“Always. The one complaint I ever heard my husband make of John Zant was that he didn’t come to see us often enough, after our marriage. Is there some wickedness in him which we have never suspected? It may be—but how can it be? I have every reason to be grateful to the man against whom I have been supernaturally warned! His conduct to me has been always perfect. I can’t tell you what I owe to his influence in quieting my mind, when a dreadful doubt arose about my husband’s death.”
“Do you mean doubt if he died a natural death?”
“Oh, no! no! He was dying of rapid consumption—but his sudden death took the doctors by surprise. One of them thought that he might have taken an overdose of his sleeping drops, by mistake. The other disputed this conclusion, or there might have been an inquest in the house. Oh, don’t speak of it any more! Let us talk of something else. Tell me when I shall see you again.”
“I hardly know. When do you and your brother-in-law leave London?”
“To-morrow.” She looked at Mr. Rayburn with a piteous entreaty in her eyes; she said, timidly: “Do you ever go to the seaside, and take your dear little girl with you?”
The request, at which she had only dared to hint, touched on the idea which was at that moment in Mr. Rayburn’s mind.
Interpreted by his strong prejudice against John Zant, what she had said of her brother-in-law filled him with forebodings of peril to herself; all the more powerful in their influence, for this reason—that he shrank from distinctly realizing them. If another person had been present at the interview, and had said to him afterward: “That man’s reluctance to visit his sister-in-law, while her husband was living, is associated with a secret sense of guilt which her innocence cannot even imagine: he, and he alone, knows the cause of her husband’s sudden death: his feigned anxiety about her health is adopted as the safest means of enticing her into his house,”—if those formidable conclusions had been urged on Mr. Rayburn, he would have felt it his duty to reject them, as unjustifiable aspersions on an absent man. And yet, when he took leave that evening of Mrs. Zant, he had pledged himself to give Lucy a holiday at the seaside: and he had said, without blushing, that the child really deserved it, as a reward for general good conduct and attention to her lessons!
IX.
THREE days later, the father and daughter arrived toward evening at St. Sallins-on-Sea. They found Mrs. Zant at the station.
The poor woman’s joy, on seeing them, expressed itself like the joy of a child. “Oh, I am so glad! so glad!” was all she could say when they met. Lucy was half-smothered with kisses, and was made supremely happy by a present of the finest doll she had ever possessed. Mrs. Zant accompanied her friends to the rooms which had been secured at the hotel. She was able to speak confidentially to Mr. Rayburn, while Lucy was in the balcony hugging her doll, and looking at the sea.