There was no angularity of movement, no austerity of countenance now in Miss Hope. Her very voice assumed a softness that would have seemed strange to those who were only familiar with the mental mask she had so long worn in public. She started towards the door, and held it half open. Then, closing it again with swift, graceful movements, she crossed the room and knelt at the lounge on which Lady Remington reclined amidst soft rich cushions of eiderdown. She wept no more; nor had tears left her face stained. Instead, a radiance suffused her cheeks, and her eyes glistened, betraying a beauty that had long been hidden by the set expression of that mask, assumed at first, habitual by long use.
“Lady Remington! Oh, Lady Remington! let me speak—let me tell you! I, too, have suffered. Don’t stop me. Let me tell you a story to the end. It may help you.”
Then commenced a life-story, told musically, almost rhythmically, of love, deceit, treachery, ending in a debacle that soured a beautiful disposition of a lovely girl. Miss Hope did not imply that she had been a lovely girl, but her radiant face, with the deep grey eyes, that for the first time during many years disclosed their full size and the limpid look of sincerity, made it evident to the stricken widow. Abruptly she finished the story, and, rising from her knees, she started across the room again. She had proceeded a bare pace or two when Lady Remington, with a vigour, surprising for her years, almost leapt from the lounge, and, throwing her arms around Miss Hope’s neck, exclaimed “Gladys! Gladys Hope! you have taught me a lesson in bravery that I will never forget. You are no longer Miss Hope. You are, if you will let me, Gladys, a dear, dear friend to me. As long as I am spared I will endeavour to be more than a friend to you!”
They embraced again and again, until the arrival of the maid with tea afforded the opportunity of a closing scene that had been tense and affecting to both women.
The new baronet left the coroner’s court, and, walking down a long stable-yard of one of the hotels, escaped from the inquisitive crowd that pursued him, by entering a coach-house with a side door that led to the scullery and kitchen of the hotel. Quickly he made for a door in the narrow passage that led to the coffee-room and main entrance. Unbolting the door, which was seldom used in these latex days, he slipped into a narrow alley way. With rapid strides he found himself, unobserved, in one of the old post-houses in a side street. Raife walked right through the low-ceilinged bar to the private parlour, with its oak beams, swinging lamp, and wide, open fireplace and chimney, from which were hanging a few hams and a side of bacon. In a wooden arm-chair with high back, without cushions, sat an elderly man, pink-cheeked and clean-shaven except for two tufts of close-cropped side whiskers. He was smoking a long churchwarden pipe, and the air was redolent with the perfume of a Virginian tobacco, which, if too pungent in excess, possessed an aroma which, by indulgence, is, by some at least, considered not nauseating. He was smoking shag tobacco. At his side, on a deal table which had been scrubbed once a day at least, for some seventy years, was an old brown toby of Kentish ale.
Kent is the garden of England, and Kentish hops are responsible for much that has been good in English manhood. Mr Twisegood was born in Kent of a long line of Kentish ancestry, and Kentish hops had formed a substantial portion of his and their daily fare. Rising from his chair as Raife entered, he displayed a portly and robust frame.
“Good afternoon, Master Raife,” he said. “I’m very sorry to hear all this ’ere bad news about your father, Master Raife. I beg your pardon, Master Raife, I suppose as ’ow as I ought to carl yer Sir Raife now, sir. Beg your pardon, Master Raife—I mean Sir Raife, sir!”
In spite of the heavy load on his mind, Raife smiled, and, laying his hand on the old man’s shoulders, said cheerily, “No, Twisegood, I hope I shall always be Master Raife to you—and to some others. Yes! Twisegood, it’s a sad case and I’m much troubled. I’ve come to you to help me.”
“Lud a mussy, sir, help ’ee! What can I do to help the likes o’ you? I’ll help, sure enough, if I can help. Now tell me, Master Raife, what can. I do for ’ee?”
When Raife was a lad, and a mischievous lad, there were many scrapes out of which he had been lifted by old Twisegood. Before the old man inherited the public-house that had been a post-house, he had worked, as many of his ancestors had, on the Remington estates.