T. W. Speight

“ Eleanor Lloyd shall know the great secret of her life before she is twenty-four hours older."
"As you will. Perhaps you are right," said Olive, quietly. "There is no reason why Miss Lloyd should be kept in ignorance any longer."
"None whatever. I don't remember anything in my life that I have regretted so bitterly as not having told Eleanor at first. But it is useless to speak of the past. The future is all we can now deal with."
"Then your feeling of resentment towards Miss Lloyd has an existence no longer?"
"It is wholly dead. A sick-bed alters one's views and feelings in many ways. ”

“ Gerald and Eleanor lingered a little behind the baronet and his wife, and to Olive's jaundiced eyes they seemed to be deep in earnest and loving conversation. In fancy she heard Pomeroy's low and tender tones and Eleanor's half-breathed replies. She set her teeth, and her lips tightened as she looked. "Before they are two hours older," she murmured under her breath, "he shall know that she is a beggar, and she shall know that her hero is nothing better than a vulgar adventurer!" And in the heat of her passion she took Matthew Kelvin's letter out of her pocket and tore it in two. ”

“ This is all I ask you to do, Olive; this is my other reason for sending you to Stammars. Am I asking more than you care to perform?"
"Certainly not, Matthew. It is not much that you ask me to do."
"But it means a great deal."
"How little men understand about us women!" thought Olive. "None of my own sex, who knew the circumstances of the case, would ever have dreamed of asking me to do what Matthew has asked me to do, and believes I will do."
"Think what a revelation my letter will be!" continued the lawyer. "At one fell blow she will be robbed of name, wealth, and position. ”

“ It was on the forenoon of a certain Saturday in May that Olive Deane found herself jogging slowly along the road that leads from Pembridge to Stammars. The morning was sunny and the road pleasant, but Olive had no eyes for anything: her own tortuous thoughts occupied her fully. Should she break as gently as possible the news she had to tell, and then give Eleanor the letter after having thus paved the way? Should she put the letter into her hand without a word, and simply wait to be questioned as to anything further that she might be supposed to know? ”

“ How can a man have room in his heart for any petty jealousies or resentments when he sees the shades of death closing slowly round him? To me all such feelings now seem as strange as though they were those of another man, about which I had read somewhere, and had never been a portion of my own inner life."
Olive longed to ask him whether his love for Eleanor was dead equally with his resentment, but she was afraid that the old wound might not yet be altogether healed.
"Then you wish me to go to Stammars to-morrow?" she said.
"I do. Miss Lloyd is there at present. ”

“ Notwithstanding the kind way in which she had spoken to Eleanor, Lady Dudgeon felt very considerably annoyed in her own mind at the thought that her pet protégée, whom she had taken everywhere and introduced to everybody, lauding her to the skies as everything that was good and beautiful, and who had, in a certain sense, as the presumed heiress of twenty thousand pounds, shed a reflected lustre on her chaperon, should turn out to be nobody knew whom, and without a sixpence to call her own. Nothing could have been more mortifying. ”

“ Lady Dudgeon was surprised for the moment out of her assumed equability.
"To put the case in plain language, and it will perhaps be best to do so," said Olive, "has your ladyship never had reason to suspect that Miss Lloyd and Mr. Pomeroy were engaged to each other?"
"Impossible! such a thing is utterly impossible!" was Lady Dudgeon's emphatic reply. "I know Miss Lloyd too well to believe anything of the kind. For once, Miss Deane, your surmises have led you altogether astray." ”

“ To be admired seems to her as natural as to breathe: admiration is her birthright, and she accepts it with the serene self-unconsciousness of a queen accepting the homage of her subjects.
Mr. James Baron is one of those fair-haired, blue-eyed young Saxons who seem all to have been cast in the same mould, and of whom there is little or nothing to be said. But he is Miriam's choice, and Miriam loves him, and that is enough.
The services rendered Ambrose Murray by Peter Byrne and his daughter have been most liberally rewarded. ”

“ Van Duren did not know--he never knew--that the people of the hotel, urged on by Ambrose Murray after his return to consciousness, had come out with lanterns to search for him, but without much expectation of being able to find him. They knew well what a little chance of life anyone would have who leaped over that balcony, either by day or night. Had the tide been out, they would have gone down to the sands, in the full expectation of finding the stranger's body at the foot of the cliff. ”

“ There before him stood the man whom he had so terribly wronged--whom he had consigned without remorse to a living tomb--who would have become the hangman's prey had not his brain been too weak to bear the burden of his doom. This man, then, it was--who he had fondly believed in his heart must have died long ago--this man it was, who, like a sleuth hound, was now on his track, determined to hunt him down without mercy and without ruth. Ambrose Murray was but a wreck of his former self, but Max Van Duren knew him again the moment his eyes fell on him. ”

“ On the other hand, there was a spice of romance about the affair that appealed to some hidden feeling, of whose existence she herself was hardly aware.
"Child! child!" she said in an aside to Eleanor, "if you had but given me your confidence! Two paupers! What are you to do? How are you to live? It's dreadful to contemplate!"
Kelvin's cheeks flushed as he listened to Gerald's words. He set his teeth and glared savagely out of his hollow eyes at his successful rival. Was it for this that he had humiliated himself by his recent confession? ”

“ How was she or her father to connect the Max Van Duren of to-day with the Max Jacoby of twenty years ago? And even granting that they knew his secret so far, there would not, even in that case, be the slightest link to connect him with the murder of Paul Stilling. But more than all else was he rendered uneasy by the fact of Byrne's disguise. There was something in that which he altogether failed to comprehend. He questioned Pringle again and again as to what he had seen at Euston Square, but with no other result than to add a more positive confirmation to what he had been told at first. ”

“ From the wicket a winding path led upward through thick clumps of evergreens and brushwood to the house. There was for him, in his present mood, a sort of fascination, a grim satisfaction, in the thought of being so near these cunning enemies of his, who seemed so thoroughly bent on hunting him down, while all the time they believed him to be hundreds of miles away. He had little or no sense of present fear upon him. His dread lay in the unknown future. The next blow that would be struck at him would not be struck here, but in London. So long as these people stayed in Wales, he was safe. ”

“ So muttered Pringle to himself as he stood at the foot of the stairs and listened to Van Duren's cry for help.
And he was right. So long as the doors were kept shut, Van Duren's loudest cries would not penetrate beyond the basement-floor of the old house. In the office above people might, and did, come and go on business, but not the faintest echo of that terrible cry of despair, that was so near and yet so far away, ever reached them. ”

“ Pomeroy were somewhere about, so the servant told her; but them, at present, she did not want to see. The young ladies, Sophy and Carry, had gone with their mamma, so that Miss Deane was left perforce to the evil company of her own thoughts. "Miss Lloyd, indeed!" muttered Olive, when the servant had left the room. "This is the last day that she will have a right to call herself by that name. What will her name be to-morrow? Should her ladyship have occasion to go shopping to-morrow, will she take this nameless pauper with her in her carriage? Not if Lady Dudgeon is the woman I take her to be." ”

“ I believe, Olive, that if I ever do get better--which I sometimes doubt--I shall owe my life far more to your care and attention than to old Druce's filthy mixtures. I shall never know how to repay you. I never knew that you had half the splendid qualities in you that you have shown of late. But we men can hardly ever see farther than our noses where a woman is concerned. ”

“ Pomeroy," she said at last, "your words have come upon me so suddenly that indeed I know not how to answer them! Your pride would not let you seek me when you believed me to be rich: my pride will not let me give myself to you now that I am poor."
"But supposing," said Gerald, "that I had come to you at eleven o'clock this morning--supposing I had come to you five minutes before Miss Deane delivered her message, and had asked you then to become my wife, what would your answer have been?" ”

“ Quit my sight for ever!" he cried; and then he fell back into his chair.
As it were an echo, came the word "Poisoner!" from the lips of every one in the room. Olive, who had risen to her feet when her cousin flung away her hand, staggered back as if suddenly smitten.
Lady Dudgeon was the first to speak. "Surely, sir," she said, addressing herself to Dr. Whitaker, "there must be some terrible mistake in all this! The accusation just made by your patient can hardly be that of a man in his proper senses." ”

“ Rehearsing a little comedietta, or what?"
"Run away to your room now, my dear," said Lady Dudgeon, as she rose and kissed Eleanor. "Every cloud has its silver lining. Keep up your spirits, and remember that you shall never want for a home as long as Sir Thomas and I are on this side of the grave."
Eleanor did not wait for another word, but hurried out by the opposite door as Sir Thomas came forward. Then the baronet had to be told everything, and it is needless to say how great was his surprise, which he expressed in far more voluble terms than his wife had done. ”

“ He would have given all he had in the world, everything save life itself, to have called this girl his own and have won one smile of real love from her beautiful lips. Presently she lifted up a face that was radiant with smiles, then she pinched her father's ear playfully, and turned and left the room. And that was the last time that Max Van Duren ever set eyes on Miriam Byrne. ”

“ What should he do? What ought his next step to be? His mind was all in amaze of doubt and terror and perplexity. Should he hurry off to London by the first train, secure all his available property, shut up his house in Spur Alley, and drop quietly out of sight where no possible search for him could be made? Or should he stay and brave out everything?
Presently he began to feel very lonely among the dim shadows of the silent lane. He fancied that he heard voices whispering, and the faint rustle of garments, as if someone were watching him stealthily through the foliage at his back. ”

“ Through the green and limpid twilight, the floor, covered with sand and shells, and huge, smooth-washed boulders, could be seen stretching away on every side till lost in the dim distance. Fishes of various kinds, some such as are never seen by mortal eye, swam silently to and fro in the liquid depths. The middle distance of the sea was filled up with a huge mass of wreckage and broken timber. There was no need to tell the dreamer of what good ship the wreck was now before him. Even in his sleep, his lips murmured, "That is the Albatross." ”

“ His first act after Eleanor knew that he was no longer John Pomeroy, the poor secretary, but Gerald Warburton, the heir to Mr. Lloyd's wealth, would be to tell her how truly he still loved her, and to ask her to become his wife. Let her, for a week or two longer, think that he had yielded her up without a struggle: in a very little while she should discover that no power on earth could make him yield her up--nothing, save her own deliberate dismissal of him, could do that.
Thus it was that Gerald left Stammars without saying a word of farewell to Eleanor ”

“ The lady who has attracted the admiration of himself and his mother is, in fact, none other than our old acquaintance, Miriam Byrne--now Mrs. James Baron. The gentlemen with her are her father and her husband.
Mr. Kelvin and Peter Byrne have never met, and are unaware of each other's existence. They have both been prominent actors in that strange drama which has had Eleanor Lloyd and Gerald Warburton for its central figures--a drama which must of necessity have worked itself out in an altogether different manner had neither of them, or only one of them, played a part in it. ”

“ Great was the glee of Jonas Pringle when he found himself left alone once more in Spur Alley. When he saw Van Duren off in a cab for Euston Square he mentally bade him good-bye for ever.
So elated was he, so sure did he now feel that the moment of success was at hand, that he went out and bought a tin of preserved lobster, and a bottle of rum, and there and then held high festival with Bakewell and his wife in their dungeon below stairs. He calculated that, at the very soonest, Van Duren need not be expected back for three or four days ”

“ I went down to Pembridge and saw Kelvin--whom I had once met years previously; but, singular as it may seem, I said nothing to him of the one particular object that had taken me there. At that time Olive Deane was living with her cousin, and it was suggested by her that, as Sir Thomas Dudgeon happened to be in want of a secretary, the place might perhaps be one that would suit me. She suggested, too, that I, being a poor man, might improve my fortunes by marrying an heiress, the heiress in question being Miss Eleanor Lloyd. ”

“ Eleanor goes with him to the foot of the stairs, where they kiss each other and say goodnight. Eleanor stands and watches him as he goes slowly up the wide staircase, looking very tired, she thinks. He turns when he reaches the landing, and smiles, and waves his hand to her. She blows him a last kiss. Next moment he is gone, and she hurries back to the drawing-room.
When Ambrose Murray reaches his room, he rakes the glowing embers together, and puts out his candle. He often sits in the dark for hours. ”