Diana's husband had reached Jersey in safety, and gone to the little secluded church of St. ——, where they had offered their mutual vows to heaven on that eventful morning, so well remembered still, when their only witnesses were the parish clerk and sexton.
"The poor old curate"—so ran his letter—"you remember his thin, spare figure, with a long black, rusty coat, diagonal shovel hat, gaiters, and white choker—has gone to his last home under the old yew-tree that for centuries has guarded the burial-ground. By a destructive fire in the vestry the whole of the marriage registers, and some of the baptismal ditto, have perished before the copies thereof were transmitted to headquarters—wherever that may be; but I have, most fortunately, oh, my Diana! by the special providence of heaven, secured the attested copy of our marriage lines, which the old curate made at my request from the now defunct register. It was found among his papers by his successor, and is now in my possession—in the old scarlet pocket-book, together with my will, which I have carefully drawn up in favour of you and our boys, and signed before witnesses. I mean to spend two days here with an old friend, and shall return by the steamer Queen Guinevère, which leaves Jersey for Falmouth on Friday, and which, by-the-bye, has on board a large sum in specie coming from France to England."
"Friday? On Saturday I shall see him!" thought the wife in her heart, with a sigh of relief, and a prayer of thanks to heaven. "The register of their marriage had perished! What if the attested copy had been lost? Oh, what then would have been the fate, the future, of their idolized sons—her tall and handsome Arthur, her merry little dark-eyed Ralf?"
Thursday passed; Friday, too; then came Saturday, but no Arthur Tresilian, or Lydiard, as she had to call him still at Carn Spern. There came tidings, however, that the Queen Guinevère had left Jersey duly, but had never reached Falmouth. Great was the anxiety, grief, and terror of the little family at Carn Spern; for there had been a severe storm in the Channel, and many ships had been driven ashore about the Lizard and Land's End; but none of these were steamers, and a whisper began to spread abroad that the Queen Guinevère must have foundered and gone down at sea, or some trace of her would have been found upon the coast. But all doubts were speedily resolved, when, on the third day after she was due at Falmouth, Derrick Polkinghorne, coxswain of the Padstow life-boat, discovered her shattered hull sunk and wedged in a chasm of the rocks near the lighthouse on Trevose Head. How she had come to be stranded there on the other side of Cornwall was a mystery to all, unless she had been blown by the late tempest completely round the Land's End, and been forced to run for shelter by St. Ives and Ligger Bay. Much wreckage and many bodies were cast on the beach; but, though none of them proved to be that of Arthur Tresilian—or Mr. Lydiard, as he was called—no doubt remained in the anguished mind of Diana that he had perished, and she at once wrote to his brother Basset, announcing the event, her existence, and the legal claims of herself and her children.
All this complication proved very startling to Basset. He knew nothing of his brother's Jersey journey, though he always suspected his secret ties; but, ignoring the latter, he at once put his household in super-mourning, and took possession of Restormel Court as his own, leaving, however, no means untried to prove the death by drowning of Arthur Tresilian, though the name of Lydiard was borne on the list of passengers.
The following day saw Diana and her sons, attired in deepest mourning, at the Court, requesting an audience with Mr. Basset Tresilian—her close cap and concealed hair, her long crape weepers, and face deadly with pallor, announcing her recent widowhood, which Basset viewed with a sneer, as with a haggard eye she looked at the stiff ancestral portraits, the cedar carvings of the stately library, the blazing fire, the gleaming tiles, and picturesque furniture of white and gold and crimson velvet.
She announced with quiet dignity, yet not without doubt and much perturbation, that she came as the widow of the late Mr. Tresilian, to claim her place, and the places of his children, at Restormel Court. He replied, calmly—
"You have proofs, I presume, of all this, Mrs.—Mrs. Lydiard?"
"Mrs. Tresilian, sir!" said she, while her Arthur, in silence and bewilderment, recognised an uncle in the father of his Mona.
Alas! Diana had neither the certificate nor the will; both had gone down into the deep, with her hapless husband. She had, however, the letter referring to those documents: but Basset, after a furtive glance at the fire, tossed it hack to her contemptuously, saying—