 CHAPTERS 1 AND 2 OF ONE LIFE, ONE LOVE This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Sillin Majore. ONE LIFE, ONE LOVE by Mary Elizabeth Braddon 1. Dramatis Personae Wife cried Robert Hattrell coming into the sunny morning-room where his wife and her daughter were sitting, the little girl in the broad recessed window with her tutor puzzling over her first French verb while in front of the window a bed of pink tulips were waving and nodding their rosy cups in the soft April wind. Wife, can you guess what good news I have brought you? Indeed, no, Rob, unless it is that you are going to take me for a long drive, to Burnham Beaches or the Forest for instance. She was not one of the indifferent offhand wives who hardly look up from their work or their book when a husband comes back from his morning walk. She was not even one of those excellent matrons whose affections are concentrated upon the nursery for whom babies have a higher claim than the breadwinner. Clara Hattrell adored her husband and was not ashamed to show her affection for him in trivial ways which marked the line between love and toleration. She laid down her pen, rose from the little Davenport and went over to meet him as he came flushed and smiling into the sunshine-y room. Better than that, ever so much better than that. Not another diamond bracelet, I hope, she said with a touch of petulance. He had a passion for buying things, an amiable weakness which had been pleasant enough up to a certain point but to which his wife objected when it passed the limits of common sense. Ungrateful woman! You know, dear, I have more jewelry already than I care to wear. It is not a bracelet. It is not any kind of ornament for the most ungrateful of women. Will that satisfy you? The little girl never looked up from the indicative mood. The glory of beginning a foreign language overcame her sense of weariness. The tutor never raised his eyelids from the eyes which watched the child puzzling over her book, but he was listening intently all the same. Not quite, Rob. You have been buying something. I can see it in the sparkle of your eye. You have been wasting a heap of money upon some trumpery or other. I have not spent or incurred a liability to the extent of three and six spent since I left this house, but I have heard something which may lead to my spending three or four thousand pounds before we are much older. The land! cried Clara, clasping her hands. My meadows, my gardens. Precisely! Young Florestan has made up his mind to part with some superfluous territory, and as soon as the lawyers are ready to sell, I shall be able to buy the extra acres for which my fair land-grabber has been buying. What rapture! And we shall be able to extend the River Terrace to twice its present length, and I shall have an Italian garden. A real Italian garden, with marble ballast raids, and pan and syrinx, and walls of Cyprus and U, and a long avenue of junipers. My dearest dreamer, your Cyprus walls will take 30 or 40 years to arrive at perfection. They will be something to look forward to in our old age, and we shall have the pleasure of planning everything and watching the things grow. The garden will be our own creation, an emanation from our very selves. Adam and Eve would have tried harder to be worthy of Eden if it had not been ready-made. Robert Hatrell had the sanguine temperament and had a knack of adopting any idea of his wife's with even greater enthusiasm than her own. He was never more pleased than in pleasing her yet had marked taste of his own. Pictures, statues, foreign travel, a man of no profession or pursuit, and of an energetic temper, energetic even to restlessness. He was an only son and had been lord of himself and of between three and four thousand a year at an age when most young men are still dependent upon parental benevolence. He had left Oxford without a degree, but with a reputation for considerable talent of an artistic, social, and generally intangible character. He had traveled and amused himself for half a dozen years, enjoying independence, health, and high spirits to the uttermost. He had had his adventures, his disillusions, and his disappointments during that long holiday, and he had only sobered and settled down on marrying one of the prettiest girls of her season, a girl fresh from a Buckinghamshire valley where her people had been lords of the soil before the wars of the roses. She had practically no money, but she came of a race which claimed kindred with Hampton. She had the calm and chaste beauty of the Florentine Venus. She neither flirted nor talked slang, and she knew no more about racing or cars than if she had still been in the nursery. In a word, she was a girl whom Wordsworth or Milton would have accepted as the fairest type of English girlhood, and Robert Hatrell considered himself very lucky in winning her for his wife. His father had been a civil engineer, a genius successful in all he touched. The rewards of his profession had been large and rapid and attempted him to overwork, which resulted eventually after many notes of warning and an appallingly sudden death. Robert inherited with the engineer's fortune the engineer's ardent temperament which on his part showed itself in superfluous energy, a feverish activity about trifles. There were times when, in spite of fortune, happy home, and idolized wife, he felt that he had made a mistake in his life, that it would have been better for him to have worked hard and had a career like his father's. He read of the two Brunels and the two Stevenson's with a pang of regret. But on this bright April morning there was no shadow upon Robert Hatrell's happiness, no sense of a purpose and a career missed, a life in some wise wasted. He talked of the additional land as if it were the beginning and end of existence. It will just make the place perfect, Clara, he said. You are always right, love. We were terribly cramped when we made our garden. The river terraces well enough but we have no depth. The grounds are unworthy of the house. He opened a glass door and went out upon the lawn, his wife following him. They stood side by side and looked first at the house and then at the garden, this way and that, and then at the river. Eleven years ago, on the eve of their marriage, he and Clara, riding together one morning on the Berkshire side of the river, between Redding and Henley, had discovered an old-fashioned cottage in a good sized garden with a lawn sloping to the river. There were a couple of meadows and an orchard behind the cottage, divided from it by a road, but the best part of the whole thing was this river frontage of less than a quarter of a mile. The cottage was to be let or sold as a lopsided board announced to the world at large, and the neglected garden gave evidence that it was a long time since the last tenant had departed and left the place to gradual decay. The lovers dismounted, found a door on the latch and explored the house which was empty of human life, albeit some shabby furniture and a sandy cat in the kitchen indicated that a caretaker had her habitation on the premises. The thick walls, leaded casements, quaint old staircase and corridor fascinated Clara. She was passionately fond of the river and of the country in which she had been born and reared. Her future home was to be in Chester Street, Belgravia, but the exploration of the cottage suggested a delightful alternative. How sweet it would be to have this for a summer home, Rob, she said, and Robert, who was at the period of his most abject slavery, instantly decided that the cottage must be hers. The negotiation of the purchase gave him something to do. Alterations and additions and improvements would make a delightful occupation for husband and wife after the honey moon. The house in Chester Street had been taken on a 7, 14 or 21 years lease, a most commonplace business. It was furnished and ready for them. Nothing more to do there. But this cottage would afford endless work. He began to plan it once, even before he knew the owner's name. Of course they must build a drawing room and dining room and a couple of bedrooms, boudoir and dressing room on the floor above. The present sitting room would make a pretty hall by knocking down a lath and plaster partition and throwing in the passage. Those thick walls and great chestnut beams were delightful. He saw his way to an artistic looking house for very little money. I am nothing if not inventive, he said. Remember what my father did. Some faint trickle from that deep stream of intellectual force ought to have come down to me. I'm sure you would be quite as clever as your father and would plan, buy a dux and things as he did, if it were required of you, said Clara admiringly. The cottage was bought and was the plaything of the first and second year of their married life, their chief amusement, occupation and excitement. The cottage was always with them and the greatest pleasure of their foreign wanderings was found in brick-a-brack shops searching out strange and picturesque things for their new home. At the end of those two years, the cottage was no longer a cottage, but a spacious and luxurious house of moderate elevation with many gables, a tiled roof and tall chimney stacks. Mr. Hattrell had remembered Ruskin's axiom that no house can be picturesque in which the roof is not a prominent feature. The garden had been made as perfect as its narrow limits would allow, but everybody felt and many people said that the house was too large and too handsome for its surroundings. They had occupied it for nine years and the daughter who had entered it a year old baby was old enough to learn her first French verb, although her education had been conducted in a very leisurely manner. Yet only today had come the hope of possessing the adjoining land which had been in the hands of trustees until two or three months ago when the air had come of age. The trustees had been unable to sell and the air had been unwilling to sell, but a month at Monte Carlo had brought about a change of tactics and this morning Mr. Hattrell had seen the land agent and had been told that young Florestan would be glad of an offer for so much of the home farm as might be wanted to perfect Mr. Hattrell's holding. You will understand that as there is a river frontage and the land is eminently adapted for building we shall want a good price for it, said the agent. Let me know your price without an hour's unnecessary delay. I'd rather not make an offer. I can't be a buyer and seller too, answered Hattrell, and then he walked home at five miles an hour brimming over with delight triumphant at having such news to carry to his wife. They looked this way and that and talked and pointed out boundaries and distances. Those dear old chestnuts in the hedgerow must come down. The river terrace must be continued along there. The meadow would have to be leveled into an upper and lower lawn, and there must be stone ballast raids and flights of steps. I'm afraid it will cost a fortune, said Clara. We can afford to do it, dear, now we have given up the house in Chester Street. They had discovered two or three years before that a London house was a useless expense, an incubus even, since it obliged them to live in town when they would rather be in the country. They both infinitely preferred life in Berkshire to life in Belgravia, so on the expiry of the first term of the lease they gave up the house and sold the bulk of the furniture to the incoming tenant. And now they could spend as much of their time as they liked in the house by the river and could winter in Italy or Switzerland without any scruples of conscience. When they wanted to reside in London, there were hotels ready to receive them, and on the other hand they could enjoy many metropolitan pleasures while resident at River Lawn, since the journey to the West End took very little more than an hour. The child had stuck to her book with dog determination while her mother and father were indoors, but the sight of them standing on the lawn was too much for her. Their animated gestures filled her with curiosity. What were they pointing out to each other? What could they be talking about? Her tutor laid his long white fingers upon her shoulder with a slow caressing touch she knew so well. Where are your thoughts, flying Daisy? He said gently. We shan't manage our two tenses if you don't attend better. I'm rather tired, said the little girl, and I want to go to mother. Let it be one tense than only one, but it must be quite perfect. Shut your book and tell me the French for I am. Je suis, replied Daisy, watching those sunlit figures on the lawn, her mother in a gown of cream white woollen stuff with an orange-colored handkerchief knotted loosely around her neck. The tutor, tutor for love, not gain, never looked up. Dreamy at the best of times he was in an unusually meditative mood this morning. He seemed to be giving a small portion of his brain power to the child while all the rest was lost in a labyrinth of thought. The present tense indicative mood of the verb Eithra was repeated without a hitch. Good, said Ambrose Arden, we will have the imperfect tense tomorrow. And now you may run in the garden for half an hour before we read our English history. Perhaps you would like to read out of doors. Very much, if you please, Uncle Ambrose. She put her arms round his neck and laid her soft cheek against his silky hair. He had pale, auburn hair, which he wore rather long. His skin was as fair as a woman's. Hair and complexion and the clear bright blue of the large dreamy eyes gave something of a feminacy to his appearance. But his features were large and boldly cut, a longish nose inclining to aquiline, a strong chin and wide, resolute mouth. He was tall and broad-shouldered, but had the stoop of a bookish man whose life was for the most part sedentary. All his movements were slow and deliberate and his full-deep voice had slow and deliberate modulations, a legato movement that answered to the gliding movements of his figure. Daisy flew out to the lawn like an arrow from a bow. She had her mother's hazel eyes and her mother's vivacity, slim, straight and swift as Atalanta, with dark brown hair flying in the wind. Ambrose Arden rose slowly and sauntered after her. May I inquire the cause of all this excitement? He asked as he approached husband and wife. Didn't you hear just now, you man of ice? Robert Hattrell exclaimed laughingly. Can it be that mundane things have no interest for you that you have only ears and mind for the abstract? I heard something about Floristan's land. Precisely. Had you been more keenly interested in the welfare of your friends, you might have heard that I have now the chance of buying the additional ground my poor Clara has been pining for ever since we made our garden. I am very glad, said Arden quietly. You don't look a bit glad, said Clara. I am one of those cold, blooded people whose faces do not express what they feel. I am heartily glad all the same since you and Hattrell are glad. Oh, it is Clara's business. This place is Clara's creation. She can do what she likes with it, said Hattrell. I'll have Cruden over this afternoon to plan the new garden. But, my dear Rob, is it worth while to begin our plans before we are even sure of the ground, remonstrated common sense in the person of his wife? We are quite sure. It is only a question of a hundred or two more or less. Floristan wants money and he can spare the land. We want the land and we can spare the money. There is always so much time lost in beginning anything. I'll send for Cruden at once. Yes, and you and Mr. Cruden will have planned every detail before I can make a single suggestion, said Clara. I know your impetuosity of old. My love, the new garden was your idea and you shall carry it out in your way, replied her husband, but we may as well see Cruden's plan. He is the best man in this part of the country for a job of that kind. We will do nothing without your approval. Clara gave a little impatient sigh. She knew so well for how little her approval would count when once the landscape gardener and his men were set at work, how little pause or leisure there would be for a thought or taste and how the whole business would be hurried along by her husband's impatient temper till all was fixed and completed for good or ill. And she knew that the loveliest gardens she had seen had been the slow and gradual growth of care and thought. Mr. Cruden, however, was a prince among nursery men. He had taste and knowledge and many acres of nursery ground, and if he were but a loud time, all would no doubt be well. Ambrose Arden strolled down to his favorite seat under a weeping willow which overhung the river and made a tent of tender green above a rustic bench and table. There were cushions scattered on the ground under the tree and there was a doll sitting with its sawdust back propped up against the trunk. These and various lesson books indicated that the spot was Daisy's chosen resort. Here in fine weather she carried on her education under the affectionate guidance of her father's friend and neighbor Ambrose Arden. When they bought their cottage at Lamford, Mr. and Mrs. Hattrell found Mr. Arden established in a small square brick house on the opposite side of the road, one of those ugly, useful houses, which people used to build 70 or 80 years ago amidst loveliest scenery, houses which imply that at a certain period of English history the sense of beauty was dead in the English mind. Houses as square and as unbeautiful are built by the dozen nowadays on the outskirts of French provincial towns and seem the natural outcome of the small bourgeois retired from business. Time and the mild moist atmosphere of the Thames Valley had dealt kindly with this sordid building and had covered it from basement to roof with roses, passion flower, woodbine, and trumpet ash. So clothed and standing in the midst of an old-fashioned garden it had assumed a certain humble prettiness as the commonest laborer's cottage will when it has time to ripen. It was quite good enough for Ambrose Arden, the Oxford scholar, the man who had carried off some of the chief prizes of a university career but whose name from a social point of view had been written in water. Even the men of his ear had scarcely heard of him or at most had heard of him as a poor creature who neither rode nor hunted nor spoke at the union nor gave wines, a creature who only sat in his rooms and read. He came to the square brick house at Lamford, a widower with one child, a boy of three years old. He had married a parson's daughter in a village among the Welsh Hills and had lived with her in that quiet far-off world until their brief married life ended in sudden darkness. Her son was just beginning to run alone when the young mother, who had never given up the pious and charitable ways of the vicar's daughter, took the contagion of a deadly fever by a sickbed in a remote homestead hidden among the hills, too far for the elderly vicar to carry words of hope and consolation. Ambrose Arden's wife had taken the duty of visiting these people upon herself. The woman's husband had an evil repute, was known to have ill-used his wife, and she was dying of some mysterious disease alone and friendless. Amy Arden went daily to visit her, Ambrose walking with her, and while his wife read or talked to the sick woman, he sat on a little rustic bridge that spanned a trout stream hard by, reading the book he always carried in the pocket of his shooting-coat. Never had Ambrose Arden been known to leave his house unsupplied with intellectual food of some kind. Whether the dying woman's malady was contagious, or whether the house itself reeked with drained poison, the doctors never decided. All Ambrose knew was that his young wife fell a victim to her own large-hearted charity. From her childhood she had ministered to her father's flock, and she was stricken with death in the path of duty. Mr. Arden left the rustic cottage in the Radnarshire village in which he had lived for three years in comfort and refinement upon a very small income which he had inherited from his mother. He was an only child, the last as he supposed, of a race that had slowly exhausted itself, a race of gentle folks who had neither toiled nor spun and who had done very little to distinguish themselves in the busy places of this world. They were a Cheshire family and they had lived on their own land and had seen their importance and their means gradually decaying from generation to generation without being moved to any strong stand-up fight against adverse fortune. Some of them had been soldiers and some of them had been students, not undistinguished in the records of the university, but the act of temper which can redeem the fortunes of a race had been unknown in the house of Arden. Ambrose fled from Radnarshire with a great horror of the soil on which he left the grave of his dead wife. He had been very fond of her, not with a passionate or romantic attachment, but with a mild and in some wise fatherly affection appreciating the sweetness of a most perfect character. She had never been more to him than a dear and tenderly loved friend and his affection at the beginning of their married life had been as placid, temperate and serious as the love of grey-haired Darby for grey-haired Joan after their golden wedding. It did not seem within the capacities of the student's nature to care passionately for anything outside the world of thought. He went to London and lived in a lodging near the British Museum for about half a year while his infant son was cared for by a little staymaker at Roehampton who had about half a root of garden ground behind her cottage. The boy drove well enough in this humble home and Ambrose used to walk to Roehampton every Sunday to look at him. All his weekdays he spent in the reading room of the museum. One day he discovered that his boy had grown very fond of him. He cried and clung to his father at parting and then it first entered into his father's mind that he might make a home for his son and for his books which had accumulated rapidly since he had lived in London, the temptations of the second-hand bookshops being irresistible to a man for whom the world of books was almost the only world. The Valley of the Thames was fairer and more familiar to the Oksonian than any other part of England. It was also within reach of the great reading room, so it was on the banks of the Thames that Ambrose Arden looked for a home. He found a cottage and a good old garden for thirty pounds a year and as his prowlings about the Lamplit streets within a one-mile radius of the museum had made him familiar with a great many broker's shops, he had no difficulty in getting together the few articles of furniture necessary for the establishment of a widower with an infant son. A carpenter from Henley put up pitch-pine shelves for the student's existing library and provided space for future purchases and with his books and his son, Ambrose Arden settled down to that dreamy life which he had now been leading for between eleven and twelve years. The Hattrells made their neighbor's acquaintance casually one summer evening on the river where the student was sitting in a punt with his boy, the father absorbed in a book, the boy fishing more to the willy-wee bank and where Robert Hattrell was sculling his wife slowly towards the sunset in his capacious skiff, the strong rhythmical stroke bearing witness to the time when he was one of the best oars in the university ate. The casual acquaintance soon ripened into an easy and familiar intercourse and with the passing years intimacy became friendship. The two men had been at Oxford together, albeit they had no memory of ever having met there. They had some tastes in common, although one was all energy, the other all repose. Mrs. Hattrell was a voracious reader and looked to Mr. Arden for counsel and help in the choice of books. By the new lights afforded by his wide knowledge of the best authors, she found many a pleasant shortcut to a higher level of thought and culture than governess or professors had revealed to her. She grew to depend upon him for intellectual guidance, and it was with delight she accepted his offer to educate her only child after his own plan. It seems almost absurd to see you wasting your time upon that child, she said, feeling some compunction at the beginning of things. I have plenty of time to waste, and Daisy's education will serve as amusement and relaxation for me. Now that Cyril is at Winchester, I have no young thing to lighten my life except Daisy. But to see you teaching a child of sevens, he must rather like setting a nasmyth hammer to crack a nut. One of the boasted merits of the nasmyth hammer is that it can crack a nut. Let me think that I have not lost the lightness and delicacy of a mind which can understand the workings of a child's brain. The mother submitted and was grateful, and it gradually became a familiar thing to see Ambrose Arden, the grave student of seven and thirty, whose magnum opus was to make a revolution in the history of philosophy, bending over the brown-eyed child and teaching her history upon his own plan, which was to begin in the valley of Euphrates, and travel gradually downward through the ages, from the dim fairyland of the east to the finished civilization of modern Europe. He had a genius for simplification and contrived to make the broad outlines of ancient history clear and interesting even to that infant's mind. He had traveled over all the same ground with his boy Cyril, who was now distinguishing himself at Winchester, whence he came nearly every saint's day to see his father. 2. CONFIDENCES The moon rose at nine o'clock that evening, and Robert Hatrell sauntered into the garden after dinner to smoke and meditate upon the projected improvements. With him, action was everything, and reverie, however pleasant rarely lasted long. Tonight, the meditative mood lasted no longer than a single cigarette. That finished, he opened a little gate in the kitchen garden and strolled across the road. Another little gate admitted him into his neighbor's garden, and he went straight to the open window of the roomy parlor which Ambrose had converted into a study by the simple process of lining it from floor to ceiling with books. An old knee-hold desk occupied the center of the floor, and three chairs and an old-fashioned sofa completed the sum of the furniture. It looked a snug and congenial room for a student, shabby as it was, in the light of the shaded lamp by which Ambrose had reading unconscious that anyone was looking at him. Shat your dusty tome, old bookworm, and come for a stroll in the moonlight, said Hatrell, whereupon the student rose and obeyed him without a word, like a man of weaker will obeying one of stronger will. A cigarette was offered and taken, and the two men walked along the road in silence, broken only by a commonplace remark or two about the weather and the night, until Robert Hatrell said abruptly, Are you sure it was the same man? The man you have described to me, assuredly it was, what other man should know your story? No, perhaps not. I doubt if there is anyone else who would know. The whole matter is easy enough to understand. This man is one of many, all on the verge of starvation, refugees of the Commune who have been dragging out a miserable existence in London since last May, nearly a year. I, who am a Republican and a nihilist in theory, have sympathies with these men who have tried to reduce theory to practice. So I whipped up a few pounds, your fiver among others, and took the money to a public house in Greek Street, where my friends assemble of an evening and distributed it among them in accordance with their necessities. While telling these poor wretches the source of the money I happened to mention your name and the man followed me into the street afterwards and questioned me about you. I naturally refused to answer questions which I considered impertinent and then he told me his story, and of course made the worst of it. He told it in a vindictive spirit. And you think perhaps that I ought to have backed it differently, that Claude Morel, the chemist assistant, ought at this moment to be my brother-in-law? My dear Hattrell, a man's relations with women are just the one part of his life which no other man has the right to question, and in which counsel and opinion are worse than useless. That's no answer, exclaimed Hattrell impatiently. Why don't you say at once that I ought to have married a milliner's apprentice and had that man for my brother-in-law? He would not have been a very agreeable connection, I admit, in practice although in theory all men are equal. There are plenty of men of as low a grade socially whom I would accept as my friend and equal tomorrow, but not Claude Morel. The fellow bears the brand of cane upon his forehead. It was men of his stamp who made the commune what it was. He was one of their speakers, the intellectual element, the force that set other man's brains on fire. I was sorry to see great hulking honest fellows under his influence. I could read the history of last year's riot and murder in that little room in Soho. A very dangerous man, your Claude Morel. Yet you think he ought to have been my brother-in-law, said Hattrell, slashing at the flowery bank with his stick harping irritably on the question. No, no, no. Since you were not so far entangled with a sister as to. But I was entangled. I loved her man. Yes, I was overhead and ears in love with that milliner's apprentice, and had more than half a mind to fling prudence to the winds and marry her. She was very young, very confiding and altogether innocent. Yes, a grisette in Paris and innocent. God knows how long that would last. She had left her native village less than a year before I met her, had traveled to Paris to find her brother who had apprenticed her to a milliner in the Rue Neuve des Petitions. We met by purest accident in a street crowd. She hustled and frightened in the mob. I happened to protect her. I walked home with her ever so far, beyond the bestie, and so began an acquaintance which might have ended, God knows how, if that young man had not tried to force the running. I have to thank his violence, not my prudence for my escape and for my sweet English wife. I shudder to think of the difference such a marriage as that must have made in my life. That depends upon the strength of your love, said Arden. I can imagine a man loving so deeply and truly as never to regret having married beneath him. No, Arden, repentance must come. It is the aftertaste of passion, and a gentleman's love for a peasant girl can be only passion at best. That depends upon the gentleman. Ah, you are in provoking mood tonight, I see. Did this fellow tell you what has become of his sister, whether she is dead or living? No, he went into no particulars, nor did I encourage him by asking questions. He talked of broken promises, broken hearts, ablighted life, pride and cruelty, talked, as you may suppose, a communist nurtured upon lapel duchan, would talk of an English gentleman who had, in his idea, compromised and disappointed his sister. I cut him as short as I possibly could, only I considered it my duty to let you know that the man is in London and that he threatens to hunt you out and revenge his sister's wrongs, her supposed wrongs, we will say, in some way or other. That means lying and wait for me at the corner of a London street to shoot me or to throw vitriol in my face, I suppose, said Hattrell, with a scornful laugh. I must take my chance of the bullet or the vitriol. It may be only an empty threat, but I own I don't like the man's physiognomy or his history and I recommend you to be on your guard. It might be wise to try and get him out of the country. I dare say he would emigrate to one of the colonies if emigration were made profitable to him. Arden, do you think I am such a paltrune as to buy my life from a foreign bully? He threatened me in Paris and I turned him out of my room, neck and crop. He wanted to frighten me into a marriage with his sister by pretending to believe that I was her seducer. But that was not the worst. When I told him that marriage was impossible, he insinuated that there might be other arrangements. A wealthy Englishman in love with a girl of inferior station might make such a settlement as would ensure the comfort and respectability of her future life without the legal tie. In a word, the man was and is a scoundrel. He knew that I was rich and he wanted to make a market out of me. Don't you know that chantage is a profession in Paris? A profession to which a lazy scoundrel looks as the one royal road to competence? And he found that I was not a singing bird. Whatever debt I owed to my little tuanette, it was not one that he could force me to pay. And do you suppose that now, fourteen years after, I would reward his bluster with a concession of so much as a sixpence? If you do think so poorly of me, Arden, you must be a very bad judge of human nature. Perhaps I am wrong, but I have your wife to think of as well as you. What if this man were to come here and tell his story? To my wife, let him. She will believe no man's word against mine. Indeed, I have talked to her about Antoinette, or at least I have told her, half in sport and half in earnest, that I was once in love with her quesette, and I'm not afraid to tell her the whole truth that in my salad days, two years before I saw her fair young face, I was very hard hit by that same grisette, and trifled with her longer than I ought, and had even half a mind to marry her, and only pulled myself up sharp when her brute of a brother interfered. I need not tell her that I sent the girl a hundred pounds in my farewell letter, and wished her a good husband in her own rank of life who would respect her all the more for that dot, and for the knowledge that I could sign myself in all sincerity and honor her faithful friend. Ah, Ambrose Arden, you who have given your heart to books can never imagine how this foolish heart of mine ached as I wrote that letter. I own that I have lived more among books than among human beings, yet I can conceive the possibility of an overmastering love bearing down all barriers, weighing cast and circumstances feathers in the scale against passion. But what I cannot conceive is that such intense feeling can be transient, that such a love can ever give place to another. Ah, but you see, I do not pretend that my fancy for Antoinette was ever a grand passion. My heart ached at throwing her off, but the heartache came as much from my sympathy with her in her disappointment as from my own sense of loss. I was never really in love till I met Clara. She accepted your hundred pounds, I suppose. I hope so. It never came back to me. But as I received no acknowledgment from my poor little friend, it is likely enough her brother intercepted my money and her letter, counseled her to refuse the gift indignantly perhaps, and then put my banknotes in his pocket. I believe this fellow to be capable of anything sneaking and infamous. And you never heard of Antoinette after that letter? Never. I left Paris the next day. The city seemed dull and dark without the light of those southern eyes. It was in autumn, the dead season, and I went off to Petersburg and thence to Odessa to look at my father's work there and to feel sorry I was not as good a man as he. The air has turned chilly. Will you come in and play a rubber? With pleasure. They turned and went back to River Lawn. They went in by the hall door into that roomy, low-sealed hall which had formed the greater part of the basement of the original cottage and which was a triumph of engineering skill on Mr. Hattroll's part. Ponderous cherry wood beams supported the ceiling which was further sustained by two oak pillars carved in a bold and vigorous style of art which looked as if it had been executed under the haptarchy. A procession of short-nosed druids and Saxon kings with Boa de Sion her chariot leading the way encircled those stunted pillars in a diagonal line and many an erudite person had expatiated upon their antique preciousness until silenced by Robert Hattroll's uproarious laughter. Tonight in the shine of the lamps the hall glowed with the vivid hues of Italian stripes and Persian embroidery and through the open door the large airy drawing room revealed its more delicate coloring and cool sea green draperies. Mother and daughter were sitting at a small round table with the light of a reading lamp concentrated upon their bright eager faces as they arranged the pieces of a large puzzle map the child intensely eager to forestall her mother. Oh mother you've put India next to Russia one so hot and the other so cold that can't be right cried Daisy. The round Chippendale card table was set ready at a respectful distance from the fire. Two shaded lamps shed their mild radiance upon the cards and the markers. The rubber was a nightly institution and there were few evenings upon which Ambrose Arden did not come in to take his part in the game he and Mrs. Hattroll playing against the master of the house who liked no partner at wit so well as dummy. Clara and her partner were in perfect sympathy in their dislike of cards and therefore they both played in unimpassioned ineffectual and often inattentive game which left Robert Hattroll master of the situation. He played with a fervor and vigor which could have carried a bill through the house or silenced an enemy's fort and he enjoyed the eager rapid hours play with an enjoyment which was exhilarating to his companions and then the hour having ended in his triumph and the complete humiliation of his opponents he would rise from the table exultant and beaming and face up and down the room talking as few men can talk with a rush of eloquence even about small things. When the three players had taken their seats Daisy came to say good night having stayed up till half past nine a prodigious indulgence. She kissed her mother and father and then went to Mr. Arden and put her arms around his neck and kissed him almost as fondly as she had kissed the other two. He detained her for a minute or so while Hattroll was dealing for the always favored dummy. Shall we have the imperfect tense tomorrow Daisy? Yes I nearly know it now I shall quite know it tomorrow and tomorrow will be today and even these kisses of yours will be in the imperfect tense won't they Pet? Things that have been God blessed mother's treasure good night. He said the words almost reverently with a touch of deeper feeling than is usually given to fatherly good nights. Robert Hattroll had not even looked up from the cards when his child kissed him. It was a pretty domestic picture in the cheerful light of lamps and fire the three figures at the table so calm so reposeful with such passionless countenances the child's vivid face moving amidst them looking with rapid glances from one to the other. Family affection, unclouded peace, unquestioning love could hardly be more perfectly expressed than they were that night in Robert Hattroll's drawing-room. CHAPTER 3 OF ONE LIFE ONE LOVE by MARIE ELIZABETH BRATTON 3. BEFORE THE CORONER IN THE EVENING STANDARD OF WEDNESDAY JULY 7 1872 APPEARED THE FOLLOWING MISTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE Much anxiety is being felt by the family and friends of Mr. Robert Hattroll of River Lawn, Lamford near Henley, who has been missing since last Monday afternoon. He left the Union Bank, Coxborough Street at three o'clock on that day in company with a friend intending to walk to Lincoln's Inn Fields, but he was accosted in Cranburn Street by a middle-aged woman of a gentile appearance whom he accompanied in the direction of Greek Street after taking leave of his friend. He had in his possession a parcel of Bank of England notes to the amount of some thousands, and it is greatly feared that he has been made away with on account of this money. The police have been on the alert since yesterday morning, but up to a late hour last night no discovery had been made. The following notice appeared in The Times on July 8. Dreadful Murder in Denmark Street, Bloomsbury The mystery of Mr. Hattroll's disappearance has been solved, and the worst fears of his family and friends are realized. On the 30th alt, a foreigner of respectable appearance representing himself as a journeyman watchmaker employed at Mr. Walker's Cornhill took a second floor back bedroom at No. 49 Denmark Street paying a week's rent in advance. He appeared to be a person of orderly and sober habits. He was out of doors all day and he went in and out morning and evening without attracting any notice from his fellow lodgers. He waited upon himself and always locked his door before going out. There was therefore no curiosity excited by the fact that his room remained closed during the whole of last Tuesday, and although no one had seen the lodger in question, it was supposed that he had gone out at the usual hour in the morning and had let himself in at the usual hour in the evening. The house is in the occupation of three different families, the first floor being occupied by a working tailor and the front room used as a workshop for three or four men. The foreigner who gave the name of Secchi and represented himself as a French Swiss from the Department of the Jura had been accommodated with a latchkey. It was only at six o'clock yesterday morning when the landlady knocked at the door of the second floor back with the intention of asking her lodger to leave his room open in order that she might clean it during his absence that suspicion was first aroused. His hour for leaving the house was supposed to be about seven and not being able to obtain any reply at six. The woman concluded that he had been out all night and proceeded to inquire of the other lodges where he had last been seen. She herself not having seen him since Monday morning when he passed her in the passage at a quarter past seven on his way out. No one remembered having seen him or heard any movement in his room since Monday afternoon when one of the men in the tailor's workshop had seen him pass the open door on his way downstairs. Suspicion now being aroused, the door was broken open and a terrible spectacle met the view of those who entered the room. A man was found lying on the floor stabbed through the heart. He had been stabbed in the back and there were three wounds, two of which were deadly. No weapon has yet been found, but from the nature of the wounds it is supposed that they were inflicted by a double-edged knife. The body was surrounded by the bed clothing which had been stripped off the bed and spread about the murdered man so as to absorb the blood that might otherwise have stained the ceiling below. Death must have been instantaneous. The deceased was a man whom few antagonists would have cared to attack single-handed. His pockets had been rifled, but his clothing was not disturbed and identification followed almost immediately upon the tidings of the murder being conveyed to Scotland Yard. Mr. Hatterall had driven a considerable sum of money out of the bank and was on his way to a solicitor's office in Lincoln's Inn Fields to complete the purchase of an estate at the time he was decoyed to Denmark Street. The police are actively engaged in the pursuit of the murderer and are said to be already in possession of an important clue. A reward of five hundred pounds has been offered by the family of the deceased. Extracts from the report of the inquest published in the Times of the following day, July 9th. Colonel McDonald stated that he was an intimate friend of the deceased and that he had lunched with him at the Army and Navy Club on Monday the 5th instant. Deceased was in particularly high spirits during luncheon, being much elated at the prospect of passing into immediate possession of a small estate adjoining his own grounds on the banks of the Thames. The estate was under ten acres, but the situation of the land was exceptional and the amount to be paid for it was large, close upon four thousand pounds. He, Colonel McDonald, could not remember the exact sum. After luncheon he offered to accompany the deceased to the bank where he was to cash a check for the purchase money and from the bank, the West End branch of the Union Bank of London in Coxpur Street. He offered to walk with him to Lincoln's Inn Fields, the deceased being somewhat in advance of the hour named for the interview with the vendor's solicitors. He and the deceased had been at Eaton together and he was, he believed, one of Mr. Hattrell's oldest and most intimate friends. They were in the habit of meeting frequently in London and he had often visited Mr. Hattrell in his house in Buckinghamshire. Coroner, were you with the deceased at the counter of the bank when he cashed his check? Colonel McDonald, I was standing at his elbow at the time. Did you observe where he put the notes? He put them into a Russia leather note case which he placed in his breath pocket. He was wearing a frock coat. I advised him to button his coat more ingest than in earnest as I considered the money perfectly safe where he had placed it. When you left the bank with him, did you observe any suspicious looking person hanging about either side of the street? Had you any reason to suppose that your friend was watched? Not the slightest, but I do not mean to state as a fact that there was no one lurking about or watching him. The idea of such a probability never entered into my mind. There was nothing out of the common in two men going in and coming out of a bank. The fact of Mr. Hattrell carrying some thousands could only be known to anyone from previous information. Did anything occur on your way to Cranburn Street to suggest the notion that you were being followed? Nothing. But if we had been followed, the fact would in all probability have been unnoticed by either of us. We were engaged in conversation the whole time and we were passing through a busy part of London. Nothing happened to my knowledge out of the common way until we entered Cranburn Street where a middle-aged woman of respectable appearance approached my friend and spoke to him in French. He stopped to answer her and I drew a little way off while they were talking. Did you hear much of their conversation? Very little. I was standing with my back to them looking into a print shop. I am not much good at the French language and they were speaking French all the time. Was it a long conversation? It seemed longish to me. I was waiting for my friend and had very little to engage my attention. I don't suppose the conversation really lasted ten minutes. You must have overheard something. You know some French, I suppose. I overheard enough to know that the woman was talking of some person who was very ill in a dying state as I understood and who wanted to see Hattrell. The woman seemed to be pleading for this dying person. I heard the name Antoinette repeated two or three times in the course of the conversation. Hattrell walked a few paces further with me after this leaving the French woman waiting for him. He told me that he felt obliged to go with this woman to see someone in old acquaintance. The visit would be a matter of less than an hour as the house was not far off and in the meantime he wanted me to go on to the solicitors in Lincoln's Infields to explain his unavoidable delay and to assure them that he would be with them half an hour after the appointment which was for four o'clock. I shall take a handsome as soon as I have seen this person, he said. It is an urgent case, sickness, destitution. I reminded him of the large sum of money on his person and asked him if the woman was known to him. He told me that she was indirectly. She was nearly related to the person he was going to see who was an old acquaintance. You don't suppose I'm going to be decoyed and murdered, he said laughing, and upon my word with his magnificent physique and perfect vigor of health and manhood he seemed about the last man whom anyone would try to decoy in the heart of London and in broad daylight. The idea seemed as preposterous to me as it did to him. He told me I could carry the money to the solicitors myself if I liked, an offer which I laughingly declined, and so he left me never to be seen by these eyes again as a living man. The witness was here deeply affected and the coroner paused for some moments before continuing the examination. Did you see the direction in which the deceased and his companion went away? Yes, I turned to watch them. They went into Cranburn Alley. That was the last you saw of them. Yes. There was one thing which I observed on my way back towards St. Martin's Lane which it has since occurred to me might have some bearing upon my poor friend's fate. As I passed a small Italian coffee-house a few doors from the spot at which Hattwell and I parted I noticed a man standing in the doorway looking down the street in the direction of Cranburn Alley and it seemed to me on after consideration that he was standing there for a purpose on the watch for something or someone in the street. He had a more intent look than a casual idler would have had. I crossed the road almost immediately after I observed this man and I loitered a little on my way to St. Martin's Lane looking at one or two shops. As I waited at the corner with my face towards Long Acre a handsome past close by me and I recognized the man being driven in it as the same man I had seen at the door of the café. Should you know the man if you were to see him again? I'm afraid not. It was the expression of his face that struck me, not the face itself. He had a keen, eager look like a man in a desperate hurry. The cab man was driving very fast. The wheel almost grazed me as the cab shot round the corner. In what direction was the cab going? Towards St. Giles Church. That would be in the direction of Denmark Street, would it not? Yes, it is the way to Denmark Street. I walked over the ground this morning. The witness appeared deeply affected but gave his evidence in a straightforward and businesslike manner. You had known the deceased from boyhood you say? Did you know anything in the history of his life calculated to throw any light upon his conduct and so readily accompanying this foreign woman to Denmark Street? Nothing. You had never heard of his having relations with a person called Antoinette? No. I never heard of anyone by that name. But I have heard him speak of a girl in Paris with whom he was in love two or three years before his marriage. Do you suppose that there was an intrigue between him and that girl? I think not. He spoke of her quite frankly and on one occasion in the presence of his wife to whom he was most devoted. I remember that upon that occasion his romantic passion for the French woman was joked about by husband and wife. I do not for a moment believe in any dishonorable connection in his past life. But you think that Antoinette may have been the name of the girl he admired? I think it very likely. And that the name was used as a lure to get him to the house in Denmark Street. I have no doubt that it was so. When did you first hear of his disappearance? Early the following day when I received a telegram from his wife asking for information about him Mrs. Hattrell knew that her husband was to lunch with me on Monday and naturally applied to me when first she took alarm. A member of the firm of solicitors in Lincoln's Enfields gave evidence as to the appointment made by the deceased for the payment of the purchase money 3,865 pounds and the execution of the conveyance. This witness described the arrival of Colonel McDonald with the message from the deceased and the surprise that was felt at Mr. Hattrell's non-arrival. It being known to the firm that he was a man of punctual and business-like habits and particularly anxious to pass into possession of the property in question. The bank clerk who cashed Mr. Hattrell's check deposed the amount and numbers of the notes and stated that the police were already in possession of these numbers and on the alert to discover any attempt that might be made to dispose of the notes either in England or on the continent. Mrs. Moore, the landlady of the house in Denmark Street, described the appearance and characteristics of the foreigner who engaged her second floor back bedroom on the Thursday preceding the murder. He was a very civil-spoken man. He looked quite the gentleman. He spoke English like a foreigner and I believe he was a Frenchman. His way of talk was quite different from a German gentleman in the tailring who occupies my first floor. I should certainly have put him down as a Frenchman and he told me he was a French Swiss from the neighborhood of Nechertel and that he worked for Mr. Walker of Cornhill. I couldn't have wished for a more respectable lodger. He offered me a week's rent in advance as he was a stranger and I did not hesitate about taking him. There was nothing repulsive or disreputable in his appearance, nothing that set you against him. Nothing. He told me that he should want no attendance as he was used to waiting upon himself. If he wanted a cup of tea he would take the teapot down to my back kitchen, I don't burn any fire in the front room in summertime, and would boil up my kettle. All he would want would be for me to clean his room once or twice a week. Did he bring any luggage? Only one small portmanteau. The police have taken that away. It was opened in my presence and there was nothing in it except an old pair of trousers, a brush and comb, and a few foreign books and newspapers. Were you at home on the day of the murder? Yes, I was indoors all that day. Yet you did not see or hear the deceased come into the house. I was in my back kitchen most of the day doing my weekly wash. Could you not hear people go in or out of the street door when you were in the back kitchen? Yes, I could hear them going along the passage and upstairs, but I wasn't likely to take notice of who went out or came in. The men from the tailor's workshop used to go in and out and up and down at all hours. There are other lodgers in the attics and an old lady and gentleman in the parlors. I might have noticed a stranger's step, perhaps, if I had been on the listen, for I knew the foot steps of most of the lodgers, but I was very busy with my wash and I didn't take much notice. What was the state of the room when you and Mr. Schmidt broke open the door? The deceased was lying on his face stabbed through the back. The bed curtain was drawn. A counterpane and blanket had been dragged off the bed and placed round the deceased so as to sop up the blood. Was there anything to indicate that the murderer's clothes or hands were bloody when he left the room, any smears upon the door or traces of bloody footprints on the floor? There wasn't a sign of anything of that kind, but there was bloodstained water in the wash basin and a towel stained with blood on the wash stand. The police examined the room. Should you know your lodger if you were to see him again? I could swear to him anywhere. John Smallman, journeyman Taylor, deposed to having seen the Frenchman go downstairs sometime on Monday afternoon. He took notice of the fact as on Friday and Saturday the man had been out all day and was supposed to be in constant employment in the watchmaking trade. He left and told one of his mates that the Frenchman had been keeping St. Monday. He could not say the precise time at which he had seen the man pass the landing, but he knew that it was some time after four and that the church clock hard by had not struck five. He generally went out for his tea when St. Giles' church clock struck five. Did you notice anything peculiar about the appearance of the man as he passed the landing? No, he walked with a bit of a swagger and he was whistling softly to himself as he went downstairs. He was whistling that toon French people are so uncommon found of. The messaillés, perhaps, you mean? No, it was the other toon. Young du noir. Bertrand pour la ciree. Yes, that was it. Had you or any of your mates struck up an intimacy with this Frenchman, had you got into conversation with him upon any occasion? Not us. He was a very close party and seemed to think himself a good bit above the rest of the lodgers. He'd only been in the house a few days before the murder. Did none of you see him after that Monday afternoon? None of us. I don't believe he ever entered the house after he left at that time. A cab man who had come forward of his own accord deposed to having driven a man from Cranbourne Street to the corner of Denmark Street about half past three o'clock on the afternoon of the murder. The man hailed him from the pavement in front of an Italian coffee shop. He told him to drive as fast as he could go and he should have double fare. He did drive fast getting over the distance in about five minutes and the man gave him a florin. He got out of the corner of the street nearest the church. Witness stopped to see where he went and he saw him enter a house on the right side of the street which he had since identified as a house where the murder was committed. Witness believed that he would be able to recognize the man in question. He was a dark complexioned man between 30 and 40 rather a good looking man and he looked like a foreigner, French or Italian, most likely Italian. The medical evidence indicated that two out of the three wounds had pierced the heart and that death must have been almost instantaneous. The deceased was a very powerful man, heart and lung sound as a bell. Such a man could not have been attacked single-handed unless taken completely off his guard. There were other witnesses examined and the inquest was adjourned for a week, the usual order being given for the burial of the deceased in accordance with the desire of his friends. The adjourned inquiry involved very little additional information. Much of the original evidence was repeated but no new facts had been discovered relative to the murderer except Mr. Walker's repudiation of any knowledge of such a man's existence. No man of that name had ever been employed in Mr. Walker's workshops in Cornhill. The police had up to this time totally failed in their efforts to trace either the missing man or the missing notes. The murder, not having been discovered until a day and a half after it had been done, the murderer had had ample time to cross the channel before the police were on his track. He would probably endeavour to dispose of the notes in Holland or in Germany and perhaps leave Hamburg or Bremen for America. The London police were in communication with their brotherhood on the continent and all suspicious departures from Haavre, Merseille, Antwerp, Hamburg or Bremen or any of the principal ports would be noted. The large reward which had been offered by the widow of the deceased was calculated to stimulate the energies of Scotland Yard but the efforts of Scotland Yard resulted only in the following up of various false scents all alike leading to disappointment and disgust. The one cent which if it could have been followed while it was warm should have led to the apprehension of the murderer was a lost cent because the lapse of time had made it cold before the Scotland Yard pack could be laid on. Ten days after the murder there came communications from the Crédit Lyonnais at Nice, from the Crédit Lyonnais at Cannes and from Mr. Smith's bank at Monte Carlo which disposed of the question as to what had become of the money which should have been paid for young Squire Floristans River Meadows, the bundle of notes which Robert Hattrell had pocketed so gaily that summer afternoon after his cheery luncheon at the army and navy club. In the morning of July 7 an elderly woman had called at the Crédit Lyonnais at Cannes to exchange two notes of five hundred pounds each for French money. She was a person of ladylike appearance and manners, spoke French with a Parisian accent and impressed the cashier as a personage to whom the utmost respect was due. She was very particular in exacting the fullest rate of exchange for her thousand pounds and seemed to take a miserly delight in the trifling profit made on the transaction. She informed the cashier, en passant, that she had hired a villa in the Quartier de Caetifourni and that she required the greater part of this money to pay half the season's rent in advance. She also added, en passant, that the people of Cannes were usurious in their insistence upon payment beforehand from a tenant whose integrity and whose means it was impossible to doubt. This was said with an air of quiet dignity which confirmed the cashier and his idea that he was dealing with a personage. These details were communicated later in confidential talk with the detective who followed up the clue. The main fact telegraphed to Scotland Yard was the fact that such and such notes had been turned into French money. From Monte Carlo came an account of a larger transaction. An elderly lady of aristocratic appearance had called at the English bank there late on the afternoon of July 7 and had changed three bank of England notes for 500 pounds each, taking in exchange French notes, 20 franc pieces, and those large gold pieces of 100 francs which make so fine a display in a rouleau on a 30 carant table. Here, as at Cannes, the cashier had been impressed by the lady's distinction of manner and perfect savoir faire. The easy way in which she handled a 500 pound note indicated long experience of wealth. A gambler evidently thought the cashier, but a woman rich enough to afford to gamble without any sort of anxiety as to the result, a person whose presence did honour to the delightful little settlement on the rock. From Nice came a third telegram. Elderly woman exchanged two notes, such and such numbers as advertised, for 500 pounds each, and one also number as advertised, for 250 pounds on July 8 at 11 o'clock a.m. at the Crésilionné. A letter following the above telegram informed the authorities of Scotland Yard that the elderly woman in question was of distinguished appearance speaking French perfectly and supposed by the cashier to be a French woman. She had alleged as her reason for changing the notes that she had bought a plot of land at Beaulieu with the intention of building a villa there and she preferred to pay for it in French money. The owner of the land she added was a ignorant man who seemed never to have seen a bank of England note and there was also the advantage upon the exchange. Again, as at Cannes, the distinguished elderly lady showed herself eager for the utmost profit upon the exchange. The money taken from the murdered man was thus accounted for within 115 pounds. The odd money being in smaller notes might easily be disposed of without leaving any trace in the memory of the people who received it. There could be very little doubt that the elderly lady of Cannes was identical with the elderly lady of Nice and Monte Carlo. Her description as given by the three cashiers tallied in every particular, especially in the trifling detail of a rather noticeable mole just above the outer corner of the left eyebrow and in another detail as to the lady's hands which were remarkable for their whiteness and delicacy of form, hands which had gone a long way towards suggesting the idea of the lady's petition birth and refined breeding to the minds of the three cashiers. One of the cleverest detectives in London charged himself with the task of following the trail of this nameless lady taking up the thread at Nice after a quarter past 11 upon the 8th July which was the time of her latest recorded appearance. It needed a good deal of close work in the way of inquiry at nearly every hotel in the city to discover that an elderly French woman of good appearance spent the night of July 7th at the Hotel de Prince that she arrived by the late train from Monte Carlo that her only luggage consisted of a handbag neither large nor heavy that she went out soon after 10 o'clock in the morning of the 8th lunched in her own room at 12 and left the hotel at half past 12 in a cab which was called for her at the door carrying her bag with her after duly paying her bill. Neither porter nor waiter had observed the number of the cab nor had anyone heard her direction to the driver. It was supposed she was going to the railway station and the hour at which she left suggested she was going in the rapide which leaves Vancemi at 6 minutes past 11 for Paris. As the aforesaid rapide stops at nearly every station between Nisse and Marseille the ladies range of country as to choice of where she should alight would be wide but the local idea was that any person so ill advised as to leave Nisse was hardly likely to stop till he or she came to Paris. Between Nisse and Paris there was practically nothing a monotonous progression of orange orchards seashore and wooded hills an insignificant watering place or two Cannes, Serrafael a shipbuilding settlement and a seaport but for pleasure for gaiety for movement for the lovers of opera playhouse and little horses absolutely nothing. The intelligent detective visited Monte Carlo and saw the cashier at Mr. Smith's bank. He went into the rooms and talked to the attendants. He met an acquaintance or two also bent on business but he could find out nothing more about the elderly lady. He went to Cannes and put the Cannes cashier through a kind of Socratic dialogue in the way of close questioning but could get no more than had been already told. A house to house visitation of the hotels resulted in the discovery that an elderly Frenchwoman traveling alone had descended at the Hotel de France at half past seven o'clock in the morning of the seventh arriving doubtless by the train which leaves Marseille an hour after midnight. She had breakfasted alone in her room had gone out before eleven had lunched and paid her bill and left the hotel in a cab a little before two o'clock in the afternoon. There was nothing to show where the woman had gone when she left Nice. Inquiries at the station there had been without result of any kind. Whether she had set her face towards the Italian frontier or whether she had gone by Marseille to Paris or had stopped at Marseille or had turned westward and crept by slow trains down to Biarritz or Bordeaux there was no power could help the intelligent gentleman from Scotland Yard to discover she was gone. From her appearance at the Hôtel de France at Cannes to her disappearance from the Hôtel de Prince at Nice she had been alone of whom so ever she might be the accomplice she had been trusted to carry out her mission uncontrolled and unwatched. The bond between her and the murderer must be very tight mused the detective or he would never trust her with the whole of his blunder. It's my belief that she has gone to Paris and that he was to meet her in Paris but how to look for a man of whose antecedents I know nothing and of whose appearance I know only the vague impressions of three or four people who all describe him differently is a problem beyond my capacity. He thought it worth his while nevertheless to spend the best part of a week in Paris and in professional circles where if ingenuity and long experience of criminal ways and windings could have helped him to a clue he might have obtained one but no clue was to be found. All the detective's research is among doubtful characters and the places which they are known to haunt all his long hours of patient hanging about at railway stations in cellars where they make music at bars where they drink mysterious liquors called by eccentric and alarming names and in this suspected quarter and in that were but fruitless labor. He could see nothing and could hear nothing of any man answering to the description of the man who had announced himself as a Swiss watchmaker at the Denmark Street lodging house. The detective pursued his researches at Haavre but he could obtain no trace of any such person lately embarked on one of the numerous American and other steamers which leave that port. Such a man might have sailed unnoted as there was nothing distinctive in the description of the murderer to mark him out from the common herd of superior mechanics. It's hard lines for a man to let such a chance slip through his fingers, the detective said to himself, but I don't believe any man will ever grow rich out of the Denmark Street murder. The job was too neatly done and the people in it were too clever. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of One Life, One Love by Mary Elizabeth Braddon This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. 4 How would she bear it? The public interest in the fate of Robert Hatrol gradually diminished and finally expired before summer leaves were withered and dead dying for want of nutriment. The crime in Denmark Street had made a profound sensation first because the victim was a man of means and position and above all a man of unblemished character. Next because it was a shock to society in general to discover that a man of undoubted courage and powerful physique could be assassinated in broad daylight in a decent London Street amidst the going and coming of respectable working people and that his murderer could escape unchallenged with his plunder. There were a good many leading articles in the newspapers upon this subject. The Denmark Street mystery was served up to the British public which gloats over all such mysteries with every variety of journalistic sauce and the British public were told as they had been very often told before that they were living in a corrupt and degenerate age. That such crimes as the Denmark Street murder were the natural outcome of luxurious habits in the upper middle classes and of unspeakable corruption among the aristocracy whereby the great city of London had become a hot bed of sin in which the criminal instincts of the masses grew and gathered strength to destroy. The British public was informed that a wave of crime was passing over England and that a savage lust of blood and gold was in the air and the British public was furthermore called upon to take warning by these monstrous developments of our 19th century civilization and in a general way to mend its manners. These voices crying in the wilderness of London life the British public heard with but a languid interest. The one fact that did interest society after the natural curiosity as to why and the how of Robert Hatrell's death was the fact that London was not altogether a place devoid of danger to human life even in broad daylight that a man might at any unguarded moment be lured within four walls and stabbed to death. There were those who argued that there must have been some dark page in Mr. Hatrell's history or he would not so readily have followed an unknown messenger on the strength of a woman's name. There must have been something in the dead man's relations with the woman called Antoinette which made it a matter of life and death to him to go wherever she summoned him. Otherwise, bearing in mind that he was on his way to an important business appointment and that he had four thousand pounds in his breast pocket, it must need seem strange that he should be so easily turned aside. So argued society, shaking its head sagely at dinner tables where men and women's natural interest in the tragedy of human life sometimes get the better of that Chesterfieldian refinement which would exclude sub-subjects of conversation from polite assemblies. Summer was gone and it was late autumn and the outside world had forgotten Robert Hatrell, had forgotten him just when his widow was waking from a long dull dream of agony to the reality of her irreparable loss. The woods along the valley of the Thames were clothed in russet and gold and Clivedon's glades were strewn with fallen leaves. The mist of autumn rose in the early evening, pale and phantom-like along the river Meadows and the tramp of the horses on the towpath and the ripple of the water against the sides of the barge had a ghostly sound in the obscure greyness through which boat and horses came slowly as if moving in secret under the veil of night. It was a mild and lovely day at the beginning of October when Clara Hatrell left the house for the first time since her husband's funeral on the eleventh of July. She had insisted on following him to his grave in Lamford Churchyard and she had borne herself with extraordinary fortitude throughout the funeral service, had stood by the grave till the last ceremony had been performed, had seen the reeds of summer flowers laid on the coffin-lid, and then she had gone quietly back to the house where the happiest years of her married life had been spent. She had gone to her room without a word, saved one gentle murmur of thanks to the sister who had been at her side on that trying day. Her sister followed her upstairs, heard her lock the door of her room and, after listening outside for some minutes, went down to the drawing-room where the clergyman of the parish, the family lawyer, and Ambrose Arden were assembled. I don't know what to do about Clara, she said anxiously. She has locked herself in her room and I don't feel that it is right to leave her alone. Yet I don't like to force myself upon her. One cannot tell what to do for the best. It may be better, perhaps, that she should be alone with her grief. Mrs. Hatrell is a woman of deep religious feeling, said the priest. She will not be alone. She has been born up wonderfully this day. The same power will be with her in the solitude of her room. It might be well to leave her alone for an hour or so, Mrs. Talbot. After a quiet interval of prayer she will better feel the comfort of your sympathy. Yes, I think you are right. I will leave her to herself for a time, poor dear thing. Mrs. Talbot was an elder sister who had married six years before Clara made her debut in society. She had married a rising physician who had now risen to the fashionable level and was one of the most popular doctors at the West End of London. Mrs. Talbot had a nursery and a school room to look after and a widely comprehensive visiting list, beginning with duchesses and dwindling down to struggling young women in the musical, literary and dramatic line. She had an exacting, albeit a kind and generous husband and she had so much to do and to think about at home that she had not been able to devote any considerable part of her life to her sister's society. She came now in this hour of calamity as an act of duty, but she was not altogether in sympathy with the household at Riverlawn, had not altogether grasped the full measure of love which had ruled between husband and wife and thus could not fathom the depth of the widow's sorrow. She had comforted a good many widows in her time and her general experience had been that however they might distress their friends by the intensity of their grief during the first half of the first year of widowhood they generally surprised their friends by their rapid recovery in the second half. Dr. Talbot was one of the British public who opined that there was something more than met the eye of the coroner on the coroner's jury in the relations of his deceased brother-in-law with a person called Antoinette. Questioned searchingly by his wife on the subject of his suspicions, he replied that the case was obvious enough to anyone who could read between the lines and with this occult phrase Mrs. Talbot was constrained to content herself. There was no family assemblage to which Robert Hattrell's will had to be read. He had stood almost alone in the world without any relation nearer than second cousins. The second cousins expected nothing from him and had made no sign since his death except in the way of letters of condolence to the widow. My unfortunate client made his will immediately after his marriage or I should rather say that he executed his will after his marriage for the will was drawn up at the same time as the marriage settlement explained Mr. Melodou the family solicitor. He leaves the bulk of his estate in trust for his wife for her life with succession to his children share and share alike. As there is only one child she will inherit all at her mother's death. The will gives the trustees power to anticipate some portion of the estate with Mrs. Hattrell's consent for the marriage settlement of any son or daughter. By a courtesal made in the beginning of the last year Mr. Hattrell leaves his house and the land appertaining to it to his wife absolutely with power to purchase contaminous land to the amount of 10,000 pounds out of the corpus of the estate. He always anchored after Floristan's land poor fellow, said Mr. Reardon the rector. Strange that he should have met his death on the very day when he was to complete the purchase of the adjoining meadows. The courtesal gives Mrs. Hattrell power to make the addition. That is a fortunate circumstance. Fortunate exclaimed the lawyer. Do you think she will find it in her heart to remain in a place so associated with her husband? I hope she will not leave my parish. There are people who fly from a spot where they have been happy with those who have been taken from them, but there are others who cling to the place where they have loved and been beloved. If I am any judge of character, Mrs. Hattrell belongs to the latter type and she will remain in the home associated with her husband. I believe you are right, Mr. Reardon, said Ambrose Arden in his calm, leisurely tones, looking up from a volume which he had taken as if mechanically from the table near his elbow. I believe Mrs. Hattrell's gentle and adhesive nature will find comfort in familiar things, after a time. I should be very sorry if it were otherwise. I should be very sorry to lose so kind a neighbor and above all to lose my dear little friend and pupil Daisy. Poor little Daisy, said the rector. What a blessed thing that she is too young to know the extent of her loss or the manner of her father's death. That she must never know, said Arden firmly. Mr. Reardon looked doubtful. Do you suppose this terrible story can be hidden from her always, he asked? I fear not. She may be kept in ignorance of the truth while she is a child under her mother's eye, but when she advances to girlhood and mixes with other girls, when she goes to school, she will not go to school, interrupted Arden. Anyone would be mad to expose her to the titill, tattle, and folly of a pack of schoolgirls? I wonder you can suggest such a thing, rector. Well, we will say there shall be no school in her case, though for an only child that means a lonely self contained in not over healthy girlhood. But the time will come when she must mix with other people and go about in the world at home and abroad. Do you think no officious acquaintance will ever be indiscreet enough to talk to her in pure sympathy about her father's death, taking it for granted that she knows all that can be known about it? That is a long way to look ahead, said Arden. I hope she will grow up a light-hearted happy girl, her mind so well furnished, her memory so full of interesting things that should the evil you apprehend ever come to pass she may be strong enough to bear the shock. In the meantime I trust that all her friends in this place, from the highest to the lowest, will do their best to keep her in ignorance of everything except the one fact that she has lost a good and affectionate father. While this conversation was going on in the drawing room, Mrs. Talbot was strolling about the garden to get rid of time, in accordance with Mr. Reardon's suggestion that it would be well to leave the mourner to herself for an hour or so. The lawn and river, the flowers and shrubs were the perfection of their summer beauty, clumps of roses, hedges of roses, standard roses, dwarf roses, blush roses, climbing roses made the glory of the long narrow lawn and between the lawn and the river. There was a terrace with green tubs containing orange trees ranged at regular intervals. There was a flight of steps leading to the river at each end of the terrace and at the western end with its back to the setting sun. There was a summer house of classic form in Portland Stone, a summer house which in Italy would have been marble. At the eastern end of the terrace and on a lower level there was a capacious boathouse containing a couple of outriggers, a punt and a skiff, and the level roof of this boathouse had been a favorite lounging place of Robert Hatrell and his friends, a place on which to talk and smoke in the summer twilight as the pleasure boats went down to Henley. Mrs. Talbot had seen her husband and the dead man sitting there in close, confidential talk on a summer evening after dinner, while she and her sister strolled up and down the terrace or stopped to feed the white stately swans on their soft gray signets. She almost fancied that she could hear the mellow sound of Robert Hatrell's laughter as she walked there now. What a joyous, frank, expansive nature! What a happy life, wanting nothing that this world can give of comfort and delight, endowed with strength, intellect, good looks, fortune, perfect health, and a wife who adored him. And he had been stabbed to death in a shabby London lodging by an unknown hand. It was only a fortnight ago that Emily Talbot and her husband had been dining at River Lawn. They had gone down for a single night in the very flush of Midsummer just to smell the roses, just for a few hours' respite from London gateys and London smoke as Clara had expressed it in her letter of invitation. There had been only the rector and Mr. Arden to meet them, the two men now in the drawing room with the lawyer. They had been a most sociable party, full of talk, Hatrell expatiating upon his plans for the arrangement of the land which was soon to be his and in higher spirits than usual. There had not been a cloud on the horizon, and Mrs. Talbot, who loved Harley's treat and all her London pleasures, had for once in her life gone back to town reluctantly. It is curious that Robert and Clara can live like hermits in the height of the season, she told her husband. But really, this morning when we were leaving I almost envied them their quiet domestic life in that lovely place. And now the bond that held two lives was broken, and joy was gone like a dream when one awakeeth. Mrs. Talbot was pacing slowly along the terrace, depressed by these thoughts when a shriek rang out upon the summer air, such a cry of agony as her ears had never heard until that hour. The sound came from the open window of her sister's bedroom, the large bow window which was one of Robert Hatrell's numerous improvements. She rushed into the house and ran upstairs, but quick as she was, Ambrose Arden and the Rector were there before her, and the former was in the act of breaking open the door as she reached the landing. He had implored Mrs. Hatrell to open the door and there had been no answer, so he put his shoulder against the paneling and wrenched the door off its hinges. Clara Hatrell was sitting on the floor in the middle of the room with a heap of her husband's letters, her lover's letters, for they had all been written before marriage, scattered about her. She sat with her hands clasped upon her knees, her eyes fixed, and staring into vacancy. Her disheveled hair fell about her shoulders in a wild confusion as if her hands had been clutching and tearing at it. Emily Talbot knelt down by her and spoke to her, trying to soothe her, gathering up the tangled hair with gentle hands, pressing tenderest kisses upon her burning forehead, but she took no notice, her eyes remained fixed in that sightless gaze, her fingers were still locked together in the same convulsive grasp. She does not know me, cried Mrs. Talbot, horrified at that awful look which made her sister's face like the face of a stranger. Oh God, she has gone mad! For more than six weeks after the funeral Clara Hatrell lived in the darkness of a distraught brain. More than once during that period she hovered on the brink of the grave and there were dismal hours in which her doctor and her nurses lost all hope. Life and reason were alike in peril and there was many a night when Ambrose Arton sat in his study trying to read but never able to leave off listening for the football that might bring him fatal tidings. During this season of fear he rarely went to his bedroom till the sun had risen above the long level meadows towards Henley Bridge and often the sunrise found him walking in the lane between his cottage and river lawn. It was the dreariest time of his life since the short sharp agony of his young wife's fatal illness. He had nothing to distract his mind from the one subject which absorbed him. His little pupil had been carried off by her aunt and was at West Gate on Sea with a bevy of cousins all older than herself. His son's vacation was being spent with the old grandfather in Radnarshire. He had planned the visit at the beginning of Mrs. Hatrell's illness. The lad's company would have been irksome to him in this time of fear. He preferred to be alone while he faced the dread possibility of a fatal issue. No one could have helped him to bear his agony, the agony of fear for the life of the woman whom he had loved in patient subjugation, in such perfect mastery of himself as never to have awakened suspicion in those among whom he lived his everyday life, ever since he first looked upon her fair young face. No one had ever guessed his secret, not the husband whose fiery temper would have been quick to kindle into flame had there been but the lightest cause for jealousy, not the wife whose purity would have been quick to take alarm at a word or a look, not the friends who lived in intimate relations with the family. No one had suspected him. Yes, one perhaps had divined his secret. One pair of clear, candid eyes had read his heart. Once, in a moment of expansion, his pupil and playfellow clasped her arms round his neck and murmured in his ear, I love you because you love mother.