CHAPTER V.

A FOUND LETTER.

It was evening--the evening of the day on which Matthew Kelvin had sent his brief note to Dr. Whitaker, making an appointment with him for half-past eleven next morning. He had desired to be left alone for an hour, and during that time he had contrived, with several intervals of rest, for his weakness was very great, to write a longer letter than had come from his pen since the first day of his illness. This letter, duly sealed and directed, now lay on the little table by his bedside. The address on it was very short, being simply--"Miss Lloyd, Stammars."

By-and-by Mrs. Kelvin came into the room. As she did so, her son quietly thrust the letter under his pillow. The old lady came to the bedside, and beamed on him through her spectacles, as he lay there with his arms crossed under his head. "Why, Matthew, my dear boy, I have not seen you look so bright and well for many a long day as you have looked during the last few hours! You have got the turn at last. I feel sure you have. I knew that Dr. Druce would bring you round again after a time."

"Yes, mother, I think I have got the turn at last, as you say," answered Kelvin, gravely. "We will never let any one say a word against Dr. Druce again, will we?"

"Ah, he's very, very clever," said the old lady. Then she stooped and kissed him, and as she did so, Matthew's arm stole round her neck, and pressed her head gently on his shoulder, and kept it there some minutes. When he let her go, she saw that there were tears in his eyes; but she was too wise to notice them, and she began at once to talk as though his recovery now were merely the question of a few days, or a week at the most.

"But I shall not let you go back to business till you are quite strong," she said. "Don't tell me that your not doing so will cost you a great deal of money. I don't care if it costs a thousand pounds: what is that in comparison with your health? You must have a month at the seaside, at some cheerful place--Boulogne or Dieppe, where you won't have time to grow melancholy. And if Olive and I go with you, we shall not bore you overmuch with our society, but only be there to see that you take proper care of yourself, and do not poison yourself with those French dinners, of which you are so fond."

"I'm sure Olive deserves a holiday as much as any one," resumed Mrs. Kelvin, a moment or two later. "What I should have done without her all this long time that you have been ill, I'm sure I don't know. She must be very fond of you, Matthew, to have done what she has done. Now, don't you think she is fond of you?"

"Yes, I suppose she is fond of me--after a cousinly fashion," said Matthew, coldly.

"Ah, you men!" sighed the old lady. "Whatever sacrifices a woman may make for you, in your own hearts you never think they are half as much as you deserve."

At this moment there came a tap at the door, and Olive entered the room. She brought her cousin a basin of arrowroot, which he, remembering his promise to Dr. Whitaker, resolved not to touch. His eyes followed her curiously as she moved about the room. "I cannot--no, I cannot believe it!" he murmured under his breath. "There must be some damnable mistake somewhere."

"I have just been telling Matthew that I have not seen him look so well for weeks as he looks to-night," said Mrs. Kelvin to Olive. "We shall soon have him all right again now."

Olive started, and threw a quick, suspicious glance at the sick man. He was looking at her very gravely but very kindly, as she thought. "No: he suspects nothing, or he would not look at me in that way," she said to herself. Then her black brows separated and her face broke into a smile. "I really believe he is better," she said to her aunt. "I believe he has only been shamming all this time, and now he is getting tired of it. I should not be a bit surprised to see him come down to breakfast to-morrow."

"I'd almost stake my life that Whitaker is making some strange blunder!" muttered Kelvin to himself. "However, I'll carry out his instructions, and let to-morrow prove to him how wrong he is."

Olive was anxious that he should drink his arrowroot. He just put a spoonful to his lips, and then put it aside as being too hot. "Come in again after my mother has gone," he contrived to whisper to her. Then he lay back and shut his eyes, and presently both his mother and Olive bade him good night, and left the room.

As soon as Mrs. Kelvin was gone to her own room, Olive came quietly back. She was on the tiptoe of expectation to know what her cousin could have to say to her. He did not keep her long in doubt.

"Olive," he said, "I have been writing a letter this evening--a letter which I want you to deliver for me to-morrow morning."

"Very well, Matthew. You know that I am entirely at your service. To whom is the letter addressed?"

"To Eleanor Lloyd."

"Ah!--then you have made up your mind at last to tell her everything?"

"I have made up my mind to tell her this: that I have discovered that she is not the daughter of Jacob Lloyd, and, consequently, not entitled to his property. But I have not made up my mind to tell her that I've known this fact for more than six months, and have concealed it purposely from her. I cannot tell her that."

"But why do you wish me to take the letter? Why not send it through the post?"

"Because I am too weak at present to put down in writing more than the barest outline of the facts, and I want you to supplement by word of mouth what my letter fails to convey."

"Why not wait till you are a little stronger--till you can tell her, in person, all that it is necessary she should be told?"

"Not one day longer will I wait. 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. 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. I had a letter from Sir Thomas this morning, in which he casually mentions that fact. You had better start early--not later than ten or half-past, by which means you will get your business over by luncheon time. Of course, you will seek a private interview with Miss Lloyd, and not say a word to either Sir Thomas or Lady Dudgeon about your errand. Eleanor must be left to break the news to them in her own way and at her own time."

"It will be a bitter task to have to do so."

"It will, indeed, poor girl! Cannot you understand, Olive, my chief reason for wanting you to go to Stammars?"

"You have told me already, have you not?"

"I have told you one reason, but not the only one. You are a woman, Olive, and I want you to break this news to Eleanor, to whom, in any case, it must come as a terrible shock. You do not like her, I know--at least, I judge so from what you have said at different times. But this is not a question of likes or dislikes. It is a question of one woman being overwhelmed by a great trouble, and of another woman smoothing away the sharp edges of that trouble with a little sympathy and kindness--articles which cost so little, but, at such seasons, mean so much. 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. Think, and pity her."

He lay back, exhausted by the exertion of having spoken so much.

"What can I give you?" asked Olive. "Will you not have your arrowroot?"

"No: I will take that later on. A little weak brandy-and-water is all I need at present."

"And now I must bid you good night," said Olive, as soon as he had revived a little.

He put the letter into her hand, and as he did so he drew her towards him and kissed her. "I should like you to start about ten in the morning," he said. She promised to be ready by that time, and then she went.

"Whitaker's suspicion is nothing but a horrible nightmare," he said to himself, as Olive left the room. "He is wrong--utterly wrong." But for all that, Matthew Kelvin hardly slept a wink all night.

Olive took the letter to her room, locked the door, and then, after deliberating for a few moments, she quietly tore open the envelope and read what was inside. "If it be requisite to deliver the letter, I can put it into another envelope, and no one will be any the wiser," she said to herself. "If I decide not to deliver it, then another envelope will not be needed."

"A thoroughly business-like document," she said to herself, as she folded up the letter, "and such as any lawyer might write to any lady. If there is no resentment in it, neither is there any love. The resentment is dead without a doubt, but is the love dead also? Query. Well, I will take the letter with me: there will be no harm in doing that: but it by no means follows that Miss Lloyd will ever read it. How easy it will be to pretend that I have lost it, and then I can tell the story my own way--with a sting in it, and before witnesses too, if such a thing be anyhow possible. Oh! to see her humiliation! that will pay for everything."

She was up betimes next morning, and ready to start for Stammars soon after ten o'clock. In answer to her anxious inquiries, her cousin declared that he was much as usual--neither better nor worse. "You will try your best to soften the blow, won't you, Olive?" were Matthew's last words to her.

"You know that I will do my best," she said, with one of her faint smiles. She laid her thin fingers in his hand for a moment, and then she went.

By-and-by came Dr. Whitaker. Pod succeeded in smuggling him upstairs unseen by anyone, and then took up a position in the corridor outside to keep away any would-be intruders. Mrs. Kelvin, especially, was to be kept out of the room. Were she to find out that her son was closeted with Dr. Whitaker, she would imagine at once that there was a conspiracy afoot to dispense with the services of her favourite. Dr. Druce. Fortunately, she was busy downstairs just about that time, and did not go near. Matthew had said that he fancied a certain sort of pudding--an elaborate pudding, which Mrs. Kelvin was positive that no one but herself could make properly--a pudding, as her son was quite aware, that would require her undivided attention for at least a couple of hours below stairs.

Mr. Pod Piper, keeping watch and ward outside his master's door, had a long corridor all to himself, up and down which he could march as though he were a sentry on duty. After a time, from a door at the extreme end, there issued a pert-looking damsel, who smiled sweetly on Pod. In one hand she carried a broom, in the other a dust-pan.

"Ah, Molly, and how are you this morning?" said Pod, with the air of a duke addressing a dependent. "Blooming as ever, I see."

"I'm quite well, Mr. Piper, and I hope you are the same," answered Molly, with a little blush. Then she added, with a confidential air, "I've got such a beautiful rose downstairs. You shall have it for your button-hole, if you'll promise to wear it."

"I'll wear it for your sake, Molly. But whose room is that that you have just come out of?"

"Oh, that's Miss Deane's room. I've just been tidying it up a bit while she's out of the way."

"You like her, of course? Everybody likes Miss Deane."

"Then everybody's welcome to like her.--She's too sly for me.--But, see, I found this letter when I was sweeping just now behind her dressing-table. It must have slipped down without her knowing it. It's been opened; but as it's got master's name on it, I hardly know whether to leave it where I found it or to let master have it."

"Allow me," said Pod, authoritatively, taking the letter from the girl's hand. "You were quite right, Molly, to ask my advice." As Molly had said, the letter was plainly addressed to Mr. Kelvin, and it had evidently been opened. As two-thirds of the office correspondence was seen by Pod in one form or another, and as this particular letter was not marked "Private," he felt no compunction about opening it and reading it. It was Gerald Warburton's first letter, in which he asked whether it was true that Jacob Lloyd had died with out a will, and that he was his uncle's heir.

Pod's mind was made up in a moment. It seemed doubtful whether hi master had ever seen the letter: in any case, he should see it now. "You had better leave this in my hands, Molly," he said, still with his ducal air. "It is only an ordinary business letter, which has been given to Miss Deane for some purpose, and which she has evidently mislaid. You may depend upon my making it all right, and there will be no need for you to say a word about it." Then he kissed Molly and told her not to forget the rose, and then he let her go.

"Another of your little tricks, Miss Deane, or else I'm vastly mistaken," said Mr. Piper to himself. "This letter has been cut open with a pair of scissors. The governor never cut open a letter with a pair of scissors in his life. Funny, very."

Pod's watch came to an end in about an hour. He was summoned into the room, and, much to his surprise, found his master dressed and sitting in his easy-chair. How gaunt and hollow-eyed he looked! What a wreck of his former self! How loosely his clothes hung about him! Tears came into Pod's eyes as he looked at him. All Kelvin's sternness and arbitrary ways were forgotten in pity for the plight in which he saw him now. Dr. Whitaker, with his arms folded on the table, was regarding him attentively.

"Piper," said Mr. Kelvin, "I want you to let Dr. Whitaker out, and you must contrive it so that my mother does not see him."

"Yes, sir."

"After that, you will come and help me to crawl downstairs as far as my mother's sitting-room."

"Yes, sir."

Dr. Whitaker rose and took his hat. "Beg pardon, sir," said Pod to his master, "but here's a letter which Molly the house-maid gave me just now. She found it in Miss Deane's room while sweeping behind the dressing-table. As the letter is addressed to you, I thought I had better let you have it."

Kelvin took the letter with hands that trembled a little, and looked first of all at the direction, and then at the mode in which the letter had been opened. Dr. Whitaker came forward to shake hands. "Don't go for a minute or two," said Kelvin. "There is something else I want to say to you."

Dr. Whitaker sat down again, and Kelvin drew out the letter and glanced first of all at the signature. He started when he saw the name, and then he ran his eye quickly over the contents; last of all he read the letter through, slowly and carefully.

"This is dated nearly a month ago," he said, "and yet I have never seen it till to-day. It has been kept purposely from me. By what a web of treachery and deceit am I enmeshed! It is horrible--horrible!" He sat for a little while in silence, holding the letter in his hand, his eyes bent sadly on the floor. No one spoke.

"Whitaker," he said at last, turning abruptly on the doctor, "I want to go to Stammars."

"To Stammars! When?"

"Now--at once."

"Impossible! I would not answer for the consequences of such a mad act."

"Whatever the consequences may be, I must go, and at once. Piper, run to the 'King's Head,' and order a brougham to be here in ten minutes from now." Pod was off like a shot.

"Kelvin, you must be crazy to do this thing."

"Perhaps so, my friend, but still, I shall do it. During the last half-hour it seems as if the scales had fallen from my eyes. I seem now to see that woman as she really is--not as I have always believed her to be. I sent her to Stammars this morning with a message of the utmost importance. How will she deliver that message? Not as I asked her to deliver it, but----What a fool I must have been to send her on such an errand! I tell you, Whitaker, that I must go after her: that there is not a minute to lose."

"If you must go, you must, but in that case I shall go with you."

And in that way the matter was settled. Dr. Whitaker, finding that further opposition was useless, yielded the point, but was determined not to lose sight of Kelvin till he had seen him safely back in his own room. A quarter of an hour later the brougham came round. Kelvin managed to crawl downstairs, a step at a time, supported on each side by Whitaker and Pod. Mrs. Kelvin, being still busy with her pudding in the back part of the house, knew nothing of all this. Matthew sent her a message by Mr. Bray, his chief clerk; but it was not to be given to her till after the brougham had started.

Then Pod climbed on to the box beside the driver, and away they went.