LINKED LIVES.
Linton Herrick, losing not a day nor an hour in London, had carried the great news to Zenobia. Much that wired and wireless messages could not convey, he, as one of the inner circle, was in a position to explain. But the triumph of the Friends of the Phœnix and the restoration of Wilson Renshaw did not exhaust the subject of their conversation. Linton was charged with an impressive and confidential message from Renshaw himself. The restored Minister entreated the daughter of the dead President to resort to no act of public reparation; he besought her to let the dead past hold its dead. The story of her father's crime need never be given in its fulness to a censorious world. Against his enemy the rescued rival nourished no resentful bitterness. His feeling, rather, was one of sorrow that the temptations of power and ambition and the weakness of human nature had wrought the moral ruin of a man in whom he had discerned many admirable and striking qualities.
Zenobia Jardine was greatly moved. She recognised the nobility of Renshaw's attitude, but she still had misgivings as to her own path of duty. The messages reached her at a time when she was torn with conflicting feelings, bewildered by new sensations, impressed with new aspects of human life, agitated by complex thoughts and emotions to which hitherto she had been a stranger. It was a crisis in her life. Subtle but masterful influences were at work upon her inmost being. Scales had failed, as it were, from her eyes, and her soul looked out upon possibilities of which in her unenlightened days she had never even dreamed. Love, duty, religion—each and all had acquired for her a deep and wonderful significance, and in her heart she feared to be presented with the problem of choice. Could these things be reconciled in the light of the revelation that had come to her? Would they be her armour and her strength wherewith she could go forward to some great predestined goal; or, if she chose the one, must she of necessity eschew the rest? One thing she knew for certain when she again held Linton's hand and looked into his face. This was the man she loved and always would love—stranger still, it seemed as if he were a man she always had loved. But she knew now of his daring, his fidelity, his narrow escape from death, and realised his clear, though unspoken devotion to herself.
And he, for his part, had known no peace until he found himself at her side again. Renshaw had placed at his disposal the Albatross, one of the swiftest of the Government air-ships, and another engineer had succeeded to the place of poor Wilton. Westwards he had rushed on the wings of the Albatross, leaving the lights of London, its crowded streets, its shouting and excited multitudes, far behind.
And now, side by side, he and Zenobia and Peter, her dog, engaged in dog-like explorations on the route, went slowly across the quaint bridge with its low-roofed shops that spans the Avon, and passed through the streets of ancient Bath.
"What would you do? What is your advice?" the girl asked, turning to him suddenly. They had been silent for some time, but each knew well what occupied the other's thoughts. "Respect Renshaw's wishes," was Linton's firm reply.
"But the will—the confession is in the will," said Zenobia.
"The will need not be proved. With or without it, what your father left belongs to you, his sole next of kin."