By this time, what was left of the family honour? He laughed bitterly as he reflected on the blots upon that once fair white scutcheon. Suicide—bankruptcy—the mud and mire of dire poverty—forgery—shame and pretence, and at last the culminating crime beyond which one can hardly go—the last crime which was also the first—the slaying of a man by his brother—MURDER!
A knock at the door roused him. Was it more trouble? He sat up instinctively to meet it. But he was quite calm. He did not expect trouble. When it comes, one generally feels it beforehand. Now he felt no kind of anticipation. It was, in fact, only a note from Constance:
“I write to tell you that the misfortunes of your House are over. There will be no more. I am certain of what I say. Do not ask me how I learned this, because you would not believe. We have been led—and this you will not believe—by the hand of the man who was killed, and none other—to the Discovery which ends it all.
“Constance.”
“The Discovery,” he thought, “which is worse than all the rest put together. No more misfortunes? No more consequences, then. What does she mean? Consequences must go on.”
You remember how, one day, there came to a certain Patriarch one who told of trouble, and almost before he had finished speaking there came also another with more trouble, and yet a third with more. You remember also how to this man there came, one after the other, messengers who brought confession of fraud and disgrace.
This afternoon the opposite happened. There came three; but there were not messengers of trouble, but of peace, and even joy.
The first was his cousin Mary Anne.
“I’ve come,” she said, “with a message from my brother. Sam is very sorry that he carried on here as he says he did. I don’t know how he carried on, but Sam is very nasty sometimes, when his temper and his troubles get the better of him.”
“Pray do not let him be troubled. I have quite forgotten what he said.”