He was about to step forward, through the soft peat mire, when he was pressed back by Captain Norton, to whom and to his son had come in one and the same instant, the revelation of the second part of the Merland mystery; and together they leaped down into the great cutting, to wade through up to their waists in the black, decayed bog vegetation. They needed no words for explanation; the tufts of little forget-me-nots and silky cotton rush growing around, and yet untouched by the navvies’ spades, told all; for there, in the side of the great drain, where the rush of water had, in its fierce eddy, scooped out a vast mass of peat, stood, perfectly upright, with hands clasped together as if in prayer, her head thrown back, as if to give the last glance upward, towards the haven of rest, the body of Marion Lady Gernon.
Foul play? Treachery there was none, save that of the deceitful moss spread over the soft peat—a verdant carpet over black relentless death from which there was no escape. Even yet, tightly clasped within her fingers, were the remains of the specimens she must have been gathering when the moss gave way, and she sank, apparently without a struggle, from the eyes of the world.
There was no horrible decay here—no frightful repelling change; the peat had the strange preservative character within it of holding unaltered that which it took to itself; and as the body of a poor Saxon woman was once found, after probably fifteen hundred years’ immersion, so was found that of Marion Lady Gernon.
The truth at last—the dread truth, proclaiming itself, trumpet-tongued, for all men to hear—proclaiming innocence, and wronging suspicion, suffering, and death. The last veil was lifted from the past; and as the truth shone forth, clear and bright, foul suspicion and lying scandal shrank away abashed from the bright light to the dark shades where they had been engendered.
“The truth at last!” groaned Philip Norton, elderly and grey now, as he stood, with clasped hands, gazing at the silent dead—“the truth at last, and now he will believe.”
The navvies shrank back in half dread at the strange sight for a few minutes; and when, recovering, they would have advanced, Brace motioned them back, and he alone heard his father’s words.
“At last—at last! what I have prayed for so long. At last! Oh Heaven! I loved her too well to have sullied her even in thought!”
He stood motionless for a few minutes, and then, by a fierce effort, he started back into life.
“Let no hand but ours rest upon her, Brace,” he whispered; and then, of the woodwork near, a litter was hastily contrived, and on a bed of the heather and rush, amidst which she had loved to linger, the sleeping figure was slowly borne towards the village, till, as they neared the Park, Brace left his father to prepare those at the Castle for the awful visitation.