The silence was dreadful to her, but she could think of nothing to say.

It was Mr. Brown, at last, who spoke.

"I was afraid you would not be able to find your way, Miss Thurwell," he said quietly. "I must apologize for asking you to come into such a den.

The small engraving on the wall is the proof 'Bartolozzi' I spoke to you about. The head is perfect, is it not? Some day I should like to show you my 'Guido.' I am afraid, just now, I could not expect you to appreciate them."

She murmured something--what, she scarcely knew, and he did not appear to hear. The cold surprise disappeared from Sir Allan's face. Evidently he believed in Mr. Brown's mercifully offered explanation of her presence here.

"What! are you an enthusiast, Miss Thurwell?" he exclaimed. "Well, well, I was worse myself once in my younger days, before my profession made a slave of me. Surely, that is a genuine 'Velasquez,' Mr. Brown. Upon my word! Fancy coming across such a treasure here!"

He picked his way across the disorderly chamber, and, adjusting his eyegla.s.s, stood looking at the picture. Helen made a hasty movement towards the door, and Mr. Brown followed her into the adjoining room.

"If I had known that I was to be honored by a visit from a lady," he said, "I would have endeavored----"

She turned suddenly round upon him with flaming cheeks.

"Don't," she interrupted, almost beseechingly. "Mr. Brown, you were very good to me just then. Thank you! I was most abominably rude to go into that room without your permission."

Her eyes were fixed upon the floor, and her distress was evident. It was clear that she felt her position acutely.

"Pray say no more about it," he begged earnestly. "It isn't worth a second thought."

She stopped with her back to one of the great cases filled with books, and hesitated. Should she confess to him frankly why she had gone there, and ask his pardon for such a wild thought? She raised her eyes slowly, and looked at him. Of course it was absurd. She has been out of her mind, she knew that now; and yet----

She looked at him more closely still. He had not seemed in any way disturbed when they had found her in that room--only a little surprised and bewildered. And yet, after all, supposing his composed demeanor had been only a.s.sumed. He was certainly very pale, very pale indeed, and there was a slight twitching of his hands which was out of character with his absolute impa.s.siveness. Supposing it should be a forced composure. He looked like a man capable of exercising a strong control over his feelings. Supposing it should be so. Was there not, after all, just a chance that her former suspicions were correct?

The action of the mind is instantaneous. All these thoughts and doubts merely flashed through it, and they left her very confused and undecided. Her sense of grat.i.tude towards him for shielding her before Sir Allan Beaumerville, and the intuitive sympathy of her nature with the delicacy and tact which he had shown in his manner of doing so, were on the whole stronger than her shadowy suspicions. And yet these latter had just sufficient strength to check the impulse of generosity which prompted her to confess everything to him. She did not tell him why she had started on the quest which had come to such an ignominious conclusion. She offered him no explanation whatever.

"It was very good of you," she repeated. "I did not deserve it at all.

And now I must go and look for my father."

Mr. Thurwell was waiting in the hall, somewhat surprised at her absence. But he asked no questions. His thoughts were too full of the terrible thing which had happened to his friend and neighbor--and withal his daughter's betrothed.

They walked back across the moor together, saying very little, for there was only one possible subject for conversation, and both of them shrank a little from speaking about it. But when they were more than half-way to their destination, she asked a question.

"Nothing has been discovered, I suppose, of the murderer?"

Her father shook his head.

"Nothing. The dagger is our only clue as yet--except this."

He drew a folded piece of paper from his pocket, and touched it lightly with his finger.

"What is it? May I see?"

He handed it to her at once.

"It was in his pocket," he said. "I am keeping it to hand over to the proper authorities. Mr. Brown offered to take care of it, but I felt that, as a magistrate, I was in a measure responsible for everything in the shape of a clue, so I brought it away with me. Read it."

She opened the half sheet of notepaper and glanced down it. It was written in a queer cramped handwriting--evidently disguised.

"Sir Geoffrey Kynaston, you are doing a very rash and foolish thing in coming back to your own country, and thereby publishing your whereabouts to the world. Have you forgotten what hangs over you--or can you be so mad as to think that he has forgiven? Read this as a warning; and if life is in any way dear to you, go back to that hiding which alone has kept you safe for so many years. Do not hesitate or delay for one half-hour--one minute may be too long. If, after reading this, you linger in England, and disregard my warning, take care that you look into your life and hold yourself prepared to die."

She gave it back to him. There was some one, then, whom he had injured very deeply. It was like an echo from that stormy past of which many people had spoken.

"He had an enemy," she murmured, pa.s.sing her arm through her father's.

"It seems so," he answered. "A terrible enemy."

CHAPTER VII

HELEN THURWELL'S SUSPICIONS

On a certain September day, about six weeks after the funeral of Sir Geoffrey Kynaston, Mr. Brown was spending what appeared to be a very pleasant afternoon. He was lying stretched out at full length on a dry mossy bank, with a volume of Sh.e.l.ley in his hand, and a case of thick Egyptian cigarettes by his side. In his ears was the whispering of the faint breeze amongst the pines, and the soft murmuring of the sea, hundreds of feet below, seen like a brilliant piece of patchwork through the fluttering leaves and dark tree-trunks which surrounded him. There was nothing to disturb the sweet silence of the drowsy afternoon. It was a charming spot which he had chosen, and he was quite alone. People, amongst whom for the last few weeks his name had become a fruitful source of conversation, were already beginning to fancy him flying across the country in an express train, or loitering on the docks at Liverpool, waiting for an Atlantic liner, or sitting at home trembling and fearful, struggling to hide his guilt beneath a calm exterior. But, as a matter of fact, he was doing none of these things. The harsh excitement of the busy gossips, and their stern judgment, troubled him nothing, for he was unconscious of them. He was away in thoughtland, dreaming of a fair, proud young face seen first on the rude pavement of an old Italian town, where its sweet composed freshness, amongst a pile of magnificent ruins, had captivated his artist's sense almost before it had touched his man's heart. He thought of the narrow street shutting in the sky till, looking upwards, it seemed like one deep band of glorious blue--of the ruined grey palace, with still some traces left of its former stately grace, and of the fountain playing in the moss-encrusted courtyard, gleaming like silver in the sunlight as it rose and fell into the worn stone basin. Here, where the very air seemed full of the records of a magnificent decay, everything seemed to form a fitting framework in his memory for that one face. It had been an artist's dream--or had it been the man's? Never the latter; he told himself sadly. Such were not for him. It had been better far that he had never seen her again. Before, the memory had been a very sweet one, stored away in his mind amongst all the great and beautiful things he had seen in his wanderings, always with a dainty freshness clinging to it, as though it had lain carefully preserved in perfume and spices. Was this new joy, of having seen and spoken to her, a better thing? this vague unsettlement of his being, which played havoc with his thoughts, and stirred up a whole host of strange new feelings in his heart? Surely not! It seemed to him like the breathing of warm new life into what had been a crystallized emotion--the humanizing of something spiritual.

Surely, for him, it had better have remained in that first stage.

There was the sound of a light footstep on the springy turf. He started to his feet. A girl, tall and slim, was coming swiftly along the winding path through the plantation towards him. He knew at once that it was Helen Thurwell.

They were both equally surprised. As she looked up and saw him standing upright in the narrow path, tall, thin, and unnaturally pale, with the cigarette still burning between his fingers, and his book in his other hand, she felt strangely stirred. Neither was he unmoved by her sudden appearance, for though not a feature twitched, not a single gleam of color relieved the still pallor of his face, there was a new light in his dry brilliant eyes. But there was a vast difference between the thoughts which flashed into his mind and those which filled hers. To him there had stolen a sweetness into the summer's day surpa.s.sing the soft sunlight, and a presence which moved every pulse in his being, and crept like maddening fire through every sense. And to her, the sight of him was simply a signal to brace up all her powers of perception; to watch with suspicion every change of his features, and every tone of his voice. Had he shown any emotion at the sight of her, she would have attributed it to a guilty conscience, and would have made note of it in her mind against him. And as he showed none--none, at least, that she could detect--she put it down to the exercise of a strong will, and was a little disappointed. For she had gone with the tide, and, womanlike, having embraced an idea, it had already become as truth to her. Mr.

Brown was the man who had murdered Sir Geoffrey Kynaston. It was a murderer with whom she was standing side by side among the glancing shadows of the rustling pine groves. It must be so!

Yet she did not shrink from him. After her first hesitation at the sight of a man's figure standing up amongst the dark tree-trunks, she had walked steadily on until she had reached him. And he, without any change of countenance, had simply stood and watched her. G.o.d! how beautiful she was! The sunlight, gleaming through the tops of the trees in long slanting rays, played like fire upon her red-gold hair; and the plain black gown, which yielded easily to her graceful movements, seemed to show every line of her supple yet delicate figure. She came nearer still, so near that he could trace the faint blue veins in her forehead, and once more recall the peculiar color of her eyes. Then he spoke to her, raising his hand with a suddenly returning instinct of conventionality for his cap; but he had risen without it, and was standing before her bare-headed.

"I am a trespa.s.ser, I fear," he said hesitatingly.

She came to a standstill by his side, and shook her head slowly.

"No, this is common land. There is a footpath, you see, although it is seldom used. It leads nowhere but to the Court."

"It is a favorite walk of mine," he said.

"Yes, it is pleasant. You bring a companion with you," she remarked, pointing to his book.

He glanced down at it, and then up at her again.

"Yes; a faithful friend, too. We spend a good deal of time out of doors together."

She read the t.i.tle, and glanced up at him with a shade of interest in her face.

"Sh.e.l.ley was a great poet, I suppose," she said; "but I do not understand him."

For the first time his expression changed. A sudden light swept across his face, and in a moment it was glowing with sensibility and enthusiasm. She looked at him astonished. He stood before her revealed in a new light, and, although unwillingly, she saw him with different eyes.

"Not understand Sh.e.l.ley! Ah! but that is because you have not tried, then. If you had, you would not only understand, but you would love him."

She shook her head. In reality she felt that he was right, that her languid attempts to read him by a drawing-room fire, with the _Queen_ beside her, and her mind very full of very little things, had not been the spirit in which to approach a great poet. But, partly out of womanly perversity, and partly out of curiosity to hear what he would say, she chose to dissent from him.