All this may have been imaginary—part of it probably was—but the sense of the dream was no doubt what my untrammeled judgment would have suggested as truth, and what later—but let me not digress or anticipate here, in the thickest of my troubles, the jungle-pass of my story as it were, but strike on through a self-made path, it may be, to the light that shines beyond the forest, even if it lead into the desert!
Something in Evelyn's suggestion had struck me as the best to pursue under the circumstances, although at first I so boldly repudiated the idea of Mr. Bainrothe's power. Unless I could prove that he had removed the treasure for unworthy uses—why speak of it at all? I should only irritate and set him on his guard by such allusions; whereas, by a course of reticence, I still might learn, as she had suggested, the truth when he least suspected my purpose.
It would be so easy for him to deny all knowledge of the concealed chest—so easy to lay the robbery on Morton, even if the first were proved—or even on Evelyn!
I had sent impulsively for Mr. Bainrothe to come to me on the evening of my discovery, but his visit was delayed by a necessity that kept him from home all night, so that I had time to revolve and resolve on my course of action before I saw him, which was not until the following afternoon, and by this time my mind had undergone a change. He came, but not alone—his son accompanied him.
I have reason since then to think that Evelyn and Claude Bainrothe had met before their cold and measured interview in my presence. It was to me a painful and embarrassing one, and this time the graceful ease was all on the other side—I was preoccupied and agitated, Claude courteous and self-possessed, Evelyn lofty and confident, as though she had lived or trodden down her emotions, and, to my surprise, Mr. Basil Bainrothe wore his accustomed deliberate and self-poised demeanor, making no reference, not even by his expression of face or a glance of his kaleidoscopic eyes, to the sad catastrophe with which by this time I was but too well acquainted.
I had been reading newspapers eagerly all day, when he came, and, from a contradictory mass of evidence, had gleaned some grains of truth. One fact was beyond contradiction—a second Samson had drawn down the ruins of a temple, not on the heads of his foes alone, but his friends as well, blinded, as he of old, by the treachery of that basest of all Delilahs, a fawning public!
Yes, we were ruined; the only hope now was in the honesty of Mr. Basil Bainrothe. Should the gold I saw him hiding away not have been appropriated to the purchase of bank-stocks—should it have been saved for me—we might still rejoice in wealth beyond our deserts, and equal to our desires.
We still might keep the old, beloved roof above our heads, preserve one unbroken circle of family domestics—live without labor, or terror of the future. But would this be? I waited, as I still think I should have done, for Mr. Bainrothe to take the initiative in this proceeding.
Impatient and sick-hearted, I saw day after day glide past, without an effort on his part to explain or ameliorate my condition—one now of excessive and wearing anxiety.
At last he came. For the first time in his life when a matter of business was in question, he asked for me. I went to him alone at my own instance, and somewhat to Evelyn's chagrin, I thought.