"I was looking at a face out of the grave—the face of Marie Prévol; younger, fresher, but not more innocent in its stainless beauty than Marie's face when I first knew her. The likeness is but a vague one, perhaps—a look, an air; but to me at that moment it struck home. My heart went out to you at once. If my murdered wife had come back to me in some angelic form, had offered me peace, and pardon, and the renewal of love, I could not have surrendered myself more completely to that superhuman bliss than I surrendered myself to you. I loved you from the first, and swore to myself that you should be mine. I do not think I used any dishonourable arts in order to win you."
"You knew that she was the betrothed of another man, knew that your hands were stained with blood," said Heathcote, with suppressed indignation. "Was there no dishonour in tempting a pure-minded girl with your love? You, whose heart must be as a charnel-house!"
"I had put every thought of that dark past behind me before I entered Tregony Manor. Was I a different man, do you think, because in one dark hour of my life I had sinned against the law of civilised society, and revenged my own wrongs according to the universal law of unsophisticated mankind? I loved my new love not the less dearly because of that crime. I loved her as women are not often loved. Dora, speak to me; tell me if I have ever failed in any duty which a husband owes to an idolised wife. Have I ever been false to the promises of our betrothal?"
"Never; never, my beloved," murmured the low mournful voice.
"We might have lived happily to the end, perhaps, had Fate been kinder. I had my dark dreams now and again, acted over my past crime, my old agonies, in the helplessness of slumber; but this was only a transient evil. My darling's influence could always soothe and restore me, even in the darkest hour. All went well with me—better, perhaps, than life goes with many a better man—until the fatal hour when I received a letter from Marie Prévol's mother, written on her death-bed, asking me to find a home in England for her orphan granddaughter, the child I had heard of in the Rue Lafitte, and who had occasionally stayed there as Marie's pet and plaything, but whom I had avoided at all times.
"I answered the letter promptly, in my character of a friend of the missing Georges. It was in this character that I had contrived from time to time to send money for the relief of Madame Lemarque's necessities. I sent money to bring the girl to London, and arranged to meet her at the railway-station. That was when I went ostensibly to buy the famous Raffaelle, Dora. I was somewhat uncertain as to my plans for the girl's future; but I meant kindly by her; I had no thought but of being kind to her. If she should prove an amiable girl, with pleasing manners, my idea was to bring her to this neighbourhood, to get her placed as a nursery governess somewhere within my ken, to introduce her to you, and to secure your kindness and protection for her. I had paid for her education at a convent in Brittany; and I had been assured that she left the convent with an excellent character. She was the only link remaining with the terrible past, the only witness of my crime; but I had been told that after her illness all memory of that crime had left her. I had been assured that I should run no risk in having her about me."
"Poor child," said Dora, with a stifled sob, recalling that summer evening when Julian Wyllard came out of the station, a little paler than usual, but self-possessed and calm, telling her in measured tones of the calamity upon the line—the strange death of a nameless girl.
"I met her at Charing Cross in the early summer morning," he continued quietly. "She was flurried and frightened—so frightened by the strange faces and the strange language round about her, that she forgot to tell me of the bag she had deposited in the waiting-room. But I succeeded in putting her at her ease; and while she was taking breakfast with me in a private room at the hotel, she told me all about her grandmother's death, and her own education in the convent; what she could do in the way of teaching. She was frank and gentle, and seemed a good girl, and I had no thought but to do the utmost for her advantage. I could have pensioned her and made her independent of all service; but I considered that for a friendless girl there could be no better discipline than the necessity of earning a living under reputable circumstances, and protected by powerful friends.
"We drove together to Paddington—as your cabman informed you," continued Wyllard, addressing himself for an instant to Heathcote, whom he for the most part ignored. "At Paddington I took a second-class ticket for Plymouth, not quite resolved as to whether I should take the girl on at once to Bodmin, or leave her in the care of the wife of my frame-maker at Plymouth, an honest creature, who would, I knew, be faithful to any trust I reposed in her. I put my protégée in a second-class carriage, in the care of some friendly people, and I rode alone in a first-class compartment. I wanted to be free to think out the situation, to decide on my line of conduct. I knew that she had a packet of my letters—my early letters to Marie Prévol, written without reserve, out of the fulness of my heart—letters identifying me with the man Georges. It was vital that I should get these letters from her before she left the railway-carriage. Yet, with a curious weakness, I delayed making the attempt till we came to Plymouth. There would be fewer people in the carriages then, I thought. It would be easier for me to be alone with Léonie. I had by this time decided upon taking her on to Bodmin, and finding her a temporary home in my steward's family.
"At Plymouth I left my own compartment, intending to go straight to the second-class carriage in which I had placed Léonie: but on the platform I was met by people I knew, who detained me in conversation till the train was within two minutes of starting. While I was talking to these people I saw Léonie wandering up and down the platform in an aimless way, perhaps looking for me. I had told her that I would let her know when she had come to the end of her journey, and now she was mystified by the delay, and feared that I had forgotten her. About one minute before the starting of the train I escaped from my troublesome friends, and got into an empty second-class, into which I beckoned Léonie as she came along the platform.