The first confusion and alarm which had ensued on Mr. Guyon's sudden illness had subsided, and had been succeeded by the orderly hush of a house in which mortal sickness had assumed its irresistible sway. Mr. Guyon had been carried upstairs to the large bedroom formerly occupied by Katharine, and which he had used since his daughter's marriage. The doctor who had been found and brought to his assistance upon the race-course, and his own physician, for whom the housekeeper had sent at once, before she had despatched the footman to carry the evil tidings to Mrs. Streightley, were busily but silently occupied with the insensible form. The servants, frightened and helpless as servants generally are, were standing about on the stairs and landing-place, ready to obey such orders as were transmitted to them from time to time from the grave gentleman in that awful room, through the medium of the housekeeper. They whispered together solemnly at intervals, and started when the door on which all their attention was fixed opened a little, and Mrs. Clarke beckoned one of the two women towards her. Mr. Stallbrass was in the dingy dining-room, awaiting the award of the solemn tribunal upstairs. He was a kind-hearted fellow enough; and having done so much, "having picked up the poor old boy," he thought, "I may as well see it out." Mrs. Clarke had entreated him to remain--her master's daughter, she said, would be here immediately, and she would want to hear how it happened. So this modern type of Good Samaritan, useful but not officious, and rather sheepish about his good nature, stayed. The rain, which had begun to fall just as they were getting Mr. Guyon away from the race-course, was now falling in cold, pitiless, ceaseless streams, and the early darkness of a winter's evening had added its gloom to the scene. The gas had been lighted in the dining-room of Mr. Guyon's house, but the window-shutters were unclosed, and Stallbrass walked disconsolately up and down from the door to the window, stopping each time as he reached the latter boundary to look out into the damp dreariness of the street. His spirits were beginning to flag under the monotony of this occupation, and he was seeking relief by furtive snatches of reading--odd paragraphs in the Field for last week, and little bits of the current Punch--when Mrs. Clarke came in, looking very pale and scared.
"Well," said Stallbrass abruptly, but kindly, "what news is there? Has the lady come? She can't have come, though, or I should have seen her."
"No, sir, she has not come; and I dread she won't while the breath is in her father, which it's all it is, as far as I can understand the doctors."
"Really! I'm very sorry--poor old gentleman! Has he not recovered consciousness at all, then?"
"No, sir, not a bit--he has groaned a few times, and then they thought he were coming to, but he didn't--but there, sir, there's a carriage--there's Mrs. Streightley----" And the housekeeper ran excitedly out, followed by Mr. Stallbrass, and threw open the door, through which a gust of wind and a cold dash of rain drove into the hall.
Stallbrass saw a tall young lady, whose face, pale and agitated, struck him even then as being one of the most beautiful he had ever seen,---who passed into the room he had just left, followed by the housekeeper. He stood in the hall, the noise of wind and rain outside mingling with the stamping of the horses, the jingling of their harness, and the sound of the women's voices.
"What is all this, Clarke? is it true?" asked Katharine, as she hurriedly untied her bonnet and flung it down, and threw off her pelisse of velvet and fur.
"Yes, ma'am, it's all true. But O, why did you not come sooner? James has been more than an hour gone to fetch you."
"I was out--they had to find me," she said, in the same hurried tone. "What do they say it is? Let me see the doctor. Let me go up stairs."
"Yes, ma'am, directly," said Mrs. Clarke, down whose rosy and unrefined cheeks tears were beginning to flow. "But first you must see the gentleman that brought him home; he knows all about it; he breakfasted with master this morning. If you please, sir,--Lord ha' mercy, if he hasn't been left out in the hall!"
Katharine stepped hastily towards the door, as Mrs. Clarke, with many voluble apologies, brought Mr. Stallbrass in. She thanked him briefly, and entreated him to tell her all that had happened. She listened to his story with painful eagerness, turning paler and paler as he went on; and when she had heard it all, she thanked him again.
"And now I must go to him," she said, and held out her hand to the stranger.
"I will wait a little longer, if you will allow me, for the chance of a more favourable report," he said.
"Do so," she returned. "My carriage is at your disposal. Tell them to come back here, Clarke, when they have taken this gentleman home." Then she again bade him farewell and left him.
He walked up and down the room for half an hour, at the end of which time the housekeeper came downstairs again;--this time crying unrestrainedly.
"There's not a bit of hope, sir; but they think he will live for some hours; and they hope he will get his senses back, and speak to his daughter, or at least look at her before he dies."
"I hope so, I am sure," said Mr. Stallbrass solemnly.
"I was to ask your name, if you please, sir," said Mrs. Clarke with some hesitation.
"Certainly; there is my card," and he laid one on the table. "I shall call in the morning." Then he took up his hat and went away, having declined the offer of the carriage. Mrs. Clarke ordered the coachman to return to Portland Place, adding that his mistress would remain with her father. "I wonder your master hasn't been here afore this," said the housekeeper in conclusion.
"Master's out of town; worse luck!" was the sympathetic answer of the footman, as he jumped up beside the coachman, and they drove off.
Mrs. Clarke went slowly up the long staircase to the room about which such awful suspense and interest gathered, unmindful of the card which lay upon the table in the dining-room, and was swept away with other rubbish afterwards and forgotten; and when she stood beside Katharine by the dying man's bedside, all remembrance of the stranger had faded out of the minds of both.
The dying man! Yes, the fiat had gone forth--he was dying. Ned Guyon, the ci-devant jeune homme par excellence, the trifler by vocation and profession, the man of all others with whom it was impossible to associate an idea of solemnity, the dandy in dress, the roué in morals, the persifleur in religion, the man in consideration of whom it would have been particularly pleasant to disembarrass the mind of belief in present and future accountability,--this man was dying. Not slowly, with time and opportunity for reflection, for repentance, for "setting his house in order;" but quickly, dumbly, as a stricken animal might die--as men die in whom the brain is killed first, and the machine has but a little while to labour on afterwards. His daughter saw it all, realised it all in a minute, even as she crossed the threshold of the room she had never entered since her wedding-day; and there mingled with the horror and anguish of the moment a sudden sense of recognition, and yet of strangeness, as she saw, without looking at them, in the inexplicable vividness of perception which comes in moments of strong emotion, the "soulless things" she had lived amongst for so long in the old life gone for ever. And here was another life going away for ever. She did not doubt it for one instant; and when the physician, who had known her from her girlhood, gravely took her hand, and whispered to her that there was no hope, the dying man lying insensible to any sight or sound, she shuddered strongly from head to foot, but she did not weep, or shrink from the touch or the voice.
From the senseless figure upon the bed, over which the strange doctor was stooping, his fingers busy with hopeless investigations at the heart and the wrist--from the ghastly distorted face, so much more terrible, with its rouge and cosmetics, its wig and its pearl powder all removed, than any face of reverend old age, however worn and wasted, can ever be--from the limp, bluish hand lying upon the coverlet, with the heavy seal-ring and its pretentious blazon, with the showy golden buttons hanging from the loosened sleeve--Katharine's haggard gaze roamed over the room almost unconsciously. It was in most respects the same as when she had inhabited it; but several of her father's special belongings had been brought from the den, and occupied the place of the feminine properties dispossessed. Her dressing-table, none too large for Mr. Guyon's requirements, was in its accustomed place, and the long glass had not been moved. But the writing-table she had been accustomed to use was there no longer, and in its place, in the recess beside the fireplace, stood a large cabinet, whose heavy doors closed over a range of wide, shallow shelves, and also shut in a desk. A basket, half full of scraps of torn paper, stood between the burly carved legs of this old-fashioned piece of furniture; and in front of it was the well-worn red-leather arm-chair which Katharine remembered from her babyhood. The clothes which had been taken off the insensible man were lying in a heap over the back of this chair--bright in colour, juvenile in cut, and painful to see, when one glanced from them to their wearer of a few hours ago. A bunch of keys had fallen from the gaping coat-pocket upon the ground, where it lay with a few crumpled papers, a card of the races being conspicuous among them.
"I believe I can do no more," said the strange doctor, as at length he relinquished his hopeless task. Then the two left the room together, and after a little Katharine's old friend returned. By this time she had drawn a chair to the bedside, and was seated there, gazing fixedly on the rigid face, which looked as though death itself, when it should come, would not seal it more utterly up from all impressions of the outer world. She was lost in thought, and was quite passive while the doctor gave his final directions to the housekeeper, who was to remain all night with the dying man. She understood him to say that he must go home now (he lived close by), but was to be summoned if any change took place. He gave a few simple directions, which the two women could carry out, and which were of a merely perfunctory character, and designed to relieve them by giving them occupation, rather than the patient, for whom there was nothing more to be done until the undertaker's turn should have arrived; and he went away, whispering to Katharine that if he were not sent for sooner, he would be with her at seven on the following morning.
The night wore on, and Katharine and Mrs. Clarke kept their terrible watch. They were for the most part quite silent; the one in the chair beside the bed, the other seated at the fireside, and coming from time to time to gaze disconsolately upon the dying man. No weariness came upon Katharine as the hours crept on. The strong excitement kept her up; and as she administered the few cares of which her father's condition allowed, the enforced composure of her manner did not break down. The silence of the room was awful, as silence under such circumstances always is; the clock upon the chimneypiece ticked loudly, the showy gold watch, with its trumpery bunch of trinkets, which had been deposited upon the dressing-table, also ticked on, till late in the small hours, when it stopped. The fire burned low and dim, and flickered upon the housekeeper's weary figure in the deep arm-chair, and upon the ribbons of her cap, as her head nodded abruptly forward, in the uneasy snatches of broken slumber. Sometimes a little flame sprung out and glimmered upon the silken folds of Katharine's rich dress, upon the gold bracelet of the arm laid upon the bed, upon the pale stern face keeping its wakeful watch.
There were times during those dread hours when the dying man groaned heavily; and then the two women would bend eagerly over him, using the prescribed restoratives, and trying to discern some symptom of consciousness, even of pain; but it never came. Ned Guyon had spoken his last words--had experienced his last emotion in this world; and what they were has already been told.
It was about four in the morning; and the cold dismal chill peculiar to that ghastly hour had stolen over the room; and Katharine had begun to shiver and yawn under its influence. Mrs. Clarke woke with a guilty start, softly raked the fire together and replenished it, and, in answer to Katharine's beckoning finger, approached the bed.
"There's no change--no, no change," said Mrs. Clarke; and she shook her head gravely.
"Are you sure?" said Katharine; "I thought his face looked colder and grayer. Don't you think the eyelids are heavier and more nearly shut?"
Mrs. Clarke took a candle, and held it close to the wan face. There was no change perceptible to her; and the "muffled-drum" beat of the heart told of life still lingering.
"No, my dear," said the old woman compassionately; "he is not gone yet, nor going; but Lor' ha' mercy, how cold you are! why, you're shivering. I'll go and fetch a teapot and a kettle, and make some tea. No; the kitchen-fire is alight. If you don't mind being alone, I'll make it downstairs; it's quicker done; and I am sure you want it."
"I do want it, Clarke," said Katharine, shuddering. "The dawn is coming, I suppose; and the cold strikes into my blood. I shall be glad of the tea."
Mrs. Clarke went away on her errand. Katharine, all her senses quickened, heard her step upon each stair until she reached the hall. A strange, lonely, nervous feeling came over her, and she rose from her seat by the bedside, and went over to the fireplace. As she stood idly by the chimneypiece, an unusually strong nicker of the flame shone upon something bright which lay upon the ground. Katharine stooped, and picked up a bunch of keys and a handful of crumpled papers. She laid the keys upon the mantelshelf, and mechanically turned over the papers. The card of the races she threw into the fire, the others she smoothed out; and finding some memoranda apparently containing calculations among them, she thought it would be well to put them away safely. With the intention of doing so, she took up the keys again, and opened the heavy door of the oak cabinet.
Mr. Guyon, like many men devoted to the business of pleasure, was very orderly in his arrangements, and kept all his papers with an enviable degree of precision. The long shallow drawers of the cabinet had each its neat parchment label, indicating the contents; and the lowest of the range bore the superscription, "miscellaneous letters." Katharine pulled the pendent brass ring attached to this drawer with a little more force than was necessary to open it. The drawer slid out easily, and the whole of its contents were exposed to her view. At the back, in the right-hand corner, lay a small packet, slipped into an elastic band, on which her quick eye caught her own name, written in a hand she knew well--her own name, as it had been--"Miss Guyon"--and a date scrawled in the corner. The blood rushed hotly into Katharine's face as she took the packet out of the drawer and carried it to the fireplace, where she examined it by the light of a [xxx ?] lamp. It consisted of four letters: the uppermost that on which her name was written: the undermost was placed in the bands so that the address did not show; but a line was written on xxxx Mr. Guyon's hand--"shown to R.S."
Katharine sat down in the chair vacated by the housekeeper and deliberated. In her hand she held a packet of papers, which she felt concerned her deeply. Here was a letter in Gordon Frere's hand--a letter whose date was that of the very date which had begun her hopeless watching and waiting, in the time which, until this moment, had seemed so far, so illimitably past, but now in an instant was brought near again, and revived in all its pain and anger. Here was a letter which must have been written that day when he had sent her the music and his card, as she had believed without a word. A vague sense of treachery, something which led her intuitively to an approximate suspicion of the truth, came into Katharine's mind. She glanced at the bed, and turned away trembling. What was she about to learn? Something, she felt instinctively, which must change all her life. Then she drew out the note directed to "Miss Guyon," and read it. It was that which Gordon Frere had written to Katharine, from Cramer's, after he had left Charles Yeldham, with the intention of starting by the next train, on his pilgrimage of hope, to his father's rectory. It was a bright gay note, with a pleasant allusion to their talk about the music; a strong expression of disappointment about Katharine's not being at the ball; an intimation that his absence would be as short as he could make it; and that he hoped to see her immediately on his return. Katharine dropped the hand that held the note heavily into her lap; had she received it, what might she have been now? An undefined fear stole over her; this was foul play; this letter had been intercepted. What did it mean? She drew out the second in order, and opened it. Again, a letter from Gordon Frere; again, a letter to her--a passionate, tender, pleading, frank, hopeful letter--such a letter as a girl might well be glad and proud to receive from the man she loved; such a letter as Katharine had dreamed of, had hoped for, had longed for, in the days that were gone. It was that which Gordon had written from his father's house in the full flush of his delight, and the perfect but not presumptuous assurance of her love. Deadly cold and sickness crept over Katharine as she read this letter; her limbs grew heavy, her sight grew dim, her head grew dizzy. "I must be near fainting," she thought; "and they are not all read." She forced herself to rise from her chair, and went to the dressing-table, where she found water and eau-de-cologne. She drank a glassful of the mixture, and then returned to her task. All this time--it was in reality only a few minutes--the insensible form upon the bed lay motionless and silent.
The third letter was a short one, also written by Gordon Frere, and addressed to Mr. Guyon. It was a straightforward, manly letter, in which the writer acknowledged his unworthiness of the blessing he asked with more sincerity than such matter-of-course acknowledgments usually convey, and set forth his modest confidence in Miss Guyon's consent to become his wife. Gordon stated the prospects then opening upon him; and finally, in accordance with his father's wish, formally requested Mr. Guyon's permission to address his daughter. (The old-fashioned punctilio of the good rector had helped the unscrupulous schemer considerably, as the virtues of good men are not seldom found to aid the devices of knaves.)
The fourth letter, which was endorsed with the words "shown to R S.," and was the last contained in the packet, was in Mr. Guyon's handwriting. As his daughter read it, all the truth revealed itself to her; all the baseness of which she had been the victim stood in its revolting nakedness before her eyes. As she read the flowery sentences in which Mr. Guyon condoled with his "dear young friend," and pitied himself for being the medium of so painful a communication, a grasp seemed to tighten upon her throat and to press down her heart: still she read on,--read that her father had written, on her behalf, to the effect that, feeling she had been so unfortunate as to have conveyed a totally unfounded impression to Mr. Frere, she had shrunk from a personal explanation, and felt sure that, when Mr. Frere should know that she was engaged to Mr. Streightley, and their marriage was to take place very shortly, he would excuse her making a written one;--read that, though Mr. Guyon hoped their future friendship would be quite unaltered, he trusted Mr. Frere would abstain from any communication, either personal or by letter, for the present, as such would agitate Miss Guyon, and cause much unpleasantness; and that she and her father united in every good wish for Mr. Frere's future welfare.
Katharine read this terrible letter over many times--not before she understood and believed the revelation it made, but before she got the reality of it into her mind, before it connected itself with her own self, and showed her the past and present laid utterly waste. It was her father who had done this,--her father! who had been kind to her, too, after a fashion--her father! Ay, and her husband!
Shown to R.S. Shown to Robert Streightley--shown to the rich man who had bought her. Well, she had often told herself, bitterly enough, that it was a bargain, a purchase; but now it was more--it was a theft! Stolen from the man who loved her! made to believe him false, duped--wretchedly, ignominiously duped! Good God! how was she to bear this knowledge? Shown to R.S. There were the words, the fatal, damning proofs which convicted the two men who were her nearest friends, her only protectors, of the foulest conspiracy that ever two rascals concocted against an unhappy woman. She crushed the letters in her clenched hand, and rose to her feet. She had taken a step forward, her eyes flaming, her face white and fixed,--far more changed than by the earlier, weaker shock of this dreadful night,--when the door was softly opened, and the housekeeper came in, carrying a trayful of tea-things. At the sight of Katharine's face she set the tray down, and said, in a hurried whisper:
"Were you coming to call me? Is he worse?"
"I--I don't know," stammered Katharine; "I think so."
"Poor dear!" said the woman compassionately; "no wonder you are frightened. I shouldn't have left you alone."
Then she bent down to look closely at the patient. Closer and closer still: she felt the hand, the heart; she touched the chill forehead. Katharine stood still and watched her, quite silent, the papers in her clenched hand covered by the folds of her dress. The woman's touch suddenly became more reverent as she raised the chin and made the passive blue lips meet, as she pressed her fingers on the half-shut eyelids, and closed them over the sightless eyes. When she had drawn the sheet over the still, stiffening face, she turned to the dead man's daughter, and said,
"Come away, my dear. It's all over. I must send for the doctor, as he told me."
* * * * *
The wintry sun had been up for many hours when Mrs. Streightley returned to her own house from that in which her father lay dead. She had sent for Mr. Guyon's solicitor, and had a long interview with him in the dingy dining-room. She had been wonderfully calm and collected, the servants said; but she had not reentered her father's room, though "the corpse is laid out beautiful, to be sure," said James to the coachman from Portland Place, while that functionary awaited his mistress, or her orders. She came out, looking pale and absent; and she took no notice of the sympathising looks of her maid when she reached home. She went at once to her room, declined all attendance, and directed that she was not to be disturbed.
The servants wondered whether their master had been sent for; had James been sent to the telegraph office, did coachman know? Coachman knew nothing about it; but the lawyer was there,--perhaps he had sent for master. And then they discussed the death, and the dead man, with much freedom and candour.
At about two o'clock in the afternoon the footman, doing his turn of duty by looking out of window in the hall of Mr. Streightley's house, was surprised by seeing his mistress come downstairs in her bonnet and cloak, with her veil down, and carrying a square parcel in her hand, "which it looked like a box done up in paper," the man said afterwards, when questioned concerning the circumstance.
"Open the door, William, if you please," said Mrs. Streightley.
The man obeyed, wondering.
"I am going to Queen Anne Street. I don't require the carriage," said Katharine. And she passed out of the door, and out of the footman's sight.
While the events recorded in the last chapter had been taking place, Robert Streightley had been down to Middlemeads to give the necessary orders for the immediate reduction of the establishment there. It was an act over which a great many people would have been sillily sentimental, but one which affected Robert Streightley very little indeed. The stately old mansion had never been his home, though it had contained his wife and his household gods; he had never had the same regard for it as for the dingy Brixton villa, where every thing was so old and mean and common. Even when he first bought the place, and inhabited it in the early days of his wedded life, long before the falseness of his position and the chance of some day being compelled to return to his old and quiet mode of life had dawned on him, he had felt uncomfortable and out of place at Middlemeads. But latterly, as speculation after speculation "went wrong" in the City, and as scarcely a week passed without the addition of some new improvement, the importation of some fresh luxury by Katharine's orders, the negative feelings with which he had regarded that estate, for the possession of which he was so much envied and hated, grew into positive dislike; he remembered that the first time he had seen the place was the day before he had had that fatal conference with Mr. Guyon, and he began to associate most of his troubles with the name of Middlemeads.
He would have sold the place at once but for two reasons; the first and chiefest of which was, that Katharine took great pleasure and interest in it--more pleasure and interest than she had taken in any thing else during her married life; the other, that the sale of his country estate, which, with the county people who visited there and the swells whom he entertained, had been so much talked of among his friends in the City, would be a confession of weakness which Robert Streightley shrunk from meeting. Besides, all would probably come right very soon; the house of Streightley and Son was too firmly established not to be able to stand a shock or two; and by reducing the establishment at Middlemeads he should effect a considerable saving, while the sale of a portion of the valuable timber on the estate would bring in a sum of ready money, of which he was greatly in need. This done, he drove off to the railway, caught the up-train, and was on his way to London.
He was alone in the railway carriage; there was no old gentleman rustling a newspaper, no young gentleman playing with his watch-chain, no humorous children to trample on his feet,--nothing to disturb the train of thought into which he fell. By no means a pleasant train of thought, for a dead weight was at his heart, and he felt a horrible sense of something--he knew not what--but some calamity hanging over him. Something, some trifle had reminded him of the day on which Mr. Guyon had told him of Frere's proposal for Katharine's hand, and now he could not get the subject out of his head: the words seemed to ring in his ears; and when he closed his eyes, that peculiar look with which Mr. Guyon had suggested the suppression of Frere's letter seemed to rise before him. What had his life been since then? He had married Katharine! O yes, she was his wife; but had he ever obtained from her one grain of confidence, one look of love? Had not his business transactions gone wrong ever since? Had he not suffered under perpetual qualms of conscience ever since he became a silent confederate in that monstrous fraud of which Katharine, his wife, was one of the victims? In his case, at least, retribution had not been long delayed; the first mutterings of the avenging storm had been long since heard, and now something told him that the storm itself was close at hand. He would welcome it in all its fury, though it stripped him of all his wealth and left him to begin life anew, if it only could bear away on its wings the barrier existing between Katharine and himself; if it only enabled him to prove to her his worship of her; if it only raised in her for him one tithe of the love with which he regarded her.
It was a dark, dull, damp evening when Robert Streightley alighted from the cab in which he had driven from the railway, and knocked at his own door in Portland Place. The enormously stout middle-aged man, who for a by no means poor wage consented to pass his life in alternately sitting in and getting out of a porter's chair, like a leathern bee-hive, was usually sufficiently on the alert to recognise his master's rap, and give him speedy admission; but on this occasion Mr. Streightley had to knock three times, and when the porter opened the door there was a strange odd look on his face, which made his master think he had been drinking. Robert passed by him quickly and went into the library, where he rang the bell. It was answered by William, the footman who had opened the door for Katharine when she left the house.
"Is your mistress in the Cedar-room? is there any one with her?"
"Missus is not in the Cedar-room, sir, and there is no pusson with her, as I knows of. Missus ain't at home, sir."
"O, very well. What time did she order the carriage to fetch her?"
"The carriage isn't ordered at all, sir. Missus said she wouldn't want the carriage."
"Do you know where your mistress is?"
"She said she was goin' to Queen Anne Street, sir."
"Very good. I'll go across myself and bring her home."
"Begging your pardon, sir, I don't think you'll find missus at Queen Anne Street, sir."
"No! what do you mean?"
"Why, sir, Mamzell Augustus went across about six o'clock, sir, to know whether missus was comin' home to dress, sir, and they said at Queen Anne Street that she'd never been there since she left in the morning."
"Never been there? and--O, she's probably gone out with Mr. Guyon."
"Good Lord, sir!" said the footman, startled out of all propriety; "I forgot, sir, you didn't know--the hold gent's dead!"
"Dead? Mr. Guyon dead?"
"Yes, sir; had a fit at Croydon races last evening, sir, and died hearly this morning. Beg pardon, sir, shall I tell Anderson to bring you a glass of brandy, sir?"
"Eh? No, thank you, William--yes--you may, if you please. I feel--" and Robert Streightley clutched at a chair near him, and sunk into it, with trembling limbs and beating heart.
Mr. Anderson, the staid butler, brought a small decanter of brandy, filled a liqueur-glass, and handed it to his master, whose hand shook so that the glass rattled against his teeth. After the discreet domestic had withdrawn, Robert Streightley sat in his chair, glaring straight before him, revolving in his mind a hundred subjects, all equally dismal. Katharine's absence, first of all, what could that mean? what could have induced it? was it in any way connected with Mr. Guyon's death? Mr. Guyon's death, poor man! not one with whom he had any thing in common except--that horrible conspiracy always cropping up! Mr. Guyon dead? well, then, there was an end to the chance of any betrayal of that mystery; he might rest secure that--Good God! where could his wife have gone to? Could she have learned--no; that was impossible. Still, why had she left his house, without leaving any trace of her whereabouts? Lady Henmarsh was not in town; but she might have gone to some other friend's house, where she could receive that womanly kindness and consolation which, in the first shock of her grief, her heart sought for. It was absurd in him to have imagined that, under such circumstances, she would remain in her own house alone, without a soul to speak to in confidence. She would return soon; he would wait up to receive her.
So through the long hours of that night, having dismissed the household to rest, Robert Streightley sat in his library, the door of which opened on the hall, in eager anticipation of his wife's return. The sharp ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece seemed running a race with the solemn ticking of the clock in the hall; the rumble of the cabs outside, the footfalls of the passers-by, fell with monotonous solemnity on his ear; the dead silence at the back of the house, broken only by the wailing of dissipated cats, oppressed him; and the keen anguish of his own thoughts made him occasionally clasp his forehead and utter some ejaculation; but still he sat there, looking out into the dimly-lighted hall, and waiting for his wife's return. That Mr. Guyon was dead, had died suddenly and in a ghastly manner, he yet scarcely realised: he had heard the fact, and that was all; he had not thought over it; his thoughts were entirely occupied with the fact of his wife's absence. To account for this he had now no possible satisfactory theory. Had she been persuaded to remain at the house of any friend to whom she might have gone, a message to that effect would surely have been sent to Portland Place. The shock of her father's death might have been too much for her; and in walking to the house of some friend she might have been seized with illness; at that moment she might be lying unknown in some hospital, or--and as the thought came across him Robert Streightley started to his feet, his mind half made up to sally forth at once, and set the detective force at work to discover Katharine's whereabouts. But before he had advanced a few steps his cautious common-sense came to his aid. He was a weak, hot-headed fool, and his usual powers of reasoning had been, he argued to himself, a little impaired by the mental strain to which during the last few weeks he had been subjected. Nothing was known yet of his wife's disappearance. Even to the household their mistress's absence was a mere subject for discussion over the supper-beer, where no one had a substantial theory to broach, but all arrived at a general conclusion, originally propounded by the cook, that "master not being at home, she'd gone away, poor soul, to some other friend's nigh by; and not expectin' him, they'd kep her, as was only right and jest when she was in trouble." If he were to raise a hue and cry, it would become at once a public scandal; and from a public scandal, from the mere thought of the knowledge that his friends were discussing his domestic affairs, Robert Streightley shrunk in horror and dismay. No; he would take no step, at least for the next few hours; morning must bring the solution of the mystery, and for that solution he would wait. Arrived at this determination, he turned out his lamp, and crept up stairs to bed.
To bed, but not to sleep. For hours he lay tossing on his hot pillow, racked with dismal doubt. Where was his wife? To whom had she gone in her time of trouble? That she had not remained to share her grief with him would have been, under other circumstances, a sufficient cause of dissatisfaction for her husband; but Robert, calmly reviewing--as calmly as he could, poor fellow--his real position in the dull dead watches of the night, was forced to acknowledge to himself that there had never been any confidence between him and Katharine, which would warrant him in looking for such a display of affection. On the other hand, a doubt of her having infringed the strictest rules of propriety never crossed his mind. Never, during the whole course of her married life, had she given him occasion for the slightest suspicion of jealousy. With all her undeniable beauty, with all the attention she perforce commanded, she had not shown the smallest symptom of coquetry. If she had not come heart-whole to him, if hers had not been a love-match, if he had not been the beau ideal of her girlish fancy, by no act of hers could that have become patent to the ever-watchful, always censorious world. Where, then, was she gone? Her position was so peculiar, even to Robert's unworldly view; she had lived so self-contained a life since her marriage, that she could scarcely be said to have any special friends. Acquaintances she had by the score; but one does not go to acquaintances in the time of trouble; while her quondam chaperone, Lady Henmarsh, her only intimate, was away, and Mrs. Stanbourne, from whom she might justly have sought consolation, was far from England. Where could she have gone? Still revolving this question in his mind, Robert, just as day was dawning, fell into a fitful feverish sleep, haunted by horrible dreams, in which he and Katharine, the dead man and Gordon Frere, all played conspicuous parts, being mixed up in that dreadfully grotesque manner only possible under dream-influence.
He seemed only to have closed his eyes--in reality he had been asleep but a couple of hours--when he was aroused by a knocking at the door, and the voice of his servant, who, according to usual custom, had brought the post-letters to his bedroom door. In an instant Streightley sprang up, all the events of the previous day--Guyon's death, Katharine's absence, his own misery--all flashing upon him at once, opened the door, and there, on the top of the little heap, saw a letter in Katharine's well-known hand. He seized it instantly, was about to tear it open, and stopped--stopped, for his heart was beating loudly, and there was a choking sensation in his throat, and a film over his eyes. He sat down on a chair, placed the letter on the table beside him, and passed his hand over his brow. The whole room reeled before him; he felt that he must, and yet that he dared not break that seal. The answer to the question that had been tormenting him all night, the key to the enigma of his wife's departure, lay before him, and yet he hesitated to avail himself of it. He remained irresolute for some minutes; then he took up the letter quietly, opened it, and read as follows:
"This is the last time I shall ever hold communication with you, and therefore it is well that I should be explicit. By the merest accident I have become acquainted with the plot by which the whole of my life was maimed and perverted, my happiness blighted, my feelings trampled on, and my girlish pride mortified and humbled. In that plot were two conspirators; one who basely sold an honest, trusting, loving girl--his daughter; the other, who, by the mere accidental advantage of his wealth, was enabled to buy that girl for his wife. By neither, save as a mere matter of barter, something to be bought and sold, was I, that girl, considered. One of the plotters has been removed beyond the reach of my vengeance, and I shall take care to prevent the other from any opportunity of further villainy, so far as I am concerned. I have turned my back upon my father's corpse, and I turn my back on your house. I leave behind me all the price at which you purchased me; I take nothing with me but my mother's jewels, to which I suppose I have a right, and the unalterable determination which I have formed; and that is, in this world or the next, living or dying, never to forgive you, Robert Streightley, for your share in my degradation, and never to look upon your face again.--K.S."