CHAPTER XVIII.

AN UNLOOKED-FOR DEVELOPMENT.

That Robert Melray was infinitely distressed by the revelations of his kinsman's delinquencies we have had his own word for. He had been so much away from England that for a number of years he had seen scarcely anything of Dyson, but he knew that his brother had always had a high opinion of the young man's industry and business capacity, and that from the time of the elder Dyson's death he had stood in a sort of paternal relation to him. To James Melray, as Robert admitted, far more than to himself, must the discovery, thrust upon him by Dunning, have come as a shock--one, indeed, in his case from which he would never have wholly recovered had his life been prolonged for years.

Richard Dyson's wrongdoing was of a character so extreme that not to have taken some kind of notice of it would have seemed to Robert Melray not merely weak, but criminal. What if he were to carry out the programme as laid down by his brother to Dunning? What if he were to advance Dyson the three thousand pounds which would accrue to him presently under James Melray's will and dismiss him with ignominy? Nothing less than that did it seem possible for him to do. On the other hand, he could not afford to overlook the love borne by his mother for her dead niece's son--a love till now undarkened by the faintest shadow of a cloud. Mrs. Melray senior was seventy-six years old. The murder of her eldest son had been a blow which nothing but her indomitable spirit had enabled her to recover from. Should his be the hand, Robert Melray asked himself, to strike her another blow, which, to such a woman as she--one to whom the probity of every member of the house of Melray was as dear as her own virtue--would be only less terrible than the first? The more he thought of it the more he shrank from taking upon himself the onus of such a deed.

One other course was open to him. He had good hope of being able to dispose of the business of Melray Brothers before he was many weeks older. What if he were to go on till then and make no sign? With the turning over of the business to other hands his relations with Dyson, so far as the firm was concerned, would cease, and there would be no need ever to set eyes on him again were he minded not to do so. What if he were to keep his dark secret undivulged, unless it were to the criminal himself at their hour of parting, and allow his mother to live on for the rest of her days in happy ignorance of what, were it brought to her knowledge, might, perchance, prove well-nigh fatal to her? Yet it galled Robert Melray's strong sense of right and justice to think that a crime so flagrant should go wholly unpunished, even although the criminal were of his own flesh and blood. Willingly, then, did he accede to Dyson's written request for a ten-days' holiday on the plea of ill-health, which he found on his desk one morning shortly after his and Philip Winslade's interview with Mr. Dunning. For the time being he felt absolved from coming to a decision of any kind, and he breathed more freely in consequence.

Fanny Sudlow was another inmate of Loudwater House whose mind was beset by doubts which refused either to allow themselves to be treated as if they were of no consequence, or to furnish any ground from which they might be developed into certainties. It was Phil's last briefly-worded epistle which had served to upset Fanny's equanimity. The strange discrepancy between Evan Wildash, as described by those who had known him, and the same person as described in Mrs. Melray's statement, was one which it baffled her to reconcile, even as it had baffled her lover. When she looked at Denia and asked herself whether it were possible that the foul demon of deceit could find lodgment in so fair a frame, she could but shake her head and tell herself that such a thing was very hard to believe. And yet there was Phil's letter! In her own despite, Fanny began to feel something of that sentiment of vague distrust which the elder Mrs. Melray avowed that her daughter-in-law had inspired her with from the first.

Meanwhile Denia's smiles, as the spring days lengthened, began to come and go more frequently, and there were times when some quaint remark on Fanny's part would elicit a little burst of rippling laughter and a gay rejoinder. The cloud which had for so many months overshadowed her young life was beginning to melt and disappear. Soon the past, with all that it held of pleasure or of pain, would for her have become nothing more than a faint memory which, as time went on, would intrude itself less and less often upon her. Hers was one of those natures which no calamity can crush for long. Her heart was like one of those quiet tarns, deep-buried among the hills, high above which the tempests rave while they lie softly darkling below. She was happy as the birds are happy, because it was not in her to be otherwise: that, at least, was how Fanny Sudlow summed her up in her own thoughts.

But Denia's talk, however wide it might range, or however apparently careless it might be, was always strictly impersonal. Herself and her concerns were kept studiously in the background, and Fanny's hand was not the one to try to drag them to the front. One afternoon, however, either of set purpose or because for a moment her usual caution had deserted her, Denia said to Miss Sudlow: "Don't these sunny, sweet-breathing spring days, when everything seems bursting with life, often make you long to have wings that you might fly away somewhere--anywhere? They do me. Oh! I am not going to bury myself in this place for ever, let who will think it. I have ideas--intentions. As soon as my husband's affairs have been wound up and I know for certain what my portion of the estate will amount to, I shall leave here and for ever. I have friends in London, and to them I shall go first of all. Afterwards---- But that is no matter."

It was a hot close evening in mid May. There had scarcely been a breath of air all day and the night had brought no coolness. Fanny Sudlow sat in the dark at the open casement of her bedroom window, her hair unbound and a handkerchief soaked in vinegar laid across her forehead. She was suffering from one of those distressing headaches to which she had been more or less liable all her life. She heard the clock of St. Mary's strike eleven, and still she sat on, knowing of old that it was useless for her to go to bed till the pain should in some measure have abated. Her window looked into a corner of the old garden, in which, just then, the moon shone silvery bright. She had not been out of doors all day; her room felt so stifling and the garden looked so cool and inviting, that a strong desire came over her to get away from the close atmosphere of the house and pace its silent walks awhile in search of that nepenthe she was unable to find indoors. It was a desire which she let have its way.

Having tied back her hair, she flung a dark travelling cloak around her, the hood of which she could draw over her head were she so minded. Then she quitted her room and went lightly downstairs. Early hours were the rule at Loudwater House, and everybody had retired long ago. There were two exits from the house into the garden, one through the conservatory, the other by means of a glass door at the end of a side corridor. Fanny chose the latter. Having, with as little noise as possible, unlocked the door, she opened it and stepped out into the still moonlit night.

Making her way into the farther walks, she began to pace them slowly to and fro. Not a light shone anywhere in such windows of the house as were visible from the garden. The quietude was intense, but presently the silence was broken by the chiming of the quarter before twelve. The moonlight seemed to listen, and as the sound died away a low sigh breathed over the garden, and therewith half-opened leaves and bursting buds began to stir and whisper. They had awoke to the first kisses of the soft cool airs which had come as the avant-couriers of midnight.

Suddenly Fanny became as rigid as a statue. Her quick ears had caught a faint sound, as it might be of the crunching of gravel beneath someone's footsteps. Scarcely breathing, she listened. Yes, there it was again, nearer than before. Evidently someone was approaching in the direction where she was. Her first impulse was to hide herself. In a little trepidation she glanced around. Ah! there, close by her, was the well-house, as it was called. It was the one sheltered spot in the garden. A few swift noiseless strides and her form was lost among its shadows.

The old well was said to be coeval with the building of Loudwater House, to the inmates of which it had been the sole source of water supply for several generations. Of late years, however, that is to say, since the establishment of the Merehampton waterworks, it had fallen into the desuetude and neglect which become the portion of all things which outlast their uses. Nowadays its water was used for two purposes only. One was to supply the dowager Mrs. Melray's tea-kettle (there was no water anywhere, in that lady's opinion, equal to that of the old well for expressing the hidden virtues of Souchong or Bohea). The other purpose to which it was put was the irrigation of the garden. The well itself was covered in by a conical overhanging red-tiled roof, supported by thick oaken beams, with other beams inside, forming, with the windlass-rope and bucket, the needful apparatus for bringing the water to the surface. Even on a moonlight night like the present it was a home of dense shadow.

Fanny drew the hood of her cloak about her and waited in mute expectancy, her eyes fixed on the point whence the sound had come. Nearer came the footsteps--only in the intense midnight quietude could they have been heard--and presently round a curve of the path advanced a female figure, also, like Fanny, darkly cloaked; but, for all that, one glance was enough to reveal to the latter the identity of the new-comer. It was impossible to mistake either figure or gait for those of anyone save Denia Melray.

Fanny, with an arm flung round one of the beams that supported the windlass and with her other hand pressed to her bosom, watched the lithe, graceful figure pass her hiding-place and disappear round a curve of the walk a little further on. Three or four seconds later came the sound of a low whistle, which was immediately responded to by another whistle. Then, as in a flash, Fanny recalled to mind that, among other knick-knacks suspended from a chatelaine which the young widow occasionally wore, was a tiny silver dog-whistle, which had struck her as being a somewhat incongruous ornament for a person to carry who acknowledged to never having owned a dog in her life. Now, in the direction which Denia had taken was the one door by which admittance could be had to the garden from the outside; consequently, when a peculiar grating sound presently made itself heard, Fanny at once came to the conclusion that Mrs. Melray was at that moment withdrawing the bolts of the door in question. Who was her midnight visitor? Fanny's heart beat painfully. On the threshold of what mystery had she unwittingly found herself?

Evidently a change of weather was impending. By this time a fine gauzy mist had overspread the upper reaches of the sky, through which the moon shone with a chastened lustre. The evergreens babbled softly to each other of the rain that was soon to come. Presently a sound of voices reached the ears of the waiting girl, those of a man and a woman talking together in low tones, and then, half a minute later, the speakers came round a turn of the path and so towards the well-house, he with an arm round her waist and with his other hand holding one of hers pressed close to his breast. Then, while the two were still some distance away, something in the man's walk, or figure, or his way of carrying himself, revealed his identity. "It is Richard Dyson!" exclaimed Fanny to herself, with a thrill that set every nerve tingling. "Oh, blind, blind that I have been!"

Phil had written her a brief account of what had passed at the interviews with Messrs. Noyes and Dunning, and she was aware that Dyson had been accorded a holiday on the plea of ill-health, Mr. Melray having mentioned the fact in her hearing in reply to his mother's question, "How is it that I have seen nothing of Richard for the last few days?" In all probability Dyson had only just returned, and his first thought, his first object had been to---- But when Fanny's thoughts had travelled thus far they veered suddenly round to his companion. "Oh, it is dreadful--dreadful!" she murmured under her breath. "Who would have thought it of her?--Who would have believed it possible?"

Meanwhile the two were slowly drawing nearer, talking earnestly together. The first words which reached Fanny distinctly were spoken by Denia.

"You are sure your holiday has done you good, and that you have come back better than you went?" she was saying.

"On that point I have no doubt whatever," was Dyson's low-voiced reply. "Only, darling, had _you_ been with me I should have enjoyed my holiday infinitely more. But the day will come, and that before long, when you will be mine and I shall be yours, and no one in the wide world will have the right to come between us."

With that he bent his head and, unreproved, pressed his lips to hers.

At that moment they were exactly opposite the well-house. Slowly they kept on to a point about a score yards beyond it, then they turned and as slowly retraced their steps. It struck Fanny that the reason why they kept to that particular walk might be because it was less overlooked from the windows of Loudwater House than any other part of the grounds. Ought she to stay and overhear more of what they might have to say to each other? Ought she not, rather, to try and get away unseen and unheard? What right had she to be there, hiding and listening? On the other hand, she could not forget that a certain dark mystery still remained unfathomed, and in consideration of the strange and undreamed-of way in which events were shaping themselves, she could not help saying to herself, "What if by staying here and listening I should chance to overhear something which would----" She was about to add, "bring to light the long-sought-for clue?" But her thought became dumb midway. No, whatever Denia might be, whatever she might have been guilty of otherwise, she, Fanny, could not and would not believe that she had had any hand in the bringing about of her husband's death. It was a hateful thing to be an eavesdropper, and as soon as they had passed her--they were close to the well-house again by this time--she would steal away through the shrubbery at the back.

Suddenly, with a quick movement, Denia disengaged herself from Dyson's encircling arm. "Ah!" she exclaimed, drawing a deep breath, as she turned and confronted him, "for the moment I had forgotten. Answer me this, and truthfully, as the breath is in your body: Did you, or did you not, just before you went away, on two occasions, take Annabel Glyn for a walk along the Solchester Road?"

There was a perceptible pause before Dyson replied. Then with a laugh which to Fanny in her hiding-place sounded wholly forced and artificial, he said: "Why, my darling, what rubbishing nonsense is this you have got into that pretty head of yours? _I_ take Annabel Glyn for a walk? The idea is preposterous."

"Your answer is no answer. Did you, or did you not, take her?"

"I did not."

"That you will swear?"

"That I swear."

"Very well. I will take your word for the truth of what you tell me. It was the dusk of evening and my informant must have mistaken someone else for you. Only, I want you to understand, Dick, that if I know how to love, I know how to hate just as fervently. It is as easy to me to do one as the other. Therefore, _cher ami_, woe be to you if you deceive me. Don't forget--never for one moment forget, that your secret is my property--that I hold your life in the hollow of my hand!"

For a moment or two longer her emotion seemed almost to choke her; then suddenly turning, she placed her hand within his arm. "Come," she said, and her voice was again as soft as that of a cooing dove, just one turn more and then you must positively go. "Who can say what prying eyes may not be secretly watching us?"

With that they passed out of earshot, and the same instant Fanny turned and sped softly away through the shrubbery at the back of the well-house. As she passed the conservatory she saw that the door was ajar, but she did not pause till she reached her own room. Then she stood with her hands pressed to her head, amazed--confounded--not so much by her own blindness as by the revelation of Denia's unparalleled cunning and duplicity. It almost took her breath away to think of it. How she had hoodwinked them all!--she, with her doll's eyes and candid-seeming brow, and her smile that was almost infantine in its sweetness. What puppets they had been in her fingers--Mr. Melray, Phil, and herself!

And she loved Richard Dyson! On that point, after what she, Fanny, had been witness to, there could be no possible doubt; and yet all along Denia had made believe that Dyson's presence was utterly repugnant to her. But over and above their love for each other was there not some dark secret between the two--some bond the nature of which was known to themselves alone? "Your secret is my property. I hold your life in the hollow of my hand." Those had been Denia's words, and they had been meant as a warning to Dyson. What hidden meaning lay at the back of them? Could it, after all, be possible that Denia----? "No--no--even now I will not believe it!" cried Fanny when her thoughts had carried her thus far.