"I do, though," replied my cousin, "and I also recollect, very often with mingled feelings, the way in which the finding of that man Summers' body in the tunnel was hushed up, and no further efforts made to connect him with the murder of poor Brooks."
"I don't see that any good purpose would have been served," I answered, "if they had connected him with it. He could not have been tried and hanged."
"No, certainly not, but there would have been the satisfaction in knowing. But I believe your deceased friend the Duke of Rittersheim worked that. In my opinion he threw a cloak of some sort over the Bath case too, and I don't suppose you will ever discover the truth of it."
"No," I answered solemnly, "I don't suppose I ever shall."
And I don't suppose I ever should but for one of those little chances which occur in a man's life, trifles in themselves, but leading on to great discoveries.
The next day after that little talk, amid the pomp of a great wedding, almost regal in its magnificence, I took Dolores to be my little wife, to have and to hold from that day forth in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, until death we two doth part.
And from that time I walked as on air, and forgot the murky clouds which had darkened my horizon in the days before I found my happiness.
CHAPTER XXI
MADAME LA COMTESSE
It was five years after my marriage, or to be correct, in May of the year nineteen hundred and seven, that Dolores and I, leaving our three dear little children in the manor house on the shores of the Solent whilst we took a flying trip to Switzerland, found ourselves one heavenly spring morning standing on the balcony of the great hotel at Lucerne which is built on the very edge of the blue lake.