CHAPTER LIII. A RAINY NIGHT AT SEA.
The absurd demand preferred by Lady Augusta in her letter to Marion was a step taken without any authority from Pracontal, and actually without his knowledge. On the discovery of the adhering pages of the journal, and their long consideration of the singular memorandum that they found within, Pracontal carried away the book to Longworth to show him the passage and ask what importance he might attach to its contents.
Longworth was certainly struck by the minute particularity with which an exact place was indicated. There was a rough pen sketch of the Flora, and a spot marked by a cross at the base of the pedestal, with the words, “Here will be found the books.” Lower down on the same page was written, “These volumes, which I did not obtain without difficulty, and which were too cumbrous to carry away, I have deposited in this safe place, and the time may come when they will be of value.—G. L.”
“Now,” said Longworth, after some minutes of deep thought, “Lami was a man engaged in every imaginable conspiracy. There was not a state in Europe, apparently, where he was not, to some extent, compromised. These books he refers to may be the records of some secret society, and he may have stored them there as a security against the lukewarmness or the treachery of men whose fate might be imperilled by certain documents. Looking to the character of Lami, his intense devotion to these schemes, and his crafty nature and the Italian forethought which seems always to have marked whatever he did, I half incline to this impression. Then, on the other hand, you remember, Pracontal, when we went over to Portshandon to inquire about the registry books, we heard that they had all been stolen or destroyed by the rebels in '98?”
“Yes. I remember that well. I had not attached any importance to the fact; but I remember how much Kelson was disconcerted and put out by the intelligence, and how he continually repeated, 'This is no accident; this is no accident.'”
“It would be a rare piece of fortune if they were the church books, and that they contained a formal registry of the marriage.”
“But who doubts it?”
“Say rather, my dear friend, why should any one believe it? Just think for one moment who Montague Bramleigh was, what was his station and his fortune, and then remember the interval that separated him from the Italian painter—a man of a certain ability, doubtless. Is it the most likely thing in the world that if the young Englishman fell in love with the beautiful Italian, that he would have sacrificed his whole ambition in life to his passion? Is it not far more probable, in fact, that no marriage whatever united them? Come, come, Pracontal, this is not, now at least, a matter to grow sulky over; you cannot be angry or indignant at my frankness, and you 'll not shoot me for this slur on your grandmother's fair reputation.”
“I certainly think that with nothing better than a theory to support it, you might have spared her memory this aspersion.”
“If I had imagined you could not talk of it as unconcernedly as myself, I assure you I would never have spoken about it.”