She glanced nervously about her, and finally thrust her hand among the folds of her dress about her neck, and slipped in his hand a crumpled letter, ill-spelt, and written evidently by an imperfectly educated person.
“My Own Daughter Clare” (it began),
“Your brother Jim sets sail for America on Tuesday next, and we all hope if once he gets out in Canada with Uncle Pete he’ll do well. But you know what the boy always was about you. It was ever Clare first, and the rest of us nowhere. He won’t budge a foot without seeing you, and giving a good-by kiss to his little sister, for all she’s a great lady now. Now, my girl, it’s hard enough to have had never a sight of you for them three years, save now and again as you’ve drove past in your carriage, and that one time you contrived to slip off to the old cottage for half an hour. I’m hungering to speak to my beautiful girl. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’ve thought I seen a sad look on your face of late. It’s wicked and unnatural for Sir Philip to part flesh and blood, and as to us not being gentlefolks, he should have thought of that afore he took ye. What you say he threatened about shooting as poachers any on us as come within his property, that’s mere tall talk. What harm to anybody will it do for your father and brother to see you for ten minutes or so, and give you a good-by kiss, and tell you how dear you are to us still? So, my girl, to-morrow night, at any time between nine and eleven, do you slip out to the shrubbery at the back of the paddock. If it rains hard we shan’t expect you, but if it’s fine, seeing as the gray wolf is away, we know you’ll come, my pretty, to your loving brother, and your old father.”
Dr. Netherbridge read the letter carefully, and returned it to Lady Cranstoun. He was beginning to understand several things which had puzzled him. One point was very clear—Sir Philip Cranstoun had married beneath him, and had forbidden his young wife from communicating in any way with her relations.
“Did you go?” the doctor asked.
She supported herself on her elbow, and spoke in quick, gasping tones:
“It was a beautifully clear night. I thought Sir Philip was away, but he had returned from London without my knowledge. Somehow, some one—one of the spies who are about me, waking and sleeping—picked up and read this letter. I can only suppose this, for all I know is that as I crept out of the house at about half-past nine I was followed. Just as I reached the shrubbery, and caught sight in the moonlight of my father and brother in waiting under the dark shadow of the trees, I was seized from behind, something was thrust into my mouth and over my eyes, and I was carried back into the house. I fought and struggled, but to no purpose, and I could plainly hear several shots, the sound of a scuffle, and a great cry as of a man in mortal agony. From that day to this I have been able to learn nothing of what happened on that night. But yesterday Margaret overheard Sir Philip telling his steward that he was going to Guildford to-day, where the sessions are held, to appear as a witness against some poachers who were found in his grounds several weeks ago, and who have been in jail ever since. Dr. Netherbridge, I am certain he meant my father and my brother!”
“But how could that be?” he asked, trying to allay her fierce excitement. “Your father and brother are not poachers surely?”
A faint red color stole into her white cheeks.
“My people don’t see that the rich are injured by the loss of a hare or a rabbit now and again,” she muttered with lowered eyelids. “They should belong to the people, wild game like that, and a bird or two—but that’s not what we were talking of. It was no poaching brought out Jim and father that night. Sir Philip knew that right enough. He made me take a solemn oath never to betray to anybody what he called my disgraceful origin. Disgraceful!” she repeated, with burning cheeks. “A Carewe’s as good as a Cranstoun any day, as I’ve told him often enough. I’ve never broken my vow until to-day; not even Margaret knows who my people are. But I’ve told you, because I must and will know what has happened to my father and my brother Jim to-day.”
As he watched her talking, and noted the English nature of her beauty, the intense blue-blackness of her hair, and a certain touch of wildness about her free, graceful gestures and rapid speech, another conviction came home to Ernest Netherbridge’s mind, and this was that Lady Cranstoun, wife of Sir Philip Cranstoun, of the Chase, Surrey, Cranstoun Hall, in Aberdeenshire, and Berkeley Square, London, had in her veins the untamable blood of the true “Egyptian,” those despised wanderers over the face of the earth who are found and hated in all the chief countries of Europe.