She was sixteen years of age at the time of her mother's death, and lovely in face and figure; her friends flattered her vanity by averring that with her beauty and accomplishments she might win the love of a nobleman, or even of a prince! But what nobleman or prince would marry the daughter of a felon? Therefore, she resolved to let the truth be hidden. If Eric Marville were still living he was free; let him rejoice in that fact: if dead, her attestation of his innocence would do him no good. True, she knew that Marville had left a son, who must often have felt shame at the stigma resting on his name. But this son would now be twenty-three years of age; he had grown up, she cynically argued, accustomed to the feeling, whereas in her case the knowledge had come upon her with a sudden and overwhelming shock. She pictured the pitying looks of her friends, the gibes of the malicious (for her beauty had made for her many enemies), and she shrank from facing the new situation. No: let the unknown Idris Marville bear the disgrace that of right belonged to her. And when, a month or two later, she learned from the newspapers that this same Idris Marville had perished in a fire at Paris, she felt a sense of relief.
But retribution was to follow!
The day came when her life was in such danger that she must have perished but for the providential help of a certain stranger; and when that stranger proved to be none other than the Idris Marville whom she was wronging by her guilty silence, her feeling of remorse was so great that she was almost tempted to leap from the rock into the sea. To withhold the truth was pain, yet to declare it would be to earn Idris' contempt. Every kindly word, every pleasant look on his part, had gone to her heart like so many thrusts of steel.
The irony of fate! She had married Viscount Walden in the expectation of succeeding to a coronet, and now the belief was gradually forming in her mind that Idris was the rightful heir of Ravenhall: Beatrice Ravengar, and not herself, was destined to be the Countess of Ormsby.
O, if at the age of sixteen, and following the dictates of justice, she had tried to find Idris Marville, and finding, had given him her mother's written confession, how different her life might have been! Idris would perhaps have been attracted by her then as he had been seven years later. But now? She was united to a husband whom she felt to be worthless: a husband who had ceased to care for her: a husband whose title of right belonged to Idris.
"I am justly punished," she murmured, bitterly.
The remaining contents of the packet drawn by Lorelie from the escritoire consisted of the correspondence mentioned by Madame Rochefort in her inculpatory letter.
Arranging these missives according to the order of time in which they were written Lorelie took up the first, which dealt with the events that followed upon the flight from Quilaix.
"The Pelayo Hotel, Pajares.
25th April, 1875."The newspapers will already have told you how admirably the rescue was planned and carried out, so I need not dwell upon that point.
"There was, however, one awkward hitch in the arrangement—the death of Mrs. Marville: but I am not to blame for that. Had Eric listened to me it would not have happened; my intention was to proceed direct to the yacht: he would turn aside to take his wife with him: now he has no wife.
"Eric Marville is free, and I hope you are satisfied.
"The superscription of this letter will show you that we are no longer on board the Nemesis.
"'What is Pajares?' you may ask. A mere hamlet on the northern slope of the Asturian Sierras, so high up as to be almost in the clouds: and the building dignified with the name of hotel is but a miserable log posada.
"How we come to be here is soon told.
"To fly from Quilaix to the open sea was an easy task: the difficulty was to attain dry land again in safety; for, as our romantic escapade would form the chief topic in all the newspapers, it was pretty certain that at every port a watch would be kept for our yacht. We feared putting into harbour. But land we must—somewhere. We could not cruise forever on the open main. How to land without detection was the problem.
"Chance decided our course of action. We lay becalmed in a wild rocky bay off the Asturian coast. Anchoring a mile from land we swept the shore with the glass: there was neither village nor human dwelling visible, not a living creature in sight. It was the very spot for our purpose; and, as if to favour us still more, a mist came on. Marville proposed that we should go ashore in the boat, and get rid of the tell-tale yacht by scuttling it there and then. I was compelled to agree to this plan, for I could devise none better. It went to my heart to watch the beautiful Nemesis sinking out of sight forever, but it would have gone to my heart still more to be captured by a French cruiser, and provided with a cell at Valàgenêt.
"Fortunately, the sea was as smooth as glass and the wind still as we rowed off, otherwise enveloped in a fog on an ironbound coast we might have fared ill. We ran the boat ashore in safety, destroyed it immediately afterwards, and paid off our crew, who were as glad as ourselves to be quit of the yacht, for they, too, as fellow-conspirators in the rescue-plot, were amenable to justice.
"We dispersed: and since the crew went eastward, Marville and I turned our faces westward, and walking all night as chance directed, found ourselves at early dawn at Gijon, where we rested. We assumed the character of pedestrian tourists. From Gijon we moved on to Oviedo, and thence to the mountain-hamlet of Pajares, where I write this.
"I have found Marville far from being a pleasant companion: the death of his wife has gloomed his spirits, and has poisoned the pleasure he might otherwise derive from his newly-acquired freedom.
"His talk, on the few occasions when he does talk, turns mainly upon that accident, and upon the look of horror which his boy gave him. 'He will never want to see me again,' he mutters moodily.
"I was not sorry when he proposed that we should part. He saw that his gloom was an ill-match for my cheerful nature. With his love of mountaineering he resolved to cross the sierras, and to penetrate into Leon. He set off without a guide. From the door of the posada I watched him ascending the mountain-path, his solitary black form outlined against the white snow. He dwindled to a speck, and that was the last I saw of him. Shall we ever see each other again? He forgot to make arrangements for a future meeting, and I didn't remind him of the point.
"He has done me irreparable injury. For him I have wrecked a brilliant military career, lost a Colonial Governorship, and made myself an exile forever from la belle France. Why should I confess the deed to him? Haven't I made the fellow sufficient atonement?"
Lorelie took up another letter, which was dated more than a twelvemonth after the first.