"I will force his hand," he said half aloud. "I will spend all the time I can with Violet, and I will begin at once. My constant presence will be the best safeguard she can have."

Mounting his bicycle, he made short work of the two miles to the lodge gates of the Manor House, and as luck would have it whom should he see coming towards him along the drive but Violet herself. She was looking deliciously cool and dainty in a coat and skirt of white drill, which set off her tall, graceful figure to perfection. Leslie's pulses quickened at sight of the pleased surprise and heightened colour in her face as she saw him.

"I didn't expect you to-day," she said, when he had jumped off his machine. "I thought that you would be kept by that horrid affair in the town, but I suppose you couldn't shed any light on it."

"It was soon over--adjourned for a week," replied Leslie. "As I was able to get away, I saw no reason why this should be a day entirely wasted."

Violet shot a glance at him from under the deep-fringed lids which had given the critics their cue for their ravings over her Academy picture.

There was a warmth in the tone of the neatly-turned little speech that had been lacking in their intercourse of late. The millionaire's daughter had never disguised from herself the singular attraction which this sun-browned, well-knit young soldier from India had for her from the moment of their first meeting a month ago. And he had begun to woo her so bravely and openly, only to slacken his ardour after a week into an indifference which was almost insult after such warm beginnings.

No woman of spirit cares to be treated like goods sent out "on approval"--to be a.n.a.lytically inspected and then cast aside as not quite up to the mark. Especially if she happens to be the acknowledged beauty of the London season, and so lavishly dowered as to have had half the bachelor peerage at her feet. It speaks wonders, therefore, for the efficiency as a lover which Leslie Chermside had shown when he wasn't in love, that now, when he was, Violet should have behaved as she did.

"Let us go and be lazy on that seat by the sundial in the rose garden,"

she said, with a smile of invitation.

It was all that Leslie asked for--to be near her, to worship her, to feel her gracious presence, and, above all, by his unceasing watchfulness, to avert the peril of the steamer with the giant horse-power lurking thirty miles away along the coast. That was all that was in his mind as he wheeled his bicycle at her side over the turf that lay between the drive and the rosery. But half an hour amid the late blooms of the old world pleasaunce was to alter all that modest scheme.

Leslie Chermside had made the mistake of reckoning without heed to the power that had them in thrall--the mighty power of love.

Neither of them ever knew how it came about. When they first sat down there was a shy constraint between them that seemed to hold them apart.

They talked at random of trifles, with an obvious effort at searching for subjects. Violet even referred to the inquest on Levison, though in such a manner as to show that she plainly took only a superficial interest in it. It made Leslie shudder to hear her touch so lightly on a matter in which, though she was not aware of it, she was so nearly concerned.

Gradually and imperceptibly the awkward attempt at making conversation ceased, and the silence that supervened was threatening to become more awkward still, when Violet said suddenly:

"I believe that your heart is in India, Mr. Chermside--anywhere but in Ottermouth. You always--latterly at least--seem to me to be living in the past, or, perhaps, in the future. When your yacht is ready for sea, I suppose that you will lose no time in going back to the East?"

Leslie started, and came back to earth. "If you only knew the price I paid to get out of India you would not say that," he answered gravely.

"And I am afraid that you are incorrect in your other surmises, Miss Maynard. I am neither living in a past which has nothing to recommend it, or in a future which is not alluring. As a matter of fact, I am just drifting--and revelling in the present."

He did not look at her as he spoke. He was staring straight before him at a trellis arch groaning under a weight of crimson rambler roses, but at the suggestion of trouble in his voice the girl swayed nearer to him.

"I wish you would be as frank with me as I am with you," she said. "A woman's sympathy counts for much sometimes. Forgive me for saying that you puzzle me, and one isn't puzzled where one isn't interested. You don't convey the impression of a man with a discreditable career behind him, and from the accepted accounts of your position your prospects are a.s.sured from a worldly point of view. A month ago I thought--I hoped--that we were going to be friends. We had begun to exchange confidences in a mild sort of way. Will you not confide in me now more fully, and tell me if there is anything in which I can help?"

In that moment, listening to her sweet proffer of womanly aid, Leslie suffered the most exquisite torture. This was the girl whom he had lightly condemned to a fate worse than death--a fate which he had pledged himself to compa.s.s by deceitfully gaining her love. He turned and looked at her, and he knew that the priceless guerdon which he had played for as a mere counter in a disgraceful game had been won. And now that it was his--now that he valued it for its own sake more than all the treasures in the world--he could not take it. His reawakened sense of honour forbade him to think of such desecration. How could he, wastrel and pauper, have aspired to this queenly maiden, even if his soul had not been soiled by the memory of his infamous bargain?

"I am not worthy one pa.s.sing thought from you--still less to give you my confidence," he faltered. "Confidence!" he went on, with something like a groan of anguish. "Why, I would rather lose the power of speech for ever than befoul your ears with the record of my shame."

Her eyes, like twin pools of shining radiance, were searching his face.

"That is for me to judge," she said softly. "But I do not, on second thoughts, ask you for your confidence, Mr. Chermside. I have faith in my instinct. I do not believe that you have done anything really base--whatever, perhaps, after sore temptation, you may have contemplated. You would have stopped short when you realized that you were on the brink of an evil deed. And--and if you hadn't stopped short I--well, I, perhaps, should have tried to make allowances. So, if you cannot give me your confidence, at least let me give you my help."

"Help?" came the man's sobbing cry, as the blood surged into his brain, and all barriers of conscience, expedience, and common-sense were swept away in a whirlpool of riotous pa.s.sion--"it is your love I want, my darling. The love of such as you means not only help but regeneration, life itself, to such as I."

By the great laws that govern us, these things happen so, and the love of Leslie Chermside and Violet Maynard had pa.s.sed beyond the region of words and of petty sophistries. They were locked in each other's arms, eye to eye and lip to lip, at that moment of glad surrender in the solitude of the rose garden--a solitude that was not entirely solitary.

For from behind the high box-hedge that hemmed them in, the French maid, Louise Aubin, glided across the silent turf back to the house, her piquant features contracted in a venomous frown. She had come out to seek her young mistress on some trifling errand, but, having found her, decided to retreat without fulfilling it.

CHAPTER XI

THE PEERING EYES

Rumour at Ottermouth had a trick of travelling as quickly as it does through the bazaars of the East. When the French maid turned away from the rose garden, after seeing Violet Maynard in Leslie Chermside's arms, she was already aware of the proceedings at the inquest held earlier in the afternoon. She knew, therefore, that the gentleman whose love affair seemed to be prospering so gaily had been called as a witness, and had owned to an acquaintance with her deceased admirer.

Now mademoiselle was an adept at swift deduction, and, putting two and two together, she had arrived at the conclusion that this Mr. Chermside, who had admitted having business relations with Levi Levison, must be the individual whom Mr. Travers Nugent suspected. Mr. Nugent had a.s.sured her that he had ascertained that Levison had appointed to meet some one on the marsh on the fatal evening. It followed as almost a certainty that the appointment must have been with the gentleman who had a mysterious connexion with Levison, the nature of which he refused to divulge.

And now this _scelerat_, this a.s.sa.s.sin who had ruined her prospects by untimely removing the amorous "financial agent," was making successful love to Miss Violet. It was preposterous, and not to be countenanced for a moment, that the murderer should carry off the great heiress, while his cruel crime had relegated her, Louise Aubin, to a probable future of celibate poverty. If only in her young mistress's interest, the atrocious thing must be nipped in the bud.

But mademoiselle was endowed with a fair share of French caution, the quality which kindly Nature supplies to balance French impulse, and she was not going to jeopardize a comfortable and lucrative situation by making a premature move. She must first put it beyond all doubt that the man whom Mr. Levi Levison had arranged to meet on the marsh was the man whom she had just seen in the rose garden, and to that end she must take counsel with that dear gentleman who had saved her from the error of denouncing Pierre Legros.

"Ce cher Monsieur Nugent--'e admire me just a leetle himself, I think,"

she murmured, as she tripped back to the house across the lawn. "I make 'im tell me all he knows."

Whereby Mademoiselle Louise Aubin showed herself to be of sanguine temperament, but a poor student of the art of reading men.

Nevertheless, when Mr. Travers Nugent was sitting in his cosy dining-room at The Hut that evening, peeling peaches and sipping his claret in the soft glow of shaded lamps, his sphinx-like manservant, Sinnett, entered, and, without a word, handed him a folded slip of paper. Nugent read it with a twitch at the corner of his mouth, and looked up sharply.

"Did any one beside yourself see this lady come?" he asked.

"Can't have, sir," was the reply. "She came to the front door, and I admitted her myself. It is pitch-dark outside, so none of the maids can have seen her walking up the drive."

"Then you can show her in," said Nugent. "It is business, Sinnett, but we don't want any village scandal. There are a score of gossiping old women in this place who would give their wigs to know that I had received a smart Frenchwoman in the seclusion of my dining-room, eh?"

A grim smile was the only answer, and presently the man of few words returned, ushering in Mademoiselle Louise. Faithful to his policy of treating her with all respect, Nugent rose with outstretched hand as she minced towards him. There was just enough pleased surprise in his manner to conceal the fact that by paying him this visit she was only fulfilling his calculated expectations.

"This is good of you, mademoiselle," he said in his soft accents. "You will be fatigued after your long walk from the Manor House. Sit down and let me give you a gla.s.s of wine from your own sunny France before you tell me how I can be of service to you."

The fair Louise simpered, and seated herself at the well-appointed dessert table. For that night, if for no longer, she had mounted several rungs in the social ladder, and in that thought was compensation for the loss of her "financial agent"--also encouragement for the future. This kindly-spoken gentleman of middle-age was evidently "taken" with her, and there could be no better way, she told herself, of winning and clinching his further regard than by professing a whole-hearted devotion to her last lover.

"I have some news for you, monsieur," she said, when she had sipped the claret poured out by her host. "And, in return, I come to demand, nay, to implore, some information from you."

"Then it must be my privilege to oblige you first, if it is in my power," smiled Nugent. "I trust, however, that you do not still suspect your fellow-countryman, Legros, of the foul deed that robbed you of your friend. Believe me, he is guiltless."

"It is not Pierre Legros that I suspect, monsieur, thanks to your guidance the other day," replied Louise coquettishly. "I was convinced then that the murderer of the poor Levison was the man who was to meet him on the marsh, and now--to-day, at the inquest, comes the straw that makes to show the blow of the wind. Monsieur Chermside was a witness, and admitted that he had affairs of business with Levison."

"Well?" Nugent purred gently at his pretty visitor.

"My little stupid wits figure from that, monsieur, that it was Chermside who was to meet the unfortunate one on the marsh. I have paid you this call, at so great risk to my reputation, to find out if for once my little stupid wits are right. You will not disappoint me. Say, I beseech you, if Chermside was the man with whom my poor one had arranged the rendezvous in that so desolate spot."

Nugent was moved with inward laughter at the impressive speech, at the ogling glances accompanying it. He was quite aware of the personal element the minx was endeavouring to import into their relations.

Outwardly his face wore the semblance of a severe mental struggle.

"I cannot resist your appeal, Mademoiselle Aubin," he said at last, sighing a little as if in regret that his better judgment should be vanquished by the feminine charms across the table. "I had hoped to keep it to myself a little longer, while prosecuting inquiries which will bring the crime home to this black-hearted villain without allowing an outlet for escape. But I cannot deny you the solace of sharing the secret with me, knowing that, our aims being identical, you will preserve it till the time comes to strike. Yes, Leslie Chermside was the man who had promised to complete a certain transaction with Levi Levison at the spot where the latter was foully done to death."

It is easy to speak with your tongue in your cheek, and if the cheek is large enough no one need catch a glimpse of the tongue. At any rate, Louise Aubin did not. Confident in her potent fascinations, she swallowed the purposely grandiose words like so much milk and honey, and beamed ecstatically on the wily orator, more in delight at the sentiments she believed the communication to denote than at the communication itself. Levi Levison was beginning to take a very shadowy back seat in the affections of Mademoiselle Louise Aubin.

"Then, monsieur," she said, gracefully quaffing her gla.s.s at him, "I shall not be behindhand in civeelity. I shall--what you call it--place myself in your hands for the right time to punish Chermside, and in the meanwhile the secret is buried deep in my heart. Now for your repayment for your kind help, though it is only a tiny piece of news. The villain so despicable, upon whom we desire the avenge, is in love with my--with Miss Maynard. I come from observing them this very afternoon, monsieur, in the rose garden, where they were embracing and using words of endearment."