Volume Three—Chapter Twenty Seven.
A Long Adieu.
Major Rockley’s tacit acknowledgment of the truth of the charge against him, and the piecing together of the links, showed how, on the night of Lady Teigne’s death, he had been absent from the mess for two hours, during which Fred Denville lay drunk in the officers’ quarters—made drunk by the Major’s contrivance, so that his uniform could be used. How too, so as further to avert suspicion, the Major had the fiendish audacity to take the party to perform the serenade where the poor old votary of fashion lay dead.
The truth, so long in coming to the surface, prevailed at last, and Stuart Denville, broken and prostrated, found himself the idol of the crowd from Saltinville, who collected to see him freed from the county gaol.
“To the barracks, Claire,” he whispered. “Let us get away from here.”
They were at the principal hotel, and Claire was standing before him, pale and trembling with emotion.
“Your blessing and forgiveness first,” she murmured. “Oh, father, that I could be so blind!”
“So blind?” he said tenderly, as he took her in his arms. “No: say so noble and so true. Did you not stand by me when you could not help believing me guilty, and I could not speak? But we are wasting time. I have sent word to poor Fred. My child, I have his forgiveness to ask for all the past.”
They met the regimental surgeon as they drove up.
“You have come quickly,” he said. “Did you get my message?”