vain knows that I am not easily daunted, and I would go in a moment. But not now. I have never seen her as I have seen her to-day, and there is cause.”
“But under any circumstances Mrs. Lygon must have the message I bring. You, who have done so much to serve her, will simply be undoing all the good you have done if Mr. Hawkesley’s message is not delivered to her.”
“You hear this, dear Matilde,” said Silvain, earnestly.
“I tell you,” said the girl, in a low voice, “I dare not. That is something for me to say.”
“Tell me,” said Aventayle, “what is Mrs. Lygon doing?”
“You know, sir, what has come into her hands to-day.”
“Yes, yes, and that must be what Mr. Hawkesley specially means. What is she doing?”
“Now,” said Henderson, still in a low voice, “she is reading page upon page of handwriting, with her face in a flame, and with the hot tears coming down like rain, but, for all that, the last time I looked into the room, her eyes glared at me like coals of fire. I will not go in again.”
“You do not know what mischief you may be doing by your fear,” replied Aventayle. “I must speak to her myself, if it is outside her door.”
The tapping of a foot was heard in the room above.
“That is for me!” exclaimed the girl.
“Ask her to admit me, if only for a moment,” said Aventayle, hastily, “but if this is impossible, say this,”—and he gave Hawkesley’s message.
In a few minutes Aventayle was requested to come upstairs.
Laura was seated at her table, and before her lay the rescued volume—the volume which we have seen but once—when Ernest Adair laid it in the hand of Robert Urquhart. Some hand had torn from it several leaves, but they were still there.
“I am just in time, it seems,” said Aventayle, pointing at the volume.
“I am sorry to have sent you down what must have seemed a rude message,” said Mrs. Lygon, “but I was very much occupied, and I did not recognise your name. A friend of Mr. Hawkesley’s ought not to have cause to complain of incivility from me.”
Where is this face of flame—where are these coals of fire? thought Aventayle, as he looked at the beautiful and self-composed woman before him, and listened to her excuse, offered in the tone of the drawing-room. And yet, after what has happened to-day, what right has she to be so calm? She ought to be agitated. I do not like this woman.
And so hath been judged, and so will be judged until the day of the one judgment, when, for the first time, justice shall be done on earth as it is in Heaven, many a cause that is but half understood.
“Has your servant conveyed the message which Mr. Hawkesley begged me to deliver?”
“I scarcely understood it. But now that I think I understand it, from what you said at coming in, I will only ask you to say that my brother-in-law’s wish shall be obeyed to the letter.”
There was something of triumph—it was but a little—but it broke out in spite of the well-ordered features, and the calmness of tone.
“That nothing will be destroyed?”
“Nothing,” said Laura.
She laid her hands upon the book, as if to guard its contents against all the world.
“My errand is done,” said Aventayle, “and it will be my apology for my intrusion.” He was about to go, when she took his hand.
“You have come in all kindness,” she said, in a low voice, and with agitation, “and you ought not to be sent away with the thoughts that I know are in your mind. But bear with me, Mr. Aventayle. You cannot know what the day has brought to me. Have you any children?”
“Indeed yes,” said Aventayle, “God bless them!”
“Then you can understand—but I must not talk to you so,” she said, trying to smile as tears forced their way—“I have no right to talk to you. Only, if you had seen a black wall rise between you and those children, and day by day grow stronger and blacker, shutting you away from them for ever, and then there suddenly came to you—we have such things in dreams,”—and again she tried to smile, “a hope that the wall was crumbling away—you would know how to bear with a mother whose heart was nearly breaking, but who believes that the black wall is coming down. God bless you, and thank you for bringing me Charles’s message, but there is no fear of what he seems to fear—assure him of that.”
Again she held out her hand, and he pressed it and went down.
“A word, my good girl,” said Aventayle, when he found himself with Henderson. “Did I understand aright that Mrs. Lygon had been informed of the dreadful thing that has happened to-day?”
“Silvain told you so, sir, did he not?”
“Yes.”
“He was right to tell you so, but it is not true.”
“What do you mean?”
“We did not dare. And she thinks at this moment that it is Adair who has been killed.”
“I thought it must be so. Keep the truth from her until her present excitement is over. I thought it must be so. Mr. Hawkesley shall come up as soon as he can leave the house. By all means keep the truth from her.”
The police had examined the whole building, and had easily detected the mode by which Ernest Adair had entered. They found the traces of his feet, and those of the unmistakeable foot of Urquhart, but in the mould of the bed between the wall and the window, they also discovered the marks of a third person’s tread. The shoes had been well made, but must have been those of an artisan or other member of the humbler class of society. This fact remained to be explained, and was much debated by the police.
There had been but two men who could have explained it, and one of them could bear no more witness in this world.
