When a great flock of frightened people, with a fire–engine out of order, and drawn by whooping men and boys, came hurrying up to the Towers, they found a blazing edifice, which looked like an enchanted castle––great stone–framed windows vomiting flame; tall chimneys toppling down upon a fiery roof; molten lead, like water turned to fire, streaming in flaming cataracts upon the terrace; and all the sky lit up by that vast pile of blazing ruin. Only salamanders, or poor Mr. Braidwood's own chosen band, could have approached Marchmont Towers that night. The Kemberling firemen and the Swampington firemen, who came by–and–by, were neither salamanders nor Braidwoods. They stood aloof and squirted water at the flames, and recoiled aghast by–and–by when the roof came down like an avalanche of blazing timber, leaving only a gaunt gigantic skeleton of red–hot stone where Marchmont Towers once had been.
When it was safe to venture in amongst the ruins––and this was not for many hours after the fire had burnt itself out––people looked for Paul Marchmont; but amidst all that vast chaos of smouldering ashes, there was nothing found that could be identified as the remains of a human being. No one knew where the artist had been at the time of the fire, or indeed whether he had been in the house at all; and the popular opinion was, that Paul had set fire to the mansion, and had fled away before the flames began to spread.
But Lavinia Weston knew better than this. She knew now why her brother had sent her every scrap of valuable property belonging to him. She understood now why he had come back to her to bid her good–night for the second time, and press his cold lips to hers.
[CHAPTER THE LAST.
"DEAR IS THE MEMORY OF OUR WEDDED LIVES."]
Mary and Edward Arundel saw the awful light in the sky, and heard the voices of the people shouting in the street below, and calling to one another that Marchmont Towers was on fire.
The young mistress of the burning pile had very little concern for her property. She only kept saying, again and again, "O Edward! I hope there is no one in the house. God grant there may be no one in the house!"
And when the flames were highest, and it seemed by the light in the sky as if all Lincolnshire had been blazing, Edward Arundel's wife flung herself upon her knees, and prayed aloud for any unhappy creature that might be in peril.
Oh, if we could dare to think that this innocent girl's prayer was heard before the throne of an Awful Judge, pleading for the soul of a wicked man!
Early the next morning Mrs. Arundel came from Lawford Grange with her confidential maid, and carried off her daughter–in–law and the baby, on the first stage of the journey into Devonshire. Before she left Kemberling, Mary was told that no dead body had been found amongst the ruins of the Towers; and this assertion deluded her into the belief that no unhappy creature had perished. So she went to Dangerfield happier than she had ever been since the sunny days of her honeymoon, to wait there for the coming of Edward Arundel, who was to stay behind to see Richard Paulette and Mr. Gormby, and to secure the testimony of Mr. Weston and Betsy Murrel with a view to the identification of Mary's little son, who had been neither registered nor christened.
I have no need to dwell upon this process of identification, registration, and christening, through which Master Edward Arundel had to pass in the course of the next month. I had rather skip this dry–as–dust business, and go on to that happy time which Edward and his young wife spent together under the oaks at Dangerfield––that bright second honeymoon season, while they were as yet houseless; for a pretty villa–like mansion was being built on the Marchmont property, far away from the dank wood and the dismal river, in a pretty pastoral little nook, which was a fair oasis amidst the general dreariness of Lincolnshire.