"It was all on your account that we asked her," said Doreen, hurt by his indifference. "You took such a fancy to her, and she to you, apparently, at the Hutchinsons' dance, that we thought you'd be delighted.

_Now_, don't you know who it is?"

To their great disappointment, both girls saw that he didn't. Mr.

Wedmore, from the other end of the room, was observing this little incident with considerable annoyance. The young lady in question, Miss Mildred Appleby, was very pretty, and would be well dowered, and Mr.

Wedmore had entered heartily into the plan of inviting her to spend Christmas with them, in the hope that Max would propose, be accepted, and that he would then make up his mind to settle.

"Why, it's Mildred Appleby," said Doreen, impatiently, when her brother's blank look had given her the wrong answer. "Surely, you don't mean to say you've forgotten all about her?"

"Oh, no, I remember her," answered Max, indifferently. "Tall girl with a fashion-plate face, waltzes pretty well and can't talk. Yes, I remember her, of course."

"Is that all you have to say about her?" cried Doreen, betraying her disappointment. "Why, a month ago she was the nicest and the jolliest and the everythingest girl you had ever met."

"He's seen somebody else since then," remarked the observant Queenie, in her dry, little voice. "When he was in town yesterday, perhaps."

Max looked at his sister with a curious expression. Was she right? Had he, in that adventurous thirty-six hours in London, seen somebody who took the color out of all the other girls he had ever met? He asked himself this question when Queenie's shrewd eyes met his, and he remembered the strange sensation he had felt at the touch of Carrie's hand, at the sound of her voice.

Before he could answer his sister, Mr. Wedmore spoke impatiently:

"Rubbish!" cried he, testily. "Every young man thinks it the proper thing to talk like that, as if no girl was good enough for him. Miss Appleby is a charming girl, and she will find plenty of admirers without waiting for Max's valuable adoration."

He had much better not have spoken, blundering old papa that he was. And both daughters thought so, as they saw Max raise his eyebrows and gather in all the details of the little plot in one sweeping glance at the faces around him. He drank his coffee, but he could not eat. Doreen sat watching him, ready to spring upon him at the first possible moment, and to carry him off for the _tete-a-tete_ he was so anxious to put off.

What should he tell his sister of that adventure of his in the slums of the East End? Would she be satisfied if he told a white lie, if he said he had found out nothing?

Max felt that Doreen would not be satisfied if he got himself out of the difficulty like that. In the first place, she would not believe him. He saw that her quick eyes had been watching him since his return, and he felt that he had been unable to hide the fact that something of greater significance had occurred during that brief stay in town. What then should he tell her? Perfect frankness, perfect confidence was out of the question. To look back now, in the handsome, s.p.a.cious house of his parents, from the snug depths of an easy-chair, on the time he had pa.s.sed on and about the wharf by the docks, was so strange that Max could hardly believe in his own experiences.

Who would believe the story of his adventures, if he himself could scarcely do so? Would Doreen, would anybody give credence to the story of the dead body that he touched, but never saw, the eyes that looked at him from an unbroken wall, the girl who lured him into the shut-up house, and then let him out again with an air of secrecy and mystery?

The transition had been so abrupt from the gloomy wharf, with its suspicious surroundings and the heavy, fog-laden air of the riverside, back to the warmth and light and brightness of home, that already his adventures had receded into a sort of dreamland, and he began to ask himself whether Carrie, with her fair hair and moving blue eyes, her vibrating voice and changeful expression, were not a creature of his imagination only.

He was still under the influence of the feelings roused by this dreamy remembrance, when he s.n.a.t.c.hed the opportunity afforded by Doreen's being called away by Mrs. Wedmore, to go out into the grounds, on his way to the stables. A ride through the lanes in the frosty air would, he thought, be the best preparation for the trying ordeal of that inevitable talk with Doreen, whose wistful eyes haunted him as she waited for a chance of speaking to him alone.

In the garden a scene of desolation met his eye.

The lawns were torn up and trodden down; the gravel path from the stables looked like a freshly plowed field; every tree and every bush bore the marks of the marauder.

The head gardener was in a condition of unapproachable ferocity, and it was generally understood that he had given notice to leave. The under-gardeners kept out of the way, but could be heard at intervals checking outbursts of derisive laughter behind the shrubberies. The story of the Yule log and its adventures was the best joke the country had had for a long time, and it was bound to lose nothing as it pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth. And poor Mr. Wedmore began to dread the ordeal of congratulations he would have to go through when he next went to church.

Max felt sorry for his father. As he entered the stable-yard, which was a wide expanse of flagged ground at the back of the house, round which were many outbuildings, he came upon a group of snickering servants, all enjoying the story of the master's freak.

The group broke up guiltily on the appearance of Max, the laundry-maids taking flight in one direction, while the stablemen became suddenly busy with yard-broom and leather.

Max put a question or two to the groom who saddled his horse for him.

"There was no great harm done last night, was there, except in the garden? You have not heard of anything being stolen, eh?"

"Well, no, sir. But it brought a lot of people up as had no business here. There was a person come up as we couldn't get rid of, asking questions about the family, sir; and about Mr. Horne, too, sir. She wouldn't believe as he wasn't here, an' she frightened some of the women, I believe, sir. They didn't know where she'd got to, an' n.o.body saw her go out of the place, so they've got an idea she's hiding about.

A fortune-telling tramp, most likely, sir," added the man, who wished he had held his tongue about the intruder when he saw how strongly the young master was affected by this story.

The fact was that Max instantly connected this apparition of a woman "who asked questions about Mr. Horne" with the ugly story told him at the house by the wharf, and he was glad that Dudley was not spending Christmas at The Beeches.

He was oppressed during the whole of his ride by this suggestion that the questionable characters of the wharfside were pursuing Dudley; it gave color to Carrie's statement that it was Dudley who killed the man whom Max believed to have been Edward Jacobs; and it looked as if the object of the woman's visit was to levy blackmail.

Or was it--could it be that the woman was Carrie, and that her object was to warn Dudley? To a.s.sociate Carrie herself with the levying of blackmail was not possible to the susceptible Max in the present state of his feelings toward her.

And, just as he was meditating upon this mystery, all unprepared for a meeting with his sister, Doreen waylaid him. He was entering the house by the back way, muddy from his ride, when she sprang upon him from an ambush on the stairs.

"I've been waiting all the morning to catch you alone," said she, as she ran out from behind the tall clock and seized his arm. "You've been trying to avoid me. Don't deny it. I say you have. As if it was any use!

No, you shall not go upstairs and take off your boots first. You will just come into the study, mud and all, and tell me--tell me what you _know_, not what you have been making up, mind! I'm going to have the truth."

"Well, you can't," returned her brother, shortly, as he allowed himself to be dragged across the hall, which looked cheerless enough without a fire, and with the great, clumsy, hideous, maimed old Yule log filling up the fireplace and reminding everybody of all that it had cost.

Doreen pushed him into the study and shut the door.

"Why can't I know the truth?" asked she, eying him steadily. "Do you mean that you have found out Dudley doesn't care for me."

Max glanced at his sister's face, and then looked away. He had not known till that moment, when he caught the tender look of anxiety in her big brown eyes, how strong her love of Dudley was. An impulse of anger against the man seized him, and he frowned.

"Why, surely you know already that he doesn't care for you, in the way he ought to care, or he would never have neglected you, never have given you up!" said he, ferociously.

"I'm not so sure about that. At any rate I want to know what you found out. Don't think I'm not strong enough to bear it, whatever it is!"

"Well, then, I'll tell you. He _is_ off his head. He has got mixed up in some way with a set of people no sane man would trust himself with for half an hour, and--and--and--well, they say--the people say he's done something that would hang him. There! Is that enough for you?"

He felt that he was a brute to tell her, but he could see no other way out of the difficulty in which her own persistency had placed him. She stared at him for a few seconds with blanched cheeks, clasping her hands. Then she said in a whisper:

"You don't mean--murder?"

Her brother's silence gave her the answer.

There was a long pause. Then she spoke in a changed voice, under her breath:

"Poor Dudley!"

Max was astonished to see her take the announcement so quietly.

"Well, now you see that it is impossible to do anything for him, don't you?"

"Indeed, I do not!" retorted Doreen, with spirit. "We don't know the story yet. We don't know whether there is any truth in it at all; or, if there is, what the difficulties were that he was in. Look, Max. You must remember how worried he has been lately. I have heard him make excuses for people who did rash things, and I have always agreed with him. You see, I knew how good-hearted he was, and I know that he would never have done anything mean or underhand or unworthy."

"Don't you call murder, manslaughter--whatever it is--unworthy?" asked Max, irritably.

"Not without knowing something about it," answered she. "And I think there's generally more to be said for the man who commits murder than for any other criminal. And--and"--her voice gave way and began to shake with tears--"I don't care what he's done, I'm sorry for him. I--I want to help him, or--or, at least, I want to see him to tell him so!"

Max was alarmed. Knowing the spirit and courage of his brilliant sister, he was afraid lest she should conceive the idea of starting off herself on some mad enterprise; so he said hastily:

"He's away now, you know. He's gone without leaving any address. Perhaps I was wrong, after all. Perhaps when he comes back he will be himself again, and--and everything will be cleared up. We can only wait and see."