“Hallo!” he said. “I beg your pardon. I was going back to Colonel Summerford to tell him that I should have to go to the Grange, and that I would take Mrs. Bradstone’s letter myself.”
The man produced it instantly; he had overheard the conversation between the colonel and Bradstone.
Bradstone took the note, with a casual glance at it, gave the man a shilling, and walked on.
All the way to The Maples the letter—the words in his own handwriting which could, if they were allowed to escape from that envelope, hang him—seemed to be burning through his clothes and eating a fiery way into his heart.
“Curse him, curse him!” he muttered, as he dragged himself heavily and feverishly through the great gates and up the drive to the house which he had prepared for the woman he had entrapped. “Curse him! he’d separate us forever! He’d send me into a kind of transportation for life! I’d—I’d almost rather be hanged——” He shuddered. “No, no; anything’s better than that. But to lose Olivia; to lose her forever, forever! After all I’ve done, all I’ve spent, all I’ve risked!”
He drew a long breath, and, unlocking the door of the library, dropped, exhausted by his walk and the excitement, on to a sofa.
“If there was only some way out of it, some way of quieting him!”
The words rang in his brain until he found himself repeating them in a dull, mechanical fashion. Suddenly his face crimsoned.
“Why, he’ll be quiet enough presently!” he exclaimed, as a swift hope rushed into his craven heart. “If—if I can only wait, keep out of the way and wait, he’ll think the letter’s delivered, and I mean to keep my promise! It’s not for long. The trial will be here directly, and—and he’ll plead guilty——”
He stopped, and sprang to his feet, white and trembling.