Silver threw off the mask, as he was enraged she should so boldly withstand his demands. "I give you one week," he said harshly. "And, if you do not pay me twenty-five thousand pounds, that letter goes to the inspector at Wanbury."

"It can go now," she declared dauntlessly.

"In that case you and Mr. Lambert will be arrested at once."

Agnes gripped the man's arm as he was about to step through the door. "I take your week of grace," she said with a sudden impulse of wisdom.

"I thought you would," retorted Silver insultingly. "But remember I must get the money at the end of seven days. It's twenty-five thousand pounds for me, or disgrace to you," and with an abrupt nod he disappeared sneering.

"Twenty-five thousand pounds or disgrace," whispered Agnes to herself.

CHAPTER XII.

THE CONSPIRACY.

It was lucky that Lambert did not know of the ordeal to which Agnes had to submit, unaided, since he was having a most unhappy time himself. In a sketching expedition he had caught a chill, which had developed once more a malarial fever, contracted in the Congo marshes some years previously. Whenever his const.i.tution weakened, this ague fit would reappear, and for days, sometimes weeks, he would shiver with cold, and alternately burn with fever. As the autumn mists were hanging round the leafless Abbot's Wood, it was injudicious of him to sit in the open, however warmly clothed, seeing that he was predisposed to disease. But his desire for the society of the woman he loved, and the hopelessness of the outlook, rendered him reckless, and he was more often out of doors than in. The result was that when Agnes came down to relate the interview with Silver, she found him in his sitting-room swathed in blankets, and reclining in an arm-chair placed as closely to a large wood fire as was possible. He was very ill indeed, poor man, and she uttered an exclamation when she saw his wan cheeks and hollow eyes.

Lambert was now as weak as he had been strong, and with the mothering instinct of a woman, she rushed forward to kneel beside his chair.

"My dear, my dear, why did you not send for me?" she wailed, keeping back her tears with an effort.

"Oh, I'm all right, Agnes," he answered cheerfully, and fondly clasping her hand. "Mrs. Tribb is nursing me capitally."

"I'm doing my best," said the rosy-faced little housekeeper, who stood at the door with her podgy hands primly folded over her ap.r.o.n. "Plenty of bed and food is what I give Master Noel; but bless you, my lady, he won't stay between the blankets, being always a worrit from a boy."

"It seems to me that I am very much between the blankets now," murmured Lambert in a tired voice, and with a glance at his swathed limbs. "Go away, Mrs. Tribb, and get Lady Agnes something to eat."

"I only want a cup of tea," said Agnes, looking anxiously into her lover's bluish-tinted face. "I'm not hungry."

Mrs. Tribb took a long look at the visitor and pursed up her lips, as she shook her head. "Hungry you mayn't be, my lady, but food you must have, and that of the most nourishing and delicate. You look almost as much a corpse as Master Noel there."

"Yes, Agnes, you do seem to be ill," said Lambert with a startled glance at her deadly white face, and at the dark circles under her eyes.

"What is the matter, dear?"

"Nothing! Nothing! Don't worry."

Mrs. Tribb still continued to shake her head, and, to vary the movement, nodded like a Chinese mandarin. "You ain't looked after proper, my lady, for all your fine London servants, who ain't to be trusted, nohow, having neither hands to do nor hearts to feel for them as wants comforts and attentions. I remember you, my lady, a blooming young rose of a gal, and now sheets ain't nothing to your complexion. But rose you shall be again, my lady, if wine and food can do what they're meant to do. Tea you shan't have, nohow, but a gla.s.s or two of burgundy, and a plate of patty-foo-gra.s.s sandwiches, and later a bowl of strong beef tea with port wine to strengthen the same," and Mrs. Tribb, with a determined look on her face, went away to prepare these delicacies.

"My dear! my dear!" murmured Agnes again when the door closed. "You should have sent for me."

"Nonsense," answered Lambert, smoothing her hair. "I'm not a child to cry out at the least scratch. It's only an attack of my old malarial fever, and I shall be all right in a few days."

"Not a few of these days," said Agnes, looking out of the window at the gaunt, dripping trees and gray sky and melancholy monoliths. "You ought to come to London and see the doctor."

"Had I come, I should have had to pay you a visit, and I thought that you did not wish me to, until things were adjusted."

Agnes drew back, and, kneeling before the fire, spread out her hands to the blaze. "Will they ever be adjusted?" she asked herself despairingly, but did not say so aloud, as she was unwilling to worry the sick man.

"Well, I only came down to The Manor for a few days," she said aloud, and in a most cheerful manner. "Jane wants to get the house in order for Garvington, who returns from Paris in a week."

"Agnes! Agnes!" Lambert shook his head. "You are not telling me the truth. I know you too well, my dear."

"I really am staying with Jane at The Manor," she persisted.

"Oh, I believe that; but you are in trouble and came down to consult me."

"Yes," she admitted faintly. "I am in great trouble. But I don't wish to worry you while you are in this state."

"You will worry me a great deal more by keeping silence," said Lambert, sitting up in his chair and drawing the blankets more closely round him.

"Do not trouble about me. I'm all right. But you--" he looked at her keenly and with a dismayed expression. "The trouble must be very great,"

he remarked.

"It may become so, Noel. It has to do with--oh, here is Mrs. Tribb!" and she broke off hurriedly, as the housekeeper appeared with a tray.

"Now, my lady, just you sit in that arm-chair opposite to Master Noel, and I'll put the tray on this small stool beside you. Sandwiches and burgundy wine, my lady, and see that you eat and drink all you can.

Walking over on this dripping day," cried Mrs. Tribb, bustling about.

"Giving yourself your death of cold, and you with carriages and horses, and them spitting cats of motive things. You're as bad as Master Noel, my lady. As for him, G.o.d bless him evermore, he's--" Mrs. Tribb raised her hands to show that words failed her, and once more vanished through the door to get ready the beef tea.

Agnes did not want to eat, but Lambert, who quite agreed with the kind-hearted practical housekeeper, insisted that she should do so. To please him she took two sandwiches, and a gla.s.s of the strong red wine, which brought color back to her cheeks in some degree. When she finished, and had drawn her chair closer to the blaze, he smiled.

"We are just like Darby and Joan," said Lambert, who looked much better for her presence. "I am so glad you are here, Agnes. You are the very best medicine I can have to make me well."

"The idea of comparing me to anything so nasty as medicine," laughed Agnes with an attempt at gayety. "But indeed, Noel, I wish my visit was a pleasant one. But it is not, whatever you may say; I am in great trouble."

"From what--with what--in what?" stuttered Lambert, so confusedly and anxiously that she hesitated to tell him.

"Are you well enough to hear?"

"Of course I am," he answered fretfully, for the suspense began to tell on his nerves. "I would rather know the worst and face the worst than be left to worry over these hints. Has the trouble to do with the murder?"

"Yes. And with Mr. Silver."

"Pine's secretary? I thought you had got rid of him?"

"Oh, yes. Mr. Jarwin said that he was not needed, so I paid him a year's wages instead of giving him notice, and let him go. But I have met him once or twice at the lawyers, as he has been telling Mr. Jarwin about poor Hubert's investments. And yesterday afternoon he came to see me."

"What about?"

Agnes came to the point at once, seeing that it would be better to do so, and put an end to Lambert's suspense. "About a letter supposed to have been written by me, as a means of luring Hubert to The Manor to be murdered."

Lambert's sallow and pinched face grew a deep red. "Is the man mad?"

"He's sane enough to ask twenty-five thousand pounds for the letter,"

she said in a dry tone. "There's not much madness about that request."

"Twenty-five thousand pounds!" gasped Lambert, gripping the arms of his chair and attempting to rise.