"The mystery of her death?" said Edward Arundel; "you believe, then, that she is dead?"
"I anticipate nothing; I think nothing," answered the artist; "I only wait. The mysteries of life are so many and so incomprehensible,––the stories, which are every day to be read by any man who takes the trouble to look through a newspaper, are so strange, and savour so much of the improbabilities of a novel–writer's first wild fiction,––that I am ready to believe everything and anything. Mary Marchmont struck me, from the first moment in which I saw her, as sadly deficient in mental power. Nothing she could do would astonish me. She may be hiding herself away from us, prompted only by some eccentric fancy of her own. She may have fallen into the power of designing people. She may have purposely placed her slipper by the water–side, in order to give the idea of an accident or a suicide; or she may have dropped it there by chance, and walked barefoot to the nearest railway–station. She acted unreasonably before when she ran away from Marchmont Towers; she may have acted unreasonably again."
"You do not think, then, that she is dead?"
"I hesitate to form any opinion; I positively decline to express one."
Edward Arundel gnawed savagely at the ends of his moustache. This man's cool imperturbability, which had none of the studied smoothness of hypocrisy, but which seemed rather the plain candour of a thorough man of the world, who had no wish to pretend to any sentiment he did not feel, baffled and infuriated the passionate young soldier. Was it possible that this man, who met him with such cool self–assertion, who in no manner avoided any discussion of Mary Marchmont's disappearance,––was it possible that he could have had any treacherous and guilty part in that calamity? Olivia's manner looked like guilt; but Paul Marchmont's seemed the personification of innocence. Not angry innocence, indignant that its purity should have been suspected; but the matter–of–fact, commonplace innocence of a man of the world, who is a great deal too clever to play any hazardous and villanous game.
"You can perhaps answer me this question, Mr. Marchmont," said Edward Arundel. "Why was my wife doubted when she told the story of her marriage?"
The artist smiled, and rising from his seat upon the stone step, took a pocket–book from one of the pockets of the coat that he had been wearing.
"I can answer that question," he said, selecting a paper from amongst others in the pocket–book. "This will answer it."
He handed Edward Arundel the paper, which was a letter folded lengthways, and indorsed, "From Mrs. Arundel, August 31st." Within this letter was another paper, indorsed, "Copy of letter to Mrs. Arundel, August 28th."
"You had better read the copy first," Mr. Marchmont said, as Edward looked doubtfully at the inner paper.