About the same time that Sir Paul Raughton received the telegram from London, and was taking counsel with one or two of his elder guests as to whether he should at once tell Ida the dreadful news or leave it till the morning, Lord Penlyn entered his hotel in town. A change had come over the young man--a change of such a nature that any one, who had seen him twenty-four hours before, would scarcely have believed him to be the same person. His face, which usually bore a good colour, was ghastly pale, his eyes had great hollows and deep rings round them, and even his lips looked as if the blood had left them. He had come from his club--where, since it had been discovered who the victim of last night's tragedy was, nothing else but the murder had been talked about, as was also the case in every club and public place in London--and he now mounted the steps of the hotel with the manner of a man who was either very weak or very weary.
"Do you know where my servant is?" he asked of the hall porter, who held the door open for him; and even this man noticed that his voice sounded strange and broken, and that he looked ill.
"He is at his tea, my lord; shall I send for him?"
"No, but send him to me when he has finished. We shall return to my house to-night."
The porter bowed, and said, "I have sent a letter to your room, my lord," and Penlyn went on. His apartment, consisting of a sitting-room and bed-room, was on the ground floor of the hotel, and was usually given to guests of distinction (who were likely, in the landlord's opinion, to pay handsomely for the accommodation), as it saved them the trouble of going up any stairs. The hotel was a private one; a house that did not welcome persons of whom it knew nothing, but made those whom it did know, entirely at their ease. It was very quiet, shutting its doors at midnight unless any of its visitors were at a ball or party, in which case, if some of those visitors were ladies, the porter's deputy sat up for them; but, when they were gentlemen, furnishing them with latch-keys. As sometimes there were not more than three or four gentlemen in this extremely select hotel at one time, this was an obviously better system than having a night-porter.
Lord Penlyn took up the letter that was lying on his table, and proceeded to open it, throwing himself at the same time wearily into an arm-chair. He recognised Ida's handwriting, and as he did so he wondered if, by any possibility, the letter could be about the subject of which all London was talking to-day---the murder of Walter Cundall. When he saw that there was another one inclosed in it, the handwriting of which he did not know, his curiosity was so aroused (for he wondered how a stranger to him should know, or suppose, that he was at Belmont), that he opened this one first and read it. Read it carefully from beginning to end, and then dropped it on the floor as he put his hands up to his head, and wailed, "Murdered! Oh my God! Murdered! When he had written this letter only an hour before." And then he wept long and bitterly.
The letter ran:
My Brother,
"Since I saw you last Saturday I have been thinking deeply upon what passed between us, and I have come to the conclusion that, after all, it will be best for nothing to be said to any one on the subject of our father's first marriage; not even to Miss Raughton or her father. By keeping back the fact that you have an elder brother, no harm is done to any one. I shall never marry now, and consequently, you are only taking possession of what will be yours, or your children's, eventually. No one but you, your friend Mr. Smerdon, and I, know of this secret; let no one ever know it. We love the same woman, and, when she is your wife, I shall have the right to love her with a brother's love. Let us unite together to make her life as perfectly happy as possible. To do this we must not begin by undeceiving her as to the position she is to hold.
"I suggest this, nay, I command you to do this, because of my love for her, a love which desires that her life may be without pain or sorrow. I shall not witness her happiness with you, not yet at least, for I do not think I could bear that; but, in some future years, it may be that time will have so tempered my sorrow to me, that I shall be able to see you all in all to each other, perhaps to even witness your children playing at her knee, and to feel content. I pray God that it may be so.