Miss Margaret Nugent—I have no good news for you, and the less said the better. Time alone can straighten the tangle. I leave London for Paris to-night. Kind regards.
Greyson.
Margaret angrily tossed the telegram in the fire.
“A miserable evasion,” she muttered. “How much does he suspect? I see through it all. He is taking Harold abroad with him. If I only dared to follow them and nurse my darling back to life! It may be months or years, and with my lady out of the way my devotion is sure to win in the end.”
That very night, at a late hour, some terrible news reached the Nugents. The Earl of Seabright was dead, killed while riding over his own estate. His horse had stumbled over some hidden brambles, and my lord was pitched headforemost to the earth. The land steward was with him at the time, and the accident at first appeared to be only a trivial one. The earl had struggled up again, but only to sink back with a groan. The shock had injured him internally, and he was carried to his bedchamber a dying man.
“You have only an hour to live, my lord,” the hastily-summoned doctor gravely told him. “If your affairs are not in order there is no time to be lost.”
The earl listened incredulously at first.
“I suffer no pain,” he said. “Surely you are mistaken! Am I to die because my horse stumbled—I, the maddest rider in the county?”
“You are bleeding internally, my lord. No human power can save you,” was the decided reply.
Then the earl had wept childishly for a little while, and sent hastily for the nearest lawyer. He wished to make a new will—to appoint fresh executors.