She opened the gate of the simple cottage-garden—there was no need of bolts or locks for the fortification of Godolphin Cottages—and went up to her own little sitting-room,—the room in which her father had told her the secret of his life,—the room in which she had sworn to remember the name of Henry Dunbar. All was dark and quiet in the house, for the mistress of it was elderly and old-fashioned in her ways; and Margaret was accustomed to wait upon herself when she came home after nightfall.
She struck a lucifer, lighted her candle, and sat down with the newspaper in her hand. She unfolded it, and examined the pages. She was not long finding what she wanted.
"The Winchester Murder. Latest Particulars."
Margaret Wentworth read that horrible story. She read the newspaper record of the cruel deed that had been done—twice—slowly and deliberately. Her eyes were tearless, and there was a desperate courage at her heart; that miserable, agonized heart, which seemed like a block of ice in her breast.
"I swore to remember the name of Henry Dunbar," she said in, a low, sombre voice; "I have good reason to remember it now."
From the first she had no doubt in her mind—from the very first she had but one idea: and that idea was a conviction. Her father had been murdered by his old master. The man Joseph Wilmot was her father: the murderer was Henry Dunbar. The newspaper record told how the murdered man had, according to his own account, met his brother at the Waterloo station upon the afternoon of the 16th of August. That was the very afternoon upon which James Wentworth had left his daughter to go to London by rail.
He had met his old master, the man who had so bitterly injured him; the cold-hearted scoundrel who had so cruelly betrayed him. He had been violent, perhaps, and had threatened Henry Dunbar: and then—then the rich man, treacherous and cold-hearted in his age as in his youth, had beguiled his old valet by a pretended friendship, had lured him into a lonely place, and had there murdered him; in order that all the wicked secrets of the past might be buried with his victim.
As to the robbery of the clothes—the rifling of the pocketbook—that, of course, was only a part of Henry Dunbar's deep laid scheme.
The girl folded the paper and put it in her breast. It was a strange document to lie against that virginal bosom: and the breast beneath it ached with a sick, cold pain, that was like the pain of death.
Margaret took up her candle, and went into a neatly-kept little room at the back of the house,—the room in which her father had always slept when he stayed in that house.