"Everybody believes alike. I never heard of one who thought that he did not do it."

"Only yourself!"

"Yes, and that was, perhaps, for your sake," said Clara, affectionately.

"And I suppose that I believe in him for his own sake."

"That is natural; but will people think that it is logical?"

"No, they won't," said Lettice, "at all events, not at first. But, gradually perhaps, they will. I am perfectly convinced that Alan did not stab his wife--because I feel it with a force that amounts to conviction. You see, I know his character, his past history, the character and history of his wife, the circ.u.mstances in which they were placed at the time. I am sure he is innocent, and I am going to act up to it. Alan will live down this horrible accusation and punishment--he will not give way, but will keep his self-respect, and will do infinitely better work for all the torture he has gone through. And our hope must be this--that when the world sees him stronger than ever, stronger in every way, and doing stronger work in his vocation, it will come to believe in him, one by one, beginning with us, until his vindication is brought about, not by legal proof, which is impossible, but by the same feeling and conviction which to-day only draw two weak women to the side of an unhappy and discredited man."

"Are you calling yourself a weak woman? You have the strength of a martyr, and in days when they used to burn women you would have chosen to be a martyr."

"I am not so sure. It is one thing to do what one likes, but quite another thing to burn, which no one likes."

"Well, you are very brave, and you will succeed as you deserve. But not at first."

"No, not at first. The hardest task will be with Alan, who has been in despair all these months, and at death's door with fever. He will come out weak, helpless, hopeless; there will be constant danger of a relapse; and, even if he can be made to forget his despair, it will be very difficult to restore him to cheerfulness." Her eyes filled with pitying tears as she spoke.

"Only one thing can do that!" Clara stroked her friend's bright brown hair, and kissed her on the cheek. "With you for his doctor he will soon be well."

"Only two things can do it--a joy greater than his sorrow, and a self-respect greater than his self-abas.e.m.e.nt."

Lettice stood up; and the far reaching look that Clara knew so well came into the true and tender grey eyes, strong with all the rapt purpose of a devoted woman. Her resolutions were forming and strengthening as she went on. She had been guided by instinct and feeling, but they were guiding her aright.

There was one thing more in which Clara was a help to her. She took her to an old woman, the mother of her own parlor-maid, exceptionally clean and respectable, whom Lettice engaged to go at once to Bute Lodge, taking a younger daughter with her, and make everything ready for the morrow.

"I shall come and see you soon," said Clara, as they wished each other good-bye.

"Do! And if you can convert your husband----"

"If not, it will not be for want of trying."

It was evening before Lettice was at her lodging again. She had done all that she could think of--made every preparation and taken every precaution--and now there was nothing left but to wait until the appointed hour should strike, and Alan should be a free man again.

One concession she made to Mrs. Graham's sense of propriety. There was an old lady who had once been Clara's governess--a gentle, mild-tongued, un.o.bservant person, who was greatly in want of a home. Mrs. Alison was easily induced to promise the support of her presence to Lettice during the days or weeks which Lettice hoped to spend at Bute Lodge. She was a woman of unimpeachable decorum and respectability, and her presence in the house would, in Clara's opinion, prove a bulwark against all dangers; but, although evil tongues might be silenced by the fact of her presence, the old lady was singularly useless in the capacity of chaperon. She was infirm, a little deaf, and very shy; but her presence in the house was supposed to be a sop to Cerberus, in the person of Mrs.

Grundy, and Clara was less afraid for her friend than she had been before Mrs. Alison was installed at Bute Lodge.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

FROM PRISON TO PARADISE.

Punctually at ten o'clock on the 29th of October a brougham drove up to the gates of the prison in which Alan Walcott had spent his six months of retreat from the world; and almost immediately Alan made his appearance, leaning on the arm of a warder.

Lettice hurried to meet him, displacing the warder with a few words of thanks, and repressing with an effort the painful throbbing of her heart and throat. The sight of his shrunken form and hollow eyes, as he looked at her with pathetic and childlike trust, for a moment took away all her strength; but when his hand was laid upon her arm, and she accommodated her steps to his slow and unsteady movements, he found in her no trace of the weakness she had overcome.

It was clear that he had not yet made a good recovery from his fever.

Lettice's last little qualm of doubt as to the use or need for what she had done disappeared as she saw this wreck of the man whom she loved--whom she believed to be innocent of offense and persecuted by an evil fate. What might have become of him if he had been left to crawl out of his prison into the cold and censorious world, without a friend, a hope, or an interest in life? What lowest depth of despair might he not have touched if in such a plight as this he should be found and tortured anew by his old enemy, whose cruelty was evidently not a.s.suaged by the sufferings she had heaped upon him? Who now would say that he had no need of succor, that her service was unasked, unwarranted, unwomanly, that the duty of a pure and delicate soul was to leave him either to his own wife or to the tender mercies of strangers?

The carriage was piled with cushions and shawls, the day was bright and warm, Lettice was full of light gossip and cheerfulness, and Alan had reason to think that he had never had a more delightful drive.

"Where are you taking me?" he said, with a smile of restful grat.i.tude, which clearly implied, "I do not care where it is, so long as I am taken by you!"

"You are going to a convalescent home, where you will be the only patient. If you obey the rules, you may get well in a month, and the first rule is that you are not to ask questions, or to think about unpleasant things."

"Are you my nurse?"

"That is the first breach of rules! They are very strict at this home, I can tell you!"

She spoke in a playful mood, but it left him with the impression that he was really being taken to a "home" of some kind, where he was to be nursed until he was well. He had no objection to make. He would have gone anywhere with equal pleasure, if he could be sure that she would be there to look after him. His one thought in prison, when he lay in the grip of fever, was that he must surely die before his sentence had run out. That was his hope and belief from day to day; and only when he heard that Lettice had come and made inquiries about him, and promised to fetch him as soon as he was released, did any real desire for life return to him. Now, in her presence, he was so completely happy that he forgot all his former sufferings and despair.

Weak as he was, he would have found words to tell her of his grat.i.tude--and of much more than grat.i.tude; but this because of, not in spite of, weakness--if she had not carefully checked him whenever he tried to speak. Fortunately, it was not at all hard to check him. He was infirm in mind as in body. Apart from the illness, which sapped his energies and paralyzed his power of thought, he had never thrown off the cloud of callous and despairing indifference which fell upon him after the fatal scene in Surrey Street. Add to this that the surrender of his independence to Lettice was in itself a pleasure to him, and we need not wonder that her self-imposed task seemed to her fairly easy of accomplishment.

At Bute Lodge they found everything very nice and comfortable. Mrs.

Jermy and Mrs. Beadon (as Milly was to be called), who had come earlier in the morning with a cabful of yesterday's purchases, had carried out Lettice's instructions to the letter. The best room in the house looked out upon a delightful garden landscape--two borders, backed by well-grown box and bay-trees, holly, Irish yews, and clambering roses, with a lessening crowd of herbaceous plants in front, dwindling down to an edge of brilliant annuals on either side; and between these a long and level lawn, broken near the house by a lofty deodara, and ending in a bowling-green, and a thickly-planted bank of laurels, beyond which lay a far-off vista of drooping fruit-trees. The garden was reached through a small conservatory built outside a French window at one end of the room, and a low verandah ran along the remainder of the garden front.

Inside, all was as Lettice had planned it. A square writing table in front of the window was covered with a dozen of the books which had made most noise during the past season, with the November magazines, and the weekly papers which Alan had been wont to read. Milly had cut them all over night, and here they lay, with an easy-chair beside them, ready to tempt the student when he felt inclined and able to read. That was not just yet; but Alan saw the pile, and darted at his guardian angel another look of grat.i.tude from his l.u.s.trous, melancholy eyes.

"Why, here," he said, looking round the room and out upon the garden, "a man must get well only too soon! I shall steadily refuse to mend."

"You will not be able to help yourself," said Lettice. "Now you are going to be left alone----"

"Not alone!"

"For half an-hour at the very least. All this floor belongs to you, and you are to have nothing to do with stairs. When you want anything you are to ring this bell, and Milly, whom you saw when we came in, will attend on you. Here, on this sideboard, are wine, and biscuits, and jelly, and grapes. Sit down and let me give you a gla.s.s of wine. We will have some lunch at one, tea at four, and dinner at seven--but you are to be eating grapes and jelly in between. The doctor will come and see you every morning."

"What doctor?"

"Why, the doctor of the Establishment, to be sure!"

"Oh, this is an Establishment?"

"Yes."

"It is more rational in its plan than some I have heard of, since it takes in your nurse and your nurse's maid. Will this precious doctor dine with us?"

"This precious! You are to have great faith in your doctor; but I am sorry to say he will not be able to dine with us. He has other occupations, you see; and for company I am afraid you will have to be content with such as your nurse may be disposed to give you!"

Before he could say anything else, she had left the room.

He was alone--alone and happy.

Straight from prison to paradise. That was what the morning's work meant for him, and he could not think with dry eyes of the peri who had brought him there.

Oh, the bitterness of that dungeon torture, when his heart had been branded with shame and seared with humiliation; when he had sworn that life had no more hope or savor for him, and the coming out from his cell had seemed, by antic.i.p.ation, worse than the going in!