"I echo every single word that Captain Carbury says!" exclaimed Aunt Penelope. "I am very outspoken, and from first to last I have always detested everything I have heard about you, Lady Helen; and now that I see you I hate you more than ever. It would give me sincere pleasure to drag your crime into the light. What right had you to work on the feelings of the most tender-hearted of men in order to save your brother from the shame and the punishment his sin deserved? My poor n.o.ble brother-in-law volunteered to take your wicked brother's place. Why, Lady Helen, it was a Christ-like deed! The least he can get for the rest of his days, poor fellow, is peace and happiness. Oh, yes, you can refuse, but the moment you do so the whole of this affair shall be placed in the hands of my solicitors, for I am determined that my brother-in-law and my niece's father shall no longer be considered unworthy to be a true soldier of our late Queen."

"You can leave me," said Lady Helen. "Go at once, all three of you; don't attempt to stay another moment in my presence. You drive me mad!

Go--go--go! Oh, I shall have hysterics! I--Heather, ring the bell; my maid must come to me; I feel the attack coming on. Oh, you awful people!

Heather, you can stay if you like; you don't mean to be cruel, I know you don't. I who have suffered so sorely--I who am broken-hearted! But leave me, you two others; leave me at once--at once!"

"Not until my niece goes with me do I stir one step out of this room,"

said Aunt Penelope.

"Well, Heather child, if you must go you must. Oh, try to turn their wicked, cruel hearts! but I--yes I----"

"What do you mean to do?" said Vernon. "You haven't told us that yet."

"Nothing, I tell you--nothing. You can't be so cruel--so monstrous!"

"Miss Despard's address is 90A, Torrington Square, W.C.," said Vernon, in his calmest voice; "that address will find her and Heather and me any time between now and noon to-morrow. If at noon to-morrow we have not heard from you, we shall be forced to draw our own conclusions--namely, that you have refused to consider Heather's most natural pet.i.tion, that she should be allowed to make her father happy. It will then be our duty to put the matter absolutely into the hands of Messrs. Fenchurch and Grace, Miss Despard's solicitors."

Lady Helen sank back again in her chair, her eyes shone with feverish hate.

"Leave me, you terrible people!" she said. "Go, all of you!"

We went.

CHAPTER XXII

We said very little to each other that night at the comfortable little hotel. I think we were all very tired. Aunt Penelope went early to bed, Vernon and I stayed downstairs and talked about our future. We talked languidly, however; our thoughts were not even with our own happy future at that moment. I was thinking all the time of my father, and I know well that Vernon was thinking of him also. Aunt Penelope went to bed between nine and ten o'clock; it was between ten and eleven when the door of the private sitting-room was flung open and a servant announced: "Major Grayson," and my dear father came in. His face was flushed, and his eyes looked feverishly bright. He came up to us both with his hands extended.

"My dear, good, kind children," he said; then he paused for a minute until the waiter had shut the door. Then he took me into his arms and kissed me half a dozen times, and then he wrung Vernon's hand and said, "My dear boy--my good boy!" Afterwards we all got a little calmer and sat down, I sinking close to father's side and Vernon standing opposite to us.

"Come, now," said father, after a minute's pause, "you must give it all up, you know. Yes, Vernon, my boy, you must give it up, and so must that dear Pen, and so must my little Heather. I am but fulfilling a promise made long years ago. You none of you understand. I'll pull along somehow, in some kind of fashion, but I won't drag that poor woman's name into the dust. You see, my children, she doesn't know what it means, but I do. I have plenty of strength in me--the great strength of innocence, which supported me all through my terrible period of imprisonment, and also the strength which is but seldom given to a woman. Anyhow, she is not to suffer; I put down my foot. She has told me all; I found her in a terrible state; I had to send a doctor to her. She is in bed now; he was obliged to give her a soothing draught. Children, both of you, I shall live in your happiness, and my own does not matter.

I can't desert Helen Dalrymple, and, what's more, I won't!"

"Oh, Daddy!" I said. "Oh, Daddy!"

I laid my head on his shoulder and began to sob.

"I can't live without you," I whispered, and I pressed my lips to his rough cheek and kissed him. He put his arm round me very firmly.

"You will live and be very happy, little girl. And now, look here; I could not leave our house in Hanbury Square until Helen was asleep, then I thought I'd come round and have a talk with you. When she wakens she must be told that you are not going to do anything. She will drop you out of her life, Heather, and so much the better--yes, so much the better. I can get a promise out of her that I shall come and see you now and again, and when I do come I can a.s.sure you, my two dear young people, I shall be as jolly as a sand-boy; you won't have anything to complain of on that score. But while I'm here I'll just hold to the bargain I made long years ago."

"Oh, father, father!" I said. "Why did you make it? Why did you do it?

Why did you sacrifice yourself for her and for that man?"

"Hush, child! You can't read all a man's motives. At that time I--I really cared for Lady Helen. Not, perhaps, Heather, as I loved your mother, but I was fond of her, undoubtedly; and if this trouble had never come I should probably have married her. She loved me too. I'll tell you one or two things I left out the other day. I had proposed to her long before that fearful scandal came to our ears in connection with her brother. She had refused me. I had begged and prayed her to be my wife, but she had firmly refused. Then I got into debt; I always was an extravagant slap-dash sort of person. I was very unhappy, and I brought you back to England--you remember that time, don't you, little woman?"

"Oh, yes," I said, trying to bring my thoughts back to the distant past.

"She wanted me to do so. She thought it very bad to have a child as old as you in India. I settled with your aunt to keep you. My debts haunted me and although Lady Helen refused to marry me, she lent me money to pay my debts. I went back to India, and then the thunderclap came. Lady Helen's brother would undoubtedly have been arrested if I had not thrown myself into the breach. I thought out a plan very quickly; I liked Helen and I pitied her, and I did not think my own life worth saving. I went to Helen and told her that I could put the officers of justice off the scent and get the crime fastened on myself, and I would do so on condition that she married me when I came out of prison. She agreed, and there we are. Now, my dear Heather, as that's the story, I could not go back from my bargain now."

"It was a very bad bargain for you," I could not help saying. I trembled very much, and the tears rolled down my cheeks.

"But we must keep our bargains, whether they are good or bad, Heather,"

whispered my father to me. "That is the law of life: as we sow we shall reap. And I am not altogether unhappy, not since this good fellow has found out the truth and I am cleared in his eyes, and in the eyes of you, my child, and in my sister-in-law's eyes. Nothing else greatly matters. Heather, you are in the morning of your days, I am in the evening of life. When we come to the evening of life nothing concerns us, except so to live that we may fear G.o.d and do His commandments, and so fulfil the duty of man. That's about all, child. I am more grateful to you than I can say, and more than grateful to you, Carbury. Give poor dear Pen my love when she wakes, and tell her that it is quite all right--yes, quite all right. I am in the evening of life, and I will do my duty worthily to the very end."

As father said the last words he got up. He took me in his arms and kissed me; there was a solemnity about his kiss, and his dear, bright blue eyes looked softer than I had seen them for a long time.

"Heather, you're the image of your mother," he said abruptly. "And she--bless her memory!--she was the one woman in all the world for me."

Then he wrung Vernon's hand and went away. We could not detain him. I sat up for a little longer with Vernon, and then I went upstairs to bed.

Vernon was staying in an hotel not far away.

All that long night I lay awake, not for one minute could I slumber. My past seemed to come before my eyes, it seemed to torture me. I felt somehow as though I were pa.s.sing into a region of great darkness, as though I were going--I, myself--through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. What right--oh, what right had I to be happy when my father, my darling father, was thought so cruelly of by the world! I felt I could not bear it. I got up, I paced the floor, I drank cold water, I went to bed again, I tried every dodge for coaxing sleep to come to me, but sleep would not obey my mandate. At last morning broke, and with the first blush of dawn I got up. I was downstairs and in the breakfast-room when Vernon appeared. He brought in some beautiful roses; he laid them on my plate.

"Have you told Aunt Penelope yet?" he asked.

"No," I replied. "I have not seen her since last night."

Just at that moment my dear auntie entered the room.

"Well, children," she said, "I hope you have slept well. I have. I have got a great accession of strength and am determined to go right through with this matter. We'll wait here, as promised, until twelve o'clock, then we'll go straight to my solicitors, and, hey, presto! the thing is done. That fine madam will be down on her knees to us before the day is over. I know the sort--horrible, painted wretch!"

"You will have some breakfast before you do anything else, won't you?"

said Vernon.

He took the head of the breakfast table. Really nothing could ever discompose Captain Carbury. He poured out tea and coffee for us both.

Aunt Penelope ate her breakfast with appet.i.te; then she desired me to sit by the window and watch.

"We have given her till twelve o'clock, but the woman may send round long before then, that's what I am expecting."

I looked at Vernon. The waiter had removed the breakfast things; we had the room to ourselves. Vernon went and shut the door, then he came up to Aunt Penelope and took her hand.

"Twelve o'clock won't make any difference, my dear friend," he said.

"Why, what on earth do you mean, Vernon?" was her remark. "You surely are not backing out of it!"

"Heather and I can have nothing to do with it."

"You and Heather? what nonsense you talk! I don't believe I am hearing you aright."

"Yes, you are. Major Grayson was here last night; he came after you had gone to bed. He doesn't wish it done; he says he will abide by his bargain. He is as brave a soldier as I have ever come across, and for my part I don't see why he should be deprived of his laurel wreath."

"Oh, what are you talking about!" said Aunt Penelope. "His laurel wreath! Why, you know as well as I do that he's cashiered from the army. And you call that a glory, or whatever else you consider a laurel wreath!"

"In the eyes of G.o.d he is a hero, and he doesn't much mind what man says. Now, I'll tell you everything. You've got to listen--you can't go against a n.o.ble spirit like his."