The analyzing doctors found nothing to justify any suspicion of the existence of poison. Such signs as were apparent resembled those of apoplexy so closely that the most accurate judges might easily have been deceived. They gave in a certificate to the effect that the cause of death was apoplexy.
It would have been worse than useless to accuse Lucia Guiscardini. Paul Desfrayne began to persuade himself that he must have been deluded by his own excited imagination when he fancied he saw her on that lonely, darksome road.
At the end of a few days he was able to run up to London. His first visit was to Frank Amberley.
The lawyer showed him the ink-stained, vellum-covered book containing the brief register that would restore some light and happiness to Paul Desfrayne’s life. Paul’s heart was overflowing with gratitude to the friend who had regained for him the liberty that seemed gone forever.
Fortune was resolved on favoring him now, however. On leaving Alderman’s Lane, he went to the club of which he was a member.
Immersed in thought, the young man was walking at a rapid pace, when a faint, musical exclamation, and what sounded much like his own name, caused him to awake from his abstraction, and look up.
His eyes met those of Lois Turquand, fixed upon him with a strange, indefinable expression that made his heart beat, while a vivid blush overspread that beautiful face upon which he had so often meditated, to the risk of his own peace, since he had first beheld it.
Miss Turquand was sitting in an open carriage with Blanche Dormer in front of a large drapery establishment. They were waiting for Lady Quaintree, who had alighted with the view of matching some silk.
It had been Miss Dormer who cried out Captain Desfrayne’s name. The girls had hoped he might not have heard; but his looks showed that he had done so. He lifted his hat, and came to the side of the carriage to speak to the young ladies.
The gloomy, care-worn expression had already begun to melt from his face, and, in a manner, he was no longer the self-restrained, cold personage he had been since the days his misfortune had gathered upon him.