CHAPTER XVII.

A DOOR BETWEEN.

Dacia's first words to Burgo were: "Have you burnt my scrawl?"

"I have."

"That is well. Seeing that one can't foretell what may happen from day to day, and that what I wrote was intended for your eyes alone, it was better it should be burnt. And now tell me, have you devised any plan of escape?"

"After turning over in my mind some half-dozen more or less impracticable schemes, I can only think of one which seems to hold out a tolerable prospect of success."

"And that is----?"

"To file through the two bars which guard the window of my prison, force out the glass-work, and then by means of a rope lower myself to the ground outside."

"An admirable scheme, and I see no reason why it should not succeed. Tell me, in what way can I help you to carry it out?"

"By procuring for me a couple of files and a sufficient length of rope."

"I will drive to Oakbarrow to-morrow and obtain them, after which they shall be conveyed to you either by Mrs. Sprowle or myself."

"How can I ever thank you sufficiently?"

"Your success--and you will not fail, I feel assured--will far more than repay me. But to file through the bars will be a matter of time, will it not?"

"It will; probably a matter of three or four days, but I can't speak positively. I don't think I have mentioned before that now and then Signor Sperani takes it into his head to pay me a stealthy visit in the middle of the night, probably with the view of satisfying himself that I am not engaged in any nefarious attempt to escape."

"I can well believe it. From what I have seen of him he seems to me to abound with underhand ways, and to distrust every one. He is one of those men who regard their own shadow with suspicion. But so far, Mr. Brabazon, I am altogether in the dark (and should you have any reason for wishing me to remain in it, pray don't hesitate a moment to tell me so), and utterly fail to understand how it happens that you, a nephew of Sir Everard Clinton, should have been assaulted as you were in your uncle's grounds, and be here a prisoner under your uncle's roof. I may tell you that I am indebted to Mrs. Sprowle for my knowledge of the relationship between you and Sir Everard. Doubtless it had come to her from her son, but in what way the latter learnt it I have no means of knowing."

"It will afford me very great pleasure, Miss Roylance," replied Burgo, "to explain in the fewest possible words what, doubtless, does seem to you a most inexplicable state of affairs."

He took a turn or two in silence, as if revolving in his mind in what terms he could best begin that which he wanted to say.

Dacia followed him with her eyes--those wonderful blue-gray eyes, which by some lights, when half veiled by their dark lashes, seemed almost black, and could, when she so willed, look as cold and fathomless as a mountain tarn. Just now, however, they shone with the light of eager expectancy, and with something more than Dacia was aware of--something deeper, which sprang from another source than that. To-day its name was sympathy; what it might be six months hence it would not have been safe to prophesy.

She was standing just as she had stood the night before, her face framed by the aperture in the door, and her long slender hands, with their interlocked fingers, resting on the little shelf outside.

And so Burgo began his story, telling her in a condensed form everything, so far as it related to his uncle, Lady Clinton, and himself, all of which is already known to the reader. Of Clara Leslie's name he made no mention, it was not necessary to his purpose that he should do so; neither did he repeat much of what had passed between his uncle and himself in the course of his last brief sojourn in Great Mornington Street. That he was not without his suspicions of foul play in the case of Sir Everett, Miss Roylance, if she chose to do so, might infer from certain of his remarks, but he was especially careful that not so much as the shadow of a definite charge should be formulated by him against Lady Clinton.

"Thank you, Mr. Brabazon," said Dacia, when he ceased speaking. "If my determination to help you to escape had needed any stimulus before, it certainly does not after what you have told me. As I gather from your narrative, the one great object to which you still adhere is to obtain access to your uncle?"

"That is so, most certainly."

"Then--pardon my saying so--even should your--or our--plan of escape prove successful, you will only, as it seems to me, be in precisely the same position as before you were brought here, that is to say, you will not be a step nearer the attainment of your object."

"I admit it--sorrowfully. But the recovery of my liberty will give me one advantage--it will enable me to devise and, as I trust, carry into effect some other scheme for rescuing my uncle from the clutches of that----" He stopped abruptly, and bit his lip.

Miss Roylance smiled. "You need not mince your phrases, as far as I am concerned, where Lady Clinton is in question," she said.

"You don't like her ladyship?" he queried, with an ambiguous smile.

"I hate her!" was Dacia's emphatic reply, as her dark eyebrows came together for a moment. "Any milder term would be a euphemism." Then her face broke into a smile. "And yet, you must know, Mr. Brabazon, that to all outward seeming, she and I are the best of friends. But that is the way we women are made."

"In your note you told me that the illness which carried off Colonel Innes, like my uncle's, was a lingering one."

"Yes, and to me one of the strangest features of the affair is, that Sir Everard's symptoms seem almost precisely similar to my uncle's."

Burgo drew a long breath. "Is that indeed so?" he said.

For a moment or two they gazed into each other's eyes, Dacia's slowly dilating the while, reading there, perchance, what neither of them cared to express in words.

"Then you can no longer wonder, Miss Roylance," continued Burgo, "at my burning anxiety to rescue my uncle from the fate which, as it seems to me, is but too surely overtaking him."

"I did not wonder from the first," she said gently. "It is only of late that my eyes have begun to open by degrees to certain things. And even now I can scarcely believe that---- No, no; it is altogether too terrible for belief!"

For a little space she covered her face with her hands, and Burgo could see that her shoulders were heaving with suppressed emotion. He made believe to be busying himself with the lamp, while giving her time to recover her composure.

"Does it not seem a strange thing, Mr. Brabazon," said Dacia, presently, "that all through my uncle's illness, which lasted over three months, I was never allowed to help in nursing him, although again and again I begged to be let do so? An old woman, an Italian, and her ladyship that is now (I never have, and I never will call her 'aunt'), took it in turns to watch by him, and would not permit me to go near him unless one or other of them was in the room at the time. And now it is the same in the case of Sir Everard. I would so gladly help to wait upon him, and do all that lies in my power to relieve the others. But, as before, I am thrust aside, and except her ladyship and Vallance no one is allowed to go near him."

"It is nothing fresh to me to be told that Lady Clinton is the most devoted of nurses," said Burgo, meaningly. "I heard the same thing from my uncle's own lips. I am afraid, Miss Roylance, that you fail to sufficiently appreciate her affectionate solicitude in not permitting you to risk your health by tending the bedside of a sick old man. But about this Signor Sperani--what object has brought _him_ to Garion Keep?"

"To me his object is plain enough, although up till now neither he nor his sister have so much as hinted at it. It is neither more nor less than to gradually ingratiate himself with me, with the ultimate view of persuading me to become his wife. Oh, I am neither so blind nor so simple as they take me to be!"

"What a vile plot!" was Burgo's sole comment. Indeed, he hardly knew what to say.

"Of course, Sperani cares nothing about me for myself," resumed Dacia; "he would not give a second thought to me--a cripple and a hunchback--were it not for the prospective thousands I shall inherit a year hence, when I come of age."

"And this is your only home! It cannot be a happy one for you--pardon my presumption in saying so."

"No, it is not a happy home, but such as it is I am bound to make the best of it. It is the only home I have, or can have, till I am of age. Then I shall be my own mistress, and---- But that is nothing to the purpose." She paused for a moment, then, with a bitterness which was not without a touch of pathos, she added: "A happy home! To me it is a phrase without meaning, so far as I myself am concerned. But enough of all this. We are wandering from the point at issue. _Revenons, s'il vous plait_. From what you said a little while ago I gathered that, even if you should succeed in regaining your freedom, you would still be at a loss what step to take which would serve to give you access to your uncle, or in any way tend to bring you and him together again."

"That is just my difficulty. Those who are in charge of him are evidently determined to go to every extreme in order to keep my uncle and me apart. Even if, when I regain my freedom, I were to enter an action for false imprisonment, what then? I could not prove that her ladyship was in any way a party to the attack upon me and what followed, while as for Sperani, he would simply have to disappear from this part of the country and there would be an end of the affair. But let us not count our chickens before they are hatched," he continued more gaily. "These four walls still hold me fast."

Miss Roylance hardly seemed to be heeding him. Her brows were knit, her eyes bent on vacancy. She came back with a start and a half smile.

"Supposing," she said--"and I want you to bear in mind that it is only supposition--that Lady Clinton could be got out of the way for a short time, that is to say, that she could not merely be induced to quit her husband's side, but to leave the Keep itself for a few days, would her absence help your scheme in any way?"

"It would help it in every way, Miss Roylance," said Burgo eagerly, his black eyes flashing a sudden light. "Lady Clinton is the one and only obstacle between my uncle and me. So long as she remains by his side I see no possibility of being able to approach him. Remove her, and my way is easy." Then, after a pause, as he drew a step or two nearer, for he had always maintained a respectful distance between himself and her: "You would not ask me such a question, Miss Roylance, unless there was some motive at the back of it. Can it be possible that you have thought of some plan whereby----"

"Here is my plan without further preface, Mr. Brabazon; you can give me your opinion afterwards as to its feasibility or otherwise. If there is one person in the world whom Lady Clinton loves it is her son, young Carlo Offredi, a boy of fourteen, who, as I have already told you, is at school at Lausanne. Now, as it happens, my dearest friend--we were schoolmates for a number of years--is married to a professor in the same town. Marie would do anything for me, and my idea is, to write to her and ask her, immediately on receipt of my letter, to telegraph to Lady Clinton to the effect that her son is dangerously ill, and that her immediate presence is earnestly requested. I have not forgotten the name of Carlo's _lycée_, and the message would of course be represented as coming from there. That her ladyship will at once respond to it I do not doubt. Meanwhile," she added, with a smile, "that is to say, during the time which would have to elapse before the message could reach her, you would be slowly and laboriously filing your way to liberty."

Burgo's chest rose and fell. "Miss Roylance, I know not what to say; I feel far more than I am able to convey in words. Such a scheme, if duly carried out, would not merely be the means of bringing my uncle and me together again, but of defeating one of the most abominable conspiracies that ever was hatched."

"But consider into what a maze of duplicity I shall be venturing!" said Miss Roylance with a half-smile. "The message I shall have to ask my friend to send will not have a single word of truth in it."

"In fighting a woman like Lady Clinton one cannot choose one's weapons; one is bound to take the first that comes to hand. If ever a lie was excusable, it is surely in a case like this, where nothing less than the existence of a helpless old man is at stake."

"I would do more, far more than that to save the life of Sir Everard Clinton!" said Dacia, with a thrill in her rich, low tones to which some responsive chord in Burgo vibrated. "But here comes Mrs. Sprowle," she continued, "to tell me that her precious son is about waking up, and that I must not stay a minute longer. I will write to my friend before I sleep, and will post the letter myself before breakfast. The cord and the files I will make into a parcel and send you by Mrs. Sprowle in the course of to-morrow. And now my lamp, if you please, Mr. Brabazon."

"Will you not bring the parcel yourself, Miss Roylance?" asked Burgo, and his voice had a supplicatory ring in it, or so it seemed to Dacia.

Her sensitive under-lip trembled for a moment. "Perhaps," she said with a smile such as she had not bestowed on Burgo before, and the radiance of which struck him dumb. "But it is never wise to promise more than one is sure of being able to perform."

As she put forth her hand for the lamp, Burgo took it in one of his, and bending over it, touched it with his lips. "In any case, God bless you!" he fervently exclaimed.

Her only answer, as she turned from him, was the delicate flush which suffused alike her throat and face.

He watched her with lingering eyes as she went slowly and carefully down the stairway, the protuberance on her left shoulder throwing a clearly-defined shadow on the whitewashed wall; nor did he turn away till the last faint tap-tap of her crutch had died in the distance.

"What a pity, what an unspeakable pity it is," he said wit a sigh, "that a creature so incomparable in every other respect should be the victim of a deformity which nothing can remedy or obviate!"