They were soft, silken, well-rounded things; and they showed no least impression of anybody having recently rested on them.

“I’m off, sir,” said the man. He went scrambling for the boat, white to the lips. Once secure in his seat he looked up. “I understand now,” he said, “what he was a’trying to escape from. There’s more somewhere here than meets the eye. Come along, sir, in God’s name!”

“No,” said Gilead. “Go you, while I wait, and fetch assistance. Supposing that we both went, and somebody not knowing were to board here and look in?”

Merciful and considerate for others as always, he set himself resolutely to endure his vigil.

* * * *

There was a strange scene at the inquest, which led to its postponement sine die. The body was identified, as many people will remember, and the fact reaffirmed, for all that it is worth, that a first-rate actor may be a tenth-rate man. This man had led the double, the quadruple life—a brutal, worthless creature, whose crowning grace had been his ending it voluntarily. He was married and had children. Fortunately for them he had played, and he died, under a nom-de-théâtre.

But the odd thing at the inquest was the conflict of evidence as to his latest victim. Even local witnesses, when questioned as to her local existence, faltered and contradicted themselves. They fancied that they had seen some one with him, on this day or the other, but, when confronted with the oath, they would not swear. It would have been comical if not so tragical.

It was the great London philanthropist—by then made known and suitably reverenced—who caused the final sensation in the Coroner’s Court. Gilead had risen to account for his presence on the scene; he had described how, in the interests of his Agency, he had traced a very vilely-used young woman to the neighbourhood, with the purpose of redeeming her if possible from the shame, and saving her from the misery to which she appeared committed. And there he had hesitated and stopped. It had been unnecessary and quite useless to quote the supernatural raison d’être of his mission; but how was he going to deal with the illusion, if illusion it were, which had lured him to a pursuit otherwise unjustified? His companion on the occasion had already wavered, like the others, in his evidence: there might have been someone, he had ventured vacantly—he was not sure—the sun in his eyes, and so forth. And then even he, Gilead, had found himself unaccountably wondering if the apparition might not have been after all but a bugbear of the suicide’s own haunted conscience, hypnotically suggested to others. He answered a remark from the coroner, abstractedly looking down:—

“I believe that the young woman in question joined the deceased on the date specified—my information justifies the assumption—” and then he had glanced up, given a very palpable start, and continued mechanically, like one repeating a lesson: “I believe that he met her by appointment, that he took her to the boat, and that during the next two days she was often seen with him, in the flesh, upon the water. I believe that during the night of the third day he murdered her, and sunk her body in the deep pool under the houseboat, and that it lies there now. That is my opinion, sir—I cannot explain why—and I give it to you to act upon as you think fit.”

Exitus acta probat. Here was the sensation, and with every incitement, on the initiative of such a witness, to prosecute it to the end.

That end makes a well-known chapter in criminal history. The inquest was adjourned, the river dragged, and the body of the unfortunate girl actually found as suggested. She had been shot in the breast, lashed firmly to a heavy iron bar, and dropped overboard.

What provocation underlay the desperate horrible deed, whether it had been premeditated or committed in a moment of uncontrollable frenzy, will never be known.

Nor was it known for long, to any but himself and one other, what had inspired Gilead to that tragic statement. The explanation shall be given in his own words, as uttered, in awe and solemnity, to a young lady:—

“I had been trying to argue it out in my own mind; I had fallen into a state of odd moral confusion, when, looking up, I saw her. She stood beside the Coroner facing me, as she had stood that night in the office, and, as her lips moved without sound, I simply took from them and repeated the purport of their message. The moment I had uttered it she was gone.

“I spoke and walked for long afterwards as in a shattering, a tremendous dream. I hope and pray that such an experience can come to a man only once in his lifetime. Her spirit, have you realized, must have sprung to us—to you—for help, on the instant that his intention betrayed itself?”

“And afterwards?” whispered Vera. “That nature of hers, so persistent, so vindictive! O, wicked as he was, my whole soul shudders for him!”

CHAPTER XI.
THE QUEST OF THE VEILED WOMAN

No one instituting a philanthropic mission could have been less adequately equipped for it in one way than Gilead himself. Beginning by presuming in all others an integrity as pure as his own, he had from the first to put force upon his nature to cultivate that suspicion of motive, that moral self-guardedness, which are the first essentials of practical benevolence. He had, in short, in recognizing the eternal human duplicities, to learn to distinguish finely between cant and sincerity; and he was not always successful. Practice and experience did much for him; yet there were occasions still when guile found the opportunity to encounter him triumphantly on his emotional side.

Such was the case in the affair which we have entitled as above—a quest which he could never recall without humiliation, and the memory of which made him feel sore for years afterwards. But it is true that he was hit, in its connection, on quite another than the humanitarian side; and it was that wound, no doubt, which most rankled.

He himself saw and interviewed ‘Suppliant’ during the temporary, and unfortunate, absence of Miss Halifax, who, by his desire, had undertaken the case. He entrusted many such to her now, especially where feminine appeals were concerned. It seems slanderous to apply so shrewd a term to those soft and seductive orbs, but indeed the amanuensis had a ‘lynx eye’ for the shams and hypocrisies of her own sex. Without doubt her native perspicacity had saved her employer from the clutches of many a plausible impostor miscalled of the weaker vessel.

‘Suppliant’—she introduced herself hurriedly, diffidently by the name—entered upon Gilead in one of the unguarded moments. He was impressed by her appearance at once; it was all that it should have been under the circumstances—quiet and unaffected, though with a suggestion of strong repressed emotion in the thickly-veiled face. She seemed a young woman, she was certainly a graceful and slender, as her sober frock betrayed. It was of black, and just sufficiently faded to confess long usage. There was a heavy trimming of beads at the skirt hem, which weighed down its folds prettily about the tips of a couple of little shoes, worn but shapely. The long motor veil which embraced her hat and neck was of a heliotrope colour, not so diaphanous as to reveal, yet enough to suggest the entreaty of two large plaintive eyes.

But the attractive, the moving thing about her was her voice—so soft, so musical, that, before she had half uttered her prayer, it was granted.

Gilead, as he placed a chair for the visitor, apologized in his courteous way.

“I am so sorry. The lady, Miss Halifax, who has made your case her interest, is unhappily engaged elsewhere for the moment. If you would prefer to await her return—”

The visitor made a little distressed movement.

“I did not know,” she said, hesitating—there was that low huskiness in her voice which seems to caress—“I did not know. Since receiving your letter—I heard, I have been told—are you not Mr Balm?”

“Yes, I am Mr Balm.”

“O, I don’t know what to do!” she whispered. “It is so urgent, and they say about you—”

“Nothing unflattering, I trust,” said Gilead smiling, seeing that she paused for an expression.

“O, no, no!” answered the visitor. “But only that one appealing to you—to you above all—may expect—”

Again she stopped. “Reason, I hope,” said Gilead gently. “I try to practise it. Sympathy and help, unless given in reason, are likely to defeat their own objects, are they not?”

“Yes,” said the visitor forlornly; and she seemed to droop a little.

“Does that discourage you?” asked the young man.

She raised her head.

“Is it in reason,” she said, “to expect one, however merciful, however pitiful, to save another from the just consequences of his own misdeeds?”

“That depends,” said Gilead, “whether or not mercy to the sinner entails a wrong to the sinned against.”

She sighed, and whispered: “I do not know—I do not know. If you will only tell me?”

“You have been informed of us, it seems,” said Gilead. “You will have learnt, in that case, of the inviolately confidential nature of our mission, and of the necessity it is under of demanding truth for its first desideratum. You will answer my questions or not as you please; but you must not be offended when I tell you that it is impossible for us to move in any matter unless in the clear light of understanding. Am I to ask, then?”

“O, if you will!” she murmured.

“Very well,” said Gilead—“your name?”

“It is—Nightingale; Mrs Nightingale.”

He bowed his head gravely. “I have your advertisement in mind. I recall also your allusion to someone’s misdeeds. Was your choice of the male pronoun accidental or intentional?”

“It was intentional.”

“Am I to know to whom it referred?”

“It referred to my husband.”

He was very concerned for her. She appeared to feel acutely the shame of her admission.

“I am sorry,” he said, “sincerely sorry to have to cause you this pain. But the surgical knife, relentless as it seems, is often the shortest cut to convalescence.”

To his distress she uttered a little wincing cry, as if the very edge of his metaphor had touched her.

“O! it was that,” she said—“the knife, the necessity, that was the cause of all.”

He looked at her, pitifully, remorsefully. “I perceive,” he said, “that I have blundered somehow. Will you not say something that will put me right with myself?”

“How could you know!” she answered, pressing an agitated hand to her bosom. “Our Gracie—our one darling! It was to save her, sir—they had to operate at once; and afterwards—the nursing, the change of air—”

She broke off with a little gasp.

“I understand,” said Gilead. “She was your only child, and her dear life was at stake. You incurred expenses—am I right?”

She controlled herself with an effort, sitting erect, clasping and wreathing her hands before her.

“Overwhelming to people in our position,” she answered. “But he said yes—it was to be—he would find the means, though to secure them he must sell his soul to destruction. O! I little guessed what fatal significance lay behind his words. I trusted him; I was in despair; not until three days ago had I ever dared to question—to face, the possible truth. And then he himself struck me dumb with it. To save the little life so dear to us, he had robbed his employer.”

She rose to her feet, seemed to shiver, and dropped back again. Gilead, in the deepest commiseration, had also risen.

“Command yourself,” he said. “Tell me all. You will not find me an unsympathetic confidant.”

She appeared to cast a look at him of the most pathetic gratitude.

“I will,” she said—“O, I will! We had been so happy and so contented—and then the blow—the horror! His position was one of trust; but indeed, indeed, the temptation was overwhelming. He had intended, the emergency once past, to move heaven and earth to restore what he had borrowed—only that. But Fate was always against him. And now, at last—” she rose again, in uncontrollable agitation—“to-morrow morning,” she said, “the accountants are to begin their annual examination of the books, and if before then he has failed to make good the deficit, we are disgraced and ruined for ever.”

A brief silence succeeded her agonized cry, during which Gilead battled with his emotions. It was not so much the anguish, perhaps, as the heart-moving tone of its utterance which stirred the very bowels, so to speak, of his official circumspection. He made but a feeble attempt to assert his independence. This story, on the face of it, seemed to him one of the most pitifully tragic to which he had ever listened. That a man should be so cast down and trampled on in the name of fond humanity appeared to him monstrous. There were some temptations which it was even irreligious to resist. Was not Nature one with God?

“Mrs Nightingale,” he said, “I need affect no hesitation in assuring you that you have my sincerest sympathy in your trouble, and that your case comes directly within our province. If you will kindly leave me your address—”

Something in her attitude—some suggestion of hope but half fulfilled, of resignation setting itself to endure long hours of doubt and fear, overcame him finally. He turned to his desk, sat down, produced a cheque-book, and prepared to write.

“No,” he said. “I will not condemn you to it. The sum was fifty pounds, you say. I will trust you, or never myself again.”

He wrote, rose, and handed a draft to the visitor.

“Take it,” he said—“I have made it payable at the counter—and peace go with you.”

He thought she was about to fall on her knees to him, and he prevented her.

“I am sure this confidence will be as sacred to you as it is to me,” he said. “There is no need to say more, unless it is now to give me your address.”

She murmured it, sobbing, and he took it down from her lips: “Myrtle Villa, Garden Lane, Gospel Oak.” And then, with many passionate, half coherent expressions of gratitude, she left him.

He sat pondering for some little while after she was gone, the glow of his impulsive action slowly cooling. He would not regret it; yet for some reason he felt a nervousness in confessing, as would come to be necessary, its nature to Miss Halifax. He felt quite sure that she, however moved, would have kept the balance of her judgment at the discriminating poise.

During the afternoon he paid a visit to some famous Auction rooms in Wellington Street. A notable sale of Japanese colour prints was advertised, and the precious lots were on show. Gilead’s love for these things was either a weakness or a fine enthusiasm, according to the point of view. He was enraptured with the art, and was a ruinous competitor where he coveted rare examples of it. Still, as yet he was not so bitten but that he could resist—occasionally—temptation at what he considered absurdly inflated prices. The final stage of the disease had not hopelessly overtaken him. This day, very possibly, was to mark the turning point.

It was certainly a demoralizing display. A St Anthony of a virtuosic cast would have had a desperate struggle not to succumb to its seductions. The walls of the big room were bedizened, tapestried with a very profusion of covetable things, all representing the better or best periods of the leading schools. Such a sale, such a chance for the collector, had not yet occurred in London. It was to extend over five days, and included examples of all the notable artists from Kiyonobu to Kuniyoshi.

Gilead spent an absorbed hour or so in the room before leaving instructions as to which delectable nishiki-ye he wished to acquire, if possible. In this matter he desired to temper cupidity with reason; and he put force upon himself—or imagined that he did—in deciding the limits to which he would go. It was no parsimony, of course, which moved him to this caution. It was a reluctance merely to associate himself with that form of plutocracy which, in its greediness to possess at any figure, sets that standard of artificial values which is the despair of the poor but honest collector. An admirable principle in itself, though perhaps, from the seller’s point of view, an admirably one-sided. Nevertheless, a humorist might have observed that the young gentleman was careful, in the case of those prints which he particularly wanted for himself, to leave bids morally calculated to beat any possible competitor out of the field. It seemed the more perverse of him therefore to exhibit an obstinately inelastic spirit before perhaps the finest example of a Haronobu in the room.

It was an exquisite thing, harmonious in tone and composition, perfect in registration, as flawless a specimen of artistic and technical work as was ever produced by this incomparable artist. It represented a young girl being carried on the shoulder of a man to a temple for the meyamairi or naming ceremony, attendants following; and in condition and treatment and the soft intricacies of its colour scheme it fairly baffled criticism.

“There, sir! What do you think of that?”

It was Mr Desmund who spoke, art expert and valuer to a well-known firm of print and book sellers. He had accompanied Gilead round the room, booking his bids—an unwearying resourceful man, with a drooping light moustache, a bright complexion, and pale blue eyes, tired but interested. He wore a loose blue serge suit with a bright tie; his shoulders were bent a trifle beneath their load of specialised knowledge; he was a busy soul, but never too busy for enthusiasm in the right directions or to the right people. What Mr Desmund did not know about Japanese art was not, in the vernacular, worth the knowing.

“There, sir!” he said, confident of the exclamation of delight that was to follow.

It came, but in tempered form.

“Good,” said Gilead. “It is a fine example.”

He was more gratified with the print than he thought it politic to confess.

“Good!” said Mr Desmund. “There’s not another to better, or equal it, in Europe. Look at that background; look at that gauffrage. You should secure it, Mr Balm. You won’t get such an opportunity again.”

“When does it occur for sale?”

“On the first day, sir.”

“That’s to-morrow?”

“Yes, to-morrow.”

“What will it fetch—give me an idea?”

“Fifty pounds—not a penny less.”

“O! that’s absurd.”

The expert tapped his note-book.

“I’ve a commission myself, sir, for forty.”

Gilead hummed and ha’d a little.

“I think it’s preposterous; it’s against all my principles; but—well, I’ll go to forty-five.”

“You’d better leave me a margin—take my advice.”

“No.”

“A pound or two.”

“Not a copper farthing.”

“You’ll lose it.”

“Very well; but I don’t believe I shall.”

“Not a shilling over forty-five pounds, then, Mr Balm?”

“Not a shilling.”

He fancied the thing was a bluff; and in that he wronged both the expert and himself. He really coveted the print grievously; but he hardly doubted that he was safe to secure it. Nevertheless, as time went on, fears began to assail him. Supposing after all, that Desmund were right in his surmise, and that he should come to be outbidden? It would be ridiculous—an insane exaggeration of values, but—

No one who has not lusted after a particular print, book, carving, or any rare and costly work of art, nor felt in himself the processes of that mania which, beginning in a studiously qualified desire for the object, mounts swiftly through growing apprehensions of rival desires to an unqualified and reckless passion to secure it, can possibly enter into his feelings. Those grew acute with the hours; and, as the following morning wore on, neighboured on hysteria. Still he fought for sanity, held himself tight, and when the time came, obliged himself to face the dreary ordeal of lunch. In the midst, the Haronobu suddenly rose before him, stupendous, irresistible, and blocked all his field of moral vision. He must have it, he decided, at any price. He glanced at the clock, rose, snatched his hat, and, palpitating all through, rushed for the Auction room. It was packed, and he could barely gain the door. As he did so, he heard the voice of the auctioneer proclaiming Lot 40—but one step, and that the wrong way, removed from the object of his desire. The immortal print was that moment sold. Whether for rapture or despair his fate was cast.

With that recognition of the inevitable, reason, if only temporary, returned to him, and he to his office. He thought his brief dementia over, and contented himself with despatching a telegram to the expert, asking if he had been so fortunate as to acquire for him the print in question. The answer—it only arrived after an unconscionable interval—completely prostrated him.

“Regret sold at fifty.”

The world was darkened; heaven eclipsed; for the moment life itself seemed hardly worth living. The virtuoso will understand better than I can explain.

Gilead, in a state of profound depression, sought out Mr Desmund the next morning.

“You were right,” he said, “and I was a fool.” (I think he emphasised it)

It comforted him only partially to find that every other one of his bids had been successful. He received the parcel in a gloomy silence. His collection, minus the Haronobu, seemed little better than trash and vanity.

“Who got it—do you know?” he asked drearily.

Mr Desmund shook his head. “It was bought a broker, sir. I daresay I can find out.”

“No,” said Gilead. “No. After all it would only aggravate the sore.”

The sore, however, healed, or nearly, in the process of time. Japanese prints were really only the recreation of a mind devoted to the interests of humanity.

One day, weeks later, Gilead had occasion to motor with a friend to the city. It was a dusty morning, and the two wore goggles. At the Bank of England the car drew up by the kerb while the friend entered the building. He was gone so long that Gilead had ample time to study the endless types of humanity that drifted beside him. They were all intent on business and money-making, and he wondered if there was one in all the confused throng capable of properly appreciating his feelings over his lost Haronobu.

While he gazed, speculative, philosophic and lazy, a figure, two figures, standing by the end of Bartholomew-lane caught and fixed his attention. They were so close by that he fancied they must have that moment emerged, or he would have noticed them sooner. One was of a woman, slender, graceful, dressed in faded black and closely veiled, the other of a little girl, poorly but neatly clad and of a fairy prettiness.

He stirred, oddly smitten with some memory; and in the same instant the woman thrust out a white hand, dumbly proffering to a passer-by a little basketful of matches, and he perceived, with a certain consciousness of shock, that she was begging.

Presently he lay back again and watched the two. They stood all the time he was there at the street-corner, and during that brief space he observed that they reaped quite a small harvest in silver and copper. Mostly people gave, and demanded nothing in return. Now and then one would wisely insist on goods for his money. Men, young glossy cits and sober fathers of families, were moved obviously by the charm of the little face raised to them—and also, it seemed, by something else. Gilead was not long in discovering what that something was. The veiled woman, in addition to the mystery encompassing her, had, whether pleading or returning thanks, the softest, the most musical voice it was possible to imagine.

He looked down at her feet; the black skirt, weighted with a heavy bead trimming, dropped prettily about them. Only the veil was different. Yet he could not doubt for a moment that he saw before him Mrs Nightingale, the pitiful suppliant of Gospel Oak.

Had it, then, for all his timely help, come to this, and was she driven to beg upon the streets, her little Gracie the lure to public charity? He was perplexed, vaguely dissatisfied, at a loss how to act, when he suddenly perceived a friend of his coming round the corner from Throgmorton Street. The young fellow paused a moment to slip a sixpence into the child’s hand before he came on. As he approached, Gilead accosted him, and, after greetings and a commonplace or two, remarked pleasantly:—

“That was mistaken charity, you know, Robson. You should have insisted on your matchbox in exchange.”

The other stared a moment, gathered, and laughed.

“O, that!” he said. “It’s one’s instinctive homage, I suppose, to a lovely face and a soft voice—the two best things in nature.”

“I daresay. And doesn’t she know and trade on it, too.”

“Well, if you put it that way, to quite a respectable tune, I should say. The two are familiar figures at that corner—have been for some time. They catch the drift there, you see, from a dozen golden ways. It’s a good pitch.”

“So I should think. Is anything known about them?”

“Not that I’m aware. It’s the mystery does the business, you see. They’re there as regular as clockwork from ten to four, and then they go. I’ve noticed them a dozen times, and they always move off on the stroke.”

Gilead, after parting with the young gentleman, grew so restless over the non-reappearance of his other friend, that in the end he left a message for him with the chauffeur, and, stopping a taxicab, drove back to the office. Arrived there, he instantly despatched in the same vehicle a member of his staff to Gospel Oak, with directions to the man to make exhaustive enquiries. He was already quite prepared for the result, and expressed no surprise when informed that there was no such place in Gospel Oak as Garden Lane, and consequently no Myrtle Villa, and, by inference, no Mrs Nightingale. Her ‘complaint,’ it was evident, dated from other and less righteous groves. He prepared, very stern and quietly wrathful, to act upon that assumption.

Fortunately for his purpose the weather, though it did not yet rain, was sufficiently threatening to justify a waterproof. He selected one with a very high turn-up collar, in which he muffled the lower part of his face. A cap pulled low down over his eyes completed a sort of disguise which he had no doubt would prove efficient. A quarter to four that same afternoon saw him posted in Threadneedle Street at a point whence, from amidst the hurrying throng, he could easily watch the movements of the woman and child, who were still stationary in their place at the street corner.

At the first stroke of the hour, punctual to his information, the woman took the child’s hand in hers and, moving away, became on the instant one of the unconsidered crowd. Gilead followed, instant but wary, in pursuit. She led him to the Mansion House Station, where, standing behind her, he heard her take tickets for Victoria, whither he journeyed in a neighbouring carriage. Thence, ‘shadowing’ his quarry, he ran her into an omnibus, to the roof of which he himself mounted. It took them by the Queen’s Road and Cheyne Walk to the Albert Bridge and across. He had paid his fare, for security, for the entire route, and was prepared therefore to descend at once when, at the corner of Park Road, the woman and child got out. It was raining by then, and his umbrella afforded him useful cover. The child, as if by established custom, ran away towards the adjacent slums; the woman herself walked southward down the Albert Road. At a block of handsome flats bordering on Battersea Park she turned, and, passing without stopping through the swing doors, mounted the stairs to the second floor. Following at her heels as close as he might venture, he came upon her letting herself in at a certain door with a latchkey; and, even as he reached the place, the door closed and he was alone.

He let some moments pass while he considered the situation. Wrathful suspicion still claimed him hotly, yet he was conscious that at present it amounted to no more, and that it was above all things necessary for him to behave with circumspection. After a minute of deliberation, he tapped resolutely with the brass knocker that hung upon the door. The connoisseur in him observed, as he did so, that the knocker was good and an antique.

After some little delay the door was opened, or half opened, as if the person behind it questioned the character of the visitor, and a woman looked out. She was neat, formal, severe in aspect, suggesting the housekeeper to a greater mansion. She wore an apron, but no cap. Her face was narrow, the lips compressed, her bosom flat, and the hair drawn plainly down her temples.

“Yes?” she said, in a thin harsh voice.

“I wish to see Mrs Nightingale,” said Gilead.

“Who?”

“Mrs Nightingale.”

“She doesn’t live here,” said the woman, and prepared to shut the door. Gilead, quietly but effectively, prevented her.

“Pardon me. I saw her this moment go in,” he said.

“You are mistaken, sir.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Will you take your foot away, sir, or must I call for some one?”

“You may call,” said Gilead. “I don’t think it would be wise. She may not be Mrs Nightingale—nothing more likely—and yet fear exposure.”

To his surprise, the woman opened the door wide, beckoned him in and closed it upon them.

“What are you saying?” she whispered fiercely. Her eyes sparkled in their gloomy rings. “Why do you speak like that on the public stair?”

“Why do you force me to?” said Gilead.

She stared at him a moment. Then, “Come,” she said, and led the way into a pretty room beyond.

Its windows faced upon the park; the polished floor was spread with Eastern rugs; chairs, little tables, what-nots, a bookcase, a dainty bureau, a daintier corner-cupboard, all of rare old Chippendale and loaded where they might be with bijoutry, silver, and exquisite scraps of china, made up the furniture. And on the walls, all framed in slender white, hung many beautiful specimens of Japanese colour prints, among them, in a place of honour, the very Haronobu which Gilead had coveted. Looking round and round in amazement, his eyes suddenly fixed themselves on the prize; and there they remained riveted, while he endeavoured to take in the stupendous situation.

The truth dawned, grew plain, grew monstrous to him as he gazed. She had played that trick upon him, had invented that lying story with the sole purpose of acquiring its possession; and out of his humanity, his—yes, his damned credulity—he had come to be defrauded and desolated. He could not doubt it. He pointed at the print speechless.

“Yes,” said the woman; “these things are a fancy—a craze—of my sister’s—I don’t hold by them myself—and that is her latest. She values it above everything.”

He turned upon her, goaded to frenzy.

“Your sister!” he cried—“she is your sister? And she values it, does she? Will you, I wonder, when I tell you that she procured from me by fraud the money with which to pay for it?”

“I told you,” said the woman, cold and passionless, “that personally I didn’t hold by them. This one, I know, was beyond our means.”

“Do you know what story she invented to augment those means?”

“No, sir, I don’t; nor do I intend to ask. I take it that you were her victim in some way. She is a woman of the most resourceful imagination.”

“You look upon it in that light? Then I presume, of course, that you are her partner and abettor in the other fraud?”

“What fraud?”

“Why, this,” said Gilead, with a comprehensive, disdainful gesture—“all the fruits, I am to conclude, of begging at street corners?”

“Why is that a fraud?” said the woman. “Not merit but natural qualifications are the key to all success. It is the taking, not the good person, who gets on in the world. If the public likes to pay toll to a lovely face, a sweet voice, why should we disappoint it and starve? We have no other alternative, believe me?”

“The child,” said Gilead, still sternly—“is that hers?”

“No,” answered the woman; “she hires it. We have neither of us been married, and children as children are hateful to us. I do not think any man could be got to marry my sister Emile. The face behind her veil is ravaged—unsightly. She owes no debt of gratitude to man or God; we neither of us do; they are our enemies. Is that a fraud—the mystery of her veil? Let him answer for it who wove its meshes. She had been beautiful once. Only her voice lives and pleads in a dead land; and with it and through it she obtains these means to the amelioration of her bitter lot—these little toys and graces which her soul loves, and to surround herself with which she suffers and wearies through each livelong day. Call it a fraud if you will. In this inhuman world our souls have ceased to count with us.”

Sick at heart, Gilead turned to the door.

“Are you going to expose her,” said the woman—“to tear her veil away?”

“No,” he answered. “I want fresh air, that’s all.”

CHAPTER XII.
THE QUEST OF THE OBESE GENTLEMAN

Nothing short of the direct interposition of Providence can be held to explain the premature chancing into Gilead’s hands one morning of an ex-official copy of the Daily Post. The thing might have happened on any other morning in the year and signified nothing; it happened, as it happened, on the one and only morning on which it could signify a great deal. He invariably read the Times at breakfast, and the other paper, or Nestle’s report on it, on his arrival at the office. Providence, desiring his independent notice of this particular issue, found occasion therefore to slip under his nose a copy of it, brought in, and forgotten, by some casual acquaintance who had sought him for a moment on a personal matter.

He might not have looked at it even then, had he not chanced—chanced, mark you—in rising to reach for the marmalade, to tread on an iron tack.

Now there was no reason, other than a providential one, why the tack should have been there; no reason why it should have stood up awkwardly on its head; none why its point should have penetrated the only thin place in the young gentleman’s pump. That all these things happened, with the result that, in the start and clutch he gave, he knocked over the Daily Post and stooped to pick it up again, can be ascribed to supernatural design and to that alone.

As he sat down, shin over thigh, to pluck the obtrusive nail from his sole, his eye was caught by an advertisement prominent in the Agony Column of the paper he held in his left hand:—

Gilead, having extracted the nail, read the advertisement again, and chuckled. It was of the order Facetiæ, of course. Wags not infrequently would thus parody the incredible absurdities of cults and cranks, or even invent wilder ones in a mere frolic of animal spirits. He had come across quite a number of such hoaxes in his long experience of the paper. There had been, for instance, the two ladies who, studying the endurance of physical pain, desired the co-operation of another in arranging for a series of private experiments on human subjects; there had been the duet of lone bachelors, depressed by London Sundays, who invited suggestions as to how best to pass their time in any agreeable way not involving energy, and those other two who, being without the capacity to work, invited some wealthy philanthropist to provide them with annuities and a cottage in the country meet to their leisured tastes. There had been the despairing gentleman who coveted a society and a friendship unfranked by whiskies and sodas, which disagreed with him, and the practising barrister who had offered an equitable mortgage of his body (heart excepted) in return for an accommodation. Finally there had been the demand for a man willing to demonstrate his personal pliability on an old English rack, Star Chamber pattern, and who had been recommended, by an admirable touch, to be ‘short to start with.’

Of such palpably was the obese gentleman, with his superfluous flesh, and Gilead was on the point of laying him aside, with a parting grin, when his gaze was caught and riveted on an advertisement which appeared just under the one in question:—

Now we all must have observed how advertisements, though of an exceptional and esoteric cast, are gregarious in character. That is to say, if some strange want appears advertised on a particular day, there will be sure to be others of its kind in company, and that without any editorial provision, and despite the fact that nothing of its sort, maybe, has occurred for weeks. Here one obese gentleman led to another, and undesignedly, one might feel sure. It was simply that adiposity was in the air, like a germ, and affected not individuals but communities. It made no difference that an obvious sincerity spoke from the second advertisement—no difference to the principle, I mean. As to its effect upon one reader, it was simply for the moment paralysing.

WINSOM WYLLIE! Those who have followed the career of our young philanthropist will not have forgotten the name of that detestable scoundrel, the persecutor of the beautiful amanuensis. It was peculiar, one must admit—a name not likely to be borne by more than a single person in the world. So thought Gilead, as, with a deep sigh, he struggled out of his stupefaction and reread the lines.

Winsom Wyllie! So the brazen wretch had confessed himself, and unblushingly, at the last. It was well. If unlimited wealth, if a soul of righteous indignation, were of any avail against the forces of malignancy, he should be hounded surely to his doom. The means were here; the way alone was the question.

It must not be supposed that during all these long months Gilead had been content to relegate this matter to the shelf of discarded things. Quietly and unobtrusively he had kept it alive in his mind, had prosecuted cautious enquiries, had caused a persistent watch to be kept on the little house on Knight’s Hill; and, if all his efforts had proved in vain, he had been at least able to find comfort in the conviction that the villain, true to his name, had scented danger and studied discretion by obliterating himself. And now here he was come out into the light of day, and boldly affirming his existence in the face of any whom it might concern. The advertisement was nothing less than a challenge and a defiance. Well, the gage, he should find, would be taken up.

But it was necessary, of course, to move with the extremest caution and circumspection. Nothing, in the first place, must be said about the matter to Miss Halifax, lest the shock should bring on again one of those cataleptic seizures with which it was associated; nor could he think himself justified in revealing, unauthorized, to her fiancé the details of so delicate and painful a story. No, alone and single-handed he must encounter the man on his own ground, betraying nothing of his purpose until that purpose was accomplished. The villain must be overthrown, disposed of for good and all, ere ever the girl should learn of the shadow that had finally been removed from her life.

He finished his breakfast in a very thoughtful mood, and by the end of it had come to a definite resolve. These two must get married with as little delay as possible. There could be no better means for disposing once and for all of Mr Winsom Wyllie and his unwelcome attentions. He himself might discover and expose the scoundrel; to provide Vera with a legitimate protector was to render him innocuous for ever more. Yes, it must be done and at once; there was no reason in the world for delaying a consummation so sensible and so happy.

Before starting for the office Gilead took up the paper yet once more to study the advertisement, and this time with a fine ironic laughter. He recalled very well, he believed, certain descriptive epithets applied by the young lady to her persecutor. He had been “unusual and sinister”; he had been “endowed with a demoniac energy”; he had been “a dangerous man,” affecting piratic emblems. And here he was after all grown fat, confessed of middle age, and recommended by his doctor to chop wood in order to reduce his bulk! O, to what base passes would not constitution bring us! Picturesqueness, romance, attractiveness, even, of the diabolic cast—we were each one of us in such matters at the mercy of our stomachs. No doubt this same spider, indolently watchful in his web, had waxed plump and round through too much feeding and too little exercise.

Agreeable to his steadfast purpose, Gilead found both the secretary and amanuensis in his room when he reached the Agency. Somewhat high-strung as he was and sensitive to impressions, he seemed conscious of an atmosphere as it were of strain, expectancy, anxiety—he knew not what to call it, but attributed it, whatever it was, to his own suppressed emotions. However, sitting down with the best air of detachment he could muster, he called upon Nestle for his report.

“I have run down the column, sir,” answered the secretary. “There is nothing whatever in it to detain or interest you.”

Did his own feelings mislead him, or was there a hint of tremor in the young man’s voice, a flush of increased colour on his cheek, which belied the easy assurance of his words? He decided, at once and definitely, that the suspicion was born of nothing but his own excited fancy. For the rest he was reassured to find that Miss Halifax herself had evidently passed by the advertisement unnoticing. Had her eyes encountered it, all his chivalrous intent would have been balked at the outset.

“O! very well, Nestle,” he said. “There is, as it happens, a certain advertisement—but you could not have been expected to attach any importance to it from our point of view. Only, as it chanced, I saw a copy of the Daily Post this morning before I reached the office, and—” He broke off, lay back in his chair, drew and emitted a long breath, smiled, and addressed himself resolutely to the two before him. “That is all nothing,” he said, “to the case which is just now most prominently in my mind. It affects our mutual relations, as it does my most earnest wishes. I want you two to eschew diffidence, to eschew formality, to allow me to speak with the freedom engendered of our long and happy intercourse, and to suggest your arranging a date for your marriage with as little delay as possible.”

Having got it out, he rose to his feet. Miss Halifax at the same moment rose hurriedly to hers. Her face was white; her beautiful eyes seemed to have gathered in an instant dark shadows about them.

“Our marriage!” she whispered; and then her breath caught.

Gilead laughed, half protestingly, half melancholy.

“Is it such an appalling prospect?” he said. “You must not allow yourselves to doubt that, for my poor practical part, I will soften its acerbities to you by the best means in my power. Our intimacy, my long debt to you both, will rob that assurance of any suggestion of impertinence or ostentation. I want to see you both settled and happy; I am impatient for the end; and, if I have my reasons, they can hardly be less trenchant ones than your own. I ask you to marry, and to marry soon. If you consider any part of this obligation yours, and desire to liquidate it, there are the means most calculated to give me delight in the settlement. Now I am going to leave you alone to talk the matter over; nor do I intend to refer to it again until invited by yourselves—with the assurance, I shall trust, that you have decided to conform to my wishes.”

He took up his hat, crossed the room, patted the secretary kindly and cheerily on the shoulder, bowed to Miss Halifax and went out.

For minutes after he had left, the two stood silent and transfixed. At length the secretary raised his face with a groan.

“He saw it—the advertisement,” he said. “My God, what a fatality!”

She began to laugh in a mirthless unnatural way, and stopped as suddenly.

“Yes, he must have seen it,” she said. “What does it mean? What will he do? We oughtn’t to doubt, I suppose, unless he is going to be untrue to himself for the first time in his life. But he won’t, of course; and then—what will come of it all?”

She gasped, and then laughed again hysterically.

“And our marriage! O, it is too ridiculous! Herbert, for pity’s sake say something in reason!”

“Reason or no reason spells nothing but our ruin,” he answered dejectedly. “His resolution is set, and it must give us away. I understand its purpose well enough; he thinks our marrying will put that—that other finally out of court.”

“But what other?” she said. “In heaven’s name, what other?”

He laughed, even more hollowly than she had.

“God knows!” he said. “The devil has hoist us with our own petard.”

She passed her hand across her eyes in great grief and misery.

“Well,” she said, with a quivering sigh, “we can’t complain; and I don’t. It is not often a woman is given such an education for the natural evil in her. I think it teaches me to welcome the punishment I have striven so hard to avoid. I shall be clean at last in my shame. Let me be the one to confess it to him, that I may drink the cup to its dregs. My suffering after all is worse than yours.”

“Is it? Why?”

“Cannot you guess? Because I have learned to love him, Herbert, with all my heart and soul, and because I must kill before his eyes the thing he has honoured.”

“Kill! you don’t mean—”

“O, don’t look so scared! That would be a hateful, a selfish return for all his gentleness and nobility—to curse my love with a heritage of undeserved remorse. But I must kill his trust for ever—O, my dear, I must, I must!”

In sudden uncontrollable anguish she threw herself into her chair, and flinging her arms over the desk, buried her face in them.

In the meantime Gilead, returning to his chambers, set himself to concoct an epistle, at once guarded and alluring, to the obese one. It was a delicate task, and one or two trials were needed before he could satisfy himself as to the suitable form. This, finally, was the answer he despatched:—