The day will come

by M. E. Braddon

And yet there remained the fact that the local policeman and a London detective had both failed in obtaining the faintest trace of a suspicious-looking stranger, or indeed of any stranger, male or female, who had been observed in the neighbourhood of Cheriton before or after the murder; there remained the fact that a large reward had been offered without resulting in one scrap of information bearing upon the subject. How could he hope, in the face of these facts, to trace the movements of a man whose personal appearance was unknown to him, and who had come and gone like a shadow?

“I can but try, and I can but fail,” he told himself. “Knowing what I know now, I cannot remain inactive.”

It may be that he had caught something of the fiery eagerness which consumed Juanita, that in his ardent desire to be worthy of her regard, to waste his life in her service, he had become, as it were, inoculated with the spirit of his mistress, and hoped as she hoped, and thought as she thought.

With the beginning of the Long Vacation he went to Dorchester, but this time not alone. He took his friend Cuthbert Ramsay with him, as a visitor to the grave old house, in the grave old town.

His sisters often made a complaint against him that he never introduced any of his college friends to them—that whereas the sisters of other University men were rich in the acquaintance of Charlies and Algernons, and Freds and Toms, who were produceable at tennis parties and available for picnics at the shortest notice, they were restricted to the youths of Dorchester and a horizon bounded by the country houses of the immediate neighbourhood. Remembering these reproaches, and seeing that his friend Ramsay was obviously pining for rest and country air, Theodore suggested that he should occupy the bachelor’s room in Cornhill as long as he could venture to stop away from hospitals and lectures and scientific investigations.

“You want a long fallow, Cuthbert,” he said, “and you couldn’t have a better lotus island than Dorchester. There’s not an excitement or a feverish sensation to be had within twenty miles, and then I really want to make you known to my cousin, Lord Cheriton. He is a very clever man—an all-round man—and he would be interested in you and all that you are doing.”

“I shall be proud of knowing him. And then there is your cousin, Lady Carmichael. I am deeply interested in her, without having ever seen her face, and when I do see her——”

“You will say she is one of the loveliest women you ever saw in your life, Cuthbert. I have no doubt of that. You will see her beauty under a cloud, for she is not one of those women who begin to get over the loss of a husband as soon as their crape gets rusty; but her beauty is all the more touching on account of the grief that separates her from all other women—even from her past self. I sometimes look at her and wonder if this sad and silent woman can be the Juanita I once knew; the light-hearted, spontaneous girl, a buoyant creature, all impulse and caprice, fancy and imagination.”

“You may be sure that I shall admire her, and you may be sure I shall not forget that there is some one whose admiration has a deeper root than the lust of the eye and the fancy of the moment.”

Theodore would not affect to misunderstand him. It was not possible that he could have talked of his cousin in the freedom of friendship without having revealed his secret to his friend.