She is bound by the promise you exacted from her. Their future home—everything is in abeyance till you return," pleaded Dora.
"The home must remain in abeyance a little longer. It is hard, no doubt; but when I go back I may be able to give Bothwell some substantial help in the matter of that future home."
"He will need only your sympathy and your advice. He can manage everything else for himself."
"I understand. He has been helped already."
"Bothwell has always been to me as a brother and he can never be poor while I am rich," answered Dora, as they shook hands.
Heathcote walked slowly back to the Boulevard, thinking over this unexpected arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Wyllard in Paris. Why had they come? That alleged reason of the picture-sale seemed rather more like an excuse for a journey than a motive. True that Wyllard had been known to go up to London on purpose to attend a sale at Christie & Manson's, and there might, therefore, be nothing extraordinary in his going still further on the same errand. But it was strange that the picture-sale should coincide with Heathcote's presence in Paris. Could it be Dora's eagerness to know the result of his researches that had brought her and her husband to the Hôtel Windsor? Was her impatience the motive of the visit?
Hardly, he thought, for he knew the candour of her nature, and he told himself that she would not have misrepresented the reason of her journey. She had told him that the visit was a sudden whim of her husband's, arising out of his passion for art.
Could it be that Julian Wyllard was so deeply interested in the question of Bothwell's guilt or innocence as to make an excuse for being on the scene of the investigation? He had seemed indifferent almost to unkindness. He had wounded his wife's feelings by his coldness upon this question. And now it seemed to Edward Heathcote that his real motive in coming across the Channel must be to watch the case with his own eyes. His manner to-day, when he inquired about Heathcote's progress, had been seemingly careless: but beneath that apparent indifference the lawyer had noted a keen expectancy, an intent watchfulness. Yes, it was something of deeper moment than a picture-sale which had brought Julian Wyllard to Paris, post-haste, at a day's notice. His angry manner to his wife an hour ago had indicated nervous irritation, a mind on the rack.
Yet, looking at the question from a worldly point of view—and Heathcote considered Wyllard essentially a man of the world—there seemed but little reason why he should be deeply concerned as to whether Bothwell was or was not suspected of
