“You are a good man, Mr. Churchill,” he said, “and Heaven will reward you! Pray count upon me if I can be of any assistance. I will go and make out the certificate.”
Spenser Churchill accompanied him to his gig, then lit a cigarette, and paced up and down for a few minutes, thinking intensely.
His voice and manner, while he had been talking with the simple-minded provincial doctor, had been completely under control—quiet, calm, and sadly sympathetic; but now that he was alone he felt that his hands were shaking, and that his face was white.
“My dear—Spenser—” he murmured. “Steady—steady!” and he held his hand out and regarded it clinically. “No shaking and trembling! Chance—or shall we say Providence—has placed a great game in your hands, and you must play it properly if you mean to win, and you do mean to win! Great Heaven, what a narrow escape it was! Another minute, another half-minute, and you would have been removed from this terrestial sphere! And to think that he should have died just at the critical moment! It was a special interposition! Let me think—now, steady, my dear fellow, steady! Jeffrey dead—thank Heaven!—no one but myself knows the secret of this girl’s birth! The papers—” he took them from his pocket, and looked at them, and it may be stated, to his credit, that a shudder ran through him as he did so, for they still seemed warm by their contact with their dead owner, from whom he had stolen them—“yes, he was right. They are all here; proof incontestable, evidence that no one, not even the dear marquis, could refute! No one knows of their existence but myself! And she is alone and friendless, yes, friendless, for my letter has done its work, and Cecil Neville is too far off to undo it! We must keep you in Ireland, dear Cecil, we cannot have you back interfering in this business. No one knows that Doris Marlowe is the daughter of the Marquis of Stoyle, but me. Spenser, my dear fellow, you hold all the cards, play them carefully and properly, and——” he flung the stump of his cigarette into the hedge, and, smoothing his face into its usual bland expression, returned to the cottage.
The woman, the wife of the woodman, stood waiting for him.
“How is poor Miss Marlowe, Mrs. Jelf?” he said.
Mrs. Jelf dropped a curtsey.
“Ah, poor young thing, sir!” she said, wiping her eyes with her apron. “She’s lying down, sir, quite worn out and looking like a corpse herself! It don’t seem as if she had strength to speak or move! I was thinking, sir, that we’d better send for her friends——”
“Not at present, I think, Mrs. Jelf,” he said, gently. “I think she had better be left to herself for a while. I have promised the doctor to do all I can in my poor way——”
“Oh, sir, I know you’ve a kind heart,” murmured Mrs. Jelf.