid by Miss Hildreth to the villa outside St. Petersburg, she should have taken in mistake one of the unfortunate Adèle Lamien's handkerchiefs, and, on seeing her error, have remarked it carelessly with her own initials; or that after a time the bit of muslin should have found its way back to its rightful owner? As to the second handkerchief, that was a very simple riddle; Miss Hildreth had in her possession many articles of dress belonging to Adèle Lamien, having required them in her first disguise as that lady. The note-paper was easily explained in the same way; he could himself prove that the penmanship was Miss Hildreth's, though slightly disguised. As to the conversation which took place in Mrs. Newbold's boudoir, and the latter lady's evident agitation during it, he would only ask his honour to consider the decidedly awkward position in which Mrs. Newbold was placed. She knew what the consequences would be were Miss Hildreth's Quixotic protection of the real Adèle Lamien to become known, and she already had her suspicions regarding Count Mellikoff: she alone rightly estimated the danger run by Miss Hildreth in personating one who was a fugitive from justice.

"As to the part Miss James had played in the whole matter, he should be sorry to call it by its right name; he believed there was no enmity so bitter or treacherous as the enmity of a jealous woman. Might not the motive power of Miss James's conduct be found in the one word—jealousy? However, with that he had nothing to do. He begged again, and finally, to submit to his honour's consideration the point at issue; namely, the proved identity of Miss Hildreth, not with the governess known as Adèle Lamien, but with the real Adèle Lamien, the wife and murderer of Stevan Lallovich, which identity he submitted, had in no particular been established. The warrant of arrest must therefore fall to the ground."

Up to a certain point Mr. Mainwaring felt that he carried his public with him; but beyond that point—when he came to the equivocal position held by both Miss Hildreth and Mrs. Newbold—he knew himself to be losing touch again. He could calculate his audience's pulse to a fraction of a beat, and he was aware of the exact moment when their allegiance fell away from him, and veered back again to the opposing scale.

It was as he had warned Patricia it would be; the instant he touched delicate and doubtful ground and advanced a theory in support of which he could produce no proofs, that instant the entente cordiale failed him. The public likes to believe in its own strict integrity, and its abhorrence of anything not honest and above-board, and to have so extravagant a story as this masquerading of Miss Hildreth's thrust down its throat, accompanied by such lame excuses as sealed lips and secret promises, was not at all to its taste.

Therefore when Mr. Munger sprang to his feet, he but expressed the public's opinion when he told his honour "that Mr. Mainwaring must gauge them by a fool's measurement, if he expected them to swallow such a cock-and-bull story as that he had expounded. If Miss Hildreth had not some awkward secret to conceal, why should she bind the tongues of both her lawyer and her friend? What possible reason could she have for concealment, unless the work she was engaged upon would not bear official scrutiny? Mr. Mainwaring had begun boldly enough, and had not spared his insinuations as to the good faith of those opposing him; but he must say he failed to see how Mr. Mainwaring had established even one point in his elaborate theory.

"He had submitted that while Miss Hildreth was Adèle Lamien, still she was not Adèle Lamien. Such reasoning sounded to him very like a page out of 'Alice in Wonderland,' where everything was not what it seemed, and seemed not what it was. Why did not Mr. Mainwaring bring forward proofs to establish his theory of there being two Adèle Lamiens? Were they to meekly accept this melodramatic story of Miss Hildreth's heroic championship of the wretched woman who had killed her lover, and not ask for proofs? Both Mr. Mainwaring and Mrs. Newbold had made a great show of acknowledging Miss Hildreth as Adèle Lamien, the governess; and then they asked his honour to accept the absurd tale of Miss Hildreth's personating Adèle Lamien, only to further some foolish plot of her own devising, some personal intrigue that would not bear investigation.

"Either Miss Hildreth was or was not Adèle Lamien-Lallovich. She had been proved to be the Adèle Lamien of the Folly, and had been acknowledged by Mr. Mainwaring as such, and yet now, forsooth, he wanted to prove that while she was the one Adèle Lamien, she was not the real Adèle Lallovich—not the Simon Pure article. It was about as logical a deduction as that of a child, who told you it either rained, or it did not rain; it did not rain, therefore it rained! Altogether too much time had been spent in such foolish arguments; on his side time was valuable, would his honour, therefore, make known his decision; a decision which could only be made in one way, and end this farce by declaring in favour of the validity of the warrant, and the identity of the Adèle Lamien, therein named, with the lady calling herself Miss Hildreth."

Mr. Munger's harsh voice threw out his words energetically, while he clenched each sentence by a single hammer-like beat of one hand upon the other. He had sprung up so suddenly, and poured out his rough eloquence in such a stream, no one had an opportunity of interrupting; he finished with another contemptuous snort and settled himself down in conspicuous defiance.

With the calling of the noon recess, the case against Patricia Hildreth had assumed a more ugly and threatening aspect than ever.