"When he reads that, I shall be half-way to Launceston," he said, as Christabel gave him back the letter.
"I am deeply grateful to you, and now good-bye," she said, gravely, offering him her hand. He pressed the cold slim hand in his, and gently raised it to his lips.
"You have used me very badly, but I shall love and honour you to the end of my days," he said, as Christabel left him.
Jessie was following, but de Cazalet stopped her on the threshold. "Come," he said, "you must give me the clue to this mystery. Surely you were in it—you, who know her so well, must have known something of this?"
"I knew knowing. I watched her with fear and wonder. After—after Mr. Hamleigh's death—she was very ill—mentally ill; she sank into a kind of apathy—not madness—but terribly near the confines of madness. Then, suddenly, her spirits seemed to revive—she became eager for movement, amusement—an utterly different creature from her former self. She and I, who had been like sisters, seemed ever so far apart. I could not understand this new phase of her character. For a whole year she has been unlike herself—a terrible year. Thank God this morning I have seen the old Christabel again."
Half an hour afterwards the Baron's dog-cart drove out of the yard, and half an hour after his departure the Baron's letter was delivered to Leonard Tregonell, who muttered an oath as he finished reading it, and then handed it to his faithful Jack.
"What do you say to that?" he asked.
"By Jove, I knew Mrs. T—— was straight," answered the Captain, in his unsophisticated phraseology. "But it was a shabby trick to play you all the same. I daresay Mop and Dop were in it. Those girls are always ready for larks."
Leonard muttered something the reverse of polite about Dop and Mop, and went straight to the stable-yard, where he cancelled his order for the trap which was to have conveyed him to Trebarwith sands, and where he heard of the Baron's departure for Launceston.
Mystified and angry, he went straight upstairs to his wife's room. All barriers were broken down now. All reticence was at an end. Plainest words, straightest measures, befitted the present state of things.