The Heart of a Mystery

by T. W. Speight

Edward had not been home more than a few minutes when Lord Elstree was announced.

His lordship was one of two sleeping partners in the brewery, having about ten thousand pounds invested in the concern. He was on excellent terms with Edward, of whose business abilities he had a very high opinion. His home for three parts of the year was at Seaham Lodge, a splendid property some four or five miles from Beecham. His family were all grown up; the daughters married and the sons out in the world; but with himself and his wife, as companion to her ladyship, there lived a distant kinswoman, Miss Winterton by name, whom Edward Hazeldine had secretly made up his mind to win for his wife, if it were anyhow possible for him to do so. Miss Winterton was thirty years old, and plain looking, but accomplished and amiable; and had, moreover, a fortune of fifteen thousand pounds in her own right. Edward, who had frequent occasion to visit the Lodge on matters of business, and who was generally asked to stay for luncheon or dinner, as the case might be, had as yet ventured to whisper no word of love in Miss Winterton's ear; but there may have been that in his looks and manner which afforded her some inkling of the state of affairs. If such were the case, her treatment of Edward was not of a kind to lead him to fear that when the time should have come for him to urge his suit, he would be very hardly treated. He told himself that he would wait till after Christmas; till the year's balance at the brewery should have been struck. Business was going up by "leaps and bounds," and he wanted to secure not merely Miss Winterton's approval of his suit, but the Earl's as well, and he knew that nothing would put the latter into such a good humor as the assurance of a thumping dividend on his investment in the brewery.

"My dear Hazeldine, what is this terrible rumor that has just reached my ears?" said his Lordship, as he came hurriedly into the room and held out his hand to the other. "Surely, surely there can be no truth in it!"

He was a short, podgy, sandy-haired man, with a fresh complexion and a tip-tilted nose, and looked far more like a retired tradesman than a "belted Earl." In one respect, indeed, he would have made a first-rate tradesman; in him the commercial instinct was very strongly developed, and half his time was given to the consideration of schemes by means of which his large income might be made larger still.

"My father was murdered last night, if that is the rumor to which your Lordship refers," answered Edward, with a little break in his voice.

The Earl sat down and stared at the other for a full half minute without speaking. Then he said, "If not too painful to you, I should like you to tell me such particulars of the affair as are already known."

This Edward proceeded to do as briefly as possible.

"It is terrible--terrible!" ejaculated the Earl. "I need scarcely say, my dear Hazeldine, that you have my most unfeigned sympathy--both you and your mother--in this dreadful affliction. How little we know what a day--nay, an hour--may bring forth!" The Earl had a habit of indulging in mild platitudes, which he enunciated with an air of profundity which almost lent them a touch of freshness. "I left home the bearer of an invitation to you to dine at the Lodge to-morrow, but that, of course, is now out of the question. It will be Agnes's birthday"--Agnes was Miss Winterton--"so her Ladyship is going to ask a quiet half-dozen to dinner, and you were to have been of the number."

A glow of satisfaction burnt for a moment in Edward Hazeldine's cheeks. Even at a time like the present he could not help feeling a keen sense of gratification that his name should have been remembered on such an occasion. Might he not accept it, he asked himself, as an augury of the good fortune that would attend him when the time should have come for him to put to Miss Winterton a certain momentous question?

As soon as the Earl had gone, Edward's eyes fell on the heap of unopened letters left there from morning. Business must go on whatever happens, and it was with a sense of relief that he endeavored to bring his mind back for a time to the commonplace details of everyday life. He took up the letters one by one, opened them, read them, and his mind took in their contents automatically, but his real mind was back at the Bank--he was gazing again on that ghastly, upturned face, on those sightless eyes into which no light of recognition would ever flash more. Only last night he had been sitting by his father's side, worrying him about the details of a paltry debt of twenty pounds, hardly noticing how ill and careworn he looked, parting from him in his usual off-hand, careless fashion; only last night--and now!