“That is rather hard upon Lord Cheriton—bearing in mind your detective’s suggestion of a vendetta. The vendetta would not be likely to close with the death of Sir Godfrey Carmichael. Hatred would demand further victims—Lord Cheriton himself perhaps—or this lovely young widow,—but there could hardly be such a vindictive feeling without a strong cause. Enmity so deadly must have had a beginning in a profound sense of wrong.”
“I have studied the case from that point of view, but can discover no cause for such malignity. I have almost given up all hope of unravelling the mystery.”
“And your kinsman is to live under the sword of Damocles for the rest of his life? Upon my soul I pity him. I can imagine nothing in Ireland worse than the murder of Sir Godfrey Carmichael—a man seated peacefully in his own drawing-room; and a high-principled, amiable young man, you tell me, who never was known to wrong his fellow-man.”
Theodore Dalbrook did not spend his Easter holidays in Dorsetshire. He had heard from his sisters that Juanita was staying at Swanage with Lady Jane Carmichael. He was unwilling to intrude upon her there, and he had nothing to communicate upon the subject which was at present his only claim upon her interest. Under these circumstances he was easily persuaded to spend his vacation in a ten days’ trip to Holland with Cuthbert Ramsay, who was keenly interested in the result of some experiments which had lately been made at Leyden; and thus it happened that Theodore let some time go by without seeing any member of his family except his father, who came to London occasionally upon business, and whom his son was delighted to entertain and make much of in his chambers or at his club, the serviceable Constitutional.
Towards the end of April he read an announcement in the papers which had touched him almost to tears.
“On the 23rd inst., at Milbrook Priory, the widow of Sir Godfrey Carmichael, of a posthumous son.”
He was thankful for her sake that this new interest had been given to her days—that a new and fair horizon was open to her in this young life, with all its possibilities of love and gladness. It might be that the coming of this child would change the current of her thoughts, that the stern desire for retribution would grow less keen, that the agonizing sense of loss would be softened almost to forgetfulness. He remembered those lovely lines of the poet philosopher’s—
“A child, more than all other gifts,
Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts.”