"Yet this dog of a Mortlake had ventured to amuse himself at my expense--had outwitted me in my own game; can the depths of misfortune be too profound for such a traitor? _Pardieu!_ no, a thousand times no!

"So that when my Mortlake was dragged to prison, I, the insulted man of honesty, felt only joy that there was a rogue less to find.

"Most ill.u.s.trious heroine, shall I resume the chronicles?

"Your face answers with eloquence: 'Yes, my friend, and be brief;' but your great heart trembles, and shrinks from the deep cup of vengeance which I offer, although you long have sought to taste it.

"No? you deny the imputation? But, mademoiselle, you tremble and are pale as the winter moon; wherefore? Ah, you apprehend my halting meaning; you perceive the mists of possibility with those keen eyes, and you urge, 'Haste, haste, and a.s.sure me of the truth!'

"_Eh, bien!_ you shall taste of a cup more mellow than this one of revenge. I hasten to hold it to the lips of Margaret _la Fidele_!

"I learn as much of my Mortlake's history as my interest in him prompts me to search out.

"I hear that he was banished to Tasmania twelve years ago for a daring act of forgery; that he has come back with a ticket of leave two years since, and, seizing the first opportunity, has presented himself with freedom, and escaped from the espionage of the law.

"That the detectives sent on the track of Roland Mortlake have met the detectives on the track of the fugitive ticket of leave man, and that O'Grady has confessed that they are identical.

"O'Grady, being a companion-convict, and having shared in that enterprise for freedom, is well qualified to put the detectives upon his track, and does so. Thus our friend Mortlake vanishes from the scene; one month ago the prosperous heir of Castle Brand--to-day, the convict waiting sentence for the murder of the true heir of Castle Brand.

"But, mademoiselle, the little tale is not complete without the _eclairciss.e.m.e.nt_; permit me to draw aside the curtain from my secret.

"You shall give the word that draws the bolt, and drop out Mortlake into a murderer's grave; or you shall raise the warning hand that stays the doom upon the felon's platform, and waves him back to Tasmania for life in the chain-gang.

"How you have that power is my secret, mademoiselle; shall I tell it you for one thousand pounds?"

Grave, keen, penetrating, the Chevalier de Calembours bent forward and waited breathlessly the answer to this momentous question.

The great eyes of Margaret Walsingham still met his in a fascinated gaze; her electric face kept its spell-bound attention. With lips apart and bosom heaving she waited for the end of the story.

"Mademoiselle, shall I tell it you for one thousand pounds, or shall I go back to America, and bury the secret in oblivion?" asked the chevalier.

"Tell me all," breathed Margaret, faintly.

"Mademoiselle will remember my modest request?"

"Yes, yes, monsieur, I will pay you what you ask!" she cried, hysterically; "go on to the end."

"_Milles mercis!_" cried he, cheerfully, "mademoiselle is magnificent!

Mademoiselle does not wish M. Mortlake to escape with his life?"

"No," shuddered Margaret, "he must not live."

"So perfidious!" aspirated the chevalier; "he stole St. Udo's history, he stole his ident.i.ty, and then he stole his life. Fiendish Mortlake!"

"He shall die, monsieur, be content," groaned Margaret.

"Even if he had not succeeded in killing St. Udo, his intention would make him worthy of death," remarked the chevalier.

"Ah, yes, worthy of twenty deaths!" cried Margaret, wringing her hands.

"Mademoiselle loves the brave man who was murdered?" insinuated the chevalier, in softest accents.

She grew white as death, and the great tears rushed from her eyes.

"What does it matter now?" she moaned. "I do love him--ah, I do love him!"

Then did the little man rise and expand with warm enthusiasm--then did his handsome face glow with rapture and with pride.

He put on a smile of most gracious benevolence, he drank in the rich love-light upon her eloquent countenance, and then he cried, joyfully:

"Incomparable mademoiselle! you deserve good news. We shall hang the dog, and then resurrect the master; for, _Viola! Colonel Brand is not dead yet_!"

CHAPTER XXV.

OFF TO AMERICA.

The chevalier paused with dramatic _empress.e.m.e.nt_ to enjoy the effect of his announcement. But the pale woman who was sitting before him made little sign of her emotions.

With the tears still upon her cheeks, and hands clasped in her lap, she had gone a wild trip into fairyland, and its brilliant fantasies were whirling round her in all manner of rainbow tints presaging hopes of joy; and the little chevalier, glossy-bearded, pleased, and triumphant, seemed to dance round her in the many-tinted flare, like the good geni of the fairy tale.

Save the added wildness to these resistless gray eyes, and the sudden aurora gleam over brow and cheek, the demonstrative Frenchman might have doubted if she believed him.

"Admirable mademoiselle," aspired he, after a due pause; "she is brave as the Spartan boy with his more disagreeable burden, the wolf. She will not let the surprise show so much as the tip of his nose--ah, you British know how to shut the teeth. _Mais Voila_, you shall say, 'Go on, _mon ami_, and accept your thousand pounds,' or shall I say no more of my colonel, and let the naughty convict go hang?"

"He is alive--go on," breathed Margaret to the pirouetting geni of her fairy-tale.

"What! and loose monsieur's neck-cloth, which was to strangle him?"

"Yes yes; tell me of St. Udo Brand, that we may bring him home to his own."

"Mademoiselle is magnificent. She forgives like an angel, and pays like an empress. I bow before so grand a demoiselle, the effulgence of her nature dazzles me, and _Voila!_ I, also touched with enthusiasm, emulate her in magnificence. For the poor sum of one thousand pounds I give to mademoiselle the hero of her heart, and happiness, and to me darkness, after the blinding study of her perfection. Nay more, I have a turn for necromancy--I may not read man's destiny in the stars, but woman's future in her own _pet.i.te_ hand I have often seen, and I see this hand, which is a lovely hand, holding out the fortune of St. Udo, my fine colonel, to him, and being taken, fortune and all, for its own open kindness; and I behold myself (in the future of this _pet.i.te_ hand) placing by the revelation I am about to make, my n.o.ble heroine in the arms of another--for only one thousand pounds.

"Behold me, then, lift the cloud which has swallowed up the life of our gallant St. Udo Brand from the moment in which the renegade, Thoms, has stabbed him on the battle-field and lo! with the sweep of my magician's wand I place before you the succeeding picture, clear, truthful, and unshadowed.

"My fallen hero finds himself next--not in Heaven, where, by gar, his brave deeds have doubtless bought for him a seat in the dress-circle--but in a villainous ambulance, being jolted over an execrable wood-road in a rain-storm which kindly drenches him with sufficient moisture to keep his wounds flowing. Having ascertained as much, and doubtless feeling disgusted with the lack of courtesy which the jade Fortune has displayed, he absents his spirit once more from his body, going an experimental tour to his future quarters, and leaving that tenement to all appearances 'to let.'

"It is barely possible that his future quarters are not inviting, for the spirit comes back from a blind boxing for a place somewhere, and takes up with the poor, shattered body once more, and St. Udo wakes up to find himself a prisoner of the South, immured in Castle Thunder, Richmond.

"Mademoiselle, I have already narrated to you the trials which I, the foot-ball of the vixen Fortune, endured in Castle Thunder with my _camarade_. I pa.s.s the time of his deadly illness, when the breath flits forth like a puff, and seems gone forever--when the great wounds fever, and my friend in blue babbles at the charge, and the rally, and shouts of phantom soldiers, or turns to his pillow and whispers of woman's tender hands, when there are but the rough fingers of his faithful Ludovic. _Ma foi!_ but he is a British Napoleon! He triumphs over his desperate wounds, and stifling captivity, and one day my Brand sits up and knows me, whom last he had known as a foe, by the ungraceful _contretemps_ of war.

"_Mon Dieu!_ but I was glad, and I was sorry! There he is for you--so thin, and so patient--waiting to accept the life that G.o.d shall give.

"My heroine, you shall not weep. It is better than the death by treachery, is it not? And _Voila!_ he shall give you an English hand-grip yet--shall he not? And I shall be there to see and to bless, and to be the good _sorcier_. Ah, bravo! or what you call in England, 'Here, here!' we shall all be happy presently.

"But to resume: When I know better this man whom I have yet known as the brave soldier at the head of his company, when I see him in captivity, in trial, in sickness, eating with me the crust, drinking with me the muddy water, bearing cowardly usage from his jailers--all with that grand patience, I find in him a great man, and morally I see myself upon my knees before him to do honor and I whisper in my own ear, 'Ludovic Calembours, tell this, the only man whom you ever loved better than yourself the plot which was made by this wretch, Mortlake, to oust him from his Castle Brand!'