"And all this has not set you thinking?" said he.

"Thinking," returned I. "I don't know what you mean. I am sure I have done nothing but think for the last three days. I--"

"Of course-of course," he cried. "I didn't mean to say anything disagreeable. And so you have seen Mr. Clavering?"

"Just seen him; no more."

"And are you going to a.s.sist Mr. Harwell in finishing Mr. Leavenworth's book?"

"How did you learn that?"

He only smiled.

"Yes," said I; "Miss Leavenworth has requested me to do her that little favor."

"She is a queenly creature!" he exclaimed in a burst of enthusiasm. Then, with an instant return to his business-like tone: "You are going to have opportunities, Mr. Raymond. Now there are two things I want you to find out; first, what is the connection between these ladies and Mr. Clavering--"

"There is a connection, then?"

"Undoubtedly. And secondly, what is the cause of the unfriendly feeling which evidently exists between the cousins."

I drew back and pondered the position offered me. A spy in a fair woman's house! How could I reconcile it with my natural instincts as a gentleman?

"Cannot you find some one better adapted to learn these secrets for you?" I asked at length. "The part of a spy is anything but agreeable to my feelings, I a.s.sure you."

Mr. Gryce's brows fell.

"I will a.s.sist Mr. Harwell in his efforts to arrange Mr. Leavenworth's ma.n.u.script for the press," I said; "I will give Mr. Clavering an opportunity to form my acquaintance; and I will listen, if Miss Leavenworth chooses to make me her confidant in any way. But any hearkening at doors, surprises, unworthy feints or ungentlemanly subterfuges, I herewith disclaim as outside of my province; my task being to find out what I can in an open way, and yours to search into the nooks and corners of this wretched business."

"In other words, you are to play the hound, and I the mole; just so, I know what belongs to a gentleman."

"And now," said I, "what news of Hannah?" He shook both hands high in the air. "None."

I cannot say I was greatly surprised, that evening, when, upon descending from an hour's labor with Mr. Harwell, I encountered Miss Leavenworth standing at the foot of the stairs. There had been something in her bearing, the night before, which prepared me for another interview this evening, though her manner of commencing it was a surprise. "Mr. Raymond," said she, with an air of marked embarra.s.sment, "I want to ask you a question. I believe you to be a good man, and I know you will answer me conscientiously. As a brother would," she added, lifting her eyes for a moment to my face. "I know it will sound strange; but remember, I have no adviser but you, and I must ask some one. Mr. Raymond, do you think a person could do something that was very wrong, and yet grow to be thoroughly good afterwards?"

"Certainly," I replied; "if he were truly sorry for his fault."

"But say it was more than a fault; say it was an actual harm; would not the memory of that one evil hour cast a lasting shadow over one's life?"

"That depends upon the nature of the harm and its effect upon others. If one had irreparably injured a fellow-being, it would be hard for a person of sensitive nature to live a happy life afterwards; though the fact of not living a happy life ought to be no reason why one should not live a good life."

"But to live a good life would it be necessary to reveal the evil you had done? Cannot one go on and do right without confessing to the world a past wrong?"

"Yes, unless by its confession he can in some way make reparation."

My answer seemed to trouble her. Drawing back, she stood for one moment in a thoughtful att.i.tude before me, her beauty shining with almost a statuesque splendor in the glow of the porcelain-shaded lamp at her side. Nor, though she presently roused herself, leading the way into the drawing-room with a gesture that was allurement itself, did she recur to this topic again; but rather seemed to strive, in the conversation that followed, to make me forget what had already pa.s.sed between us. That she did not succeed, was owing to my intense and unfailing interest in her cousin.

As I descended the stoop, I saw Thomas, the butler, leaning over the area gate. Immediately I was seized with an impulse to interrogate him in regard to a matter which had more or less interested me ever since the inquest; and that was, who was the Mr. Robbins who had called upon Eleanore the night of the murder? But Thomas was decidedly uncommunicative. He remembered such a person called, but could not describe his looks any further than to say that he was not a small man.

I did not press the matter.

XVII. THE BEGINNING OF GREAT SURPRISES

"Vous regardez une etoile pour deux motifs, parce qu'elle est lumineuse et parce qu'elle est impenetrable. Vous avez aupres de vous un plus doux rayonnement et un pas grand mystere, la femme."

Les Miserables.

AND now followed days in which I seemed to make little or no progress. Mr. Clavering, disturbed perhaps by my presence, forsook his usual haunts, thus depriving me of all opportunity of making his acquaintance in any natural manner, while the evenings spent at Miss Leavenworth's were productive of little else than constant suspense and uneasiness.

The ma.n.u.script required less revision than I supposed. But, in the course of making such few changes as were necessary, I had ample opportunity of studying the character of Mr. Harwell. I found him to be neither more nor less than an excellent amanuensis. Stiff, unbending, and sombre, but true to his duty and reliable in its performance, I learned to respect him, and even to like him; and this, too, though I saw the liking was not reciprocated, whatever the respect may have been. He never spoke of Eleanore Leavenworth or, indeed, mentioned the family or its trouble in any way; till I began to feel that all this reticence had a cause deeper than the nature of the man, and that if he did speak, it would be to some purpose. This suspicion, of course, kept me restlessly eager in his presence. I could not forbear giving him sly glances now and then, to see how he acted when he believed himself un.o.bserved; but he was ever the same, a pa.s.sive, diligent, unexcitable worker.

This continual beating against a stone wall, for thus I regarded it, became at last almost unendurable. Clavering shy, and the secretary unapproachable-how was I to gain anything? The short interviews I had with Mary did not help matters. Haughty, constrained, feverish, pettish, grateful, appealing, everything at once, and never twice the same, I learned to dread, even while I coveted, an interview. She appeared to be pa.s.sing through some crisis which occasioned her the keenest suffering. I have seen her, when she thought herself alone, throw up her hands with the gesture which we use to ward off a coming evil or shut out some hideous vision. I have likewise beheld her standing with her proud head abased, her nervous hands drooping, her whole form sinking and inert, as if the pressure of a weight she could neither upbear nor cast aside had robbed her even of the show of resistance. But this was only once. Ordinarily she was at least stately in her trouble. Even when the softest appeal came into her eyes she stood erect, and retained her expression of conscious power. Even the night she met me in the hall, with feverish cheeks and lips trembling with eagerness, only to turn and fly again without giving utterance to what she had to say, she comported herself with a fiery dignity that was well nigh imposing.

That all this meant something, I was sure; and so I kept my patience alive with the hope that some day she would make a revelation. Those quivering lips would not always remain closed; the secret involving Eleanore's honor and happiness would be divulged by this restless being, if by no one else. Nor was the memory of that extraordinary, if not cruel, accusation I had heard her make enough to destroy this hope-for hope it had grown to be-so that I found myself insensibly shortening my time with Mr. Harwell in the library, and extending my tete-a-tete visits with Mary in the reception room, till the imperturbable secretary was forced to complain that he was often left for hours without work.

But, as I say, days pa.s.sed, and a second Monday evening came round without seeing me any further advanced upon the problem I had set myself to solve than when I first started upon it two weeks before. The subject of the murder had not even been broached; nor was Hannah spoken of, though I observed the papers were not allowed to languish an instant upon the stoop; mistress and servants betraying equal interest in their contents. All this was strange to me. It was as if you saw a group of human beings eating, drinking, and sleeping upon the sides of a volcano hot with a late eruption and trembling with the birth of a new one. I longed to break this silence as we shiver gla.s.s: by shouting the name of Eleanore through those gilded rooms and satin-draped vestibules. But this Monday evening I was in a calmer mood. I was determined to expect nothing from my visits to Mary Leavenworth's house; and entered it upon the eve in question with an equanimity such as I had not experienced since the first day I pa.s.sed under its unhappy portals.

But when, upon nearing the reception room, I saw Mary pacing the floor with the air of one who is restlessly awaiting something or somebody, I took a sudden resolution, and, advancing towards her, said: "Do I see you alone, Miss Leavenworth?"

She paused in her hurried action, blushed and bowed, but, contrary to her usual custom, did not bid me enter.

"Will it be too great an intrusion on my part, if I venture to come in?" I asked.

Her glance flashed uneasily to the clock, and she seemed about to excuse herself, but suddenly yielded, and, drawing up a chair before the fire, motioned me towards it. Though she endeavored to appear calm, I vaguely felt I had chanced upon her in one of her most agitated moods, and that I had only to broach the subject I had in mind to behold her haughtiness disappear before me like melting snow. I also felt that I had but few moments in which to do it. I accordingly plunged immediately into the subject.

"Miss Leavenworth," said I, "in obtruding upon you to-night, I have a purpose other than that of giving myself a pleasure. I have come to make an appeal."

Instantly I saw that in some way I had started wrong. "An appeal to make to me?" she asked, breathing coldness from every feature of her face.

"Yes," I went on, with pa.s.sionate recklessness. "Balked in every other endeavor to learn the truth, I have come to you, whom I believe to be n.o.ble at the core, for that help which seems likely to fail us in every other direction: for the word which, if it does not absolutely save your cousin, will at least put us upon the track of what will."

"I do not understand what you mean," she protested, slightly shrinking.

"Miss Leavenworth," I pursued, "it is needless for me to tell you in what position your cousin stands. You, who remember both the form and drift of the questions put to her at the inquest, comprehend it all without any explanation from me. But what you may not know is this, that unless she is speedily relieved from the suspicion which, justly or not, has attached itself to her name, the consequences which such suspicion entails must fall upon her, and--"

"Good G.o.d!" she cried; "you do not mean she will be--"

"Subject to arrest? Yes."

It was a blow. Shame, horror, and anguish were in every line of her white face. "And all because of that key!" she murmured.

"Key? How did you know anything about a key?"

"Why," she cried, flushing painfully; "I cannot say; didn't you tell me?"

"No," I returned.