An exclamation from Flora for a moment attracts him. She has followed him and has turned the body over.
“Evie!” she cries, and there is a passionate ring of triumph in her voice, “though Gloria be dead, her pure, fair fame is saved. Though God has taken her, He has dashed to the ground the foul lie with which they sought to doom her. Look, Evie, look! Her noble name is cleared.”
With a startled, eager look he comes to her side. He sees at his feet the pallid upturned face of a dead man. This man has dark hair, and a dark thick beard, moustache and whiskers in which grey hairs are stealing fast. This man has dark eyes, but the lustre of life has left them, and his white teeth are clenched together with a horrid grin.
He stares down at the corpse below him. The wild, hungry look in his beautiful eyes is dying now. Triumph and exultation are there.
“Gloria!” he cries, “my darling, you have triumphed. They thought they could kill you with a false and awful lie. There is your answer. Nor shall your great cause die. I swear to win it for you! I swear—I swear it now!”
He turns away with a gasping sob. But Flora has no longer any fear for him. Evie Ravensdale’s vow will bid him live, live on for Gloria’s sake.
Calmly and quietly she turns to the sailors. “We will carry that body to Dorlin, my lads. Guard it well. There lies the man whom a too confident jury declared to be dead, for whose murder the noblest of women was unjustly condemned. That corpse is Lord Westray!”
CHAPTER V.
The blinds are drawn down in the single window of a small bedroom that overlooks a narrow, dull, and dingy street, not far removed from Trafalgar Square. The room, though clean, bears a poverty-stricken look, for in it, in addition to the bed, there are only two chairs, an old table, and a dilapidated sofa with a thin rug covering it. There is a small washhand-stand in this room besides the other articles named, but this is all.