Sight of that letter had recalled to her visions of the man whom she had loved so fondly, and next instant I hated myself for having acted injudiciously in showing her the curious missive.
Ah, how deeply, how devotedly I loved her! and yet I dared not utter one single word of affection. That calm, sweet countenance, with those big, wonderful eyes, was ever before me, sleeping or waking, and yet I knew not from hour to hour that she might not be arrested and placed in a criminal dock, as accomplice of that arch-adventurer Shaw—that man who led such a strange dual existence of respectability and undesirability.
“I cannot understand what he discovered regarding the apparition of the hand,” she exclaimed at last, still gazing upon the letter in a half-dreamy kind of way.
“It seems as though, by some fact accidentally discovered, he arrived at the solution of the mystery,” I said. “It was to explain this to me that he intended to come over to Upton End, but was, alas! prevented.”
“But why didn’t he tell me?” she queried. “It surely concerned myself for I had seen it, not in our own house, remember, but in the house of a friend at Scarborough.”
“And I saw it in an obscure French inn,” I said; “and previously I had been warned against it.”
“Yes, I agree, Mr Kemball. It is a complete mystery. Ah! how unfortunate that poor Guy never lived to tell you his theory concerning the strange affair. But,” she added, “our present action must concern dear old Dad. What do you suggest we should do? How can we give him warning?”
“I can suggest nothing,” was my reply. “Tramu is watching them both. Probably he is fully aware of some ingenious conspiracy in progress.”
“Ah! I foresaw danger in his association with her,” the girl declared, pale and anxious in her despair.
“But why has not your father returned to Lydford? Surely while his whereabouts could be preserved from Tramu he would be safer there than anywhere!”