William Le Queux (continued 2)

“Ah!” He sighed, rather heavily I thought. “And I, too, have found it so. I quite agree with you. One may travel the world over, as I have done these past twenty years, yet there’s no place like our much-abused old England, after all.”

“Oh, then you’ve been a rolling stone, like myself,” I remarked, delighted at the success of my ruse.

“Yes. And I still am,” was his answer, given rather sadly. “Ever since my poor wife’s death, now nearly twenty years ago, I’ve been a wanderer. This place is mine, but I’m scarcely ever here. Why? I can’t for the life of me tell you. I’ve tried to settle down, but cannot. After a week here in this quiet rural dulness, the old fever sets up in my blood, a longing for action, a longing to go south to Italy—the country which seems to hold me in a kind of magnetism which I have never been able to resist.”

“And I, too, love Italy,” I said. “Is it not strange that most of us who have lived any length of time in that country of blossoming magnolias and gentle vines always desire to return to it. We may abuse its defects, we may revile its people as dishonest idlers, we may execrate its snail-like railways and run down its primitive hotels, yet all the same we have a secret longing to return to that glowing land where life is love, where art is in the very atmosphere, where the sun brings gladness to the heaviest heart, and the night silence is broken by love stornelli and the mandoline.”

“You are right,” he said, gazing straight out of the old leaded window and speaking almost as though to himself. “Byron found it so, Shelley, Smollet, Trollope, the Brownings and hosts of others. They were fascinated by the fatal beauty of Italy—just as a man is so often drawn to his doom by the face of a beautiful woman. And after all we are but straws on the winds of the hour.”

Then, turning to a cabinet, I bent and admired a fine old Lowestoft tea-set and a collection of old blue posset-pots, whereupon he said:—

“Ah! I see you are interested in antiques. Do you care for pictures? I have one or two.”

“I do. I should delight to see them,” I answered with enthusiasm; therefore he led me across the low old-fashioned hall with its great oak beams and open fireplace into a long gallery where the floor was polished, and along one side was hung a choice collection of masters of the Bolognese, Tuscan and Venetian schools.

At a glance I saw that they were of considerable value, and as I walked along slowly examining them I half feared lest I might come face to face with the daughter of the house.

Mine was a bold adventure, and surely it was fortunate for me that old Miss Catherine had a headache.

Through room after room he conducted me with all the pride of a collector showing his treasures. Indeed, I was amazed to find such a perfect museum of Italian art hidden away in that picturesque old Manor House. “Yes,” he said presently, as we entered the long old-fashioned drawing-room upholstered in antique rose-pattern chintz, “I’ve collected in Italy for a good many years. One can pick up bargains, even now, in the less frequented towns, say Ravenna, Verona, Bologna or Rimini; while in Leghorn there are still lots of genuine Sheraton and Chippendale which was imported from England by the English merchants of that time. I once made a splendid find of seventeenth-century English silver—two porringers and some spoons—in the Ghetto in Leghorn.”

I was at the moment looking at a circular Madonna on panel, evidently of the Bolognese school of the cinquecento, hanging at the end of the long pleasant old room when, in glancing round, my eye fell upon two small tables where stood photographs in frames.

In an instant I bent over one and recognised it as that of the girl who had come to me so mysteriously at Shepherd’s Bush.

“That is my daughter,” he remarked.

“Curious,” I said, feigning to reflect. “I think I’ve met her somewhere abroad. Perhaps it was in Italy. Could it have been in Leghorn?”

“You know Leghorn?”

“I’ve been there many times. I know the Camerons, the Davises, the Matthews, and most of the English colony there.”

“Then you may possibly have met her there,” he said. “We have a small flat on the sea-front, and my daughter often plays tennis.”

“Of course!” I exclaimed, as though the mention of tennis brought back to me full recollection of the incident. “It was at tennis that I saw her—last season when I was at the Palace Hotel. I remember now, quite well. Our Mediterranean fleet were lying there at the time, and there were lots of festivities, as there are every summer. Is your daughter now in England?”

“Oh, yes. She’s up in London, but returns to-morrow.”

“And are you going back to Italy soon?” I inquired.

“I hardly know. My movements are never very certain. I’m quite a creature of circumstances, and nowadays drift about with the wind of chance,” he laughed.

“But this is a lovely old place,” I remarked. “If I had it I should certainly not prefer a flat in a sun-baked Italian town, like Leghorn.”

“Circumstances,” he remarked simply, with a mysterious smile upon his grey face.

What, I wondered, was his meaning?

Did he really intend to convey that the circumstances of his dishonourable profession compelled him to hide himself in a small flat in that somewhat obscure town—obscure as far as English life went?

When he learnt that I knew some of his friends in Leghorn he became enthusiastic, and began to discuss the town and its notabilities. What did I think of the English parson? And whether I did not think that seeing the small English congregation the church ought not to be removed to some town with a larger English colony. It was absurd to keep a parson there for half a dozen people.

And while my sharp eyes were busy examining the photographs set among vases of fresh-cut flowers, I made replies and sometimes laughed at his witty criticisms of persons known to both of us in “the Brighton of Italy.”

“What a contrast is the quiet rural life here, with all its old-world English tranquillity, to that of the gay, garish, sun-blanched passeggiata of Leghorn, with its bright-eyed women, its oleanders, its noise, movement, the glare and strident music of the café-chantants, and the brightness of the newly discovered spa,” I said.

He sighed, pursing his lips.

“Yes, Mr Leaf, you are quite right,” he answered. “I love Italy, but I confess I very often long to be back here at Studland, in my own quiet old home. Lucie is always begging me to forsake the Continent and return. But it is impossible—utterly impossible.”

“Why impossible?” I asked, looking into his deeply furrowed face.

“Well—there is a reason,” was his response. “A strong reason, one of health, which induces—nay, compels me to live abroad. And I greatly prefer Italy to any other country.”

Little did he dream that I had that secret document of the Italian Detective Department in my possession, or that I had learnt the truth from my friend Sampson, the friend of the young Chilian Carrera.

We were chatting on, having halted at the open window which looked across the old-fashioned garden with its rose arbours, moss-grown terrace and grey weather-beaten sundial, away to the park beyond, when I suddenly crossed to another table, whereon were other photographs.

One of them I thought I recognised even in the distance.

Yes! I was not mistaken! I took it in my trembling hand with a word of apology, and looked into the picture intently. Sight of it staggered me.

“Who is this?” I asked hoarsely, and my host must, I think, have noticed the great change in my countenance.

“A friend of my daughter’s, I think. Do you know her?”

“I knew her,” I replied in a hard, low tone, for sight of that smiling face brought back to me all the bitter remembrance of a part that I would have fain forgotten. “It is Ella Murray!”

“Ah!—yes, that’s her name. I recollect now,” he said; and I saw by his face that he was interested. “I think they were at school together.”

Again I looked upon the portrait of my dear dead love, my eyes fascinated, for I beheld there, at her throat, the small brooch I had given her on her birthday, a green enamelled heart with two hearts in diamonds entwined upon it.

Those sweet, wide-open eyes, clear blue and wondering like a child’s, gazed out upon me; her well-formed lips were slightly parted, as though she were speaking again, uttering those soft words that had so charmed me when she was mine, and mine only. I recollected the dress, too, one she had worn one night at dinner at the big country-house where we had been fellow-guests. Every feature of that lovely face was indelibly photographed upon my memory. Through those dark years, after that paroxysm of grief that had overtaken me when I discovered her false, I had, sleeping and waking, seen that smiling countenance as before my vision. Even in death Ella was still mine.

That smile! Ah! did it not mock me? Had not Avarice and Death cheated me out of Happiness? A great darkness was over my mind, like the plague of an unending night.

I set my teeth, swallowed the lump that arose in my throat, and with a sigh replaced the photograph upon the table.

“A pretty face,” remarked the man whose police record was in my possession.

“Yes, very,” I remarked casually.

Ah! what a storm of bitter recollections surged through my burning brain.

Had she but lived and loved how different would my own wasted, aimless life have been!

Yes. She was, after all, my dear dead love—my Ella!

Chapter Ten.

My Own Confession.

The “Lion” Inn was a pleasant, old-fashioned little hostelry overlooking the bay, with Bournemouth beyond the distant haze. My room was small and clean, with white dimity curtains and hangings, and framed religious texts upon the walls. As I sat at the window in the hour before my dinner was ready, I reflected upon the strange incidents of those past few days—a chain of curious circumstances that seemed to enmesh and to entangle me.

Lucie Miller—the girl whose peril was such a mysterious and yet deadly one—had actually known my Ella. That very fact seemed somehow as a further link between us. What, I wondered, did she know of those later days of my dead love’s life? To me they were shrouded in mystery.

That cold winter’s night in damp, dismal London, when I had met her in secret at the corner of Queen’s Gardens, would ever remain in my memory. She was staying with an aunt in Porchester Terrace, and we had always preserved the secret of our affection. She came dressed in black, wearing a thick veil and carrying a muff in which was a bunch of violets. Her voice, when I greeted her, was, alas! not the same. Quick to recognise that something had occurred, I inquired the reason. Had she had any difference with her father or her aunt—as she sometimes had? No, she said, shaking her head, it was not that.

And then, almost in silence, we strolled on side by side over those wet shining London pavements through the quieter streets and squares of Bayswater, while I glanced wonderingly at her face showing pale behind her spotted veil. At last her trembling hand suddenly rested upon my wrist, and halting she turned to me. In hoarse tones quite unusual to her she blurted forth the truth—the bitter truth that froze my heart. I remember even the spot where we stood, beside a red letter-box at the corner of Chepstow Place. There the greatest blow of all my life fell upon me; and we parted.

I went straight along the Westbourne Grove, blinded by tears. She was to wed the very last man she ought to have chosen. The coarse, fat-necked parvenu had bought her from her father with his gold won in gambles on the Stock Exchange. Yes, my Ella, my sweet-faced love, was not satisfied with the prospect of being the wife of a man comfortably off. Like so many other girls who are dazzled by the lights of life, she longed to shine as a hostess, to wear Paquin frocks and have her portraits in the papers. I was deeply disappointed with her, for, fool that I was, I really believed that she honestly loved me. How often, alas! is a man deceived! I was but one of thousands, after all. And yet I had adored her with all my heart and all my soul.

Away in the country the very song of the birds seemed to be in praise of her—she whose beauty was sweet and delicate as the petals of the flowers; chaste and sweet as the rose itself. Love to the looker-on may be blind, unwise, unworthily bestowed, a waste, a sacrifice, a crime; yet none the less is love the only thing that, come weal or woe, is worth the loss of every other thing; the one supreme and perfect gift of earth in which all common things of daily life become transfigured and divine.

I was crushed, benumbed, broken. At first my brain refused to accept her declaration that that meeting was to be our last, until she told me the truth in all its hideous detail, and that on the morrow her engagement was to be announced in the Morning Post. I opened my lips to upbraid her, but my tongue refused to utter a syllable of reproach. I only bit my lips in silence. Ah! yes, I loved her!—I loved her!

From that moment we never again met. Next day I saw the announcement in the papers, and, disappointed and heart-broken, I went abroad, and it was a year after when one of my intimate friends, Jack Davies, a lieutenant on board the Cornwall, in a letter which I received at a lonely post-house on the snow-bound road in the extreme north of Russia, wrote those words which caused my heart to burst within me:—

“You recollect little Ella Murray, who was, with her stepmother, up at the Grainger’s shoot two years ago? The poor little girl was engaged to some City fellow, an entire outsider, I heard, but I hear she caught typhoid at a hotel in Sheringham and died six months ago. A pity, isn’t it? I rather liked her—so did you, I remember.”

I stood at the door of that filthy, log-built place with the letter in my hand, gazing across the great snow-covered plain with its long row of telegraph-wires and verst-posts stretching away from Pokrovskoi to the grey horizon. My big bearded driver whispered to the post-house keeper, for both saw that I had received bad news. The man in sheepskins who kept the place went in without a word and returned with a glass of vodka. I recognised his kindly thought, gulped down the spirit, and mounting into the sledge drove on—on, whither I did not care. Ella—my own dear Ella was dead!

All this came back vividly to me on that evening as I ate my dinner alone in the little inn at Studland, and then in the golden sunset strolled by the sea—that same wide, mysterious sea beside which I had so long ago declared my love. She lived then, smiling, sighing, loving. But now, alas! she was no more. Of her memory there only remained that shadowy picture that I had seen in Miller’s drawing-room, the portrait of the dead that smiled upon me in such mocking happiness.

I threw myself upon a bank and watched the glorious crimson and purple of the summer afterglow. Yes, the face of the world was for me now changed. The past had been full enough of bitterness, what, I wondered, did the future contain? Ah! if I could have but known at that moment! Yet perhaps after all the Divine power is merciful in keeping from us the happiness and tragedy that lie before.

Till the summer twilight darkened into night I sat therefore before the sea, smoking and thinking. The dark vista of silent waters before me harmonised with my thoughts. Mine was, alas! a wasted, useless life, I had never known one moment’s financial worry, and yet I had somehow never found happiness. In my life where I might be, at home or abroad, there was always something wanting—the love of a good woman.

Through the following day I idled, mostly in the Lion, for it was too hot for walking. But at half-past two I sauntered to the station and, unseen by Lucie, I saw her alight from the train from London, climb into the smart dogcart that was awaiting her, and drive away in the direction of the Manor.

Then when I returned and had my tea I remarked casually to the stout, round-faced innkeeper:—

“I hear that Mr Miller is at the Manor House just now. I learnt so yesterday.”

“An’ so did I,” was his reply. “Dear me! wonders ’ull never cease. Fancy Mr Miller coming back again! An’ they say that Miss Lucie’s a-comin’, too.”

“Is she his daughter?” I inquired, as though in ignorance.

“Of course she is; an’ a very good girl, too. When she’s ’ere—which ain’t very often, more’s the pity—she does a great deal of good in the village—visits the old people, looks after the coal club, and gives away quite a lot of money to the deserving people who are destitute. I only wish there were more like ’er in these ’ere parts.”

“Does she often come here?”

“Oh! two or three times a year,” answered the landlord. “Some say she lives up in London with ’er aunt, and others declare that she’s mostly abroad with ’er father. I believe the latter story. She ’as a foreign way about ’er, and I’ve ’eard the servants say as ’ow all ’er things are made abroad.”

“Then nobody knows her address?” I said.

“Seems not. But she’s very fond of ’er father, and no doubt is always with him.”

“Do they have many friends at the Manor when Mr Miller and his daughter are at home?”

“Not many. Dr Haviland often dines with ’em.”

“I don’t mean local friends—visitors from London.”

“Very few. I’ve known one or two, but they’ve all been forriners. Mr Miller seems to like them forriners some’ow. But I don’t,” declared the old fellow. “They’re too infernal polite and sleeky for me. I wouldn’t trust any of ’em for a pint o’ beer.”

“They were gentlemen, I suppose?”

“Oh, dear, yes—full of fine graces and fine manners. They wore shoes like women, and shirts pleated like women’s blouses—great swells, I can assure you.”

“You never heard of any of their names?”

“No, how was I to ’ear? Once two of ’em came in one hot day and jabbered, sayin’ ‘boch! boch!’ an’ grinnin’ all over their faces. It was quite a long time before I discovered that they wanted two half-pints o’ bitter. I suppose boch is what they calls it in French.”

“Yes,” I laughed. “You’re quite right.”

The strangers had evidently been French, I reflected. Had they been Italian they would have asked for birra.

Regarding Lucie, I learnt that on several occasions, while she had been at home, a young, black-moustached foreigner had been guest at the Manor, and that she frequently drove him out in the dogcart. My host did not know the visitor’s name. He described him, however, as tall and thin with a narrow hatchet face, black eyes and moustaches that turned up at the ends.

“They passed up and down the village once or twice on their way to the post-office, and I ’eard ’em talking in some gibberish,” added the old fellow, as he raised his tankard to his lips. Like all his race in the rural districts, he had no love for the foreigner, be he whatever he might. In his estimation every person from beyond the Channel was “a froggie.”

That evening I went for my usual lonely stroll by the sea, while all next day I spent in watchful vigil in the vicinity of the Manor. Though for hours I idled concealed in the park, within view of the stately old home of the Millers, my patience was unrewarded. No sign of Lucie did I see, either at any of the windows or in the old rose-garden.

Next evening, however, having learnt from the landlord that she was much interested in a decrepit old woman who had been her nurse, and who lived in a cottage at the farther end of Studland, I idled in wait for her in a narrow green lane which ran at the back of the church, and was at length rewarded by seeing her approaching. She was dressed in white muslin with a large lace garden hat, and beside her walked her pet dog, a beautiful fawn collie.

Boldly I went towards her, my hat in my hand in respectful greeting.

In an instant she recognised me, and drew back, half in surprise, half in alarm.

Her countenance went white as death.

“You—Why—Mr Leaf!” she gasped, attempting to smile. “Only fancy—to meet you here!”

“Miss Miller,” I said calmly, taking the hand she offered me, and glancing around in order to see that we were not observed, “I came here on purpose to meet you—to speak with you!”

“With me?” she cried in cold surprise, her brows contracting in marked displeasure. “What have you to say? Explain quickly, for we must not be seen together here.” And I recognised from her trembling lips how anxious and agitated she had become. She was in some great fear. I was convinced of that.

She tried to smile me welcome, but it died from her white lips. The expression upon her face told me that she was in deadly fear lest I should discover her secret.

I was, I felt certain, the very last person whom she desired to meet.

The very fact of my presence there told her that I knew something concerning her—something concerning the past that she intended at all costs to hide from me.

Chapter Eleven.

Lucie is Confidential.

“This is not altogether an accidental meeting, Miss Miller,” I confessed at once to her. “The fact is I have waited in vain for your return to Granville Gardens, and at length have thought it wise to come here in search of you.”

“Who told you that we lived here?” she inquired breathlessly.

“No one told me, I discovered the fact quite accidentally,” was my answer. “Remember that your family is an old one, and in Debrett, therefore it was easy to find out the home of the Dorsetshire Millers.” My rather plausible explanation apparently satisfied her, for looking sharply around, she said:—

“If we are to talk, Mr Leaf, let us cross yonder stile and slip across the fields. We shall not be seen there.” So I helped her over the stile she indicated and we passed together along a steep path beside a high hawthorn hedge, and a few minutes later descended into the hollow where the village and sea were lost to view.

“I certainly expected you to return,” I said, half reproachfully. “I believed that you would wish to hear something further regarding the dead man. You refused to tell me his name, but I have discovered it. He was Nardini, the absconding ex-Minister of Justice in Rome.”

“Who told you so?” she inquired, looking at me with considerable suspicion.

“I took possession of his papers. They explained everything,” I replied simply. “And now,” I added, “the reason I am here is to inquire if I can assist you in any way, and to repeat my readiness to do so.”

“No,” she answered, shaking her head sadly. “No assistance that you could render me, Mr Leaf, would, I regret to say, be of any avail,” and I saw tears welling in her eyes.

“But you must not give up like this,” I urged. “You must endeavour to shield yourself, even if you fail, after all. The man is dead; his mouth is closed.”

“Ah, yes. That is just it. If he lived he might, perhaps, have had compassion upon me.”

“He refused to tell the truth—that you were at his villa at Tivoli on that evening, and therefore could not have been in Rome, eh?”

She halted, glaring at me open-mouthed. She saw that I knew the truth, and after a few moments’ silence with her eyes fixed upon mine, she exclaimed in a low, hoarse voice:—

“He preserved silence because he dared not tell the truth. He was a cur and a coward.”

“And also a thief, it would seem,” I added.

“Yes—you have seen what the papers are saying about him, I suppose? The police are searching for him all over Europe. They have no idea that he is already dead and buried.”

“Perhaps it is as well; otherwise the papers would have fallen into their hands. As it is I took possession of them all and restored them to the Italian Embassy—all but this,” and I drew out her letter of appeal, and, opening it, handed it to her.

She glanced at it, crushed it in her hand with a sigh, her dark eyes still fixed upon mine, as though she were trying to read my innermost thoughts.

“Who are your enemies?” I asked in a kindly tone of sympathy. “Tell me, Miss Miller, what have they alleged against you?”

Her brows again contracted. She set her lips hard but remained silent, determined not to satisfy me regarding the charge against her.

I pressed her to speak, but she was firm and quite immovable.

“Now that Nardini is dead I am helpless in the hands of my unscrupulous enemies,” was her low, inert answer.

“That letter is best destroyed,” I said. Then with murmured thanks she tore it into tiny fragments and scattered it to the wind which carried the pieces away across the wide field of ripe corn.

I told her nothing of the yellow document, that hideous record which Nardini had preserved with her letter.

On the contrary, I implored her pardon for my visit and for my piece of audacious imposture, and, as we walked on together, explained how her father and myself had become friends.

At first she seemed full of fear and suspicion, but gradually, as I gave a full description of how Miller had taken me over the house to see the pictures and antiques, and she saw how enthusiastic I was over the beautiful old place, she became reassured. Did she know the secret of her father’s double life? In any case I could see that she was prepared to go to any length in order to shield him.

“I expect my aunt has been very much puzzled by your card,” she said. “She will probably be wondering whoever you can be.”

“If you so desire, Miss Miller, you can explain to your aunt that I am a friend of yours, and that by a mistake of the servant the card was sent to her.”

“A most excellent excuse,” she laughed. “I’ll tell her so, and then if you are still remaining here over to-morrow, perhaps you will call.”

“I shall be only too delighted,” I assured her. “Your father I found a most charming man—almost as charming as his daughter.”

“Now no compliments please, Mr Leaf,” she exclaimed, flushing slightly.

“It is not an idle one, I assure you,” I said. “The compliment is equally to your father as to yourself.” And then we strolled forward again along the banks of a small rippling brook overhung by willows and hawthorns. Was it possible that she, so full of grace and sweetness, was actually the woman who Sammy had declared her to be? No, I could not bring myself to believe it. She spoke with such feeling and sympathy, and she was so full of an ineffable charm that I refused to believe that she was a mere adventuress assisting her father in his direction of some ingenious gang of thieves who worked in secret.

Her father, too, was the very last man whom I should have believed to be an adventurer had not the proof been so plain. Was not that appeal of Lucie’s to Nardini an ugly and suspicious truth?

The more suspicious, too, that she would give me no idea of the allegation against her. She evidently feared lest I should make inquiry and discover the disgraceful truth.

Presently, as we came to a bend in the stream where the water was deeper, its unruffled surface shining like a mirror, I halted, and looking straight into her face, said:—

“Miss Miller, yesterday at your house I made a discovery—one that utterly astounded me.”

Her countenance went ashen grey.

“A discovery!” she faltered. “What—what do you mean?”

Instantly I saw that I had quite unintentionally alarmed her and hastened to set her at her ease.

“I saw upon a table in your drawing-room the photograph of a very dear friend—Ella Murray. She was your friend, so your father told me. How curious that we should both have been acquainted with her!”

“Oh! Ella! Did you really know poor Ella?” she exclaimed quickly, reassured that my discovery was not of a compromising character.

“I knew her very well indeed,” was my slow response. “When were you acquainted with her?”

“Oh! years ago. We were together at the Sacré Coeur at Evreux, and both left the convent the same year. She was my most intimate friend, and once or twice came with me here, to Studland, when we had our holidays together.”

“She actually visited here!” I exclaimed in surprise.

“Several times. Mr Murray was my father’s friend. As you know, he lived at Wichenford, in Worcestershire. Then we went to reside entirely abroad, and for quite a long time, a year or more, I lost sight of her. She was very beautiful. From a child her wonderful face was everywhere admired. In the convent we girls nicknamed her ‘The Little Madonna,’ for she bore a striking likeness to the Van Dyck’s Madonna in the Pitti in Florence, a copy of which hung in the convent chapel.”

“Ah, of course!” I cried. Now that she recalled that picture, I recognised the extraordinary likeness. Perhaps you, who read this chronicle of strange facts, know that small canvas a foot square which hangs in a corner of one of the great gold-ceilinged salons, almost unnoticed save by the foreign art enthusiast. The expression of sweetness and adoration distinguishes it as a marvellous work. “What do you know further concerning her?” I asked. “Tell me all—for she was my friend.”

“About a year before we went to live at Enghien, near Paris, Mrs Murray died. Then her father let Wichenford Place to an American, and went to Australia for a sea-trip, leaving Ella in charge of an old aunt who lived in London. I saw her once, at her aunt’s house in Porchester Terrace. She was very unhappy, and when I asked her the reason she told me in bitter tears that she loved a man who adored her in return. She would not tell me the man’s name, but only said that her father and her aunt were compelling her to marry a wealthy elderly man who was odious, and whom she hated. Poor little Ella! I pitied her, and tried to comfort her, but it was quite useless, for that very evening her father, who was then back in London, compelled her to go out and meet her secret lover and give him his congé. Who he was or what became of him I do not know. I only know that she loved him as dearly as any woman has ever loved a man—poor little Ella!”

I stood before her motionless, listening to those words. Was this true? Had Fate any further shaft of bitterness to thrust into my already broken heart?

“Miss Miller!” I managed to exclaim, in a very low voice I fear, “what you tell me is utterly astounding. You know the man who loved Ella Murray. He was none other than myself—I who loved her, ay better than my own life—I who received that dismissal from the sweet lips that I so adored—the lips that I now know were compelled to lie to me.”

“You—Mr Leaf!” she cried. “Impossible. You were actually Ella’s secret lover!”

“Ah, yes! God alone knows how I have suffered all these years,” I said, half-choked. “You were her friend, Miss Miller, therefore you will forgive me if even to-day I wear my heart upon my sleeve. You will say, perhaps, that I am foolish, yet when a man loves a woman honestly, as I did, and he craves for affection and happiness, the catastrophe of parting is a very severe one—often more so to the man than to the woman. But,” I added quickly, “pardon me, I am talking to you as though you were as old as myself. You, at your age, have never experienced the bitterness of a blighted love.”

“Unfortunately I have,” she answered, in a low, trembling voice. “I, too, loved once—and only once. But, alas! after a few short weeks of affection, of a bliss that I thought would last always, the man I loved was cruelly snatched from me for ever.” And she sighed and tears welled in her fine eyes, as she looked aimlessly straight before her—her mind filled with painful recollections.

She told me no more, and left me wondering at the secret love romance that, to my great surprise, seemed to have already hardened her young heart.

Every girl, even in her school years, has her own little affair of the heart, generally becoming hopelessly infatuated with some man much her senior, who is in ignorance of the burning he is awakening within the girlish breast. But hers was, I distinguished, a real serious affection, one which, like my own, had ended in black grief and tragedy.

But she had told me one truth—a ghastly truth. I had misjudged my dear dead love! She had still loved me—she had still been mine—in heart my own!

Chapter Twelve.

In which a Strange Thing Happens.

“If your love has ended in tragedy, as mine has done, then we can surely sympathise with each other, Miss Miller,” I said, looking into her tearful eyes. “You know well how I have suffered. I believed that Ella really preferred that man to myself, and what you have now told me amazes me. I believed that she was false to me—and yet you tell me that she was true. Ah! how dearly I loved her! I do not believe that any man ever loved a woman so fondly, and with such fierce passion as I did. I was hers—body and soul. My love for her was that deep, all-consuming affection which sometimes makes a man as wax in a woman’s hands—to be moulded for good or for evil as she wills it. I lost all count of time, of friends, of everything, for I lived only for her. The hours when we were parted were to me like years, her words were music, her smiles the sunlight of my life, her sighs the shadows, her kisses the ecstatic bliss of terrestrial paradise in which I lived. Ah! yes, you who have loved and lost can well understand all that her love meant to me—you can understand why one dark foggy night I stood upon Charing Cross platform and swore an oath that never again would I put foot in the country which, though my native land, held for me only a poignant memory.”

“Yes,” she answered, with a slight sigh, “I quite understand how you must have suffered. Yet how strange it is that you should actually have been Ella’s lover—the man who she declared to me was the only one she would ever love. I did not know you, of course, yet I sympathised with you when she told me that she was going that evening to meet you, and to lie to you under compulsion.”

“But why—why did she consent to do this?” I asked.

“She confessed to me the reason. She spoke in confidence, but now that it is all past, I may surely tell you. The fact was that her father, owing to the great depreciation in the value of land, had got into the hands of the Jews, and was on the verge of bankruptcy. Blumenthal, who had lent him a large sum upon mortgage, had offered to return the deeds on the day that he married Ella.”

“Then she actually sacrificed herself to save her father!” I cried.

“Without a doubt. And what a sacrifice! She loved you, Mr Leaf, and yet she dismissed you in order to save her father from ruin.”

“Blumenthal was a brute to have ever suggested such a condition,” I declared savagely. “I never saw him. What kind of man was he? Did you meet him?”

“Yes. He was at Porchester Terrace on the afternoon when I called,” she replied. “A short, stout, black-whiskered man, of a decidedly Hebrew cast. He was dressed loudly and wore a white waistcoat with heavy gold albert—a typical City man such as one sees in Cornhill or Lothbury.”

“She showed no sign of affection towards him?”

“None whatever. He was introduced to me by Mr Murray as Ella’s affianced husband, and I was, of course, amazed that she should entertain a spark of affection for him. But half an hour later, when we were alone, she confessed in tears everything to me, just as I have related it to you.”

“Well, you utterly astound me,” was all I could exclaim.

What she had revealed to me placed my little Ella in an entirely new light. I never dreamed of her self-martyrdom. I sighed heavily, and a big lump arose in my throat as I reflected that, perhaps, after all death was preferable to life with a man whom she could not love.

The calm twilight was deepening into night, and the silence was broken only by the low murmuring of the water, the swift swish of some rat or water-hen in the rushes startled at our presence, and the dismal cry of a night-bird in the willows on the opposite bank.

“Did you hear nothing more of Ella after that day at Porchester Terrace—that 12th of November that was, alas! fatal to my happiness?”

“She wrote to me twice. One letter I received in Rome a month afterwards, and the second followed me about some weeks, and at last found me at Lindau, on the Lake of Constance. Both letters were full of her own unhappiness. In the first she reproached herself bitterly for having lied to the man she really loved—though she never mentioned your name—and said that she was back at Wichenford, but for her the world was dead. The man whom she had dismissed had left her in disgust and despair and had gone abroad, whither she knew not. A friend of yours had, it seemed, told her that you had gone to Algeria, and her letter concluded with the words: ‘I am alone to blame for this, yet how could I, in the circumstances, have acted otherwise?’”

“And the second letter?” I asked eagerly.

“It was written a month later, from Blumenthal’s shooting-box near Blair Athol. She and her father were guests there at the great house-party consisting mostly of wealthy City men and their wives. She described it and said how she hated it all. She had, she told me, tried to escape. She had even thought of writing to you to tell you the truth and ask your counsel, yet what use was it when she knew that she must save her father from the ruin that threatened. Wichenford Place had been the home of the Murrays ever since the days of James the First, when the King himself, granted it to his faithful partisan, Donald Murray of Parton, in Dumfriesshire. No Murray had ever before mortgaged it, therefore it was clearly her duty to her family to redeem it from the hands of usurers and vandals, even at cost of her own happiness.”

“A noble sacrifice!” I sighed.

“Yes, Mr Leaf. She was a noble girl,” declared my handsome companion. “I, who knew her through ten years or so, knew her, perhaps, better than even you yourself did. The Little Madonna was never accused of an unkind or unjust action.”

“And after that letter?”

“A few months later she came to visit us at Enghien. She and her father were in Paris, where she was buying her trousseau. But she made no mention of Blumenthal. Afterwards we were continually moving from place to place, and if she wrote, her letter never reached me. I heard no more.”

A long deep silence fell between us. We were still standing there in the grey twilight at a small gate that led into the next field, our path still continuing beside the stream.

“Strange that it should be I who should tell you the truth,” she remarked, almost as though speaking to herself. “You, a perfect stranger, offered to do me a service—indeed you have done me a very great service by restoring that letter to me—and in return, I have been able to tell you the truth regarding your lost love,” and she looked into my face with her sad, serious eyes.

“Yes, it is indeed curious,” I said. “Our circumstances are, in a measure, identical. We have both been the victims of dire misfortunes, both broken by the tragedy of an unhappy love. But you have told me hardly anything concerning yourself,” I added.

The laces of her muslin blouse rose slowly and fell again. In that dim light I detected a hardness at the corners of her mouth, a hardness that, to me, was all-sufficient proof of the bitterness wearing out her young heart.

“Myself!” she echoed sadly. “What need I say about myself? It is of the past, and the memory of it all is a very bitter one. Like you, I believed that happiness was to be mine, the more so, because my father entirely approved of our union. He made confidential inquiries concerning him, and found that he was all that he represented himself to be. But love and happiness were not for me. I, alas! am one of those who are debarred the sweetness of life,” she added hoarsely, her small white hands clenching themselves, as thoughts of the past crowded upon her.

For some time we were again silent. I was anxious to know the truth of the love romance of my sweet-faced little friend—the girl whom Sammy had denounced as an adventuress. Yet surely there was nothing of the adventuress about her as she stood there in her plain white frock amid that purely English scene. I glanced at her countenance and saw that it was pale and agitated, and that her nervous lips were trembling. Her chin had sunk upon her breast and she stood deep in thought as though unconscious of my presence.

“Where did it occur? Here?”

“No, abroad,” she answered, in a thin, mechanical voice. “I met him when we were living at Enghien, and from the first moment of our meeting we discovered that by some strange magnetism we were drawn irresistibly together. He was a foreigner, it is true, but his mother had been English, and his father was a Chilian.”

“Chilian!” I cried, in a voice of surprise. But she never guessed the reason of my amazement.

“Yes. My father discovered that we met in secret, and then invited him to dine with us. From that evening he came daily out from Paris, and we used to spend each afternoon boating on the lake or playing tennis on the island. Before long we had pledged our love, and then commenced days of bliss such as I had never before experienced. I knew at last what was meant by perfect happiness, for we adored each other. I loved him just as dearly as Ella loved you. I would have died for him. Yet in all too short a time the blow fell upon me—the blow that has crushed all life from me, that has already made me a world-weary woman before my time.”

“And what was the end?” I asked with deep sympathy, yet, alas! knowing too well the story of the tragedy.

“The end—ah?” she sighed. “How can I tell you? On the very night when we had secretly fixed the date of our marriage—a night when my father invited several friends to dine—he returned to Paris, and—” but she broke off short and burst into a wild passion of tears.

For some time I waited, my hand placed tenderly upon her shoulder, striving to comfort her, and urging her to bear up against her heavy burden of trouble. Then at last when she grew calm again, she said in a hard tone:—

“On his return to Paris he found that during his absence thieves had obtained access to his room at the hotel, and securities for a very large amount, for the safe custody of which he was personally responsible, had been stolen. He saw that his own honour was at stake, that he alone was to blame for not leaving them in the bank, and in a fit of despondency—a mad paroxysm of temporary insanity—he took out his revolver and ended his life. I only knew of it four days after, when I chanced to read of it in the Indépendance Belge, for early on the morning following the dinner, my father had received a telegram and been compelled to go to Brussels, and I accompanied him. Before I knew the awful truth, poor Manuel was already dead and buried! Since that day,” she added bitterly, “all hope of happiness has been crushed within me. I know now that the love of an honest man is not for me.”

I made no response. I was too absorbed in my own thoughts. Every word of hers bore out Sammy’s story, yet I saw that she herself was innocent of the foul plot which had, as a sequel, the suicide of the poor girl’s lover.

Miller knew the truth; he was, indeed, in all probability the instigator of the ingenious theft that had had such a tragic sequel.

In silence I held the small gate open for her, and together we passed on along the path beside the winding stream. Both our hearts were too full for words after that unusual exchange of confidences.

Of a sudden before us, advancing in our direction, there appeared the figure of some one in the shadow beneath the trees.

Lucie detected it at the same instant as myself, and halting drew back in quick alarm.

“We must not be seen here together,” she gasped. “People would talk, and it would quickly get to my father’s ears.”

“And what harm if it did?” I asked, but ere she could reply a strange thing happened—an incident more startling and more amazing than any I could have ever imagined in my wildest dreams.

I held my breath, and stood rooted to the spot.

Chapter Thirteen.

Beneath the Love-Light.

What followed was amazing, mystifying.

With a loud cry that startled me the grey figure had come swiftly towards us, and I then saw that it was a woman.

My companion and she flew into each other’s arms and exchanged wild joyful greetings, while I, catching sight of her face, stood there open-mouthed, breathless in sheer astonishment.

At that moment I doubted whether I were actually sane and in possession of all my senses. I doubted even my own eyes. And had you been there, in my place, I think you also would have been dumbfounded.

“Fancy you—of all persons in this whole world!” Lucie cried, then turning to me after kissing the newcomer with wild enthusiasm, she laughed, adding:—

“This gentleman is not altogether a stranger, I believe?”

The woman turned her flushed countenance to mine, and in the dim twilight our eyes met.

She started back with a loud cry, then, next instant, dashed forward to me, grasping both my hands.

“Ella!” I ejaculated. It was all I could say.

“Godfrey!—you?”

And she looked from me to Lucie inquiringly, for having met us walking at that hour by that lonely brook she doubtless believed us to be lovers.

“I am Godfrey Leaf,” I said, grasping both her hands. “Yes, I cannot realise that you are really Ella—my own Ella—from the grave?” And I still stood there stupefied.

“From the grave? What do you mean?” she asked, surprised.

“They told me that you were dead,” I cried quickly. “They said that you had caught typhoid, and that it ended fatally.”

“It is true that I had a bad attack of fever, and the doctors gave me up, yet somehow—I suppose by the perverseness of Fate, because I had no further desire to live—I recovered. But you were abroad constantly, and therefore heard nothing of me.”

“I was in Russia when I received news of your death, Ella,” I said in a low voice, for there, in the presence of my love, I had become a changed man. “I have mourned for you until to-day.”

“I had no idea of this!” she exclaimed. “I have been living in Ireland with my father. I have scarcely ever been in London since—since that night when we parted,” she faltered, lowering her eyes, as though fearing to meet my reproachful gaze.

“And how came you here?” Lucie asked, as amazed as I was at her appearance.

“We came over from Bournemouth to Swanage this afternoon, and it suddenly occurred to me to come and see if you were in England. I wanted to see the dear old Manor again—the house where you and I have spent so many very happy hours long ago. Minton did not recognise me at first, but when he did he told me that you had gone out to the village two hours ago. I then made inquiries as to the direction you had taken, and fortunately found you here.”

“Then your father is now at Swanage?”

“Yes. We are staying the night there. To-night a motor-car belonging to a friend of my father’s is coming from Winchester to take us for a trip through Devonshire and Cornwall.”

“Well, Ella, you certainly gave us both a turn, appearing so suddenly,” declared Lucie. “Only half an hour ago we were speaking of you, and, like every one else, believed that you were dead.”

“I wonder who started such a report?” she said. “Why did they say that I had died?”

“To trace the source of a false report is always difficult,” I said. “Somebody surmises something and tells some one else, and the second person, in recounting it, declares the surmise to be the truth. It is almost always so.”

“There certainly could be no motive in saying that Ella was dead, as far as I can see,” Lucie declared. “But,” she added, “why let us worry about the past? You have come back to us—back really from the grave.”

“Yes,” I said, still holding her hand. “I believed, Ella, that you were dead long ago. The memory of that last night when we walked through the wet streets of Bayswater has ever remained a bitter one.”

“No, no,” she cried. “Do not recall it. I, too, have suffered agonies of regret. Why is it that we meet again—like this?” and I noted that her splendid eyes were turned upon her friend in askance.

Yes. She suspected that Lucie and I were lovers, and such a conclusion was, after all, but natural.

“You are surprised, no doubt, to meet us together,” laughed Lucie. “But if you knew the truth regarding our acquaintance you would be even more surprised.”

“Then Godfrey is not—”

“He is certainly not my lover,” she exclaimed. “I may as well make that quite clear to you at once, dear. We came here because he had something to explain to me, and we naturally had no desire that the villagers should gossip.”

My Ella turned again to me, and I saw that all anxiety had faded from her beautiful countenance. She was sweet and smiling—her old delightful self again.

What had happened in those years I knew not. My love might be married, for aught I knew. She wore gloves, therefore I could not tell if her hand bore a wedding ring. She made no mention of Blumenthal, and I could not well inquire of him. So we were both of us somewhat restrained, neither knowing of the exact position of the other.

I only knew that all the great passion I had entertained for her swelled within my heart, filling it to overflowing. The touch of her had thrilled me and I longed to kiss those sweet red lips once again—to repeat to her my love and to assure her that I was still unchanged.

But with Lucie present I could say nothing. I could ask no question, nor could I make any declaration. Yet in those few moments I had been lifted from the depths of despair and despondency to the pinnacle of happiness.

Ella, my well-beloved, still lived! And while she lived she was still mine in heart, even though, perish the thought, she might be wife of another.

Darkness was now falling, yet there was still sufficient light to reveal her wondrous beauty. As she stood before me in her pale grey dress and large black hat I recognised that she had grown even more beautiful than she had been in the days of our love romance. Her figure was perfect in its symmetry; her countenance so lovely that even the uncommon beauty of Lucie paled before her. Those blue eyes that I knew were so unfathomable were turned upon me, and even there I saw in them the love-light that was unmistakable, that expression mysterious and indescribable that no woman is ever able to feign—the look, often unconscious, that tells a man that he is the object of passionate affection.

My heart leapt within me with wild ecstasy, yet I could not speak.

I only grasped her hand more tightly. Then in order to cover the emotion that I saw was rising within her, I turned and made a casual remark to Lucie that it was almost time we returned.

“Of course,” she said quickly, recognising the situation. “You two have much to talk over alone. Let us go.”

And together we moved forward along the path by, which my lost love had returned to me.

How can I describe to you my feelings in those moments? Sometimes I found myself doubting whether it was not all some dream or some strange chimera of my unbalanced brain. But I held her hand, and found that it was real flesh and blood. My well-beloved still lived; she for whom I had mourned so long had returned, even more sweet and beautiful.

The village bells were pealing, the ringers practising probably.

“Hark!” I said, as I walked at her side, treading on air from sheer buoyancy of spirits. “They are joy bells, Ella. They ring because you have returned to me.” She laughed, turning those dear, wide-open eyes to mine, and said:—

“How often have I wondered where you were, and whether—” and she paused without completing the sentence.

“Whether what?”

“Well—whether you had, after all, forgotten me,” she said. “I never dreamed that you believed me dead. I thought, of course, that if you really loved me, as you used to say, that you would surely write to me or endeavour to see me when you knew that, after all, I had not married that man.”

“Then you did not marry Blumenthal after all!” I cried quickly. “Was the engagement broken off?”

“Yes. Because of his ill-health. He released me when the doctors told him the truth—that he had only a few months to live. He died three months later.” And she grew silent again, and yet it seemed as if she wished to tell me something further. Indeed she was about to do so, but checked herself.

“Well!” I asked, in order to allow her an opportunity to speak.

“He was generous to me after all,” she went on. “The day before he died he sent for me, and I went and sat at his bedside. He knew his end was near, and after he had expressed deep regret that he had come between us—for he knew quite well that I loved you very dearly—he drew from beneath his pillow a large sealed envelope, making me promise to take it home, but not to open it until the day after his decease. Next day he died, and on the day following I broke the seals and discovered, to my amazement and joy, that he had presented me with the mortgage deeds of Wichenford. Some years before my father had mortgaged our old home to him, and those very deeds he had made my price as his wife.”

“Then for the great injustice he did you, Ella, the fellow endeavoured to atone,” I said. “The mortgage, therefore, does not now exist.”

“Of course not. I gave the deeds at once to my father, and they were that day destroyed, much to the chagrin of the heirs of the estate, who had long been scheming to become possessors of Wichenford.”

“A most generous action,” Lucie declared.

“Yes, whatever I may have said of him, and however much I have hated him in the past, I cannot help acknowledging that before his death he rendered me the greatest service.”

“Yet you were prepared to perform a noble self-sacrifice, Ella,” I said, in a low, serious voice. “You kept your secret, and before we parted told me what was untrue. But Lucie has revealed to me the astounding truth. Only to-night, for the first time, have I realised all that your self-martyrdom meant—only to-night have I discovered that, after all, you still loved me just as fondly and with a passion just as fierce as my own—that even though engaged to Blumenthal your dear heart was still my own.”

Chapter Fourteen.

Cruel Destiny.

James Harding Miller was seated alone in a long cane deck-chair on the terrace that ran the whole length of the beautiful old house. He had drawn it out through the French windows of the smoking-room, and was idly drawing out a cigar in the semi-darkness.

“Father!” cried Lucie, rushing forward as we approached, “do you recognise our visitor?”

Instantly he jumped up, exclaiming:—

“Why Ella—Ella after all this time! Minton told me that you had called and had gone in search of Lucie. And how is your father?”

“He’s very well, thanks,” was my love’s reply. “I left him at Swanage, and drove out to see if Lucie was at home.”

“And Mr Leaf,” exclaimed Lucie. “I think you have met him before, father?”

“Certainly,” Miller said pleasantly, extending his hand to me. “You are staying here, in Studland?”

“For a couple of days or so,” I answered.

“You mentioned that you had met my daughter,” he remarked, and then after welcoming Ella and pressing her to remain there the night, he ordered Minton to bring us chairs, and pushed the cigars across to me.

To Miller, Ella gave the same account of herself as she had given to us. The identity of the person who had spread the false report concerning her death—a report which had passed from mouth to mouth among all her friends—was a mystery, and Miller was just as surprised and just as pleased as ourselves at her reappearance.

As we sat there in the starlight I listened to Ella’s account of her free, open-air life in County Galway, for Wichenford was still let to the wealthy American; and her father, she said, preferred Ireland as a place of residence when he could not live on his own estate.

“But you never wrote to us,” Miller remarked. “Often we have spoken of you, and regretted that you were no longer with us. Indeed, your portrait is still yonder in the drawing-room. Only the day before yesterday Mr Leaf noticed it, and inquired whether I knew you.”

My love’s eyes met mine in a long wistful look.

“I believed that you were always abroad,” she answered him. “And—well, to tell the truth, I had an idea that you had altogether forgotten me.”

“Forgotten you, dear?” cried Lucie. “We have never forgotten you. How could I ever forget my dearest friend—and more especially when I knew what a terrible self-sacrifice you had made?”

“What’s that?” inquired Miller, quickly interested.

“Shall I tell him?” asked Lucie, turning to me.

“If you wish. It is only right, I think, that Mr Miller should know the truth.”

Therefore, receiving Ella’s consent as well, Lucie explained to her father how I had been her friend’s secret lover, and how she had broken off our affection by force of circumstance, sacrificing herself in order to save her father from ruin.

He listened to his daughter in surprise, then sighing heavily, turned to Ella, saying sympathetically:—

“How noble of you! Ah! what you both must have suffered! You need not tell me, either of you, for I know myself what it is to lose the woman one loves. I recollect my poor dear wife and still adore her memory.” And this from a man who was suspected of being leader of a gang of international criminals!

“The bitterness of the past,” I said, “will perhaps render the joy of the present all the sweeter.”

“It certainly ought to. Surely your delight at finding Ella alive and well when you, like all of us, believed her dead, must be beyond bounds?”

“It is! It is!” I cried. “I, who believed that she preferred wealth to my honest love; I, who have these long years been filled with a thousand regrets and reproaches, now know the truth. I have misjudged her!”

The soft hand of my well-beloved sought my wrist and gripped it. That action conveyed more to me than any words of hers could have done.

Presently it grew chilly, and we went into the long old-fashioned drawing-room, where we found Miss Miller, a pleasant grey-faced old lady, in a cap with cherry-coloured ribbons, idling over a book.

Upon the table still stood the portrait of my dear heart, the picture which only two days before had awakened within me such bitter remembrances. The silk-shaded lamps shed a soft light over everything, illuminating for the first time my Ella’s beautiful face. In the twilight by the river I had seen that she had become even more beautiful, yet the light that now fell upon her revealed a calmness and sweetness of expression that I had not hitherto been able to distinguish. She was far more lovely than I had believed—more beautiful even than in those days of our secret love.

Those great blue eyes looked out upon me with that same love-flame as of old—eyes that were clear and bright as a child’s, the glance of which would have made any man’s head reel—cheeks that were more delicately moulded than the marbles of Michael Angelo, and a grace that was perfect, complete, adorable.

And she was mine—still my own!

Strange that this sudden happiness was actually the sequel of a tragedy!

“It is really delightful to be back here again,” she remarked to Lucie, glancing round the room. “How well I remember the old days when, in the holidays, I came and stayed with you. Nothing has changed. The dear old place is just the same.”

“Yes,” replied Lucie. “I only wish we lived here more. But father and I are always abroad—always moving from place to place through France, Germany, Spain, Italy, just as the fit takes us. Nowadays, dear old dad is really like the Jew-errant. He can’t remain more than a few days in one place—can you, dad?” she asked, laughing across at him.

“No, my dear,” was his response in a strange voice. “I must travel—travel—always travel. To keep moving is part of my nature, I believe.”

“Only fancy! he’s here in England!” she remarked to Ella. “It’s really wonderful!”

While this conversation was in progress I was afraid that old Miss Miller might refer to my call upon her; but fortunately she either did not catch my name when introduced, or did not connect me with her mysterious visitor.

The owner of Studland Manor was, I saw, somewhat uneasy when his daughter began to explain how constantly they travelled. He seemed a little annoyed that Lucie should tell us that they were constantly moving, instead of living quietly by the Mediterranean outside Leghorn, as he would have me believe.

The old-fashioned Empire clock beneath its glass shade, standing on the chimney-piece, struck eleven, and I rose resolutely to take my leave. I had expressed pleasure at my new-found happiness, shook hands all round, and asked leave to call on the morrow.

“Certainly—most certainly,” answered Miller, in that breezy manner that he had sometimes assumed towards me on our last meeting. He was essentially a man of moods, sometimes brooding and strange, at others full of buoyant good-humour, “You are always welcome here, remember. Perhaps you’ll dine with us—just pot-luck—at seven to-morrow night? I don’t expect you get much that’s worth eating down at the ‘Lion’. We’ll induce Ella to stay over to-morrow, eh?”

My love protested that she would be compelled to return to Swanage in the morning, but we would not hear of it.

Then Miller, with a delicacy which further showed that he had taken a fancy to me, suggested that Ella might, perhaps, like to accompany me as far as the lodge-gates, and a few moments later I went forth with my love into the darkness.

For the first hundred paces, until we entered the black shadows of the old beech hedge, we walked hand-in-hand, uttering no single word.

After that long interval of mourning and black despair, I was again at her side—alone. I was beside myself for very joy.

We halted. It seemed an almost involuntary action. Then taking her tenderly in my arms I pressed my lips to hers in a first long passionate caress.

“My love!” I murmured, with heart overflowing, “my dearest love—you for whom I have mourned, and whose dear memory I have ever revered—God has given you back to me. We have met again—you have been given to me from the grave, never to part—never—never!”

To my blank amazement she turned her pale white face from mine, without reciprocating my passionate kisses. She sighed, and a shiver ran through her slight frame. Her lips were cold, and with her hands she pushed me from her with averted face.

“Ella!” I gasped, holding her, and looking into her fine eyes, though I could see no expression there, so dark was it. “Ella! Darling, may I not at least kiss you welcome on your return to me? Are you not mine—my own?”

She made no response, only pushing me farther from her very firmly, although I felt that her tiny hands trembled. She was overcome with emotion, which she was in vain striving to suppress.

I held my breath—startled at her sudden and unaccountable change of manner. My heart was bursting. What did it mean?

“Speak, dearest!” I implored. “Tell me the reason of this? Are you not still my love? Are you not mine—as you were in the old days?”

Slowly she shook her head, and in a faltering voice, hoarse and low, responded:—

“No, Godfrey! After to-night we must never again meet. Forgive me, but I thought you had long ago forgotten me as utterly worthless.”

“I have never forgotten, darling. You are my own dear Ella, as always. Therefore we are now inseparable—we shall meet again.”

“Impossible!” she declared decisively in that same hard tone, her voice so entirely changed. “I am no longer your love, Godfrey. I may as well confess to you the bitter truth at once—I am another’s!”

Chapter Fifteen.

Betrays some Hidden Intrigue.

I fell back at Ella’s words, as though I had received a blow full in the chest.

“You—you are married!” I gasped.

“No—not yet,” was her low answer, in the same blank, mechanical voice.

“Then you love another man!” I cried fiercely.

“In a month’s time I am to be married.”

“But you shall not, Ella!” I exclaimed quickly and determinedly. “You are mine. Surely I have a prior claim to you! You loved me in the old days—you surely cannot deny that!”

“I do not deny it, Godfrey,” she said, in that same sweet, soft voice that had so long rung in my ears. “Unfortunately I did not know that you still retained any affection for me. I made inquiries, but no one knew where you were, except that you were always abroad. For aught I knew you might already be married. Therefore, I am not altogether to blame.”

“Who is the man?” I asked, with a fierce jealousy rising within me. Was this fellow, whoever he might be, to rob me, after all, of my love, whom I had so fortunately rediscovered?

“I regret it, but I cannot tell you his name.”

“Not tell me his name!” I cried. “Why not? What mystery need there be if you are to be married?”

“I have promised to say nothing until we are man and wife,” she answered. “You alone, Godfrey, have I told because—well, because I dare not again deceive you.”

“Then you still love me!” I exclaimed quickly. “Confess the truth.”

“What is the use of discussing affection?” she asked. “The die is cast. At the very moment when we meet again after this long separation, we find ourselves debarred from happiness. We can never become man and wife.”

“Why not?”

“Because I must marry this man.”

“Must?”

“Yes,” she whispered hoarsely.

“But you were in that position regarding Blumenthal,” I remarked, much puzzled. In the darkness I could not distinguish the expression of her countenance, but from her voice I knew that she was in desperation, and that she was actually telling me a hideous truth.

“Misfortune seems to follow upon me,” was her somewhat enigmatical answer.

“Then be frank with me, Ella. This man whom you will not name is forcing you to marry him.”

She was, however, silent. Either she feared to commit herself, or she was reflecting upon how much she dare tell me.

I heard her breath going and coming in quick gasps, and I could distinguish that her pointed chin had sunk upon her chest in an attitude of deep dejection.

“Why not tell me everything, darling?” I went on, hoping to persuade her to confess. “Remember what I am to you; remember that our lives have for so long been linked together, that ever in these years of our separation you have been mine always, in heart and soul. I have smiled upon no other woman but your own sweet self, and never once has my heart been stirred by the zephyr of love since that dark wet night when we parted in London, and I went forth into the wide grey ocean of despair. Ella, you—”

“Enough! Enough!” she cried, suddenly interrupting me. “Do not recall the past. All is too bitter, too melancholy. Every single detail of our last interview I have lived over and over again—I, who lied to you, even though my heart was breaking. Blumenthal gave me my freedom—and yet—”

“And yet,” I said very slowly, in a low, intense voice—“and yet you have again fallen the victim of a man’s ingenious wiles. Tell me the truth, dearest. You have been entrapped—and you see no way of escape.”

But she only shook her head sadly, saying:—

“No, I can say nothing—not even to you, Godfrey.”

“Why?” I cried, dismayed. “Why all this secrecy and mystery? Surely I may, at least, know the man’s name?”

“That I cannot tell you.”

“Then he has forbidden you to reveal his real identity?”

She nodded in the affirmative.

“Which plainly shows that the fellow is in fear of something. He’s afraid of exposure in some way or other. I will not allow you, my own dear love, to become the victim of this fellow!” I said fiercely. “He may be an adventurer, for all you know—a man with an evil past. He has, without doubt, ascertained that on your father’s death Wichenford will be yours. No, Ella, I will not allow you to marry this man who forbids you to reveal his name.”

“But what will you do?” she cried in alarm.

“What will I do? I will tell him to his face that you are mine—that he has no right to you. And you will refuse to become his wife.”

“Ah!—yes—but you must not do that,” she declared. “Why not?”

“No. I beg of you to do nothing rash,” she urged in breathless anxiety, laying her hand upon my arm.

“But I will not allow you—my own well-beloved—to become the wife of another!”

“Godfrey,” she said, in so low a voice that it was scarcely above a whisper, “you must. There is no way of escape for me.”

“Then you are a victim of this nameless man!”

She nodded in the affirmative.

“Who is he? Tell me,” I demanded. “I have a right to know.”

“Yes, you have, indeed, a right, but I have given my word of honour to say nothing. I cannot tell his name—even to you.”

The mystery of it all somehow aroused my suspicions. Was she deceiving me? Had she invented this nameless lover with some ulterior object? No man can ever fathom the ingenuity of a woman who intends to deceive.

“Permit me to say so, Ella, but you are not frank with me,” I exclaimed reproachfully. “Why do you not tell me the whole truth, and allow me to take what steps I think proper? Cannot you realise all I feel at the thought of losing you again—for the second time? The past has been black enough, but the future for me will be even darker if I go away in the knowledge that you are the victim of a man unworthy of you. Tell me, dearest, do you doubt my love?”

“No,” she sighed. “I have never doubted it, Godfrey. I know how passionate is your affection; that you love me truly and well. Yet it is all to no purpose. We have met again, it is true, and under the strangest circumstances. It would almost seem as though Fate has brought us together, merely in order to tear us apart. For us, Godfrey, there, alas! can be no happiness,” she added sadly, with a deep-drawn sigh.

“Why not?”

For a few moments she did not reply. I repeated my question, again kissing the cold lips.

“Because—because,” she faltered, “I am compelled to marry this man.”

“He is compelling you, eh?” I asked, between my teeth.

“Yes.”

“And may I not stand as your champion? May I, who love you so dearly, extricate you from this trap?”

She shook her head slowly.

“It is not a trap, Godfrey,” she answered. “Rather call it force of circumstances. Those who told you I was dead lied to you, while I, hearing nothing from you, naturally concluded that you had forgotten. Therefore it is best for us to part again at once—to-night—for the memories of the past are to us both too painful.”

“Part from you, Ella!” I cried. “Never—never. You must be mad. While you breathe and live I shall remain near you as your friend, your protector, nay, your lover—the man who loves you better than his own life!” I declared, taking her small hand and raising it reverently to my lips. “It is cruel of you, darling, to suggest us parting.”

“No, it is the more merciful to both of us. We must part—so the sooner the better.”

“You told me this on that never-to-be-forgotten night in London,” I said reproachfully. “Therefore I cannot think that you are now in earnest.”

“I am, Godfrey,” she declared quickly. “I do not deny to you that I love you, but love between us is debarred. I am unhappy—ah! God alone knows what trials I have borne—what horrors have been mine to witness—and now to fill the cup of my grief I have met you only to find that you still love me,” she cried hoarsely, in a voice broken by emotion.

I held her trembling hand, and again kissed her cold, hard lips.

But she drew herself from me firmly, saying in a low, broken voice, full of pathos:—

“No, Godfrey. Let us say good-night here. Let both of us go our own way, as we have done before; both of us, however, now confident in each other’s love, even though our lives lie far apart. Remember me only as an unhappy woman who, through no fault of her own, is prevented from becoming your wife. Think of me still as your Ella of the old sweet days, and I will remember you, my Godfrey—the—the man I love. I—”

But she could utter no further word, for she burst into a flood of bitter tears.

Chapter Sixteen.

Introduces Mr Gordon-Wright.

Next morning, after a night of dark reflections, spent at the dormer window of the village inn, I called at the Manor House as early as the convenances would permit.

Lucie, cool in a white blouse and piqué skirt, met me in the hall, and, to my surprise, told me that Ella had already departed. At seven o’clock she asked that she might be driven back to Swanage to rejoin her father, as they were leaving early on the motor-car.

She was as surprised as I myself was at this sudden decision to leave, for she expected that she would remain there for another day at least, now that we had again met.

“Didn’t she tell you that she was leaving early?” Lucie asked, looking me straight in the face.

“No. I certainly expected to find her here,” I said, as she led me into the old-fashioned morning-room sweet with the odour of pot-pourri in the big Oriental punch-bowls.

I was utterly taken aback by her announcement.

When I had parted from my love she had declared that to meet again was useless, but I had assured her that in the morning I would call—that now we had met I would not again leave her. Had she not confessed her love for me? Did we not love each other with a fond, mad passion? And yet my darling had, it appeared, fallen beneath the influence of some nameless fellow, who was, no doubt, a scoundrel and an adventurer! Should I calmly stand by and allow her to ruin her life and mine? No. A thousand times, no. And as I stood there in silence in the low-ceilinged old room with Lucie Miller at my side, I made a firm and furious resolve that my Ella should not again escape me. Our love, however, seemed ill-fated. The remembrance of that night in Bayswater ever arose within my memory. Again how curious it was, that through the dead I had found the living. By the death of Nardini I had rediscovered my lost love.

I wondered whether I should confide in Lucie and explain what my love had told me, or whether it was best to allow her, at least for the present, to remain in ignorance? I decided, after due reflection, upon the latter course.

“I, of course, thought that she had wished you good-bye, and made an appointment for another meeting,” Lucie said. “In fact, both my father and myself were greatly surprised when she came and asked that the horse might be put to. And yet—” and without finishing her sentence, she looked mysteriously into my face.

“And yet what?” I asked.

For a few moments she was silent, hesitating to explain. I saw by her face that something had puzzled her. We had so quickly become friends, and our friendship had been cemented by our mutual acquaintanceship with Ella Murray, that we had found ourselves speaking perfectly frankly as though we had known each other for years.

“Well—will you pardon me for asking you a rather impertinent question, Mr Leaf?” she said.

“Why, certainly.”

“You’ll perhaps think me curiously inquisitive, but how long were you with Ella in the avenue after you left last night?”

“About half an hour.”

“Not more?”

“No. I can fix it, because I noted the time by that long grandfather clock in the hall as we went out, and I looked at my watch when I got back to the inn. I was three-quarters of an hour in getting back to Studland.”

“That’s rather strange,” she remarked, with a distinct note of suspicion in her voice.

“Why?”

“Well—because Ella was gone nearly two hours and a half. My father went to bed, and I remained up for her. Wasn’t she with you?”

“Certainly not,” was my prompt answer, much surprised at her statement.

“Then something must have occurred after she left you,” my companion said.

“After she left me! What do you mean?”

“A very long time elapsed before her return,” Lucie remarked. “She may have been alone—but I think not.”

“Who was with her?”

“How can we tell?”

“But what causes you to think that Ella was not alone?”

“By her strange manner when she returned. She was pale and breathless, as though she had been hurrying, and although she had pinned it up I noticed that the sleeve of her blouse was torn, and that her wrist bore dark marks as though she had had a desperate struggle with some one.”

“Was she attacked by some tramp or other, I wonder?” I cried, amazed.

“She refused to tell me anything save that she was rather upset. She seemed in great fear that my father should have knowledge of the affair, and made me faithfully promise not to tell him. Her hair was awry, and some of the lace at the throat was torn as though some person had seized her and tried to strangle her. Indeed, while speaking to me she placed her hand at her throat, as if it pained her. Alarmed at her appearance, I inquired what was the matter, but she would only tell me vaguely that she was not very well. I at once jumped to the conclusion that you had quarrelled.”

“We certainly had no quarrel, Miss Miller,” I quickly reassured her.

“Then it is evident that she was attacked by some one! Yet it is curious that, intimate friends that we are, she would tell me nothing of the incident.”

“She wished to shield her assailant, perhaps,” I remarked, much puzzled.

“It certainly seems so. Seeing her so pale, and believing her about to faint, I took her to the dining-room and gave her some brandy. She sipped it, and a moment afterwards burst into tears. I sat with her for nearly half an hour trying to learn the mystery of her unhappiness. I asked her quite frankly if she had quarrelled with you, but she replied in the negative. Under the light, as she sat in the dining-room, I remarked the great change in her. Her countenance was pale as death, her lips white, and her eyes bore a look of terror in them. She was undoubtedly in great fear. But of what, I am unable to tell.”

“Your surmise is, no doubt, correct. She met some one unexpectedly—some one who attacked her. I wonder who it is?”

“She was evidently followed here this evening, and was, perhaps, seen walking with you. Your conversation, as you walked down to the lodge, might have been overheard.”

“Probably. But surely, Miss Miller, the incidents of last night were very remarkable ones. I followed you and I met my love. And then, just at the moment of my re-found happiness, she has gone again without a word. Indeed, when I reflect, the incidents of last night hardly seem real. I find myself doubting whether it was not all a dream, and would really hesitate to believe in its reality if you, too, had not been present—if you, too, had not seen and spoken with her.”

“Yes, it is curious—very curious. I was quite as startled by her sudden appearance as you were. It is inexplicable. I, too, believed she was dead. I heard so from half a dozen people, and I can’t help thinking, Mr Leaf, that there was some deep ulterior motive in spreading such a report concerning her.”

“She’s a mystery,” I declared; “a complete mystery.”

“She is—and yet do you not find her far more beautiful than in the old days? I do.”

“Perhaps her beauty is fatal—like that of so many women,” I sighed. “The source of many a woman’s unhappiness is to be found in her face.”

“Last night tragedy was written deeply upon hers,” my companion said, in a low, sympathetic voice. “I wonder what has occurred?”

I, too, wondered. Her firm refusal to allow me to kiss her upon the lips showed her either to be in deadly fear of the jealousy of another; or that she was true to the vow she had given, even though she still loved me. Yet who could be this person whom she had undoubtedly met after we had parted? Why had he attacked her? Why had she fled again so quickly? Was she in fear of some one who was still lurking in the vicinity? A sense of deadly chilliness stole over me.

The whole affair was, indeed, a mystery, yet not so utterly bewildering as were certain of the events which followed—events which were so strange and startling that they formed a problem that was for so long beyond solution.

Being so passionately devoted to Ella I determined to follow her, demand an explanation of the attack upon her and seek to discover the identity of her unknown lover—the man whom she had admitted to me she was to marry under compulsion.

I had risen from my chair, expressing my intention of driving into Swanage in the hope that she had not already left, when the door opened, and a dark, well-dressed man about forty, clean-shaven, having the appearance of a naval officer and dressed in a dark grey flannel suit, came forward with extended hand to my companion, wishing her good-morning.

From his easy manner I saw that he was a guest in the house, although on the previous night I had not seen him.

“Will you allow me to introduce you?” Lucie said, and next instant presented the newcomer to me as “My father’s friend, Mr Gordon-Wright.”

The visitor turned to take the hand I extended to him, and raised his eyes to mine.

The conventional greeting and assurance of pleasure at the meeting froze upon my lips.

We had met before—under circumstances that were, to say the least, both startling and strange.

In that instant I recognised how that the mystery had deepened a thousandfold.

Chapter Seventeen.

What Happened in the Night.

Whether the recognition had been mutual I was unable to decide.

If it had the newcomer made no sign, but extended his hand and greeted me, while I, striving to remain unconcerned, returned his welcome.

“Your father tells me he’s driving over to Swanage at half-past ten, Miss Lucie. Are you coming with us?” he asked, as he lounged with his hands deep in his jacket pockets, and an after-breakfast cigarette between his lips.

“I don’t think so,” was her reply. “I’m lunching with the Strong girls.”

“Oh, do come,” urged the dark-faced man. “You’d be back before one. You promised me yesterday that you’d drive me somewhere.”

“So I will—to-morrow, perhaps.”

I watched the man’s thin shaven face, and looked into his grey eyes in silence. His was a countenance striking on account of its clear-cut features, its mobile mouth, its high intellectual forehead, and its protruding jaws—an eminently clever, good-humoured face, and yet the expression in the eyes was, somehow, out of keeping with the rest of the countenance.

He laughed lightly, making some chaffing remarks, whereat the slight flush that arose in Lucie’s cheeks told me that she was not altogether averse to his evident admiration. He was a pleasant fellow—but, nevertheless, a mystery.

His appearance there had, for two reasons, startled me. The first was because I had no idea that Miller had a male visitor, and the second was because I recognised him as a person whom I had long desired to rediscover.

The last occasion I had seen him he had called himself Lieutenant Shacklock, R.N. It was in very different circumstances. He had worn a moustache and beard, and affected a gold-rimmed monocle. His personal appearance as he stood there laughing with Lucie was, however, very different, yet those cold grey, close-set eyes were the same. They wore an expression that could never be altered or disguised.

We spoke together once or twice, and I began to feel convinced that he was unaware of our previous meeting.

“Yes,” he remarked to me. “Beautiful old place this. I wonder my friend Miller doesn’t live here more. If I were in his place I’m sure I’d prefer it to wandering about the Continent.”

“You’ve been here before, I suppose?”

“Many times. Miller, when he’s home, generally invites me,” and then he turned to Lucie, by whom he was undoubtedly attracted. Little wonder, indeed, when one recognised how handsome she was.

I again stood silent, my eyes turned upon the spruce man’s face—the face that brought back to my mind a curious and mysterious incident in my wandering life abroad.

When one travels on the Continent as I had travelled, spending years of aimless wandering and lazy idling in the halls and smoking-rooms of hotels of the first order, making passing acquaintances of men and women of all grades and all nations, listening to music in illuminated gardens, and sometimes wandering with some fair table-d’hôte acquaintance beneath the stars, one meets with some queer adventures. I had met with a good many. One of them I now found myself recalling.

Three winters before I found myself, after the brilliant season at Monte Carlo, at a little sea-side resort called Nervi, which, as travellers know, is a few miles beyond Genoa, on the way to Rome. You have possibly looked out of the train and there obtained a glimpse of the blue Mediterranean beating upon its brown rocks; you have admired the splendid white villas of the Genoese merchants, and you have, probably, noticed behind the little railway station a great hotel garden, with green lawns and a splendid avenue of spreading palms.

In that garden one April night after dinner I was strolling and smoking with two men, who were friends. We had met casually in the hotel a few days before; a pleasant word or two, cocktails in company, a proffered cigar, and we at once became acquaintances, as is the way of cosmopolitans. The elder was named Blenkap, a man of sixty, a wealthy ironmaster from Pittsburg; while Shacklock, the other, was much younger, smart, and had just retired from the Navy.

That night we wandered through the gardens to the sea, which lay like glass beneath the light of the white Italian moon, with the waves sighing softly upon the shingle. But Blenkap, after half an hour, complained of being rather unwell, and while the lieutenant went into the town to purchase some cigarettes I accompanied his friend back to the hotel.

It was then about ten o’clock, and refusing to allow me to call a doctor, the American went to his room. At two o’clock in the morning I was awakened by the night-porter, who said that number ninety-seven had asked him to call me. Hastily I dressed, and, on going along the corridor, found Blenkap in bed in a state of collapse.

“I’m very ill; the pains in my head are terrible,” he whispered to me. “Will you call a doctor—somebody who speaks English, if possible?”

His white face alarmed me, and I left him and went along to the lieutenant’s room at the other end of the corridor. To my knock there was, however, no response, but on turning the handle and opening the door, I found the room in darkness and empty. He had not returned. Therefore I hurried out, and in half an hour returned with an Italian doctor who spoke a little English.

On entering the room I noticed that the doctor sniffed the air mysteriously as he crossed to the patient, who I now saw was unconscious. He examined him, asked me a few brief questions, and then fixing his eyes upon me, exclaimed in Italian:—

“This is a rather curious affair, signore.”

“Why?” I inquired. “The gentleman was taken this evening while we were walking together. He complained of bad pains in his head and stomach.”

“Yes, but who gave him the anaesthetic?” asked the doctor.

“Anaesthetic!” I exclaimed. “Why nobody, as far as I know.”

“Well, chloroform has been given him, and quite recently. He struggled against it—don’t you see?” and he indicated the American’s clenched hands and the disordered bed. “How long were you absent?”

“About half an hour.”

“Then some one must have come here while you were away,” the doctor declared, stroking his dark beard very thoughtfully. At first I was alarmed lest the unfortunate American might die, but the doctor, after due examination, assured me that there was really no danger. For half an hour we sat and waited, until at length the man to whom the anaesthetic had been so mysteriously administered regained consciousness. It was a slow recovery, but when at length his dull eyes fell upon me he beckoned me to him and with excited gestures pointed to a leather-covered box beneath a table opposite. I pulled it out and tried the lock. It was still secure, and he nodded in satisfaction. Presently the doctor left, and I returned to bed, but imagine my blank amazement next morning when, just as I was sipping my coffee in my room, Blenkap dashed in, crying:—

“I’ve been robbed! That fellow, Shacklock, did it! He must have crept into my room while you were away, rendered me senseless, took the key from the gold chain I always wear around my neck, opened the box, extracted the whole of the money and jewellery, relocked the box, and then had the audacity to replace the chain around my neck!”

“But he is your friend?” I exclaimed, with astonishment.

“I only met him a fortnight ago at the Grand at San Remo,” he answered. “He was there with a friend of his—probably a thief also. But he came on here alone with me. The fellow has taken over eighty thousand dollars!”

I hurried with him to the questore, or chief of police, and telegrams were quickly despatched hither and thither, but the thief had evidently got back to Genoa by the train at three o’clock in the morning, and embarked at once upon some ship for a Mediterranean port—Naples, Marseilles or Algiers. At any rate, though I remained a month in Nervi, we never heard further either of the easy-going naval man, or of the eighty thousand dollars in American notes and negotiable securities. Without doubt it was intended by the thief, or thieves, to throw the first suspicion upon myself, but fortunately the night-porter stated most positively that he had seen the lieutenant coming from his friend, Blenkap’s room, ten minutes before my return with the doctor. The man had left the main door of the hotel ajar in order to admit us, and it was evident that by that means the thief got away unnoticed.