In Direst Peril

CHAPTER XVII

Of course I had a right to an explanation, and equally, of course, I was determined to have it. But the question was how to get it, and I confess that for a long time I did not see my way. If one had been dealing with a man it would have been very different. But when a lady with whom you have been on terms of intimacy and friendship turns round upon you without any cause you can assign, and tells you she desires to have no more to do with you, it is not easy to see by what means you can force her to a recognition of your side of the business. What made the thing the more astonishing and bewildering was that Lady Rollinson had always been so warm in her friendship for me. Over and over again she had alluded to my services to her son, and she had introduced me to scores of people as the savior of his life, magnifying a very simple incident to such heroic proportions that she often put me to the blush about it, and almost tempted me to wish that I had let poor Jack take his chance without any interference of mine. To have seen a lady the day before yesterday, to have been hailed by her for the hundredth time as her son's preserver, to get a solemn “Not at home” thrown at you when next you called—it was an experience entirely new, and anything but agreeable.

If I may say so without bragging, I have been judged a fairly good officer in my time. I can give an order, I can obey an order, I can see that an order is obeyed; but outside the realms of discipline, and in the common complications of life, I have never felt myself to be very much at ease! The whole of this present business was so bewildering that if only Lady Rollinson herself had been concerned I should have retired from the consideration of the problem instantly. But then she stopped my access to. Violet, and that, for a young fellow who was ardently in love, put altogether another complexion on the affair. When I had got over my first amazement, I sat down and wrote a note, which, in the fervor of my feeling, bade fair to develop into a document which would have filled, say, a column of the Times. But when I had written, perhaps, a hundredth part of what I felt it in me to say, I tore up the paper and threw its fragments into the fire. Then I started afresh, determined to be extremely brief and business-like. Once more my feelings got the upper hand of me, and again I covered half a dozen closely-written pages before I discovered my mistake anew. Finally I sat down to a pipe and thought the matter over, until I decided on a definite line of action. The upshot of it all was that I wrote this note, and with my own hands bore it to her ladyship's house:

“Dear Lady Rollinson,—I am utterly at a loss to understand the occurrences of yesterday and to-day. A moment's reflection will show you that an explanation is absolutely due to me. It is my right to demand it, and it is at once your duty and your right to give it.”

Armed with this document I set out. The same perturbed domestic greeted me with the formula to which I was by this time growing accustomed, and when I instructed him to carry the note within doors and deliver it to his mistress, he closed the door in my face and left me to await an answer on the steps. The position was anything but comfortable. It was a bright day, and a good many people were abroad, considering how quiet the street generally was. I felt as if everybody who passed was completely aware of my discomfiture. Not a nurse-maid went by with her charge who did not, to my distempered fancy, know my business, and look meaningly at me in appreciation of my position. By-and-by the door opened, and the servant asked me to step inside. I had been cooling my heels on the steps for full five minutes, and was by this time as little self-possessed as I have ever been in my life. I followed the man blindly into the familiar morning-room, and was there left alone for another ten minutes. Anger was taking the place of bewilderment, and I was striding rapidly up and down the room when Lady Rollinson entered. The weather was still cold, but she carried a fan in her hand, and moved it rapidly as she walked into the room and sank into a chair. I bowed with a stiff inclination of the head, but she made no return to my salute.

“I hope, Captain Fyffe,” she said, “that you will make this interview as brief as possible. It is likely to be painful to both of us, but you have insisted on it. I do not see what purpose it can serve, but it is just as well that you should understand that I am finally determined.”

It was plainly to be seen that she was painfully agitated; and though she had done her best to abolish the traces of the fact, I could see that she had been crying.

“You are finally determined!” I echoed, and I dare say my manner was foolish enough. “But what are you finally determined about?”

“I am finally determined,” she responded, “that everything is over between us; and until the count returns and learns the dreadful truth, everything, so far as my influence can go, is over between you and Violet.”

“What is the dreadful truth?” I asked. “I give you my word that I am utterly in the dark.”

Now Lady Rollinson was a dear old woman, and I had had a warm affection for her. On her side she had treated me from the beginning of our acquaintance almost as if I had been her son; and hitherto there had been nothing but the most friendly and affectionate sentiment between us. But I began to get angry, and I dare say I spoke in a tone to which she had been little accustomed. She cast an indignant glance at me, and fanned herself at a great rate for a full minute before she answered.

“Come,” I repeated more than once; “what is this dreadful truth? Surely I have a right to know it.”

“You shall know it, Captain Fyffe,” she answered, in a voice of weeping menace such as women use when they are both wounded and angry; “you shall have it in a word.” She dropped her fan upon her knees, and asked me, with a lugubrious air of triumph and reproach, “Did you ever hear of Constance Pleyel?”

I was standing before her, and as she leaned forward suddenly to offer this surprising question I stepped back a little. A chair caught me at the back of the knees, and I dropped into it as if I had been shot. I have laughed in memory many a time over that ludicrous accident, but it was no laughing matter at the moment, for it sent a conviction to the old lady's mind which I do not think was altogether banished from it to her dying day. Of course the question in such a connection came upon me as a surprise. In all my searchings for the cause of her ladyship's distemper I had not lighted on the thought of Constance Pleyel. I was not so much amazed at it that the name alone could have bowled me over in that way; but Lady Rollinson's idea was that it had gone home instantly to a guilty conscience.

“That is enough,” she said, “and more than enough.” With these words she arose and walked towards the door, but I intercepted her.

“I beg your pardon, it is not enough, or nearly enough.”

“You know the name,” she answered. “You have shown me enough to tell me that.”

“I know the name, certainly,” I replied. “I have known the name and the person that owns the name for many years. But that fact affords a very partial explanation of your conduct. I must trouble you to sit down, Lady Rollinson, and listen to what I have to say.”

The stupid, good old woman had taken her side already, and if anything had been needed to confirm her own mistaken judgment of the case that ludicrous accident would have supplied it. She fanned herself in an emotion made up of wrath and grief and dignity, glancing at me from time to time, and looking away again with an expression of disdain, which was hard for an innocent man to bear.

“I suppose,” I said, as coolly as I could, “that whatever information you have upon this matter comes from the Baroness Bonnar?” I waited for an answer, but she gave no sign. “I must trouble you to tell me if that is so.”

“You know that well enough,” she answered. “The Baroness Bonnar is the only friend the poor creature has in London.”

“Do you know much of the Baroness Bonnar?” I asked. “Would it ever have occurred to you to guess that the Baroness Bonnar is neither more nor less than a paid Austrian spy, and that Miss Constance Pleyel is, in all probability, her confederate?”

She looked at me with an incredulity so open that I felt it to be an insult, and she preserved the same disdainful silence.

“I came here yesterday,” I continued, “to consult Violet—”

She interrupted me almost with a shriek.

“Don't mention that poor girl's name!” she cried. “I won't have it mentioned! I won't listen to it in this connection!”

“Pardon me,” I said, “it has to be mentioned, and unless you are in the humor to permit yourself to be made the dupe and tool of as wicked a little adventuress as ever lived, you must listen to what I have to tell you. I came here yesterday to consult Violet as to what I should do with respect to a plot in which I have found the baroness to be engaged. You have often heard the count and myself speak of poor old Ruffiano. You know him as one of Violet's pensioners, and, indeed, I remember that twice or thrice I have met him in your house. He has been betrayed to the Austrians, and is at this minute in their hands. The prime mover in that matter is the Baroness Bonnar, and her tool was the Honorable George Brunow.”

Now surely one would have thought that a charge so plain and dreadful was at least worth investigation, and it had not entered my mind to conceive that even an angry woman could fail to take some sort of account of it. Lady Rollinson took it merely as a tissue of absurdities.

“It only shows,” she said, “how desperate your own case must be when you need to bolster it by a story like that—a story which could be proved to be false in half a minute.”

“Why should you suppose me,” I retorted, “to be so foolish as to bring you such a story if it could not be proved to be true? I ask nothing more or less than that you should inquire into the matter.”

“I shall do nothing of the sort,” she answered. “I know too much already.”

“I am sorry,” I answered, “to be so seriously at issue with you on such a theme, but I am compelled to insist upon my right.”

“I shall have nothing to say on the matter,” she answered, “until the count returns. He will be the final judge of what is to be done; but until he comes I shall do my duty, and it is no part of my duty to allow my niece to listen to the persuasions of a man who has only too clearly proved his powers in that way already.”

“Only a few weeks ago,” I said, desperately, “I had an interview with the Baroness Bonnar, in which I warned her not to intrude upon your society again.”

“I know all about it!” cried Lady Rollinson, with an indignant movement of her fan. “You tried to bully the poor thing into silence. You may save yourself any further trouble, Captain Fyffe. My mind is made up, and I shall do what I have decided to do. In my days,” she added, beginning to cry, which made the situation more intolerable than ever—“in my days, when a gentleman was told by a lady that his presence was unwelcome in her house he would never have intruded.”

“My dear Lady Rollinson,” I responded, controlling myself with a very considerable effort, “you must listen to reason. You have been made the dupe of a thoroughly heartless and unprincipled woman.”

“That appears to be your method!” She flashed back at me. “You can say what you please about my character, now that I know yours. Thank God I am too well known to fear your rancorous tongue!”

The position was actually maddening, and I had never dreamed until then that even a woman who was bent on revenging what she conceived to be a gross injury to one of her own sex could be so utterly unreasonable and deaf to argument.

“I repeat, madame,” I declared, “that the Count Ruffiano has been betrayed to the enemy by this woman whose lies you accept as if they were gospel. Brunow confessed to me barely six-and-thirty hours ago that he acted as her agent in that villainous transaction. Is that a woman whose bare word is to be taken against the overwhelming proof an honest man can bring?”

I know I was excited, and it is very likely that I was speaking in a louder voice than I was altogether aware of, but her answer gave me a new surprise.

“I am not in the least afraid of you, Captain Fyffe; my servants are in the house, and I can ring for them at any minute.”

This cooled me, even in the middle of my exasperation and the galling sense of impotence I felt.

“I beg your pardon, Lady Rollinson. I am bewildered by your manner. I am laboring under an accusation of a very dreadful sort, and you refuse to listen to me, though I can prove my innocence quite easily.”

“Why,” she exclaimed, “I haven't even told the man what the accusation is! But in spite of his innocence he knows all about it.”

“I know all about it,” I retorted, “because it has been brought against me before, and withdrawn by the very woman who brings it now. Will you listen to me, Lady Rollinson?”

“I will not willingly listen to another word.”

“Where is Violet?” I asked.

“That I shall not tell you,” she answered. “I have made up my mind I shall do nothing until the arrival of the count. When he comes back, if ever he does, poor man, the responsibility will be off my shoulders. Until then, I shall take very good care that you have nothing to do with Violet.”

This seemed to me to be carrying things with far too high a hand, and there, at least, I thought I had a right to speak with some show of authority.

“Violet,” I said, “is my promised wife, and I am not going to allow any folly of this kind to come between her and me. I shall insist upon my right to see her, and to clear myself of any accusation which may have been brought against me in my absence.”

“You may insist as much as you please, Captain Fyffe,” Lady Rollinson answered. “I have made up my mind as to what is my duty, and I shall do it, even at the risk of your most serious displeasure.”

“You tell me,” I said, “that she is not here?”

“I have told you already,” she replied, “that she is not here. I have made arrangements for her until the count returns.”

“And am I to understand,” I asked, “that you refuse to allow me to know her address?”

“You may understand that definitely,” said her ladyship.

It was all very disagreeable, but at least there was one ray of comfort in the middle of it.

“Violet knows my address,” I said, “and she is certain to write to me.”

“I might have something to thank you for there, Captain Fyffe,” said the old lady, with an almost comical increase of dignity, “if I had not already taken my precautions. I may tell you, however, that Violet is accompanied by a discreet person, who has my instructions as to the disposal of any letters she may write.”

This amounted to an open declaration of war, and I felt myself on the point of answering so hotly that I was wise in binding myself, for the moment at least, to silence.

“Pray let us thoroughly understand each other,” I said at length. “You, on your side, have resolved to place complete reliance on the statement of an exposed adventuress, without one word of corroboration, and to refuse the clear proof of my innocence, which I undertake to give you.” I waited for a moment, but she maintained an altogether obstinate silence. “Very well,” I resumed, “that is understood so far. You conceive it your duty to separate Violet and myself, and to attempt to widen any possible separation between us by suppressing my letters to her and hers to me. You must permit me to point out to you that you are adopting a very dangerous course, and I must warn you that I shall do my best to frustrate a design which seems to me so ureasonable and so cruel that I should never have thought you capable of forming it.”

“You will do your best, of course,” she answered, “and I shall do mine. I wish you good-morning, Captain Fyffe.”

What with perplexity, and what with grief and anger, I scarce knew what to do, but I turned to her with a final appeal.

“I am sure,” I said, “that you have your niece's interests at heart. It is not so very long since you professed to be my friend. Ever since I have known you I have had to tell you that you very much overestimated a chance service I have rendered to your son.”

“I have been waiting for that,” she answered. “That is just the sort of appeal I was expecting you to make. It is of no use for us to discuss this question any longer, for let me tell you I have seen your letters.”

“The letters!” I cried.

“The letters,” she repeated—“the letters to Miss Constance Pleyel.”

“Great Heaven, madam!” I cried, exasperated beyond patience, “I have never denied that I wrote to Miss Constance Pleyel, but the letters were written when I was a boy, and they are as absolutely harmless and blameless as any love-sick nonsense ever written in the world!”

“I have seen the letters,” she repeated, “and I have seen Miss Pleyel, and, once more, Captain Fyffe, and for the last time, I have made up my mind.”

With that she laid her hand upon the bell-pull, and sounded a peal at the bell which was so rapidly answered that I more than half suspected, and, indeed, do now more than half suspect, that the man who responded to it had been listening.

“Show Captain Fyffe out,” said her ladyship. And so, a definite end being put to the interview, I left the house as wrathful and as humiliated a man as any to be found that hour in London. So long as I live I shall not forget the smug alacrity with which the servant obeyed the behest of his mistress. I was in a state to wreak my own ill-humor upon anybody, and it was in my mind, and more than half in my heart, to kick that smug man in livery down the steps. I have suffered all my life from a certain Scotch vivacity of temperament which it has cost me many and many a hard struggle to control. It has not often been more unreasonable or more vigorous in its internal demonstrations than it was then, but I managed to reach the street and to walk away without exposing myself. As to where I went for the next few hours I never had the remotest idea. I must have walked a good many miles, for at last, when I pulled up, I found myself, at five o'clock in the evening, in a part of the town to which I was a complete stranger, and I had a confused remembrance of Oxford Street and the parks, and then of Highgate Archway. I made out, after a while, that I was at the East End, and, turning westward, I tramped back to my own lodgings with a return to self-possession which was partly due to the fact that bodily fatigue had dulled the sting of resentment.

Hinge had dinner ready when I reached home, but I had no appetite for it, and, to the good fellow's dismay, I sent it away untasted. I turned over a thousand schemes that evening, and rejected each in turn. But I decided, finally, to prepare an advertisement for the newspapers, Which might perhaps prevent further mischief. I concocted so many subterfuges, each of which in turn proved to reveal too much or to be too enigmatical, that at ten o'clock I found myself with a dozen sheets of closely-written paper before me. But at last I hit on this:

After much consideration, I hit upon “John of Itzia” as a signature, and having made three clear copies, I drove round to the offices of the three great daily newspapers of that date, and at each secured the insertion of this advertisement for a week. A little comforted by that achievement, I went to bed, and, being dog tired, got to sleep.

The days that followed were among the dreariest I can remember. I spent them for the most part at home, sitting at the open window which looked upon the street, and waiting for the advent of the postman.

I was there in the morning an hour before his arrival could reasonably be expected, and I was there all day, and there still an hour after his last round had been made. Every time he came in sight my heart beat furiously; and as the short official note on the knocker came nearer and nearer, I strove in vain to resist the temptation to run down-stairs and await him at the front door. Every man on that beat got to know me, and I grew to be utterly ashamed of myself at last, for day after day went by, and there came no answer to my advertisement and no note from anywhere of Violet's existence. At last the week for which I had prepaid the advertisement expired. I had determined to renew my warning and entreaty if no answer came, and I waited the last part of that day with a throbbing heart. The minutes of the dull, rainy night—it was mid-April by this time—crawled slowly on, and at last I heard the belated knocker at the far end of the street, and hurried on my overcoat and hat in case I should be disappointed once again. Then I slipped down to the door, and waited in the portico. The postman knocked next door, and I was ashamed to show myself; but only a second or two later he appeared with a single letter in his hand.

“Captain Fyffe?” he asked, inquiringly, and I responding “Captain Fyffe,” he handed me the letter.

The superscription was in Violet's hand. I tore it open and read, in embossed letters at the top of the first page, “Scarfell House, Richmond.” Then came this:

I had no sooner read this than, with the letter crumpled in my hand, I dashed into the street and made at full-speed for the nearest cab-stand. Half a dozen whips were waved at me at once, but I walked up and down the line inspecting the horses before I would choose a vehicle. A sorrier lot of screws I never saw, but I chose the one that looked the least unpromising, and gave the driver the word for Richmond.

CHAPTER XVIII

Overjoyed as I was at the receipt of Violet's letter, and at the prospect of seeing her again, I had not been many minutes on my way before I began to feel embarrassed at the prospect of the unavoidable explanation which lay before me. I felt malevolently disposed towards the ridiculous old lady who was the cause of all this needless trouble, but I soon forgot her in the contemplation of the difficulty she had created. It was a painful and difficult thing even to mention to Violet such a charge as that against which I had to defend myself, and as the vehicle bumped along I threw myself back in the seat and gave up my whole mind to the attempt to approach it delicately, and in the way which would make it least offensive and painful to her ears.

I have said that the hacks on the cab-stand were a sorry lot, and though I had chosen the brute which looked most promising in the whole contingent, I was not long in finding that I had no special reason to be proud of my choice. Since 1848 London has grown enormously, and in those days it was possible, even with such a beast as the one my cabman drove, to be in the country within half an hour of a West End street. I knew very little of the environs of the great city, and when I woke up to a recognition of my surroundings I was in a district altogether strange to me. There were fields on either hand, and here and there the twinkling of a distant light proclaimed a probable human habitation; but there were no lamps about the road as there are nowadays, and the scene looked altogether deserted and desolate. I pulled down the window, and, putting out my head, hailed the driver, who was apparently asleep upon his box. A thin, persistent drizzle was falling, the ill-kept road was wet with recent rain, and the wretched horse was jogging along at a shuffling trot at a rate of perhaps four miles an hour.

“Wake up there,” I cried, “and get along! I don't want to reach Richmond after midnight.”

“All right,” cabby responded, and applied the whip with such effect that for a hundred yards or so he contrived to get a decent pace out of the weary brute he drove. By this time I had fallen back once more into the perplexity of my own thoughts, but in a while I woke to the fact that we had fallen back to our old pace, and I made a new effort to stimulate the driver. He in turn made an effort to stimulate his steed, and so we went on, bumping in the shallow ruts of the road, occasionally standing still, and at our best scarcely exceeding the pace of a smart walk.

“I suppose,” I asked the cabman, “that at least you know where you are going to?”

“Richmond,” replied the driver. “I suppose it's Richmond, in Surrey, ain't it? There is a Richmond in Yorkshire, but you don't expect a man to drive there at this time of night?”

“When do you expect to get to the end of your journey at this rate?” I asked.

“The fact is, sir,” said the driver, leaning confidentially backward, “the 'orse is tired. He's a very good 'orse when he's fresh, but 'e's been in the shafts for sixteen hours at least, and whether he'll get there at all is more than I should like to swear to. 'Ows'ever,” said the cabman, “we'll do our best.”

Now I was certain that Violet was awaiting my answer to her letter in some anxiety, and I myself was on fire to see her, so that this dilatory method of progress made me feel altogether miserable. We went jogging on in a sad, mournful fashion, and I made up my mind that at the first inhabited place we came to I would discharge my driver, and find either a horse or a new conveyance; and with this resolve I controlled myself with patience. By-and-by, however, after a series of extraordinary jolts and bumpings, the vehicle came to a standstill, and once more lowering the glass and putting my head out into the drizzle, I demanded to know what was the matter.

“I'm afeard, sir,” said the cabman, “as I've lost my way. It's so blessed dark here, I've got off the road. All right,” he cried, a second later, “I see it! You 'old on, sir, I'll be right in a minute.” With this he stood up to flog the horse, and at that instant the vehicle overturned, slid rapidly down a slope, and stopped with a shock which for the moment not only drove all the breath out of my body, but all the sense out of my head. When I recovered I found my hat crushed over my eyes, and in struggling to find my feet made the unpleasant discovery that my right ankle was dislocated. I had sprained a wrist into the bargain, and under these circumstances I had great difficulty in extricating myself from the overturned vehicle. The horse was hammering with his hind-feet at the front of the carriage with a vigor surprising in a creature who had only lately shown himself so fatigued and feeble; and when at last I contrived to open one of the doors and call to the driver, I received no answer. I scrambled out painfully, and found myself scarcely able to stand. The darkness was intense; both the lamps had been broken and extinguished in the spill, and the rain was now falling with considerable violence. I called repeatedly to the driver, and groping about in the pitchy darkness on my hands and knees, I received a blow on the head from one of the frightened horse's feet, and lay for a little while quite sick and stunned. How long this sensation lasted I have no means of knowing, but when I recovered my senses I was wet through, and found myself lying among furze-bushes in a damp hollow. The horse had apparently resigned himself to the position, and lay quiet. As I struggled to my feet, with a thousand colored lights flashing before ray eyes, the darkness and silence of the night seemed filled with booming noises like those which are made by a heavy sea when the wind has fallen. I crawled about cautiously through the wet and prickly furze, and at last laid a hand upon the driver's sleeve. He was sitting with his head between his hands, and I could just make him out dimly, now that I was close upon him and certain of his presence.

“Are you hurt?” I asked. “You understand what I am saying?”

“Hurt!” he responded. “I'm as near killed as makes no matter. I thought you was done for, sir. I called out two or three times when I came to, but you never made a sign.”

“I got a kick on the head,” I explained. “It made me stupid for a time. Do you know where we are, or have you lost your way altogether?”

“I don't know,” the man responded, with a groan. “I never drove this road before, but it strikes me we're on Barnes Common.”

“Is there any house within reach?” I asked.

“How should I know?” he answered.

“Can you walk?” I asked. “I am dead lame, and cannot put one foot before another.”

“I'll try,” he answered, still groaning, and with an effort he scrambled to his feet. Once there he shook himself, and then began carefully to explore his person with both hands from head to foot; kneeling on the ground there I could see him more clearly against the lowering sky, and when, after a prolonged examination of himself, he drew up his figure and stretched his arms, I could see that he was fairly recovered from the shock his fall had given him.

“Can you walk?” I asked again, this time with a little touch of impatience. He answered that he thought he could, and began to stamp about the wet grass to assure himself that his limbs were still serviceable. “Mark this place well,” I told him. “Find the road again, and go for help. Don't leave me here all night.”

The man promised to be back as soon as possible, and set off at a stumbling walk. I shouted to him from time to time, he answering, and at length I learned that he had found the road.

“Keep your heart up, governor!” he called, finally. “I'll be back as soon as ever I can,” and with that he left me.

For a long time, or for what seemed a long time then, I could hear his heavy boots crunching on the gravel and loose pebbles of the roadway, and then, except for the low voices of the rain and wind, and the heavy breathing of the horse, complete silence reigned. I had been in worse case many a time, and have been since; and I set myself to make the best of things. The wind was rising and bringing the cold rain down in a fierce slant, and the first thing I did was to crawl to the lee side of the overturned four-wheeler, which lay wheels upward, securely wedged into a hollow. There was a little hillock, against one side of which it had rested, which was free from the prickly furze, and, all things considered, made no bad resting-place. The wrenched ankle pained me severely, but I was dazed by the blow on the head, and had more difficulty in fighting against an inclination to sleep or swoon than in enduring that discomfort. In spite of all my efforts, all knowledge of surrounding objects faded away at times, and I passed into a momentary oblivion, though a twinge from the injured ankle always swiftly recalled me to myself. In a while I remembered that I had my cigar-case in my pocket, together with a box of those old-fashioned brown paper fusees which were commonly used by smokers at that time. I had only one hand available, and it cost me a good deal of trouble to get at that bit of solace and companionship; but when I had lit a cigar, and had coiled myself into the most comfortable posture I could find, I felt more patient than before, and smoked away for half an hour or so in a tranquillity more or less enforced. I listened keenly all the time, and anybody who has ever tried the experiment knows how that act retards the slow passage of the moments at any time of anxiety and pain. If anybody thinks that an old campaigner is making much of a very slight accident, I shall ask him to remember the circumstances under which it occurred. I had been bitterly anxious the whole week, uncertain of the whereabouts of the lady who loved me, and whom I loved with all my soul, imagining, in a fashion which seemed contrary to my own nature, a hundred thousand misfortunes, and suffering more in mind than I can ever have the ability to express in words. And now, just as I had come to a knowledge of where to find her, with the note from her dear hand still near my heart, and with the knowledge in my mind that every fruitless minute spent there would be full of weariness and doubt to her, I was as effectually stopped by this trumpery overturn as if it had been the most serious disaster in the world. My cigar was smoked out, and, after a long pause, I lit another. Sometimes the mere act of listening as intently as I did made me imagine noises in my neighborhood, and I called out frequently on the mere chance of these sounds being real. Little by little the cold and wet began to take effect upon me. I grew more and more heavy with it, and at last, with the second cigar still alight between my lips, I fell fast asleep, and lay there unconscious of the wind and rain, and knowing nothing of my own bodily inconveniences. How long this lasted I never had an opportunity of knowing, but I was awakened at last by the grasp of a hand upon my shoulder, and tried to rise, half-blinded by the dazzling rays of a lantern, which was swinging close before me. There were a dozen men upon the ground, attracted by the story the driver had told, and among them was a local medical man, who had had the old-fashioned prescience to charge a big flask with brandy. I was glad enough to get a pull at its contents, and the doctor having gone carefully over me and pronounced that no bones were broken, I was lifted with a good deal of trouble into his dog-cart, and at my own request was driven on to Richmond. It was long after midnight when we got there, but after a good deal of knocking and ringing we made our way into the Talbot Hotel, where I secured a comfortable bedroom; and when my sprained wrist and dislocated ankle had been put into cold compasses by the doctor, I was got to bed. I passed an uneasy night, afflicted mainly by the thought of Violet's bewilderment about me, and in the morning I scrawled a note to her, telling her where I was, and asking her to send me word that she had received my message. I was more damaged than I had fancied, and the mere writing of the letter with my injured hand was a tough task. The messenger I despatched knew Scarfell House, and told me that it had been bought by General Sir Arthur Rollinson a dozen years ago, but had lately been very rarely used, though an old house-keeper and a general servant were always left in charge of the place. The man came back in an hour, and to my annoyance and surprise told me that Miss Rossano had left at an early hour that morning. Lady Rollinson had driven down from London in great apparent haste, and had taken the young lady back to town with her. I lay raging and helpless half the day, not knowing what to do in this unexpected posture of affairs; but at length, being myself unable to move, and unlikely, according to the doctor's statement, to leave my room for a week to come, I resolved, as a last resource, on sending a message to Hinge, on taking him completely into my confidence, and setting him to work to find out in what direction Lady Rollinson had spirited her ward.

It was late in the afternoon before he came, and the good fellow was full of sympathy about my accident, and was disposed to stop and nurse me through the effects of it. But when he had once learned the facts of the case he took up my business with an almost romantic fervor.

“You lay your life, sir,” said Hinge, “I'll find her. There's no go-betweens as 'll get any letter for the young lady out o' my hands. All right, sir; you write the letter, and you trust me to see as it gets to the proper quarter.”

Hinge's devotion and loyalty did me good, and when I had struggled through with the letter and had confided it to his care, I felt easier and more hopeful. Hinge's first movement was up to London, and thence he returned to me within half a dozen hours with the dispiriting intelligence that Lady Rollinson and Violet had left town together an hour before his arrival without leaving any instructions as to the forwarding of letters. Hinge, in his occasional visits to the house, had contrived to get on very excellent terms with a pretty parlor-maid, who had given him voluntarily all the information she had at her command. The only definite bit of news he brought was that the ladies had driven to Euston Station; and though that fact opened up, then, a vista of inquiry far less wide than it would to-day, it was still possible to go to so many places, and I had so little to guide me as to their intentions, that the news left me in a perfect fog of despair, However, Hinge, in obedience to my instructions, went to Euston, and attempted there to find out for what place tickets had been taken; but he came back next morning to report his complete non-success, and was evidently a good deal dashed and dispirited by his own failure.

“Never you mind, sir,” said Hinge, with outside stoutness, “we'll find 'em yet.”

The poor fellow did his best to keep me cheerful, but between bodily pain and suspense, and the sense of my own helplessness, I am afraid he found me rather difficult to manage.

A week had gone by, and I was so far recovered that I could limp about the room. The doctor had found it necessary to warn me more than once that I was retarding my recovery by my own eagerness, and that unless I would consent to absolute repose I might not improbably do myself a life-long injury; but I could feel the injured ankle growing firmer, and I was resolute to try the search next day myself.

Since the complete failure of his enterprise, Hinge had devoted himself entirely to nursing me; and he had been so assiduous in his attentions that I was surprised to find him absent when I called for him. At this time I was liable to be unduly excited by almost anything, and as his absence continued hour after hour, I lashed myself into a condition of wild anxiety. I was convinced that nothing but his interest for my welfare could have kept him away from me so long, and I was certain in my own mind that he had found a clew of some sort. It was seven o'clock in the evening when he came back at last, and my first glance at his face told me that something of importance had transpired.

“Where have you been all day?” I asked.

“Do you think, sir,” Hinge returned, with a face and voice of mystery—“do you think, sir, as you'll be able to get about to-morrow? If you can, I'll show you something.”

“Speak out plainly and at once, there's a good fellow,” I responded.

“Well, sir,” said Hinge, “I've found out something.” He was like a narrow-necked bottle whenever he had anything which he was eager to communicate, and I knew by experience that it was worse than useless to try to hasten the stream he had to give.

“Give me my pipe,” I said, “and get on as fast as you can.”

“I've found out something,” Hinge repeated. “I've been surprised in my time, sir, but I never was knocked so much of a heap as I have been this afternoon.” I lit my pipe and waited for him, controlling impatience as best I might. “Now who in the name of wonder, sir,” said Hinge, “do you think is down here colloguing together?”

“How should I know?” I asked, groaning with impatience.

“I was a-walking up the 'ill, sir,” said Hinge, “towards the Star and Garter this morning, just to get a breath of fresh air, when you told me as I might go out for half an hour. You remember as you'd given me leave, sir?”

“Yes, yes!” I answered. “Go on with your story.”

“Well, sir,” said Hinge, “you might have knocked me over with a feather, for coming down the 'ill arm in arm I see the Honorable Mr. Brunow and that there Sacovitch. They was talking together that interested they didn't notice me. Now Mr. Brunow, 'e knows me, sir, if Sacovitch doesn't, and I thought, after all as had happened, it might be worth my while to see what they was up to and not to be seen myself; so I just slips off the roadway behind a house as is a-build-ing on the right-'and side, and right in front of me they stops. I could hear 'em talking, but I couldn't make out what they was a-saying, till all of a sudden Mr. Brunow says, ''Ere she is,' 'e says, just like that, sir—' 'Ere she is,' as if they was a-waiting for somebody. In 'arf a minute up drives the Baroness Bonnar in a carriage, with a lady a-sitting beside her. The two gentlemen takes off their 'ats, and they all shakes hands together, and then Mr. Brunow and Mr. Sacovitch gets into the carriage, and they all drives off together.” He stopped there with such an air of triumph and perspicacity that I was angry with him. Certainly the news that Brunow was about again was interesting, and might perhaps be useful. But that, being at large, he should be in the companionship of the baroness and the Austrian police spy was not at all by itself surprising, and Hinge had the air of one who had discovered a wonder.

“Is that all?” I asked him.

“No, sir,” said Hinge, “that's only the beginning. They drives off through the park, turning the carriage round directly the gentlemen gets into it. They drove as slow as slow could be, just at a lazy kind of walk, sir; and when they was a little bit of a distance off I ventures to follow 'era. Their four heads was that close together you might have covered them with one hat, but of course I never dare venture near enough to find out what they was a-talking about. They drove about for two or three hours, and I kep' 'em in sight all the while-At one time the Baroness Bonnar and the other lady, they gets down to feed the deer from a paper-bag of biscuits, and the gentlemen strolled about smoking cigars. Then they all four gets together again just as eager and as busy as ever. I could see 'em a-talking and a-arguing like mad, and I was just wild myself to know what it was all about, sir, but of course I couldn't get a-nigh of 'em. Finally,” said Hinge, “after two or three hours, they drives back to the Star and Garter, and goes in there. I found out, sir,” he went on, with a growing air of importance which, considering the triviality of the intelligence he had so far brought me, was hard to bear with—“I found out, sir, as they'd ordered lunch; but I didn't likes to leave 'em without knowing what they was up to, and so I 'ung about, sir. That comes easy, sir,” said Hinge, “to a man as 'as been used to barrack life. I 'ung about, and in the course of an hour or more they comes out very jolly, and drives into the park again, and all the morning's business over again. Well, sir, having gone on so long, I didn't like to be put off; and I determined, as a man might say, to see the finish of it. It come, sir, and it come sooner than I expected. They drives back about four o'clock, just as it was beginning to get towards dusk, and they leaves the carriage at the Star and Garter, and they all walks down the 'ill together, the two ladies in front and the two gentlemen behind. I followed, sir, at a respectful distance, and they roams on quite gay and easy for a good mile and a 'arf, and at last they drops down by the river-side on a little cottage. The dusk was falling fast, sir, and I was able to get nearer to them than I had been. I was within twenty yards of them when they all went in together. If you can get out to-morrow, sir, you can see the cottage, and you'll see where I got to. It's just right over the river, and there's a bit of what they used to call a veranda when I was in Bombay, sir. It's right over the river, the veranda is, and I clomb onto it, and through the Venetian blind I see the 'ole party. I was just a-peeping in when Sacovitch comes along and throws the window open, just as if he'd wanted me to hear what they was a-saying. 'And now,' says he, 'it's all ready, ain't it?'”

I suppose I shifted in my chair at this, and turned round with a look of some eagerness and interest, for Hinge, in his excitement, laid his hand upon my shoulder and begged me not to hurry him.

“Don't you 'urry me, sir, if you please. I'm a coming to it now, and I think before I've done you'll say, sir, as I've got it. 'And now,' says Sacovitch, 'it's all ready, ain't it.' The baroness was standing there close by the table. There was decanters on the table, and a lot of soda-water bottles. She 'elps herself and the other lady to a brandy-and-soda, and says she, just as she let the cork fly, 'Yes,' she says, 'I think you've got it.' I'd 'ave give a guinea at that minute,” said Hinge, “to know what they'd got, but I never thought I should till Mr. Brunow gets up and says, just at that minute, 'Let's see exactly where we stand,' 'e says. 'Very well,' says Sacovitch; 'it's like this. Now listen, all of you,' 'e says, 'for these is the final instructions.'”

I moved again, half rising from my seat, but Hinge waved a protesting hand against me.

“For God's sake, sir, don't 'urry me! I'm at it now, and you shall have it all in half a minute, sir. 'It's like this,' says Sacovitch; 'we know,' he says, 'that Miss Rossano has drawn that forty thousand pounds. What that forty thousand pounds is for,' he says, 'is thoroughly well beknown to all of you. There's Colonel Quorn,' he says—Did you ever 'ear of Colonel Quorn, sir?”

“Yes, yes!” I answered. “Go on with your story.”

“'There's Colonel Quorn,' 'e says, 'lying off Civita Vecchia with the count on board 'is ship with the arms and ammunition.' Now I'm a-coming to it, sir; don't you stop me. Such a wicked plot you never heard in all your life. 'The count's on board,' he says, 'and the arms is on board. The count won't land until he gets both arms and ammunition. Colonel Quorn won't 'hand over neither arms nor ammunition,' he says, 'until he gets that forty thousand pounds. The very minute he gets that money he hands it over to Colonel Quorn, he gets the arms, and he lands. But now, mind you,' says Sacovitch, 'there's this to be considered: the count won't trust his foot on Italian soil, arms or no arms,' he says, 'after what's happened to him, unless he's sure of meeting his friends when he get's there. Now what's got to be done,' says he, 'is to time the delivery of the money. That money mustn't be paid until we've got our people ready. The count won't land until he thinks he's safe, and we must take jolly good care,' says Sacovitch, ''e don't land until we're ready,' he says. 'To be a day too soon on the one side, or a day too late on the other,' he says, 'would wreck us all. And mind you,' he says, 'the Austrian government puts more importance onto this affair than anything else as is happening just at present. They'd sooner pay a million pounds,' he says (I'm giving you his very words, sir)—' they'd sooner pay a million pounds,' he says, 'than miss the Count Rossano.”

In spite of my lame foot I was pacing about the room by this time, altogether too eager to control myself longer to physical quietude.

“And then,” said Hinge, “this come out, and this is what I want to tell you. Says Sacovitch to the other lady: 'You bring your messenger,' says he, 'at this time to-morrow here, and I'll give him his last instructions.'”