 Chapter 40 Nemesis at last The gardener opened the gate to us on this occasion. He had evidently received his orders in anticipation of my arrival. Mrs. Valeria? He asked. Yes. And friend. And friend. Pleased to step upstairs, you know the house. Crossing the hall I stopped for a moment and looked at a favourite walking cane, which Benjamin still kept in his hand. Your cane will only be in your way, I said. Had you not better leave it here? My cane may be useful upstairs, retorted Benjamin gruffly. I haven't forgotten what happened in the library. It was no time to content with him. I led the way up the stairs. Arriving at the upper flight of stairs, I was startled by hearing a sudden cry from the room above. It was like the cry of a person in pain, and it was twice repeated before we ended the circular unchamber. I was the first to approach the inner room, and to see the many-sided Miserimus Dexter in another new aspect of his character. The unfortunate Ariel was standing before a table, with a dish of little cakes placed in front of her. Around each of her brits was tied a string, the free ends of which, at a distance of a few yards, were held in Miserimus Dexter's hands. Try again, my beauty. I heard him say, as I stopped on the threshold of the door. Take a cake. At the word of command, Ariel submissively stretched out one arm toward the dish. Just as she touched the cake with the tips of her fingers, her hand was jerked away by a pull at the string, so savagely cruel in the nimble and devilish violence of it that I felt inclined to snatch Benjamin's cane out of his hand and break it over Miserimus Dexter's back. Ariel suffered the pain this time in spartan silence. The position in which she stood enabled her to be the first to see me at the door. She had discovered me. Her teeth were set. Her face was flushed under the struggle to restrain herself. Not even a sigh escaped her in my presence. Drop the string, I called out indignantly. Release her, Mr. Dexter, or I shall leave the house. At the sound of my voice he burst out with a little cry of welcome. His eyes fastened on me with a fierce, devouring delight. Come in, come in, he cried. See what I am reduced to in the maddening suspense of waiting for you. See how I kill the time when the time parts us. Come in, come in. I am in one of my malicious humus this morning, caused entirely Mrs. Villeria by my anxiety to see you. When I am in my malicious humus I must eat something. I am teasing Ariel. Look at her. She has had nothing to eat all day, and she hasn't been quick enough to snatch a morsel of cake yet. He didn't pity her. Ariel has no nerves. I don't hurt her. Ariel has no nerves, echoed the poor creature, frowning at me for interfering between her master and herself. He doesn't hurt me. I heard Benjamin beginning to swing his cane behind him. Drop this string! I reiterated more vehemently than ever. Drop it, or I shall instantly leave you. Miseramus Dexter's delicate nerves shuddered at my violence. What a glorious voice he exclaimed and dropped the string. Take the cakes! he added, addressing Ariel in his most imperial manner. She passed me, with the strings hanging from her swollen wrists and the dish of cakes in her hand. She nodded her head at me defiantly. Ariel has got no nerves. She repeated proudly. He doesn't hurt me. You see, said Miseramus Dexter, there is no harm done, and I dropped the strings when you told me. Don't begin by being hard on me, Mrs. Villeria, after your long absence. He paused. Benjamin standing silent in the doorway attracted his attention for the first time. Who is this? he asked, and wheeled his chair suspiciously nearer to the door. Oh, I know! I know! he cried before I could answer. This is the benevolent gentleman who looked like the refuge of the afflicted when I saw him last. You have altered for the worse since then, sir. You have stepped into quite a new character. You personify retributive justice now. You new protector, Mrs. Villeria, I understand. He bowed low to Benjamin with ferocious irony. Your humble servant, Mr. Retributive Justice, I have deserved you, and I submit to you. Walk in, sir. I will take care that your new office shall be a sinecure. This lady is the light of my life. Catch me failing in respect to her, if you can. He backed his chair before Benjamin, who listened to him in contemptuous silence, until he reached the part of the room in which I was standing. Your hand light of my life, he murmured in his gentlest tones, your hand only to show that you have forgiven me. I gave him my hand. One, he whispered and treatingly, only one. He kissed my hand, once respectfully, and dropped it with a heavy sigh. Ah, poor Dexter! He said, pitting himself with the whole sincerity of his egotism, a warm heart wasted in solitude mocked by deformity. Sad, sad, oh poor Dexter! He looked round again at Benjamin with another flash of his ferocious irony. A beautyous day, sir, he said, with mock conversational courtesy. Seasonable weather, indeed, after the late long continued rains. Can I offer you any refreshment? Won't you sit down? Give justice when it is no taller than you are, looks best in a chair. And a monkey looks best in a cage, rejoined Benjamin, enraged at the satirical reference to his shortness of stature. I was waiting, sir, to see you get into your swing. The retort produced no effect on Miserie Mustexter. It appeared to have passed by him unheard. He had changed again. He was thoughtful. He was subdued. His eyes were fixed on me with a sad and rapt attention. I took the nearest armchair, first casting a glance at Benjamin, which he immediately understood. He placed himself behind Dexter, at an angle which commanded a view of my chair. Ariel silently devouring her cakes, crouched on a stool at the master's feet, and looked up at him like a faithful dog. There was an interval of quiet and repose. I was able to observe Miserie Mustexter uninterruptedly for the first time since I had entered the room. I was not surprised. I was nothing left unalarmed by the change for the worse in him since we had last met. Mr. Playmore's letter had not prepared me for the serious deterioration in him which I could now discern. His features were pinched and worn. The whole face seemed to have wasted strangely in substance and size since I had last seen it. The softness in his eyes was gone. Hard red veins were intertwined all over them now. They were set in a piteous and vacant stair. His once firm hands looked withered. They trembled as they lay on the coverlet. The paleness of his face exaggerated perhaps by the black velvet jacket that he wore had a sudden and sickly look. The fine outline was gone. The multitude in his little wrinkles at the corners of his eyes had deepened. His heart sank into his shoulders when he leaned forward in his chair. Years appeared to have passed over him instead of months while I had been absent from England. Remembering the medical report which Mr. Playmore had given me to read, recalling the doctor's positively declared opinion that the preservation of dexter sanity depended on the healthy condition of his nerves, I could not but feel that I had done wisely if I might still hope for success in hastening my return from Spain. Fearing what I knew, fearing what I feared, I believed that his time was near. I felt when our eyes met by accident that I was looking at a doomed man. I pitied him. Yes, yes, I know that compassion for him was utterly inconsistent with the motive which had taken me to his house. Utterly inconsistent with the doubt still present to my mind whether Mr. Playmore had really wronged him in believing that his was the guilt which had compassed the first Mrs. Eustal's death. I felt this. I knew him to be cruel. I believed him to be fools. And yet I pitied him. Is there a common fund of wickedness in us all? Is the suppression of the development of that wickedness a mere question of training and temptation? And is there something in our deeper sympathies which mutely acknowledges this when we feel for the wicked, when we crowd to a criminal trial, when we shake hands at parting if we happen to be present officially with the vilest monster that ever swung on a gallows? It is not for me to decide. I can only say that I pitied Ms. Erymus Dexter and that he found it out. Thank you! he said suddenly. You see I'm ill and you feel for me, dear and good Valeria. This lady's name, sir, is Mrs. Eustal's MacAllum, in the post-Vengeman speaking sternly behind him. The next time you dress her, remember, if you please, that you have no business with her Christian name. Benjamin's rebuke passed like Benjamin's retort unheeded and unheard. To all appearance Ms. Erymus Dexter had completely forgotten that there was such a person in the room. You have delighted me with the sight of you, he went on. Add to the pleasure by letting me hear your voice. Talk to me of yourself. Tell me what you've been doing since you left England. It was necessary to my object to set the conversation afloat, and this was as good a way of doing it as any other. I told him plainly how I had been employed during my absence. So you're still fond of Eustas? he said bitterly. I love him more dearly than ever. He lifted his hand into his face. After waiting a while he went on speaking in an odd muffled manner still under cover of his hands. And you leave Eustas in Spain, he said, and you return to England by yourself. What made you do that? What made me first come here and ask you to help me, Mr. Dexter? He dropped his hands and looked at me. I saw in his eyes not amazement only but alarm. Is it possible, he exclaimed, that you won't let that miserable matter rest even yet? Are you still determined to penetrate the mystery at good inch? I am still determined, Mr. Dexter, and I still hope that you may be able to help me. The old distrust that I remembered so well darkened again over his face the moment I said those words. How can I help you? he asked. Can I alter facts? He stopped. His face brightened again as if some sudden sense of relief had come to him. I did try to help you," he went on. I told you that Mrs. Bowley's absence was a devise to screen herself from suspicion. I told you that the poison might have been given by Mrs. Bowley's maid. Has reflection convinced you? Do you see something in the idea? This return to Mrs. Bowley gave me my first chance of leading the talk to the right topic. I see nothing in the idea, I answered. I see no motive. Had the maid any reason to be an enemy to the late Mrs. Eustace? Nobody had any reason to be an enemy to the late Mrs. Eustace. He broke out loudly and vehemently. She was all goodness, all kindness. She never injured any human creature and thought all deed. She was a saint upon earth. Respect her memory. Let the meer-tire rest in her grave. He covered his face again with his hands, and shook and shattered under the paroxysm of emotion that I had roused in him. Ariel, suddenly and softly, left her stool and approached me. Do you see my ten claws? She whispered, holding out her hands. Vex the master again and you will feel my ten claws on your throat. Benjamin rose from his seat. He had seen the action without hearing the words. I signed to him to keep his place. Ariel returned to her stool and looked up again at her master. Don't cry, she said. Come on. Here are the strings. Taze me again. Make me screech with the smarts of it. He never answered and never moved. Ariel bent her slow mind to meet the difficulty of attracting his attention. I saw it in her frowning brows and her colourless eyes looking at me vacantly. On a sudden she joyfully struck the open palm of one of her hands with the fist of the other. She had triumphed, she had got an idea. Master, she cried. Master, you haven't told me a story for ever so long. Puzzle, my thick head. Make my flesh creep. Come on. A good long story. All blood and crimes. Had she accidentally hit on the right suggestion to strike his wayward fancy, I knew his high opinion of his own skill in dramatic narrative. I knew that one of his favourite amusements was to puzzle Ariel by telling her stories that she could not understand. Would he wander away into the regions of wild romance, or would he remember that my obstinacy still threatened him with reopening the inquiry into the tragedy at Gleninch, and would he set his cunning at work to mislead me by some new strategy? His latter course was the course which my past experience of him suggested that he would take. But, to my surprise and alarm, I found my past experience at fault. Ariel succeeded in diverting his mind from the subject which had been in full possession of it the moment before she spoke. He showed his face again. It was overspread by a broad smile of gratified self-esteem. He was weak enough now to let even Ariel find her way to his vanity. I saw it with the sense of misgiving, with a doubt whether I had not delayed my visit until too late, which turned me cold from head to foot. Miserie must extra-spoke. To Ariel, not to me. Poor devil! he said, petting her head complacently. You don't understand a word of my stories, do you? And yet I can make the flesh creep on your great clumsy body, and yet I can hold your muddled mind and make you like it. Poor devil! He leaned back serenely in his chair, and looked my way again. What the sight of me remind him of the words that had passed between us not a minute since? No. There was the pleasantly tickle self-conceived smiling at me exactly as it had smiled at Ariel. I excel in dramatic narrative, Mrs. Valeria. He said, and this creature here on the stool is a remarkable proof of it. She is quite a psychological study, when I tell her one of my stories. It is really amusing to see the half-witted, wretched, desperate efforts to understand me. You shall have a specimen. I have been out of spirits while you were away. I haven't told her a story for weeks past. I will tell her one now. Don't suppose it is an effort for me. My invention is inexhaustible. You are sure to be amused. You are naturally serious, but you are sure to be amused. I am naturally serious, too, and I always laugh at her. Ariel clapped her great shapeless hands. He always laughs at me, she said, with a proud look of superiority directed straight at me. I was at a loss, seriously, at a loss what to do. The outbreak which I had provoked in leading him to speak of the late Mrs. Eustace warned me to be careful, and to wait for my opportunity before I reverted to that subject, how else could I turn the conversation so as to lead him little by little toward the betrayal of the secrets which he was keeping from me? In this uncertainty, one thing only seemed to be plain. To let him tell his story would be simply to let him waste the precious minutes. With the vivid remembrance of Ariel's ten claws, I decided nevertheless on discouraging Dexter's new whim at every possible opportunity and by every means in my power. Now, Mrs. Valeria, he began loudly and loftily, listen. Now, Ariel, bring your brains to a focus. I improvise poetry. I improvise fiction. We will begin with the good old formula of the theory stories. Once upon a time I was waiting for my opportunity to interrupt him when he interrupted himself. He stopped with a bewildered look. He put his hand to his head and passed it backward and forward over his forehead. He laughed feebly. I seemed to want rousing, he said. Was his mind gone? There had been no signs of it until I had unhappily stirred his memory of the dead mistress of Glen Inge. Was the weakness which I had already noticed? Was the bewilderment which I now saw attributable to the influence of a passing disturbance only? In other words, had I witnessed nothing more serious than a first warning to him and to us? Would he soon recover himself if he were patient and gave him time? Even Benjamin was interested at last. I saw him trying to look at Dexter around the corner of the chair. Even Ariel was surprised and uneasy. She had no dark glances to cast at me now. We all waited to see what he would do, to hear what he would say next. My harp, he cried, music will rouse me. Ariel brought him his harp. Master, she said, wonderingly, what's come to you? He waved his hand, commanding her to be silent. Ode to invention! he announced loftily, addressing himself to me. Pervitory and music improvised by Dexter. Silence, attention! His fingers wandered feebly over the harp strings, understanding no melody, suggesting no words. In a little while his hand dropped. His heart sank forward gently and rested on the frame of the harp. I started to my feet and approached him. Was it asleep or was it a swoon? I touched his arm and called to him by his name. Ariel instantly stepped between us with a threatening look at me. At the same moment Miserie must Dexter raised his head. My voice had reached him. He looked at me with a curious contemplative quietness in his eyes, which I had never seen in them before. Take away the harp, he said to Ariel, speaking in languid tones, like a man who was very weary. The mischievous, half-witted creature, in sheer stupidity or in downright malice, I'm not through which, irritated him once more. Why, Master, she asked, staring at him with a harp hugged in her arms. What's come to you? Where's the story? We don't want the story, I interposed. I have many things to say to Mr. Dexter, which I have not said yet. Ariel lifted her heavy hand. You will have it, she said, and advanced toward me. At the same moment the Master's voice stopped her. Put away the harp, you fool! he repeated sternly, and wait for the story until I choose to tell it. She took the harp submissively back to its place at the end of the room. Miserie Mr. Dexter moved his chair a little closer to mine. I know what will rouse me, he said, confidentially. Exercise will do. I've had no exercise lately. Wait a little, and you will see. He put his hands on the machinery of the chair, and started on his customary course down the room. Here again the ominous change in him showed itself under a new form. The pace at which he travelled was not the furious pace that I remembered. The chair no longer rushed under him on rumbling and whistling wheels. It went, but it went slowly. Up the room and down the room he painfully urged it, and then he stopped for want of breath. We followed him. Ariel was first, and Benjamin was by my side. He motioned impatiently to both of them to stand back, and to let me approach him alone. I'm out of practice, he said faintly. I hadn't the heart to make the wheels roar and the floor tremble while you were away. Who would not have pitied him? Who would have remembered his misdeeds at that moment? Even Ariel felt it. I heard her beginning to whine and whimper behind me. The magician who alone could rouse the dormant sensibilities in her nature had awakened them now by his neglect. Her fatal cry was heard again in mournful, moaning tones. What's come to you, master? Where's the story? Never mind her, I whispered to him. You want the fresh air. Send for the gardener. Let's take a drive in your pony-chase. It was useless. Ariel would be noticed. The mournful cry came once more. Where's the story? Where's the story? The sinking spirit leaped up in dexter again. You've wretch, you've fiend! he cried, whirling his chair around and facing her. The story is coming. I can tell it. I will tell it. You whimpering idiot, get me the wine. Why didn't I think of it before? The kingly burgundy. That's what I want. Malaria to set my invention alight and flaming in my head. Glasses for everybody. Honour to the king of vintages. The royal clove au jour. Ariel opened the cupboard in the alcove and produced the wine and the hibernation glasses. Dexter drained his goblet full of burgundy at a drood. He forced us to drink, or at least to pretend to drink with him. Even Ariel had her share this time and emptied her glass in rivalry with her master. The powerful wine mounted almost instantly to her weak head. She began to sing loosely a song of her own devising, an imitation of Dexter. It was nothing but the repetition, the endless mechanical repetition of her demand for the story. Tell us the story, master. Master, tell us the story. Not ever his wine, the master silently filled his goblet for the second time. Benjamin whispered to me while his eye was of us. Take my advice, Valeria, for once, let us go. One last effort. I whispered back, only one. Ariel went drowsily on with her song. Tell us the story, master. Master, tell us the story. Thomas Dexter looked up from his glass. The generous stimulant was beginning to do its work. I saw the colour rising in his face. I saw the bright intelligence flashing again in his eyes. The burgundy hat roused him. The good wine stood to my friend and offered me a last chance. No story, I said. I want to talk to you, Mr. Dexter. I am not in the humour for a story. In the humour, he repeated, with a gleam of the old impish irony showing itself again in his face. That's an excuse. I see what it is. You think my invention is gone. And you are not frank enough to confess it. I'll show you you're wrong. I'll show you that Dexter is himself again. Silence, you, Ariel, or you shall leave the room. I've got it, Mrs. Valeria. All laid out here with scenes and characters complete. He touched his forehead and looked at me with a third-defense smile in cunning before he added his next words. It's the very thing to interest you, my dear friend. It's the story of a mistress and a maid. Come back to the fire and hear it. The story of a mistress and a maid. If that meant anything, it meant the story of Mrs. Bowley and her maid told in disguise. The title and the look which had escaped him when he announced it revived the hope that was well nigh dead in me. He had rallied at last. He was again in possession of his natural foresight and his natural cunning. And it pretends of telling Ariel her story. He was evidently about to make the attempt to mislead me for the second time. The conclusion was irresistible. To use his own words, Dexter was himself again. I took Benjamin's arm as we followed him back to the fireplace in the middle of the room. There is a chance for me yet, I whispered. Don't forget the signals. We returned to the places which we had already occupied. Ariel cast another threatening look at me. She had just sent enough left after emptying her goblet of wine to be on the watch for a new interruption on my part. I took care, of course, that nothing of the sort would happen. I was now as eager as Ariel to hear the story. The subject was full of snares for the narrator. At any moment in the excitement of speaking, Dexter's memory of the true events might show itself reflected in the circumstances of the fiction. At any moment he might betray himself. He looked around him and began. My public, are you seated? My public, are you ready? he asked gaily. Your face a little more this way. He added, in his softest and tenderest tones, motioning me to turn my full face toward him. Surely I am not asking too much. You look at the meanest creature that crawls. Look at me. Let me find my inspiration in your eyes. Let me feed my hungry admiration on your form. Come, have one little pitying smile left for the man whose happiness you have wrecked. Thank you. Light of my life, thank you. He kissed his hand to me and threw himself back luxuriously in his chair. The story, he resumed, the story at last. In what form shall I cast it? In the dramatic form. The oldest way, the truest way, the shortest way of telling a story. Title first. A short title. A taking title. Mistress and maid. The land of Romans, Italy. Time, the age of Romans, the 15th century. Ha, look at Ariel. She knows no more about the 15th century than the cat in the kitchen, and yet she is interested already. Happy, Ariel. Ariel looked at me again in the double intoxication of the wine and the triumph. I know no more than the cat in the kitchen. She repeated with a broad grin of gratified vanity. I am happy, Ariel. What are you? His area must extra laughed uproariously. Didn't I tell you, he said? Isn't she fun? Persons of the drama. He resumed, three in number. Women only. Angelica. A noble lady. Noble alike in spirit and in birth. Cornigonda. A beautiful devil in women's form. Demoride. Her unfortunate maid. First scene. A dark vaulted chamber in a castle. Time, evening. The owls are hooting in the wood. The frogs are croaking in the marsh. Look at Ariel, her flesh creeps. She shudders audibly at myrable Ariel. My rival in the master's favour eyed me defiantly. At my myrable Ariel, she repeated in drowsy accents. Misery must extra pause to take up his goblet of burgundy, placed close at hand on a little sliding table attached to his chair. I watched him narrowly as he sipped the wine. The flush was still mounting in his face. The light was still brightening in his eyes. He set down his glass again with a jovial smack of his lips, and went on. Persons present in the vaulted chamber. Cornigonda and Demoride. Cornigonda speaks. Demoride. Madame? Who lies ill in the chamber above us? Madame, the noble lady Angelica. A pause. Cornigonda speaks again. Demoride. Madame? How does Angelica like you? Madame, the noble lady, sweet and good to all who approach her, is sweet and good to me. Have you attended on her, Demoride? Sometimes, Madame, when the nurse was weary. Has she taken her healing medicine from your hand? Once or twice, Madame, when I happened to be by. Demoride, take this key and open the casket on the table here. Demoride obeys. Do you see a green vial in the casket? I see it, Madame. Take it out. Demoride obeys. Do you see a liquid in the green vial? Can you guess what it is? No, Madame. Shall I tell you? Demoride bows respectfully. Poison is in the vial. Demoride starts. She shrinks from the poison. She would feign put it aside. Her mistress signs to her to keep it in her hand. Her mistress speaks. Demoride, I have told you one of my secrets. Shall I tell you another? Demoride waits, fearing what is to come. Her mistress speaks. I hate the lady Angelica. Her life stands between me and the joy of my heart. You hold her life in your hand. Demoride drops on her knees. She is a devout person. She crosses herself and then she speaks. Mistress, you terrify me. Mistress, what do I hear? Conigonda advances, stands over her, looks down on her with terrible eyes, whispers the next words. Demoride, the lady Angelica must die, and I must not be suspected. The lady Angelica must die, and by your hand. He paused again. To sip the wine once more. No, to drink a deep droat of it this time. Was the stimulant beginning to fail him already? I looked at him attentively as he laid himself back again in his chair to consider for a moment before he went on. The flush on his face was as deep as ever, but the brightness in his eyes was beginning to fade already. I had noticed that he spoke more and more slowly as he advanced to the later dialogue of the scene. Was he feeling the effort of invention already? Had the time come when the wine had done all that the wine could do for him? We waited. Ariel said watching him with vacantly staring eyes and vacantly open mouth. Benjamin, impenetrably expecting the signal, kept his open notebook on his knee, covered by his hand. Misery must dexter went on. Demoride hears those terrible words. Demoride clasps her hands and entreaty. Oh, madame, madame, how can I kill the dear and noble lady? What motive have I for harming her? Conigonda answers. You have the motive for obeying me. Demoride falls with her face on the floor at her mistress' feet. Madame, I cannot do it. Madame, I dare not do it. Conigonda answers. You run no risk. I have my plan for diverting discovery from myself and my plan for diverting discovery from you. Demoride repeats. I cannot do it. I dare not do it. Conigonda's eyes flesh lightnings of rage. She takes from its place of concealment in her bosom. He stopped in the middle of the sentence and put his hand to his head, not like a man in pain, but like a man who had lost his idea. Would it be well if I tried to help him to recover his idea, or would it be wiser if I could only do it to keep silence? I could see the drift of his story plainly enough. His object under the thin disguise of the Italian romance was to meet my unanswerable objection to suspecting Mrs. Bowley's maid, the objection that the woman had no motive for committing herself to an act of murder. If he could practically contradict this by discovering a motive which I should be obliged to admit, his end would be gained. Those inquiries which I had pledged myself to pursue, those inquiries which might at any moment take a turn that directly concerned him, would, in that case, be successfully diverted from the right to the wrong person. The innocent maid would set my strictest scrutiny at defiance, and extra would be safely shielded behind her. I determined to give him time, not a word past my lips. The minutes followed each other. I waited in the deepest anxiety. It was a trying and a critical moment, if he succeeded in inventing a probable motive, and entraping it neatly to suit the purpose of his story. He would prove, by that act alone, that there were reserves of mental power still left in him which the practised eye of the scotch doctor had failed to see. But the question was, would he do it? He did it, not in a new way, not in a convincing way, not without a painfully evident effort. Still, well done or ill done, he found a motive for the maid. Conegonda, he resumed, takes from its place of concealment and her bosom a written paper and unfolds it. Look at this, she says. Damoride looks at the paper, and sinks again at her mistresses' feet in a paroxysm of horror and despair. Conegonda is in possession of a shameful secret in the maid's past life. Conegonda can say to her, choose your alternative. Either submit to an exposure which disgraces you and disgraces your parents forever, or make up your mind to obey me. Damoride might submit to the disgrace if it only affected herself. But her parents are honest people. She cannot disgrace her parents. She is driven to her last refuge. There is no hope of melting the heart of Conegonda. Her only resource is to raise difficulties. She tries to show that there are obstacles between her and the crime. Madam, madam, she cries, how can I do it when the nurse is there to see me? Conegonda answers, sometimes the nurse sleeps, sometimes the nurse is away. Damoride still persists. Madam, madam, the door is kept locked and the nurse has got the key. The key! I instantly thought of the missing key at Gleninch. Had he thought of it too, he certainly checked himself as the word escaped him. I resolved to make the signal. I rested my elbow on the arm of my chair and played with my earring. Benjamin took out his pencil and arranged his notebook so that Ariel could not see what he was about if she happened to look his way. We waited until it pleased Miserimus Dexter to proceed. The interval was a long one. His hand went up again to his forehead. A duller and duller look was palpably stealing over his eyes. When he did speak, it was not to go on with the narrative but to put a question. Where did I leave off? he asked. My hopes sank again as rapidly as they had risen. I managed to answer him, however, without showing any change in my manner. He left off, I said, Madam Orede was speaking to Conegonda. Yes, yes, he interposed. And what did she say? She said the door is kept locked and the nurse has got the key. He instantly leaned forward in his chair. No, he answered vehemently. You're wrong. Key! Nonsense! I never said key. I thought you did, Mr. Dexter. I never did. I said something else and you have forgotten it. I refrained from disputing with him in fear of what might follow. We waited again. Benjamin, sullenly submitting to my caprices, had taken down the questions and answers that had passed between Dexter and myself. He still mechanically kept his page open, and still held his pencil in readiness to go on. Aerial quietly submitting to the drowsy influence of the wine while Dexter's voice was in her ears, felt uneasily the change to silence. She glanced round her restlessly. She lifted her eyes to the master. There he said, silent, with his hand to his head, still struggling to marshal his wandering thoughts, still trying to see light through the darkness that was closing round him. Master! cried Aerial piteously. What's become of the story? He started as if she had wakened him out of his sleep. He shook his head impatiently as though he wanted to throw off some oppression that weighed upon it. Patience, patience! he said. The story is going on again. He dashed at it desperately. He picked up the first lost threat that fell in his way, reckless whether it were the right threat or the wrong one. Damoridi fell on her knees. She burst into tears. She said, He stopped and looked about him with wakened eyes. What name did I give the other woman? He asked, not putting the question to me, or to either of my companions, asking it of himself and asking it of the empty ear. You called the other woman Kunigonda, I said. At the sound of my voice's eyes turned slowly, turned on me and yet failed to look at me. Dull and absent, still and changeless, there were eyes that seemed to be fixed on something far away. Even his voice was altered when he spoke next. It had dropped to a quiet, vacant, monotonous tone. I had heard something like it while I was watching by my husband's bedside at the time of his delirium, when Eustace's mind appeared to be too weary to follow his speech, was the end so near as this. I called her Kunigonda, he repeated, and I called the other. He stopped once more. And you called the other Damoridi, I said. Aria looked up at him with a broad stare of bewilderment. She pulled impatiently at the sleeve of his jacket to attract his attention. Is this the story, master? she asked. He answered without looking at her, his changeless eyes still fixed as it seemed on something far away. This is the story, he said absently. But why Kunigonda, why Damoridi? Why not Mistress and Maid? It's easier to remember Mistress and Maid. He hesitated. He shivered as he tried to raise himself in his chair, then he seemed to rally. What did the Maid say to the Mistress? He muttered. What, what, what? He hesitated again. Then something seemed to dawn upon him unexpectedly. Was it some new thought that had struck him? Or some lost thought that he had recovered? Impossible to say. He went on suddenly and rapidly, went on in these strange words. The letter, the Maid said. The letter. O my heart, every word a dagger, a dagger in my heart. O you letter, horrible, horrible, horrible letter. What in God's name was he talking about? What did those words mean? Was he unconsciously pursuing his faint and fragmentary recollections of a pastime at Glen Inge under the delusion that he was going on with the story? In the wreck of the other faculties, was memory the last to sink? Was the truth, the dreadful truth, glimmering on me dimly through the awful shadows cast before it by the advancing eclipse of the brain? My breath failed me, a nameless horror crept through my whole being. Benjamin, with his pencil in his hand, cast one warning look at me. Ariel was quiet and satisfied. Go on master, was all she said. I like it, I like it, go on with the story. He went on, like a man sleeping with his eyes open and talking in his sleep. The Maid said to the Mistress, no. The Mistress said to the Maid, the Mistress said, show him the letter, must, must, must do it. The Maid said, no, must not do it, shan't show it, stuff, nonsense, let him suffer, what can get him off? Show it? No, let the worse come to the worse, show it then. The Mistress said, he paused and waved his hand rapidly to and fro before his eyes, as if he were brushing away some visionary confusion or entanglement. Which was it last? he said. Mistress or Maid? Mistress, no, Maid speaks, of course. Loud, positive. You scoundrels, keep away from that table, the diary's there. Number 9. Calda Shores. Ask for Dandy. You shan't have the diary? A secret in your ear, the diary will hang him. I won't have him hanged. How dare you touch my chair? My chair's me, how dare you touch me? The last words burst on me like a gleam of light. I had read them in the report of the trial in the evidence of the sheriff's officer. Miserimus Dexter had spoken in those very terms when he had tried vainly to prevent the min from seizing my husband's papers, and when the min had pushed his chair out of the room. There was no doubt now of what his memory was busy with. The mystery at Glen Inch, his last backward flight of thought circled feebly and more feebly, nearer and nearer to the mystery at Glen Inch. Ariel aroused him again. She had no mercy on him. She insisted on hearing the whole story. Why do you stop, Master? Get along with it. Get along with it. Tell us quick. What did the Missus say to the Maid? He laughed feebly and tried to imitate her. What did the Missus say to the Maid? He repeated. His laugh died away. He went on speaking more and more vacantly, more and more rapidly. The Mistress said to the Maid, We've got him off. What about the letter? Burn it now. No fire in the grade. No matches in the box. How's Topsy Turvy? Servants all gone? Tear it up? Shake it up in the basket. Along with the rest. Shake it up. Waste paper. Throw it away. Gone for ever. Oh, Sara! Sara! Sara! Gone for ever! Ariel clapped her hands and mimicked him in her turn. Oh, Sara! Sara! Sara! She repeated. Gone for ever. That's Prime Master. Tell us, who was Sara? His lips moved, but his voice sank so low that I could barely hear him. He began again with the old melancholy refrain. The Maid said to the Mistress, No. The Mistress said to the Maid. He stopped abruptly and raised himself erect in the chair. He threw up both his hands above his head and burst into a frightful screaming laugh. Funny! Why don't you laugh? Funny! Funny! Funny! Funny! He fell back in the chair. The shrill and dreadful laugh died away into a low sob. Then there was one long, deep, wearyly drawn breath. Then nothing but a mute, vacant face turned up to the ceiling, with eyes that looked blindly, with lips parted in a senseless, changeless grin. Nemesis at last. The foretold doom had fallen on him. The night had come. But one feeling animated me when the first shock was over. Even the horror of that fearful sight seemed only to increase the pity that I felt for the strike and wretch. I started impulsively to my feet. Seeing nothing, thinking of nothing but the helpless figure in the chair, I sprang forward to raise him, to revive him, to recall him if such a thing might still be possible to himself. At the first step that I took, I felt hands on me. I was violently drawn back. Are you blind? cried Benjamin, dragging me nearer and nearer to the door. Look there! He pointed, and I looked. Ariel had been beforehand with me. She had raised her master in the chair. She had got one arm around him. In her free hand she brandished an Indian club, torn from a trophy of Oriental weapons that ornamented the wall over the fireplace. The creature was transfigured. Her dull eyes glared like the eyes of a wild animal. She gnashed her teeth in the frenzy that possessed her. You have done this! she shouted to me, waving the club furiously around and around over her head. Come near him and I'll dash your brains out. I'll smash you till there's not a whole bone left in your skin. Benjamin, still holding me with one hand, opened the door with the other. I let him do with me as he would. Ariel fascinated me. I could look at nothing but Ariel. Her frenzy vanished as she saw us retreating. She dropped the club. She threw both arms around him and nestled her head on his bosom, and sobbed and wept over him. Master, master, they shall fax you any more. Look up again. Laugh at me as you used to do. Say, Ariel, you're a fool. Be like yourself again. I was forced into the next room. I heard a long, low wailing cry of misery from the poor creature who loved him with a dog's fidelity and a woman's devotion. The heavy door was closed between us. I was in the quiet enchamber, crying over that piteous sight, clinging to my kind of old friend as helpless and as useless as a child. Benjamin turned the key in the lock. There's no use in crying about it, he said quietly. It would be more to the purpose, Valeria, if you thanked God that you have got out of that room safe and sound. Come with me. He took the key out of the lock and let me downstairs into the hall. After a little consideration, he opened the front door of the house. The gardener was still quietly at work in the grounds. Your master is taken ill, Benjamin said, and the woman who attends upon him has lost her head, if she ever had a hedge to lose. Where does the nearest doctor live? The man's devotion to Dexter showed itself as a woman's devotion had shown itself in the man's rough way. He threw down his spade with an oath. The master taken that. He said, I'll fetch the doctor. I shall find him sooner than you will. Tell the doctor to bring a man with him, Benjamin added. He may want help. The gardener turned around sternly. I am the man. He said, nobody shall help but me. He left us. I sat down on one of the chairs in the hall and did my best to compose myself. Benjamin walked to and fro, deep in thought. Both of them fond of him. I heard my old friend say to himself, Half monkey, half man, and both of them fond of him. That beats me. The gardener returned with the doctor, a quiet dark resolute man. Benjamin advanced to meet them. I have got the key, he said. Shall I go upstairs with you? Without answering, the doctor drew Benjamin aside into a corner of the hall. The two talked together in low voices. At the end of it, the doctor said, Give me the key. You can be of no use. You will only irritate her. With those words he back into the gardener. He was about to lead the way up the stairs when I ventured to stop him. May I stay in the hall, sir, I said. I am very anxious to hear how it ends. He looked at me for a moment before he replied. You had better go home, madam, he said. Is the gardener acquainted with your address? Yes, sir. Very well. I will let you know how it ends by means of the gardener. Take my advice. Go home. Benjamin placed my arm in his. I looked back and saw the doctor and the gardener ascending the stairs together on their way to the locked up room. Never mind the doctor, I whispered. Let's wait in the garden. Benjamin would not hear of deceiving the doctor. I mean to take you home, he said. I looked at him in amazement. My old friend, who was all meekness and submission so long as there was no emergency to try him, now showed the dormant reserve of manly spirit and decision in his nature as he had never in my experience shown it yet. He led me into the garden. We had kept our cab. It was waiting for us at the gate. On our way home Benjamin produced his notebook. What's to be done, my dear, with the gibberish that I have written here? He said, Have you written it all down? I asked in surprise. When I undertake a duty I do it. He answered, You never gave me the signal to leave off. You never moved your chair. I have written every word of it. What shall I do? Throw it out the cub window? Give it to me. What are you going to do with it? I don't know yet. I will ask Mr. Blaymore. CHAPTER 41 Mr. Blaymore in a new character By that night's post, although I was far from being fit to make the exertion, I wrote to Mr. Blaymore to tell him what had taken place and to beg for his earliest assistance and advice. The notes in Benjamin's book were partly written in shorthand and were on that account of no use to me in their existing condition. At my request he made two fair copies. One of the copies I enclosed in my letter to Mr. Blaymore. The other I laid by me on my bedside table when I went to rest. Over and over again, through the long hours of the wakeful night, I read and reread the last words which had dropped from his erymos texter slips. Was it possible to interpret them to any useful purpose? At the very outset they seemed to set interpretation at defiance. After trying vainly to solve the hopeless problem I did at last what I might as well have done at first, I threw down the paper in despair. Where were my bright visions of discovery and success now? Scattered to the winds. Was there the faintest chance of the strike and mount's return to reason? I remembered too well what I had seen to hope for it. The closing lines of the medical report which I had read in Mr. Blaymore's office recurred to my memory in the stillness of the night. When the catastrophe has happened his friends can entertain no hope of his cure. The balance once lost will be lost for life. The confirmation of that terrible sentence was not long in reaching me. On the next morning the gardener brought a note containing the information which the doctor had promised to give me on the previous day. Miss Erymos Texter and Ariel were still where Benjamin and I had left them together in the long room. They were watched by skilled attendants waiting the decision of Texter's nearest relative, a younger brother who lived in the country and who had been communicated with by telegraph. It had been found impossible to part the faithful Ariel from her master without using the bodily restraints adopted in cases of raging insanity. The doctor and the gardener, both unusually strongmen, had failed to hold the poor creature when they first attempted to remove her on entering the room. Directly they permitted her to return to her master, the frenzy vanished. She was perfectly quiet and contended so long as they let her sit at his feet and look at him. Said as this was, the report of Miss Erymos Texter's condition was more melancholy still. My patient is in a state of absolute imbecility. Those were the words in the doctor's letter, and the gardener's simple narrative confirmed them as the truest words that could have been used. He was utterly unconscious of poor Ariel's devotion to him. He did not even appear to know that he was present in the room. For hours together he remained in a state of utter lethargy in his chair. He showed an animal interest in his meals and a greedy animal enjoyment of eating and drinking as much as he could get, and that was all. This morning, the honest gardener said to me at parting, We thought he seemed to wake up a bit. Looked about him, you know, and made queer signs with his hands. I couldn't make out what he meant no more could the doctor. She knew, poor thing, she did. Went and got him his harp, and put his hand up to it. Lord bless you, no use. He couldn't play no more than I can. Twang did it anyhow, and grinned and gabbled to himself. No, he'll never come right again. Any person can see that without the doctor to help him. Enjoy his meals, as I told you, and that's all. It would be the best thing that could happen if it would please God to take him. There is no more to be said. I wish you good morning, ma'am. He went away with the tears in his eyes, and he left me I own it with the tears in mine. An hour later there came some news which revived me. I received a telegram from Mr. Playmore, expressed in these welcome words. Obliged to go to London by tonight's mail-train, expect me to breakfast tomorrow morning. The appearance of the Louie d'Hour breakfast-table duly followed the appearance of his telegram. His first words cheered me up. To my infinite surprise and relief he was far from sharing the despondent view which I took of my position. I don't deny, he said, that there are some serious obstacles in your way, but I should never have called here before attending to my professional business in London, if Mr. Benjamin's notes had not produced a very strong impression on my mind, for the first time as I think you really have a prospect of success. For the first time I feel justified in offering under certain restrictions to help you. That miserable wretch in the collapse of his intelligence has done what he would never have done in the possession of his sense and his cunning. He has let us see the first precious glimmerings of the light of truth. Are you sure it is the truth? I asked. Into important particulars, he answered, I know it to be the truth. Your idea about him is the right one. His memory, as you suppose, was the least injured of his faculties, and was the last to give way under the strain of trying to tell that story. I believe his memory to have been speaking to you unconsciously to himself, in awe that he said from the moment when the first reference to the letter escaped him to the end. But what does the reference to the letter mean, I asked? For my part I am entirely in the dark about it. So am I, he answered frankly. The chief one amongst the obstacles which I mentioned just now is the obstacle presented by that same letter. The late Mrs. Eustace must have been connected with it in some way, or Dexter would never have spoken of it as a dagger in his heart. Dexter would never have coupled her name with the words which describe the tearing up of the letter, and the throwing of it away. I can arrive with some certainty at this result, and I can get no further. I have no more idea than you have of who wrote the letter, or of what was written in it. If we are ever to make that discovery, probably the most important discovery of all, we must dispatch our first inquiries a distance of three thousand miles. In plain English, my dear lady, we must send to America. This, naturally enough, took me completely by surprise. I waited eagerly to hear why we were to send to America. It rests with you, he proceeded, when you hear what I have to tell you, to say whether you will go to the expense of sending a man to New York, or not. I can find the right man for the purpose, and I estimate the expense, including a telegram, never mind the expense I interposed, losing all patience with the eminently scotch view of the case, which put my purse in the first place of importance. I don't care for the expense, I want to know what you have discovered." He smiled. She doesn't care for the expense, he said to himself pleasantly, how like a woman! I might have retorted, he thinks of the expense, before he thinks of anything else, how like a scorchman! As it was, I was too anxious to be witty. I only drummed impatiently with my fingers on the table, and said, Tell me, tell me! He took out the fair copy from Benjamin's notebook, which I had sent to him, and showed me these among Dexter's closing words. What about the letter? Burn it now! No fire in the grate, no matches in the box, house tops it every, servants all gone. Do you really understand what those words mean? I asked. I look back into my own experience, he answered, and I understand perfectly what the words mean. And can you make me understand them, too? Easily. In those incomprehensible sentences, Dexter's memory has correctly recalled certain facts. I have only to tell you the facts, and you will be as wise as I am. At the time of the trial, your husband surprised and distressed me by insisting on the instant dismissal of all the household servants at Glen Inge. I was instructed to pay them a quarter's wages in advance, to give them the excellent written characters, which their good conduct thoroughly deserved, and to see the house clear of them at an hour's notice. Eustace's motive for the summary proceeding was much the same motive, which animated his conduct toward you. If I am ever to return to Glen Inge, he said, I cannot face my honest servants after the infamy of having stood my trial for murder. There was his reason. Nothing that I could say to him poor fellow shook his resolution. I dismissed the servants accordingly. At an hour's notice they quit at the house, leaving their work for the day all undone. The only persons placed in charge of Glen Inge were persons who lived on the outskirts of the park, that is to say the lodgekeeper and his wife and daughter. On the last day of the trial, I instructed the daughter to do her best to make the rooms tidy. She was a good girl enough, but she had no experience as a housemaid. It would never enter her head to lay the bedroom fires ready for lighting, or to replenish the empty match boxes. Those chance words that dropped from Dexter would no doubt exactly describe the state of his room when he returned to Glen Inge with the prisoner and his mother from Edinburgh. That he tore up the mysterious letter in his bedroom and, finding no means immediately at hand for burning it, that he threw the fragments into the empty grate or into the waste paper basket seems to be the most reasonable conclusion that we can draw from what we know. In any case, he would not have much time to think about it. Everything was done in a hurry on that day. Hustars and his mother, accompanied by Dexter, left for England the same evening by the night train. I myself locked up the house and gave the keys to the lodgekeeper. It was understood that he was to look after the preservation of the reception rooms on the ground floor, and that his wife and daughter were to perform the same service between them in the rooms upstairs. On receiving your letter I drove at once to Glen Inge to question the old woman on the subject of the bedrooms and of Dexter's room especially. She remembered the time when the house was shut up by associating it with the time when she was confined to her bed by an attack of Skiatica. She had not crossed the lodge door, she was sure for at least a week, if not longer after Glen Inge had been left in charge of her husband and herself. Whatever was done in the way of keeping the bedrooms aired and tidy during her illness was done by her daughter. She and she only must have disposed of any letter which might have been lying about in Dexter's room, not a vestige of torn paper as I can myself certify is to be discovered in any part of the room now. Where did the girl find the fragments of the letter, and what did she do with them? Those are the questions, if you approve of it, would we must send three thousand miles away to ask for this sufficient reason that the lodgekeeper's daughter was married more than a year since, and that she is settled with her husband in business at New York. It rests with you to decide what is to be done. Don't let me mislead you with false hopes. Don't let me tempt you to throw away your money. Even if this woman does remember what she did with the torn paper, the chances at this distance of time are enormously against our ever recovering a single morsel of it. Be in no haste to decide. I have my work to do in the city. I can give you the whole day to think it over." Send the men to New York by the next steamer, I said. There is my decision, Mr. Playmore, without keeping you waiting for it. He shook his head and graved his approval of my impetuosity. In my former interview with him, we had never once touched on the question of money. I was now, for the first time, to make acquaintance with Mr. Playmore on the purely scotch side of his character. Why, you don't even know what it will cost you, he exclaimed, taking out his pocketbook with the ear of a man who was equally startled and scandalised. Wait till I taught it up, he said, in English and American money. I can't wait. I want to make more discoveries." He took no notice of my interruption. He went on impenetrably with his calculations. The man will go second class, and will take a return ticket. Very well, his ticket includes his food, and being thank God a teetotaler, he won't waste your money and buying a liquor on board. Arrived at New York, he will go to a cheap German house, where he will, as I am credibly informed, be boarded and lodged at the rate. By this time my patience being completely worn out, I had taken my checkbook from the table drawer, had signed my name, and had handed the blank check across the table to my legal advisor. Fill it in with whatever the man wants, I said, and for heaven's sake let's get back to Dexter. Mr. Plame will fill back in his chair and lift at his hands and eyes to the ceiling. I was not in the least impressed by that solemn appeal to the unseen powers of arithmetic and money. I insisted positively on being fed with more information. Listen to this, I went on reading from Benjamin's notes. What did Dexter mean when he said, Number 9 Keldershaws, ask for Dandy. You shan't have the diary, a secret in your ear, the diary will hang him. How came Dexter to know what was in my husband's diary, and what does he mean by Number 9 Keldershaws and the rest of it? Facts again? Facts again, Mr. Plame will answer, muddled up together, as you may say, but positive facts for all that. Keldershaws, you must know, is one of the most disreputable districts in Edinburgh. One of my clerks whom I am in the habit of employing confidentially, volunteered to inquire for Dandy at Number 9. It was a ticklish business in every way, and my man wisely took a person with him who was known in the neighbourhood. Number 9 turned out to be ostensibly a shop for the sale of regs and old iron, and Dandy was suspected of trading now and then additionally as a receiver of stolen goods. Thanks to the influence of his companion, backed by a bank note, which can be repaid, by the way, out of the fund for the American expenses, my clerks succeeded in making the fellow speak. Not to trouble you with needless details, the result in substance was this. A fortnight or more before the date of Mrs. Eustace's death, Dandy, made two keys from wax models supplied to him by a new customer. The mystery observed in the matter by the agent who managed it excited Dandy's distrust. He had the man privately watched, before he delivered the keys, and he ended in discovering that his customer was Miserimus Dexter. Wait a little, I have not done yet. Add to this information Dexter's incomprehensible knowledge of the contents of your husband's diary, and the product is that the wax model sent to the old iron shop in Caldershaws, where models taken by theft, from the key of the diary and the key of the table drawer in which it was kept. I have my own idea of the revelations that are still to come, if this matter is properly followed up. Never mind going into that at present. Dexter, I tell you again, is answerable for the late Mrs. Eustace's death. How he is answerable, I believe you are in a fair way of finding out. And more than that, I say now, what I could not venture to say before. It is a duty toward justice as well as a duty toward your husband to bring the truth to light. As for the difficulties to be encountered, I don't think they need don't you. The greatest difficulties give way in the end, when they are attacked by the United Alliance of Patient Resolution and Economy. With a strong emphasis on the last words, my worthy advisor, mindful of the flight of time and the claims of business, rose to take his leave. One word more, I said, as he held out his hand. Can you manage to see Mrs. Erymus Dexter before you go back to Edinburgh? From what the gardener told me, his brother must be with him by this time. It would be a relief to me to hear the latest news of him and to hear it from you. It is part of my business in London to see him, said Mr. Playmore. But mind, I have no hope of his recovery. I only wish to satisfy myself that his brother is able and willing to take care of him. So far as we are concerned, Mrs. Eustace, this unhappy man has said his last words. He opened the door, stopped, considered, and came back to me. With regard to that matter of sending the agent to America, he resumed, I propose to have the honour of submitting to you a brief abstract, O Mr. Playmore! A brief abstract in writing, Mrs. Eustace, of the estimated expenses of the whole proceeding. You will be good enough maturely to consider the same, making any remarks on it, tending to economy, which may suggest themselves to your mind at the time. And you will further oblige me, if you approve of the abstract, by yourself filling in the blank space on your check with a needful amount in words and figures. No, madame, I really cannot justify it to my conscience to carry about my person any such a loose and reckless document as a blank check. There is a total disregard for the first claims of prudence and economy implied in this small slip of paper, which is nothing less than a flat contradiction of the principles that have governed my whole life. I can't submit to flat contradiction. Good morning, Mrs. Eustace. Good morning. He laid my check on the table with a lobe, and left me. Among the curious developments of human stupidity which occasionally presents themselves to you, surely the least excusable, is the stupidity which to this day persists in wondering why the scotch succeeds so well in life. CHAPTER 42 OF THE LAW AND THE LADY This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Vipgamulla. The Law and the Lady by Wilkie Collins. CHAPTER 42. MORE SURPRISES The same evening I received my abstract by the hands of a clerk. It was an intensely characteristic document. My expenses were remorselessly calculated downward to shillings and even to pens, and our unfortunate messenger's instructions in respect to his expenditure were reduced to a nice city which must have made his life in America nothing less than a burden to him. In mercy to the man, I took the liberty when I wrote back to Mr. Playmore of slightly increasing the indicated amount of the figures which were to appear on the check. I ought to have better known the correspondent whom I had to deal with. Mr. Playmore's reply, informing me that our emissary had started on his voyage, returned a receipt in due form, and the whole of the surplus money to the last farthing. A few hurried lines accompanied the abstract, and stated the result of the lawyer's visit to Miserimus Dexter. There was no change for the better. There was no change at all. Mr. Dexter, the brother, had arrived at the house accompanied by a medical man accustomed to the charge of the insane. The new doctor declined to give any definite opinion on the case until he had studied it carefully with plenty of time at his disposal. It had been accordingly arranged that he should remove Miserimus Dexter to the asylum of which he was the proprietor, as soon as the preparations for receiving the patient could be completed. The one difficulty that still remained to be met related to the disposal of the faithful creature who had never left her master night or day since the catastrophe had happened. Ariel had no friends and no money. The proprietor of the asylum could not be expected to receive her without the customary payment, and Mr. Dexter's brother regretted to say that he was not rich enough to find the money. A forcible separation from the one human being whom she loved, and her removal in the character of a pauper to a public asylum such was the prospect which awaited the unfortunate creature, unless someone interfered in her favour before the end of the week. Under these sad circumstances, could Mr. Plamore, passing over the claims of economy in favour of the claims of humanity, suggested that we should privately start a subscription, and offered to head the list liberally himself. I must have written all these pages to very little purpose, if it is necessary for me to add that I instantly sent a letter to Mr. Dexter, the brother, undertaking to be answerable for whatever money was to be required while the subscriptions were being collected, and only stipulating that when Miserimus Dexter was removed to the asylum, Ariel should accompany him. This was readily conceded, but serious objections were raised when I further requested that she might be permitted to attend on her master in the asylum as she had attended on him in the house. The rules of the establishment forbade it, and the universal practice in such cases forbade it, and so on and so on. However, by dint of perseverance and persuasion, I so far carried my point as to gain a reasonable concession. During certain hours in the day and under certain wise restrictions, Ariel was to be allowed the privilege of waiting on her master in his room, as well as of accompanying him when he was brought out in his chair to take the air in the garden. For the honour of humanity, let me add that the liability which I had undertaken made no very serious demands on my resources. Placed in Benjamin's charge, our subscription list prospered. Friends and even strangers sometimes opened their hearts and their purses when they heard Ariel's melancholy story. The day which followed the day of Mr. Playmore's visit brought me news from Spain in a letter from my mother-in-law, to describe what I felt when I broke the seal and read the first lines as simply impossible. Let Mrs. MacAllen be heard on this occasion in my place. Thus she wrote, Prepare yourself, my dearest Valyria, for a delightful surprise. You stars has justified my confidence in him. When he returns to England he returns, if you will, let him to his wife. This resolution, let me hasten to assure you, has not been brought about by any persuasions of mine. It is the natural outgrowth of your husband's gratitude and your husband's love. The first words he said to me, when he was able to speak were these. If I live to return to England, and if I go to Valyria, do you think she will forgive me? We can only leave it to you, my dear, to give the answer, if you love us, answer us by return of post. Having now told you what he said when I first informed him that you had been his nurse, and remember, if it seems very little, that he is still too weak to speak except with difficulty, I shall purposely keep my letter back for a few days. My object is to give him time to think, and to frankly tell you of it, if the interval produces any change in his resolution. Three days have passed, and there is no change. He has but one feeling now. He longs for the day, which is to unite him again to his wife. But there is something else connected with you, stars, that you ought to know, and that I ought to tell you. Greatly as time and suffering have altered him in many respects, there is no change for Valyria in the aversion the horror may even say, with which he views your idea of inquiring in you into the circumstances which attended the lamentable death of his first wife. It makes no difference to him that you are only animated by a desire to serve his interests. Has she given up that idea? Are you positively sure she has given up that idea? Averint over again he has put these questions to me. I have answered what else could I do in the miserable feeble state in which he still lies. I have answered in such a manner as to soothe and satisfy him. I have said, Relieve your mind of all anxiety on that subject. Valyria has no choice but to give up the idea. The obstacles in her way have proven to be insurmountable. The obstacles have conquered her. This, if you remember, was what I really believed what happened when you and I spoke of that painful topic, and I have heard nothing from you since which has tended to shake my opinion in the smallest degree. If I am right, as I pray, God I may be, in the view that I take, you have only to confirm me in your reply and all will be well. In the other event, that is to say, if you are still determined to persevere in your hopeless project, then make up your mind to face the result. Set your stars as prejudices at defiance in this particular, and you lose your hold on his gratitude, his penitence, and his love. You will, in my belief, never see him again. I express myself strongly in your own interests, my dear, and for your own sake. When you reply, write a few lines to your stars, enclosed in your letter to me. As for the date of our departure, it is still impossible for me to give you any definite information. Your stars recovers very slowly, the doctor has not yet allowed him to leave his bed, and when we do travel we must journey by easy stages. It will be at least six weeks at the earliest, before we can hope to be back again in dear old England. Effectively yours, Catherine McAllen. I laid down the letter and did my best vainly enough for some time to compose my spirits. To understand the position in which I now found myself, it is only necessary to remember one's circumstance. The messenger to whom we had committed our inquiries was at that moment crossing the Atlantic on his way to New York. What was to be done? I hesitated, shocking as it may seem to some people, I hesitated. There was really no need to hurry my decision. I had the whole day before me. I went out and took a fresh and lonely walk, and turned the matter over in my mind. I came home again, and turned the matter over once more by the fireside. To offend and repel my darling, when he was returning to me, penitently returning of his own free will was what no woman in my position and feeling, as I did, could under any earthly circumstances have brought herself to do. And yet, on the other hand, how in heaven's name could I give up my grand enterprise at the very time when even wise and prudent Mr. Playmore saw such a prospect of succeeding in it that he had actually volunteered to help me? Placed between those two cruel alternatives which could I choose? Think of your own frailties and have some mercy on mine. I turned my back on both the alternatives. Those two agreeable fiends, prevarication and deceit, took me as it were softly by the hand. Don't commit yourself either way, my dear, they said, in their most persuasive manner. Try just enough to compose your mother-in-law and to satisfy your husband. You've got time before you. Wait and see if time doesn't stand your friend and get you out of the difficulty. Informous advice, and yet I took it, I who had been well brought up and who ought to have known better. You who read the shameful confession would have known better, I am sure. You are not included in the prayer book category among the miserable sinners. Well, well, let me have virtue enough to tell the truth. In writing to my mother-in-law, I informed her that it had been found necessary to remove Miserimus Dexter to an asylum, and I left her to draw her own conclusions from that fact, unenlightened by so much as one word of additional information. In the same way I told my husband a part of the truth and no more. I said I forgave him with all my heart, and I did. I said he had only to come to me, and I would receive him with open arms, and so I would. As for the rest, let me say with Hamlet the rest is silence. Having dispatched my unworthy letters, I found myself growing restless and feeling the want of a change. It would be necessary to wait at least eight or nine days before we could hope to hear by telegraph from New York. I bade farewell for a time to my dear and admirable Benjamin, and betook myself to my old home in the north at the vicarage of my uncle's dark weather. My journey to Spain to nurse Eustace had made my peace with my worthy relatives. We had exchanged friendly letters, and I had promised to be their guest as soon as it was possible for me to leave London. I passed a quiet and all things considered a happy time among the old scenes. I visited once more the bank by the riverside, where Eustace and I had first met. I walked again on the lawn, and loitered through the shrubbery, those favourite horns in which we had so often talked over our troubles, and so often forgotten them in a kiss. How sadly and strangely had our lives been parted since that time, how uncertain still was the fortune which the future had in store for us. The associations amid which I was now living had their softening effect on my heart, the elevating influence over my mind. I reproached myself bitterly reproached myself for not having written more fully and frankly to Eustace. Why had I hesitated to sacrifice to him my hopes and my interests in the coming investigation? He had not hesitated, poor fellow. His first thought was the thought of his wife. I had passed a fortnight with my uncle and aunt before I heard again from Mr. Playmore. When a letter from him arrived at last it disappointed me indescribably. A telegram from our messenger informed us that the lodgekeeper's daughter and her husband had left New York and that he was still in search of a trace of them. There was nothing to be done but to wait as patiently as we could on the chance of hearing better news. I remained in the north by Mr. Playmore's advice so as to be within an easy journey of Edinburgh in case it might be necessary for me to consult him personally. Three more weeks of weary expectation passed before a second letter reached me. This time it was impossible to say whether the news were good or bad. It might have been either it was simply bewildering even Mr. Playmore himself was taken by surprise. These were the last wonderful words, limited of course by considerations of economy, which reached us by telegram from our agent in America. Open the dust heap in Glen Inch. End of Chapter 42 Chapter number 43 of The Law and the Lady This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain, for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by V. P. Gemuller The Law and the Lady by Wilkie Collins Chapter 43 At last My letter from Mr. Playmore in closing the agent's extraordinary telegram was not inspired by the sanguine view of our prospects which he had expressed to me when we met at Benjamin's house. If the telegram means anything, he wrote, it means that the fragments of the torn letter have been cast into the housemaid's bucket along with the dust, the ashes and the rest of the litter in the room and have been emptied on the dust heap at Glen Inch. Since this was done the accumulated refuges collected from the periodical cleansings of the house during a term of nearly three years including of course the ashes from the fires kept burning for the greater part of the year in the library and the picture gallery have been poured upon the heap and have buried the precious morsels of paper deeper and deeper day by day. Even if we have a fair chance of finding these fragments, what hope can we feel at this distance of time of recovering them with a writing in a state of preservation? I shall be glad to hear, by return of post, if possible, how the matter strikes you. If you could make it convenient to consult with me personally in Edinburgh, we should save time, when time may be of serious importance to us. While you are at Dr. Stark Withers, you are within easy reach of the place. Please think of it. I thought of it seriously enough, the foremost question which I had to consider with the question of my husband. The departure of the mother and son from Spain had been so long delayed by the surgeon's orders that the travellers had only advanced on the homeward journey as far as Bordeaux, when I had last heard from Mrs. MacEllen three or four days since. Allowing for an interval of repose at Bordeaux, and for the slow rate at which they would be compelled to move afterward, I might still expect them to arrive in England some time before a letter from the agent in America could reach Mr. Playmore. How, in this position of affairs, I could contrive to join the lawyer in Edinburgh after meeting my husband in London, it was not easy to see. The wise and the right way, as I thought, was to tell Mr. Playmore frankly that I was not mistress of my own movements, and that he had better address his next letter to me at Benjamin's house. Writing to my legal advisor in this sense, I had a word of my own to add on the subject of the torn letter. In the last years of my father's life I had travelled with him in Italy, and I had seen in the museum at Naples the wonderful relics of a bygone time discovered among the ruins of Pompeii. By way of encouraging Mr. Playmore, I now reminded him that the eruption which had overwhelmed the town had preserved for more than sixteen hundred years, such perishable things as the straw in which pottery had been packed, the paintings on house walls, the dresses worn by the inhabitants, and most noticeable of all in our case, a piece of ancient paper still attached to the volcanic ashes which had fallen over it. If these discoveries had been made after a lapse of sixteen centuries under a layer of dust and ashes on a large scale, surely we might hope to meet with similar cases of preservation after a lapse of three or four years only under a layer of dust and ashes on a small scale. Taking for granted what was perhaps doubtful enough that the fragments of the letter could be recovered, my own conviction was that the writing on them though it might be faded would certainly still be legible. The very accumulations which Mr. Playmore deplored would be the means of preserving them from the rain and the damp. With these modest hints I closed my letter and thus for once, thanks to my continental experience, I was able to instruct my lawyer. Another day passed and I heard nothing of the travellers. I began to feel anxious. I made my preparations for my journey southward overnight, and I resolved to start for London the next day, unless I heard of some change in Mrs. McAllen's travelling arrangements in the interval. The post of the next morning decided my course of action. It brought me a letter from a mother-in-law which added one more to the memorable dates in my domestic calendar. Eustace and his mother had advanced as far as Paris on the homeward journey when a cruel disaster had beformed them. The fatigues of travelling and the excitement of a anticipated meeting with me had proved together to be too much for my husband. He had held out as far as Paris with the greatest difficulty, and he was now confined to his bid again, struck down by a relapse. The doctors this time had no fear for his life provided that his patients would support him through a lengthened period of the most absolute repose. It now rests with you, Valeria, Mrs. McAllen wrote, to fortify and comfort your stars under this new calamity. Do not suppose that he has ever blamed or thought of blaming you for leaving him with me in Spain as soon as he was declared to be out of danger. It was I who left her, he said to me, when we first talked about it, and it is my wife's right to expect that I should go back to her. Those were his words, my dear, and he has done all he can to abide by them. Helpless in his bed, he now asks you to take the will for the deed and to join him in Paris. I think I know you well enough, my child, to be sure that you will do this, and I need only add one word of caution before I close my letter. Avoid all reference, not only to the trial, you will do that of your own accord, but even to our house at Gleninch. You will understand how he feels in his present state of nervous depression, when I tell you that I should never have ventured on asking you to join him here, if your letter had not informed me that your visits to Dexter were at an end. Would you believe it? His horror of anything which recalls our past troubles is still so vivid that he has actually asked me to give my consent to selling Gleninch. So Eustace's mother wrote of him, but she had not trusted entirely to her own powers of persuasion. A slip of paper was enclosed in her letter, containing these two lines, traced in pencil, o' so feebly and so wearyly by my poor darling himself. I am too weak to travel any further, Valeria. Will you come to me, and forgive me? A few pencil marks followed, but they were illegible. The writing of those two short sentences had exhausted him. It's not saying much for myself, I know, but having confessed it when I was wrong, let me at least record it when I did what was right. I decided instantly on giving up or further connection with the recovery of the torn letter. If Eustace asked me the question I was resolved to be able to answer truly, I have made the sacrifice that assures your tranquillity. When resignation was hardest, I have humbled my obstinate spirit, and I have given way for my husband's sake. There was half an hour to spare before I left the vicarage for the railway station. In that interval I have wrote again to Mr. Playmore, telling him plainly what my position was and withdrawing, at once and for ever, from all share in investigating the mystery which lay hidden under the dust heap at Glen Inch. Chapter 44 Our New Honeymoon It is not to be disguised or denied that my spirits were depressed on my journey to London, to resign the one cherished purpose of my life when I had suffered so much in pursuing it, and when I had to all appearance so nearly reached the realization of my hopes, was putting to a hard trial a woman's fortitude and a woman's sense of duty. Still, even if the opportunity had been offered to me, I would not have recalled my letter to Mr. Playmore. It is done and well done, I said to myself, and I have only to wait a day to be reconciled to it when I give my husband my first kiss. I had planned and hoped to reach London in time to start for Paris by the night-mail, but the train was twice delayed on the long journey from the north, and there was no help for it but sleep at Benjamin's villa and to defer my departure until the morning. It was, of course, impossible for me to warn my old friend on the change in my plans. My arrival took him by surprise. I found him alone in his library, with a wonderful illumination of lamps and candles, absorbed over some morsels of torn paper scattered on the table before him. What in the world are you about? I asked. Benjamin blushed. I was going to say like a young girl, but young girls have given up blushing in these letter days of the age we live in. Oh, nothing, nothing! he said, confusedly, don't notice it. He stretched out his hand to brush the morsels of paper off the table. Those morsels raised a sudden suspicion in my mind. I stopped him. You have heard from Mr. Playmore, I said. Tell me the truth, Benjamin. Yes or no? Benjamin blushed a shade deeper and answered. Yes. Where is the letter? I must not show it to you, Valeria. This, need I say, made me determined to see the letter. My best way of persuading Benjamin to show it to me was to tell him of the sacrifice that I had made to my husband's wishes. I have no further voice in the matter, I added, when I had done. It now rests entirely with Mr. Playmore to go on to give up, and this is my last opportunity of discovering what he really thinks about it. Don't I deserve some little indulgence? Have I no claim to look at the letter? Benjamin was too much surprised and too much pleased with me, when he heard what had happened to be able to resist my entreaties. He gave me the letter. Mr. Playmore wrote to appeal confidentially to Benjamin as a commercial man. In the long course of his occupation in business, it was just possible that he might have heard of cases in which documents have been put together again, after having been torn up by design or by accident. Even if his experience failed in this particular, he might be able to refer to some authority in London who would be capable of giving an opinion on the subject. By way of explaining his strange request, Mr. Playmore reverted to the notes which Benjamin had taken at Missouri Most Exters' House and informed him of the serious importance of the gibberish which he had reported under protest. The letter closed by recommending that any correspondence which ensued should be kept a secret from me on the ground that it might excite false hopes in my mind if I were informed of it. I now understood the tone which my worthy advisor had adopted in writing to me. His interest in the recovery of the letter was evidently so overpowering that common prudence compelled him to conceal it from me in case of ultimate failure. This did not look as if Mr. Playmore was likely to give up the investigation on my withdrawal from it. I glanced again at the fragments of paper on Benjamin's table, with an interest in them which I had not felt yet. "'Has anything been found at Glen Inch?' I asked." "'No,' said Benjamin, I have only been trying experiments with the letter of my own before I've rode to Mr. Playmore.' "'Oh! You have torn up the letter yourself, then?' "'Yes, and to make it all the more difficult to put them together again I shook up the pieces in a basket. It's a childish thing to do, my dear, at my age.' He stopped, looking very much ashamed of himself. "'Well,' I went on, "'and have you succeeded in putting your letter together again?' "'It's not very easy, Valeria, but I have made a beginning. It's the same principle as the principle in the puzzles which we used to put together when I was a boy. Only get one central bit of it right, and the rest of the puzzle falls into its place in a longer or a shorter time. Please don't tell anybody, my dear. People might say I was in my dotage. To think of that gibberish in my notebook, having a meaning in it, after all, I only got Mr. Playmore's letter this morning, and I'm really almost ashamed to mention it. I have been trying experiments of torn letters off and on ever since. You won't tell upon me, will you?' I answered the dear old man by a hearty embrace. Now that he had lost his steady moral balance, and had caught the infection of my enthusiasm, I loved him better than ever. But I was not quite happy, though I tried to appear so. Struggle against it as I might, I felt a little mortified when I remember that I had resigned all further connection with the search for the letter at such a time as this. My one comfort was to think of you stars. My one encouragement was to keep my mind fixed as constantly as possible on the bright change for the better that now appeared in the domestic prospect. Here, at least, there was no disaster to fear. Here I could honestly feel that I had triumphed. My husband had come back to me of his own free will. He had not given way under the hard weight of evidence. He had yielded to the noble influences of his gratitude and his love. And I had taken him to my heart again, not because I had made discoveries which left him no other alternative than to live with me, but because I believed in the better mind that had come to him and loved and trusted him without reserve. Was it not worth some sacrifice to have arrived at this result? True, most true. And yet I was a little out of spirits. Ah, well, well, the remedy was within a day's journey. The sooner I was with you stars the better. Early the next morning I left London for Paris by the tidal train. Benjamin accompanied me to the terminus. I shall write to Edinburgh by to-day's post, he said, in the interval before the train moved out of the station. I think I can find the man Mr. Playmore wants to help him, if he decides to go on. Have you any message to send Valeria? No, I have done with it, Benjamin. I have nothing more to say. Shall I write and tell you how it ends, if Mr. Playmore does really try the experiment at Gleninch? I answered as I felt a little bitterly. Yes, I said, write and tell me if the experiments fail. My old friend smiled. He knew me better than I knew myself. All right, he said resignedly, I have got the address of your bank as correspondent in Paris. You will have to go there for money, my dear, and you may find a letter waiting for you in the office when you least expect it. Let me hear how your husband goes on. Goodbye and God bless you. That evening I was restored to you stars. He was too weak poor fellow even to raise his head from the pillow. I knelt down at the bedside and kissed him. His languid weary eyes kindled with a new life as my lips touched his. I must try to live now, he whispered. For your sake. My mother-in-law had delicately left us together. When he said those words, the temptation to tell him of the new hope that had come to brighten our lives was more than I could resist. You must try to live now, you stars. I said, for someone else besides me. His eyes looked wanderingly into mine. Do you mean my mother? he asked. I laid my head on his bosom and whispered back. I mean your child. I had all my reward for all that I had given up. I forgot, Mr. Plame, or I forgot Glen Inch. Our new honeymoon dates in my remembrance from that day. The quiet time passed in the by-street in which we lived. The outer stir and tumult of Parisian life ran its daily course around us unnoticed and unheard. Steadyly, though slowly, you stars gained strength. The doctors, with a word or two of caution, left him almost entirely to me. You are his physician, they said. The happier you make him, the sooner he will recover. The quiet monotonous round of my new life was far from wearying me. I too wanted repose. I had no interests, no pleasures out of my husband's room. Once and only once the placid surface of our lives was just gently ruffled by an illusion to the past. Something that I accidentally said reminded you, stars, of our last interview at Major Fitz-David's house. He referred very delicately to what I had then said of the verdict pronounced on him at the trial, and he left me to infer that a word from my lips, confirming what his mother had already told him, would quiet his mind at once and for ever. My answer involved no embarrassment or difficulties. I couldn't did honestly tell him that I had made his wishes my law. But it was hardly in womanhood I am afraid to be satisfied with merely replying and to leave it there. I thought it due to me that you, stars, too, should concede something in the way of an assurance which might quiet my mind, as usual with me the words followed the impulse to speak them. You, stars, I asked, are you quite cured of those cruel doubts which ones made you leave me? His answer, as he afterwards said, made me blush with pleasure. Ah, Valeria, I should never have gone away if I had known you then as well as I know you know. So the last shadows of distrust melted away out of our lives. The very remembrance of the turmoil and the trouble of my past days in London seemed now to fade from my memory. We were lovers again. We were absorbed again in each other. We would almost fancy that our marriage dated back once more to a day or two since. But one last victory over myself was wanting to make my happiness complete. I still felt secret longings in those dangerous moments when I was left by myself, to know whether the search for the torn letter had or had not taken place. What wayward creatures we are, with everything that a woman could want to make her happy, I was ready to put that happiness in peril rather than remain ignorant of what was going on at Glen Inch. I actually hailed the day when my empty purse gave me an excuse for going to my bank as correspondent on business, and so receiving any letters waiting for me which might be placed in my hands. I applied for my money without knowing what I was about, wandering all the time whether Benjamin had written to me or not. My eyes wandered over the desks and tables in the office looking for letters furtively. Nothing of the sort was visible. But a man appeared from an inner office, an ugly man who was yet beautiful to my eyes for this sufficient reason. He had a letter in his hand, and he said, Is this for you, ma'am? A glance at the address showed me Benjamin's handwriting. Had they tried the experiment of recovering the letter, and had they failed? Somebody put my money in my bag and politely let me out to the little hired carriage which was waiting for me at the door. I remember nothing distinctly until I opened the letter on my way home. The first words told me that the dust heap had been examined, and that the fragments of the torn letter had been found. End of Chapter 44 My head turned giddy. I was obliged to wait and let my overpowering agitation subside before I could read any more. Looking at the letter again after an interval, my eyes fell accidentally on a sentence near the end which surprised and startled me. I stopped the driver of the carriage at the entrance to the street in which our lodgings were situated, and told him to take me to the beautiful park of Paris, the famous Bois de Boulogne. My object was to gain time enough in this way to read the letter carefully through by myself and to ascertain whether I ought or ought not to keep the receipt of it a secret before I confronted my husband and his mother at home. This precaution taken I read the narrative which my good Benjamin had so wisely and so thoughtfully written for me. Treating the various incidents methodically, he began with the report which had arrived in due course of mail from our agent in America. Our man had successfully traced the lodgkeeper's daughter and her husband to a small town in one of the western states. Mr. Playmore's letter of introduction at once secured him a cordial reception from the married pair and a patient hearing when he stated the object of his voyage across the Atlantic. His first questions led to no very encouraging results. The woman was confused and surprised and was apparently quite unable to exert her memory to any useful purpose. Fortunately, her husband proved to be a very intelligent man. He took the agent privately aside and said to I understand, my wife, and you don't. Tell me exactly what it is you want to know and leave it to me to discover how much you remember and how much she forgets. The sensible suggestion was readily accepted. The agent waited for events a day and a night. Early the next morning the husband said to him, Talk to my wife now and you'll find she has something to tell you. Only mind this. Don't laugh at her when she speaks of trifles. She is ashamed to speak of trifles even to me. Things mirror above such matters, you know. Listen quietly, and let her talk, and you will get at it all in that way. The agent followed his instructions and got at it as follows. The woman remembered perfectly well, being sent to clean the bedrooms and put them tidy after the gentle forks had all left glen inch. Her mother had a bad hip at the time and could not go with her and help her. She did not much fancy being alone in the great house after what had happened in it. On her way to her work she passed two of the cottage's children in the neighborhood at play in the park. Mr. MacAllen was always kind to his poor tenants and never objected to the young ones round about having a run on the grass. The two children idly followed her to the house. She took them inside along with her not liking the place as already mentioned, and feeling that they would be company in the solitary rooms. She began her work in the guest's corridor, leaving the room in the other corridor in which the death had happened to the last. There was very little to do in the two first rooms. There was not litter enough when she had swept the floors and cleaned the grates to even half fill the housemate's bucket which she carried with her. The children followed her about, and all things considered were very good company in the lonely place. The third room, that is to say the butt chamber which had been occupied by Ms. Erema's dexter, was in a much worse state than the other two, and wanted a great deal of tidying. She did not much notice the children here being occupied with her work. The litter was swept up from the carpet, and the cinders and ashes were taken out of the grate, and the whole of it was in the bucket, when her attention was recalled to the children by hearing one of them cry. She looked about the room without at first discovering them. A fresh outburst of crying led her in the right direction, and showed her the children under a table in a corner of the room. The youngest of the two had got into a waste-paper basket. The eldest had found an old bottle of gum with a brush fixed in the cork, and was gravely painting the face of the smaller child with what little remained of the contents of the bottle. Some natural struggles on the part of the little creature had ended in the overthrow of the basket, and the usual outburst of crying had followed as a matter of course. In this state of things the remedy was soon applied. The woman took the bottle away from the eldest child and gave it a box on the ear. The younger one she said on its legs again, and she put the two in the corner to keep them quiet. This done she swept up such fragments of the torn paper in the basket as had fallen on the floor, threw them back again into the basket along with a gum bottle, fetched the bucket, and emptied the basket into it, and then proceeded to the fourth and last room in the corridor, where she finished her work for that day. Leaving the house with the children after her, she took the filled bucket to the dust heap, and emptied it in a hollow place among the rubbish, about half way up the mound. Then she took the children home, and there was an end of it for the day. Such was the result of the appeal made to the woman's memory of domestic events at Glen Inch. The conclusion at which Mr. Playmore arrived from the facts admitted to him was that the chances were now decidedly in favour of the recovery of the letter, thrown in nearly midway between the contents of the housemaid's bucket, the torn morsels would be protected above as well as below when they were emptied on the dust heap. Succeeding weeks and months would add to that protection by adding to the accumulated refuse. In the neglected condition of the grounds the dust heap had not been disturbed in search of manure. There it had stood untouched from the time when the family left Glen Inch to the present day, and there hidden deep somewhere in the mound the fragments of the letter must be. Such were the lawyer's conclusions. He had written immediately to communicate them to Benjamin, and thereupon what had Benjamin done. After having tried his powers of construction on his own correspondence, the prospect of experimenting on the mysterious letter itself had proved to be a temptation too powerful for the old man to resist. I almost fancy, my dear, this business of yours has bewitched me, he wrote, You see I have the misfortune to be an idle man, I have time to spare and money to spare, and the end of it is that I am here at Glen Inch, engaged on my own, sole responsibility, with good Mr. Playmore's permission, in searching the dust heap. Benjamin's description of his first view of the field of action at Glen Inch followed these characteristic lines of apology. I passed over the description without ceremony. My remembrance of the scene was too vivid to require any prompting of that sort. I saw again, in the dim evening light, the unsightly mound, which had so strangely attracted my attention at Glen Inch. I heard again the words in which Mr. Playmore had explained to me the custom of the dust heap in Scotch country houses. What had Benjamin and Mr. Playmore done? What had Benjamin and Mr. Playmore found? For me the true interest of the narrative was there, and to that portion of it I eagerly turned next. They had proceeded methodically, of course, with one eye on the pounds, shilling and pens, and the other on the object in view. In Benjamin the Louie had found what he had not bet within me, a sympathetic mind alive to the value of an abstract of the expenses, and conscious of that most remunerative of human virtues, the virtue of economy. At so much a week they had engaged Min to dig into the mound and to sift the ashes. At so much a week they had hired a tent to shelter the open dust heap from wind and weather. At so much a week they had engaged the service of a young man, personally known to Benjamin, who was employed in a laboratory under a professor of chemistry, and who had distinguished himself by his skillful manipulation of paper in a recent case of forgery on a well-known London firm. Armed with these preparations they had begun the work, Benjamin and the young chemist living at Gleninch and taking it in turns to super-intend the proceedings. Three days of labour with the spade and the sift produced no results of the slightest importance. However, the matter was in the hands of two quietly determined men. They declined to be discouraged. They went on. On the fourth day the first morsels of paper were found. Upon examination they proved to be the fragments of a tradesman's prospectus. Nothing dismayed, Benjamin and the young chemist still persevered. At the end of the day's work more pieces of paper were turned up. These proved to be covered with written characters. Mr. Playmore arriving at Gleninch as usual every evening on the conclusion of his labours in the law was consulted as to the handwriting. After careful examination he declared that the mutilated portions of sentences submitted to him had been written, beyond all doubt, by Eustace MacAllen's first wife. The discovery aroused the enthusiasm of the searches to fever-height. Spades and sifts were from that moment forbidden utensils. However unpleasant the task might be, hands alone were used in the further examination of the mound. The first, and foremost necessity, was to place the morsels of paper in flat cardboard boxes prepared for the purpose, in their order as they were found. Night came, the labourers were dismissed. Benjamin and his two colleagues worked on by Lemplight, the morsels of paper were now turned up by dozens instead of by ones and twos. For a while the search prospered in this way, and then the morsels appeared no more. Had they all been recovered, or would renewed hand digging yield more yet, the next light layers of rubbish were carefully removed, and the grand discovery of the day followed. There, upside down, was the gum-bottle which the lodgekeeper's daughter had spoken of, and more precious still there under it were more fragments of written paper, all stuck together in a little clump by the last grippings from the gum-bottle dropping upon them as they lay on the dust heap. The scene now shifted to the interior of the house. When the searches next assembled, they met at the great table in the library at Glen Inge. Benjamin's experience with the puzzles which he had put together in the days of his boyhood proved to be of some use to his companions. The fragments accidentally stuck together would in all probability be found to fit each other, and would certainly in any case be the easiest fragments to reconstruct as a centre to start from. The delicate business of separating these pieces of paper and of preserving them in the order in which they had adhered to each other was assigned to the practised fingers of the chemist, but the difficulties of his task did not end here. The writing was as usual in letters traced on both sides of the paper, and it could only be preserved for the purpose of reconstruction by splitting each morsel into two, so as artificially to make a blank side on which could be spread the fine cement used for reuniting the fragments in their original form. To Mr. Playmore and Benjamin the prospect of successfully putting the letter together under these disadvantages seemed to be almost hopeless. Their skilled colleagues soon satisfied them that they were wrong. He drew their attention to the thickness of the paper, note paper of the strongest and best quality on which the writing was traced. It was of more than twice the substance of the last paper on which he had operated when he was engaged in the forgery case, and it was, on that account, comparatively easy for him aided by the mechanical appliances which he had brought from London, to split the morsel of the torn paper within a given space of time which might permit them to begin the reconstruction of the letter that night. With these explanations he had quietly devoted himself to his work, while Benjamin and the lawyer were still pouring over the scattered morsels of the letter which had been first discovered, and trying to piece them together again, the chemist had divided the greater part of the fragments specially confided to him into two halves each, and had correctly put together some five or six sentences of the letter on the smooth sheet of card board prepared for that purpose. They looked eagerly at the reconstructed writing so far. It was correctly done, the sense was perfect. The first result gained by examination was remarkable enough to reward them for all the exertions. The language used plainly identified the person to whom the late Mrs. Eustace had addressed her letter. That person was my husband, and the letter thus addressed, if the plainest circumstantial evidence could be trusted, was identical with the letter which Miserimus Dexter had suppressed until the trial was over, and had then destroyed by tearing it up. These were the discoveries that had been made at the time when Benjamin wrote to me. He had been on the point of posting his letter when Mr. Playmore had suggested that he should keep it by him for a few days longer on the chance of having more still to tell me. We are indebted to her for these results, the lawyer had said, but for her resolution and her influence over Miserimus Dexter we should never have discovered what the dust heap was hiding from us. We should never have seen so much as a glimmering of the truth. She has the first claim to the fullest information. Let her have it. The letter had been accordingly kept back for three days. That interval being at an end it was hurriedly resumed and concluded in terms which indescribably alarmed me. The chemist is advancing rapidly with his part of the work, Benjamin wrote, and I have succeeded in putting together a separate portion of the torn writing which makes sense. Comparison of what he has accomplished with what I have accomplished has led to startling conclusions. Unless Mr. Playmore and I are entirely wrong and God grant we may be so, there's a serious necessity for your keeping the reconstruction of the letter strictly secret from everybody about you. The disclosures suggested by what has come to light are so hard-rending and so dreadful that I cannot bring myself to write about them until I am absolutely obliged to do so. Please forgive me for disturbing you with this news. We are bound sooner or later to consult with you in the matter, and we think it right to prepare your mind for what may be to come. To this there was added a post-script in Mr. Playmore's handwriting. Pray observe strictly the portion which Mr. Benjamin impresses on you, and bear this in mind as a warning from me. If we succeed in reconstructing the entire letter, the last person living we ought in my opinion to be allowed to see it, is your husband.