Those were the last words of wild Ralph Gavestone. When the doctor and Mistress Forest re-entered that silent room, my Lady was upon her knees beside the pillow; she had closed the dead man's eyes, and folded his palms together, and taken from his neck the locket, but to be returned to him by a trusty hand when the time came.
CHAPTER XIV. AND LAST.
If there had happened to be any one upon whom poor Ralph's wild talk, on the night of the Abbey festivities, had made any serious impression whatever, it was destined to be removed by the inquest that followed upon his death. The very words he had made use of in his fury, his calling my Lady his wife, and stigmatising Sir Richard as her natural son, would have been held to be no slight evidence of his insanity, which, however, was abundantly proved by other testimony. The waiter at the Royal Marine at Coveton came in all good faith to take his solemn oath that, to the best of his judgment, the gent, with the beard, who had scandalised that respectable house by taking brandy for breakfast, was like no other man alive as he had ever served; or, in other words, was nothing short of a lunatic. The postboys whom he had commanded to stop and let him out before his chaise could be whirled over the first stage, pronounced him mad. The porter at the railway station, to whose civil inquiry as to whither he was going the angry man had returned so uncivil an answer, came to the same conclusion. No man nearer home, from the lord-lieutenant to the parish constable, and (even of his whilom companions) from Captain Walter Lisgard to landlord Steve, but gave it as his opinion that the man was mad. And the verdict of the coroner's jury being in accordance with the evidence, decided that the deceased had met with his death in the manner with which we are acquainted during an attack of temporary insanity, induced by Drink.
The nerves of Madame de Castellan had received much too great a shock, from recent occurrences, to permit her presence at the inquest; and, indeed, such an effect did they take upon her, that she left not only Belcomb but England itself almost immediately, declining with many thanks Sir Richard's offer—notwithstanding that Letty drove over in person to make it known to her—that she should take up her residence for the present at the Abbey itself. So Madame went back again to her native land as suddenly and almost as mysteriously as she had come; and after a while, wrote to inform her English friends that the domestic disagreements which had driven her from home were in a fair way to be healed, and that it was very unlikely that she should have to trespass upon their kindness any more.
The real history of that lady's coming to Belcomb was never absolutely known to more than two persons, and perhaps more or less rightly guessed at by a third. From the moment that my Lady recognised her first husband in Ralph Derrick, she never concealed from herself the possibility of her having to leave the Abbey, and become perhaps a lifelong exile from home and friends for her three children's sakes, but especially for that of Sir Richard. Perhaps she exaggerated the depth to which family pride had taken root in the heart of her eldest son; but she honestly believed that the knowledge of his being illegitimate would have killed him. Although she could never have possessed the strength of mind, even had she enjoyed the requisite want of principle, to deny in person Ralph's claim to her as her lawful husband, she justly argued that he would be utterly unable to establish his case in her absence. He could summons no witness whose testimony would go half so far as her own tell-tale face; while his own character was such, that no credence would be given to his statement, unless supported by strong and direct evidence. Thus situated, my Lady turned over in her mind scheme after scheme of flight, without hitting upon anything that gave much promise, and all of which entailed a residence abroad, cruelly far from those dear ones from whom she was about, with such a heavy heart, to flee for their own good; but when she had, perforce, as we have seen, to take Mistress Forest into her confidence, something arose out of a conversation between them concerning their old life together at Dijon, which suggested that ingenious artifice which she eventually put into effect.
Madame de Castellan had been dead some years, though of that circumstance my Lady's children were unaware, albeit Sir Richard had heard a good deal of her when a boy, and had even some dim recollection of her personal appearance when she was a guest of his father and mother's at the Abbey.
Of this remembrance, my Lady took advantage. Mary and herself in that old school-time at Dijon had been used to act charades at Madame's house, and that circumstance no doubt put into Lady Lisgard's mind the idea of personating the old Frenchwoman herself. My Lady had learned from those amateur performances the secrets of “green-room” metamorphosis; * she was naturally endowed with no small power of mimicry; and she could speak French like a native.
* How a few strips of black plaster on the teeth can
counterfeit age and toothlessness, let any of our fair
readers experiment for themselves.