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A Search For A Secret: A Novel. Vol. 2

by G. A. Henty · English · Gutenberg #35265 · 312,404 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: A Search For A Secret: A Novel. Vol. 2

Author: G. A. Henty


        
Release date: February 13, 2011 [eBook #35265]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35265

Credits: Produced by David Edwards, Mary Meehan and the Online
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SEARCH FOR A SECRET: A NOVEL. VOL. 2 ***




Produced by David Edwards, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)









                       A SEARCH FOR A SECRET.

                              A Novel.

                           BY G. A. HENTY.

                          IN THREE VOLUMES.

                               VOL. II.


    LONDON:
    TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE ST., STRAND.
    1867.

    LONDON:
    WYMAN AND SONS, PRINTERS, GREAT QUEEN STREET,
    LINCOLN'S-INN FIELDS, W.C.




CONTENTS OF VOL II.


CHAPTER I. A FAMILY CONCLAVE

CHAPTER II. SWIFT RETRIBUTION

CHAPTER III. THE SEARCH COMMENCED

CHAPTER IV. EVIL DAYS

CHAPTER V. OVERTURES FROM THE ENEMY

CHAPTER VI. THE PRIEST'S CHAMBER

CHAPTER VII. THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE

CHAPTER VIII. STRUGGLES FOR A LIVING

CHAPTER IX. POLLY TO THE RESCUE

CHAPTER X. ALLIES FROM ALSATIA

CHAPTER XI. THE COUP DE MAIN

CHAPTER XII. AFTER THE BATTLE

CHAPTER XIII. A YOUNG WIDOW




CHAPTER I.

A FAMILY CONCLAVE.


For some little time after Dr. Ashleigh's carriage drove off from Harmer
Place, not a word was spoken. The scene through which its occupants had
passed, had left a deep impression upon them--even upon Mr. Petersfield,
who was by no means of a nature to be easily moved. Dr. Ashleigh felt
greatly the words he had spoken, the wrong which had been committed, and
the thought of his children's altered future. Harry felt more indignant
than hurt; he was too astonished and angry to reflect yet how much it
would affect himself. Perhaps if he had one wish more predominant than
another, it was that the Misses Harmer were but men--men of about his
own age, and that he could get them into some quiet spot--by Jove, would
not he find out where the will was hidden!

But Robert Gregory felt the disappointment with all its force. To him
the blow had been so overwhelming and crushing, that his fierce temper
was beaten down and mastered by it; and he had borne it with a sense of
dull despair, very unlike the passionate outburst of wrath which might
have been expected from him. Only when Miss Harmer had turned upon him
so fiercely, had the blood rushed to his cheek, and had not Dr. Ashleigh
interposed, he would doubtless have given way to a burst of passion; but
with a great effort he had checked himself; desperate as he was, he knew
that Dr. Ashleigh stood in a far higher and better position in the case
than he did himself; it was to his interest that the doctor should take
the lead, for he felt that what hopes remained rested solely in him.

Dr. Ashleigh was certainly favourably impressed with his conduct
throughout this trying interview; he knew that to this man the loss of
the will was a terrible blow, the defeat of all his plots and schemes,
and he was surprised and pleased that he had behaved with so much
self-control, and had avoided creating a stormy and violent scene.

"Mr. Gregory," he said at last, breaking the silence for the first time
as they were entering Canterbury, "I know that this is a grievous blow
to you, as it is to us all. I think you had better follow out your
original plan of returning this evening to your wife in London. You can
safely leave the matter in my hands; I am, for the sake of my children,
interested in this affair equally with yourself, and you may rely that I
shall spare no pains to come to the bottom of it. What search and stir
is made, will come with a far better grace from me than from yourself,
and you may depend upon my letting you know, the instant the slightest
clue is gained to the mystery."

Robert Gregory in a few words thanked the doctor, agreed that such a
course was best, and that at any rate until Sophy was perfectly
recovered, he would leave the affair in his hands.

Dr. Ashleigh then turned to Mr. Petersfield and asked him if he would
come on to Ramsgate, and stay the night with him, to chat over the
affair in quiet, and determine upon the best course to be pursued. Mr.
Petersfield agreed to stop for the night, saying that he must return to
town by the early train in the morning, but that if they would promise
that he should do that, he would accompany them.

As this was arranged, they drove into the station, and here the party
separated; Dr. Ashleigh, Harry, and Mr. Petersfield to go on to
Ramsgate, Robert Gregory to return to London. The latter preserved his
quiet demeanour until he was alone in a railway carriage, and then he
gave full vent to his fury and disappointment. He raved aloud; he cursed
himself, his fortune, and all connected with him; he poured imprecations
of every kind and description upon the heads of the Misses Harmer; and
his last exclamation as he flung himself down in a corner of the
carriage, was, "Let them beware, for by----I will find it, if it is in
existence, if it costs me my life!--or," he added, after a pause, "them
theirs!"

I now resume my own narrative. How surprised I was that evening when
they came in. Of course, just at first I was too much occupied in
kissing Harry--whom I now saw for the first time, as he had only arrived
from the North the evening before--to notice anything strange about
their manner. Then papa introduced me to Mr. Petersfield; and after I
had spoken a word or two to him, and had time to look at all their
faces, I saw that there was a great gloom upon them, greater even than
the occasion warranted; for I had been expecting some little joking
remark from papa about my being a woman of property now, so that I was
the more struck by the subdued expression of his face.

"Is anything the matter, papa?" I asked, quietly.

"Yes, my dear, a great deal is the matter, I am sorry to say. Mr.
Harmer's will is missing."

"Missing, papa!" I exclaimed, almost incredulously.

"Yes, my love; you must not take it too much to heart; it may come to
light yet, but at present it is missing."

I sat down with a faint feeling in my heart. It was not that I cared for
the money for its own sake; but I thought of Lady Desborough, and I felt
a rush of coming trouble sweep round me. However, after a moment, I
drove back the feeling, and asked, in as cheerful a voice as I could,--

"But how is it missing, papa?"

"Ah, my dear, that is the rub. Mr. Harmer had it in the house, and now
it is nowhere to be found. We all believe--indeed, there can be little
doubt--that Miss Harmer has concealed it, or, at any rate, that she
knows where it has been hidden away. I have noticed the last week a
strange manner, a sort of secret understanding between the sisters, but
thought little about it at the time. Now, however, I can understand it
all by the light of the present state of affairs; and I remember now,
what I smiled at at the time as an impotent threat, that Miss Harmer
said, in her passion, that while she lived, Sophy's husband should never
enter the doors of Harmer Place."

"But, papa," I said, "she has a very good life-income; why should she do
such a thing as this?"

"There are several reasons, my dear; but we will talk them over after
tea. I am hungry and tired, and I am sure Mr. Petersfield and Harry are
the same; so let us have tea at once; that will do us all good, and we
shall be able to look at matters in a far more cheerful light
afterwards. What are you going to give us, my dear?"

"Cold pie, papa, and some fresh-boiled mackerel, and a dish of prawns
and some muffins."

"Capital! Now we will go and wash our hands, and make ourselves
comfortable, and by that time you will be ready for us."

They were soon down again, and seated round the table, and papa began to
question Harry about his work in the North; and Harry, who was never
depressed above five minutes about anything, entered into a most amusing
description of his life on the railway; and we were all laughing
merrily, in spite of our troubles, before tea was over. I am sure no one
who had looked in upon us would have guessed that we had that day as
good as lost L50,000 between us. When we had done, papa said,--

"There, my dear, we are all a hundred per cent better. Now, as we have
taken one great consoler--tea, let us take another--tobacco. I am sure
Harry is dying for a pipe; and although I do not often smoke indoors, on
this special occasion I will make an exception. What say you, Mr.
Petersfield?"

"I am very fond of a good cigar," the lawyer said, producing a
cigar-case; "but will not Miss Ashleigh object?"

"Not at all," I said. "Harry always smokes when he is at home, and I am
quite accustomed to it. If I find it too much, I can easily open the
window a little."

The tea-things were soon cleared away, and we took our seats round the
fire. For although the weather was not actually cold, we usually had a
fire in the evening, as, indeed, by the seaside one can do almost all
the year round with comfort. Papa sat on one side, I on a stool by him,
Harry next, and Mr. Petersfield on the other side. As soon as the cigars
and pipe were fairly alight, the table cleared, and we alone, papa
began,--

"Now, my dear, I will answer the question you asked me before tea; and I
shall do so at length, as what I am saying to you may be some sort of
guide and assistance to Mr. Petersfield, who--from his late partner, Mr.
Ransome, having had the management of Mr. Harmer's affairs--does not
know very much of the business."

Papa then explained the whole history of the Harmers nearly as I have
told it, although of course in far fewer words. "Thus you see," he
concluded, "there are several reasons which we may suppose, actuate the
Miss Harmers. The first and principal, is the religious question. The
Misses Harmer were, as I have said, educated in a convent; they were
brought up to, and have ever since lived a life of ascetic severity.
They have been taught to look upon the advancement of their Church as
the thing to be striven for upon earth, the _summum bonum_ to be aimed
at. They were accustomed to consider the Harmer estate as destined to go
to the furtherance of that object; and when Herbert Harmer by the
accidental death of his two brothers, suddenly succeeded to it, they
looked upon it as absolutely stolen from the Church, to which it was, by
the elder brother's will, to have gone. They then left the house, went
abroad, and did not return until the death of Gerald Harmer seemed again
to open the way for them. They have since resided there off and on, in
hopes probably that their brother might return to his old faith, might
die without a will, or, in fact, that some unexpected contingency might
happen. The last three or four years since Mr. Harmer's declared
intentions relative to Sophy and yourselves, they have very much
intermitted their visits, and only returned on the news of their
brother's first paralytic seizure. Thus, you see, the last twenty years
of their lives, may be said to have been given to the endeavour; and the
temptation to them to suppress the will is of course enormous, in order
that the property may come to them, and afterwards, as their eldest
brother intended, to the Romish Church. They have, besides this, another
motive now, and one which, no doubt, greatly soothes their consciences.
They are mercilessly severe upon Sophy, they look upon her as their
brother's murderess, and they therefore have the twofold satisfaction of
punishing her--and so of avenging their brother's death--and of
enriching their own Church."

"Strong inducements, my dear sir," Mr. Petersfield, who was a bachelor,
said, "religion and malice, the two strongest motive powers in the
female, especially the elderly female, mind."

"Mr. Petersfield," I said, "remember that I am here, and that you are
talking treason."

"I apologize humbly, Miss Ashleigh," he said, smiling. "But really," he
continued to papa, "what you say explains the whole matter, and gives it
an even more awkward appearance, in my eyes, than it had before. The
question is, what is to be done?"

"Ah! what is to be done?" papa repeated; "that is indeed a difficult
question to decide upon. I believe the will to be in existence, and I do
not think they will venture to destroy it; it is one thing to allow a
will to lie hid in a secret drawer, another to take it out and
deliberately burn it: one requires a very different degree of courage
and hardihood to the other. No, I do not think they will venture to
destroy it."

"I do not think they will," Mr. Petersfield said; "they quailed so
unmistakably under your denunciations. Do you know, doctor, I give you
great credit for that, it was grand, sir!" and the lawyer rubbed his
hands at the thought. "I give you my word, I never saw anything better
done in the whole of my professional experience."

Harry laughed. "Yes, father, you actually alarmed me at the time; you
were awfully impressive."

Papa could not help smiling a little. "Was I?" he said. "Well, I meant
to be. I the women to be extremely superstitious; I have heard them
confess to a belief in spirits and apparitions; and it flashed across me
that the best thing I could do, to prevent them destroying the will, was
to touch them on that score, and I do think it is safe for a time. One
of the worst features to my mind is the appearance of that Father
Eustace. Where does he come from? Who sent for him? They said he had
come from abroad, and as he is an Italian, they must have telegraphed
for him."

"I think I can find that out," Harry said. "Dick Thornton, who is one of
the telegraph clerks, was at school with me, and I have no doubt I can
get out of him who the message was sent to, and who sent it, even if I
cannot get the words themselves."

"Do," Mr. Petersfield said; "that message might be of great value to
us."

"By the way, Mr. Petersfield," papa said, "there is a point which has
just occurred to me, which may serve to guide us materially in our
search. Do you keep all Mr. Harmer's deeds and papers?"

"Not all; we keep the title-deeds of the property, and that sort of
thing, but he himself keeps the copies of his tenants' leases, and
papers of that kind, to which he may have occasion to refer in his
dealings with them. But why do you ask the question?"

"It is a very important one, my dear sir, and I am pleased with your
answer."

"How so?" the lawyer asked, rather puzzled.

"In this way: if the will had been the only important document at Harmer
Place, it might have been kept in any of the drawers we searched to-day,
and the Misses Harmer might have removed it last week, and either
destroyed or concealed it in their rooms, or in any other place, where
we could never find it. Now, we have every reason to believe it is not
so, for in that case, they would have left the leases, and other
documents, and we should have found them. It is quite clear to my mind,
then, that Mr. Harmer had some secret place of concealment, to which he
alluded when he told your clerk that all the burglars in the world could
not find it; and in this place of concealment the whole of these papers,
together with the will, are stowed away, and the Misses Harmer, who no
doubt know of the existence of this place of concealment, will be
perhaps content to let them remain there, and relying upon the secrecy
of the hiding-place, will not be tempted to destroy the will."

"Capital, my dear sir," Mr. Petersfield exclaimed energetically, "you
are quite right, and it is indeed, as you say, a great point gained.
Before, we had a solitary document to look for, which might be contained
and hid away in any small space, a drawer with a double bottom, a
woman's desk, or sewed up in her stays--I beg your pardon, Miss
Ashleigh--in fact, in any small out-of-the-way corner. Now we have some
regular receptacle to look for, capable of holding bulky documents--at
any rate, a good-sized box. This is indeed a great point gained. There
the will is beyond doubt, for I think the Miss Harmers' faces were quite
sufficient evidence that it is not destroyed; besides, we may reasonably
suppose that the box is not concealed about the Misses Harmer's rooms,
but is where it was originally placed by their brother; the question
arises, 'Where the deuce is that?'"

"I can guess where it is," I said.

"Where?" the other three exclaimed, simultaneously.

"In the 'priest's chamber,' wherever that may be," I answered. "I
remember well, that when I was once talking to Mr. Harmer about the old
times, and old houses and their hiding-places, he said that Harmer Place
was celebrated as having one of the snuggest hiding-places in the
kingdom, and that many a priest had lain hidden there for months. I
asked him if he knew where it was, and he told me that he did; for that
when a boy he had gone into it on some occasion or other with his
father, and that when he came back and took possession of the house, he
had again examined it, and found it such a snug hiding-place, that he
used it as a sort of strong room; he promised that some day or other he
would show it to me, but I never thought to ask him, and, unfortunately,
he never mentioned it again."

"By Jove," Harry exclaimed, "we shall find it yet!" while papa and Mr.
Petersfield uttered exclamations of surprise and satisfaction.

"Sure enough, doctor, the will is in the 'priest's chamber.' The only
question is, how are we to find it, and how are we to get into it when
we do?"

"I should think there can be no difficulty about that," Harry said; "all
we have to do is to go before a magistrate, and swear that the will is
there, and get a search warrant to examine for it."

Mr. Petersfield smiled. "You would find a great difficulty in getting
such a warrant."

"Why so?" Harry asked indignantly. "Do you mean to say that if we knew
there was a will hidden in a certain place, which will left us all the
property, that we should have no right to go in and search for it?"

"It would be a very delicate matter indeed," Mr. Petersfield said, "very
delicate; but still not impossible. By the 7 and 8 statute of the 14 of
George, chapter 29, s. 22, it is enacted that if any person shall either
during the lifetime or after the death of any person steal, or for any
fraudulent purpose conceal any will, codicil, or other testamentary
instrument, they shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and being convicted
thereof, be liable to various punishments. And by the same statute,
chapter 29, s. 63, it says if any credible witness shall prove upon oath
before a justice of the peace, a reasonable cause to suspect that any
person has in his possession, or on his premises, any property
whatsoever, or in respect to which any such offence (such as stealing a
will, &c.,) shall have been committed, the justice may grant a warrant
to search for such property, as in the case of stolen goods. Now by this
Act it is clear that a warrant could be obtained upon an affidavit that
you believed, as you do believe, that the will exists; but that would
not allow you to pull the house to pieces, and it is quite certain that
in no other way would you discover a chamber built for the purpose of
concealment, and which you say baffled the priest-hunters of the old
time--men who were pretty well accustomed to the finding of this sort of
hiding-place, and who knew exactly where they were likely to be
situated. You would never find it; and even while you were searching for
it, Miss Harmer might enter by the secret door--wherever that may
be--and abstract or destroy the will, without your being one bit the
wiser; or, at any rate, she would be certain after you had given up the
hopeless search and left, to destroy the will to prevent the possibility
of your ever trying again with better fortune. No, your best course is
to find out, first, where the chamber is; next, how to get into it; and
when these two points are discovered, we can arrange about going in and
taking possession of the will without asking any one's leave in the
matter. That is, I believe, our only chance of recovering it--by
strategy. Take one of the servants into your pay, and get her to search
for the chamber. This I leave to you, as of course you are acquainted
with some of the domestics. I do not know that I have anything more
which I can suggest at present. Should anything strike me, I will write
from town, and, as I go by the early train, I will now, with your
permission, retire to bed. You will of course write to me immediately
you find out anything which may seem to you to have the smallest bearing
upon the affair. I should especially advise that you do not hint to any
one your belief in the existence of the will, as it may get to Miss
Harmer's ears; and although, if she believes that no search is being
made for it, she may be content to let it remain for years concealed as
at present, you may be assured that should she believe that you are
working to find it, either she or the priest will destroy it at once."
We all agreed in the propriety of following this advice, and then
separated for the night.

The next morning I got up at six, to make breakfast for Mr. Petersfield
before he started. He was pleased at my having done so. We had not much
time for talk, but before he went, I said,--

"Honestly, Mr. Petersfield, do you think we shall ever find the will?"

"Honestly, my dear Miss Ashleigh, I am very much afraid you never will.
It is a lamentable affair, and I am certain in my own mind that it is in
existence, and that its place of concealment is known to the Misses
Harmer; but under the circumstances of the case, I feel assured that,
even on their death-beds, there is no chance of their ever revealing
where it is. Your only chance, in my mind, is in finding the
hiding-place; direct all your energies to this point; find that chamber,
and you may be assured you will find the will."

When the others came down to breakfast at nine o'clock, I proposed that
we should return at once to Canterbury; but papa said that this affair
would cause so much talk and excitement in the place, that we should be
quite overwhelmed with calls from every one, and have to repeat the
whole story a dozen times a day, which would be a terrible infliction,
and that as he and Harry would be mostly out, I should have to bear the
whole brunt of the attack. So it was settled that we should stay there,
at any rate a week or ten days longer, until the first stir and
excitement were over. So papa and Harry went over every day to
Canterbury, and I remained quietly down at Ramsgate. For some days they
brought back no news of any importance, but one day towards the end of
the week papa came back to dinner alone, and Harry did not arrive until
nearly ten o'clock. As he came in he told us that he had had a long chat
with his friend Thornton of the telegraph office.

"And what have you learnt, Harry?" I asked.

"I will tell you all about it, my dear, directly I have made myself
comfortable;" and he proceeded with the most provoking coolness to take
off his coat and gloves, and to arrange himself in a chair before the
fire. "Now I will tell you. I went down to the station to-day, and there
I saw Dick Thornton. He shook hands with me, and said--what every one
says--'This is a bad job, Harry.' 'A devilish bad job' I answered."

"Never mind the expletives, Harry," I put in, "we can imagine them."

"Don't interrupt me, Agnes, or I won't tell you anything. 'I want to
have a chat with you, Thornton,' I said. 'When can I see you?' 'I don't
get away from here till six.' 'Well, suppose you come round to our place
and have a chat with me when you get away.' 'Done,' he said. Accordingly
I had a snug little dinner cooked, got a bottle of wine up from the
cellar, and at about half-past six Dick came in. After we had dined, and
had talked over the whole affair, I told him he could do me a great
service by telling me whether the Misses Harmer had sent off a
telegraphic message, and if so, where. 'It would lose me my place, if it
were known I had told you, Harry,' he said. 'I know it would,' I
answered; 'but what you say will not go any further; indeed it is more
as a matter of curiosity that we may find out where the priest came
from, than from any action we can take from it.' 'Well, Harry,' he said,
'I will tell you all about it, and you can make what use you like of it;
the place is not so first-rate that I should care very much if I did get
the sack in consequence. One of the servants from Harmer Place--I should
say Miss Harmer's own maid, for she was a stiff foreign-looking
woman--came down upon that Friday afternoon, with a note and a message.
I was alone at the time, for the other clerk happened to be away. The
message was in Italian; it was that which made me notice it
particularly, and when I got home I took the trouble to get a dictionary
to see what it was about. I could not make much of it, and I forget the
Italian words, but the English was--"To the Bishop of Ravenna, Italy. He
is dead--much can be done, if lawful, for the mother--send advice and
assistance." 'And did you get an answer,' I asked. 'Yes, the answer came
on Sunday morning; I always attend there between half-past nine and
half-past ten. It was also in Italian. "All is lawful for the
mother--advice and aid have started."'"

"Father Eustace to wit," papa said.

"That is all," Harry concluded, "that Thornton told me. Of course I said
I was very much obliged to him, and that I would take good care that it
never was known from whom I got the information. And now, I suppose the
mother they talk of means Mother Church, but who is the Bishop of
Ravenna?"

"I remember," papa said thoughtfully, "that about three years ago Miss
Harmer said she was delighted to hear that the confessor, or visitor, or
whatever they call him, of the convent where they formerly lived so many
years, and where they always stayed whenever they went upon the
Continent, had just been made a bishop; and her only regret was that it
was to some place in the north of Italy, whereas their convent was at
Florence. I remember the fact specially, because, after the sisters had
left the room, their poor brother said to me, 'Between you and I,
doctor, I should have been much better pleased to have heard that the
excellent priest had received his promotion to heaven. That man has had
a complete ascendancy over my sisters for many years. He is, I believe,
some four or five years younger than they are, but at any rate he has
been the confessor or whatever it is of their convent, ever since they
were there, twenty-four or five years ago. He is, I judge by what they
say, a gloomy fanatical man, whose ambition is to do service to his
Church, and, I suppose, rise in it--at any rate, he has a complete
ascendancy over them, by his ascetic life and devotion to the Church.
They correspond with him frequently, and I cannot help thinking that his
advice and orders--given in his letters, and whenever they go over
there, which they do constantly--have tended greatly to make them the
gloomy unhappy women they are. They were, it is true, brought up with
extreme strictness and austerity, but I cannot help thinking that much
of that would have worn off, if it had not been for this man's
influence.'

"No doubt," papa continued, "Mr. Harmer was right, and all their actions
are dictated by this priest; it was he who ordered them to make friends
with their brother, at Gerald Harmer's death, and to come over here and
take up their abode,--I know they were at that convent when they heard
the news, and that they had announced their intention of staying there
permanently--and now he has sent over this Father Eustace. The man looks
a religious enthusiast, and there is no doubt that he will never allow
them to change their minds even were they disposed. Altogether, my
children, it is evident the only remaining chance is to find out the
secret chamber. If we can discover that, well and good; if not, it will
be wiser for us, painful as the disappointment is, to give up all hope
of finding the will, and to endeavour to go on as if it had never had an
existence. It is a most unfortunate affair now, Sir John having died."

"It is, indeed," Harry answered, "Sir John would have pushed me on, and
I should have had no difficulty, even without capital, in making my
way."

Sir John, to whom papa alluded, I should say was the engineer to whom
Harry had been articled. Harry's time had run out now three or four
months, and he was only remaining in the North on a small salary,
completing the piece of work on which he was engaged. His old master had
died only a month before this time. When this piece of work was
finished, Harry had intended buying a partnership in some good business,
with the L10,000 Mr. Harmer had promised him for the purpose.

"Yes, it is very unfortunate his having died," Harry said; "unless one
has a good patron of that sort to push one on, it makes up-hill work of
it. Not that I care much; I can fight my way well enough;" and Harry
stretched his great shoulders, and looked as confident and cheerful as
if he had just gained a legacy, instead of losing one. "I shall go back
in another two or three days to my work," he said; "it will not last
much more than another month; and in the meantime I shall be on the
look-out for something else."




CHAPTER II.

SWIFT RETRIBUTION.


Sophy Gregory might have excited pity even in the minds of her enemies
could they have seen her as she lay, pale and sad, in her lonely room,
during the long hours of the day upon which her husband had gone down to
hear the reading of the will of Mr. Harmer. The week which had passed
since she left home had indeed been a terrible one. Her punishment had
followed, bitter and heavy, ere the fault was scarce committed. Only one
day of happiness and life, and then that crushing blow which met her the
very day after her marriage, in the words of the telegraphic message,
"Mr. Harmer is dead." It had reached them at York, where, after
wandering through the old streets, they had come back to their hotel to
lunch. It lay upon their table. Robert had opened it eagerly. Sophy
needed not that he should tell her what were its contents. The sudden
start, the deadly pallor, the look of horror that he could not control,
told their tale too plainly. Her grandfather was dead; she had killed
him.

She did not faint, she did not scream; one faint, low, wailing cry broke
from her, and then she stood, rigid and immovable, her eyes open and
staring, her lips parted, and every vestige of colour gone from her
face. One hand clasped her throat; the other, clenched and rigid, rested
on the table.

Robert Gregory forgot his own heavy interest in the news, forgot that a
fortune might have been gained or lost by the few words of that
telegram. Sophy's face frightened him as he had never been frightened
before. He spoke to her, he called her every loving name; but it was of
no avail. No movement of the rigid face, no change in the fixed eyes,
showed that she had heard him. He dared not touch her; she might break
into dreadful shrieks--her reason might be gone. What was he to do? He
pealed at the bell, and then went to the door, and told the waiter who
answered it to beg the landlady to come up instantly. In another minute
the landlady arrived, all of a fluster--as she afterwards expressed it
when describing the matter--at this sudden summons, and at the brief
account the waiter had given her of the manner of Robert Gregory.

"My wife has had a terrible shock; she has just heard of the sudden
death of her father, and I don't know what to do with her. She does not
hear me; I am afraid she is going to be ill or something terrible. For
God's sake speak to her, or do something or other." Such was the hurried
greeting which met her at the door.

The landlady was somewhat accustomed to sudden emergencies, but she saw
at a glance that this was beyond her, and she said to the waiter, who
had followed her up, to hear, if possible, what was the matter,--

"James, the lady is ill. Send Hannah here with some cold water, and my
scent bottle, and run across to Dr. Cope's opposite, and tell him to
come over at once. If he is out, run for the nearest doctor."

Then, closing the door, she advanced towards Sophy.

"Don'tye, don'tye, take on so, dear!" she said, in a kind, motherly way,
as if she was speaking to a little child; "don't, now, for your
husband's sake; try and rouse yourself, dear." But it was no use. There
was a slight, a very slight quiver of the eyelids, but no other sign of
life or movement.

The landlady paused. She was almost as much frightened at Sophy's face
as Robert Gregory had been, and she dared not touch the rigid hand. They
stood, one on each side of her, watching her helplessly; with faces
almost as much blanched by apprehension as was her own and listening
breathlessly for the footstep of the doctor outside. It was not long in
coming, although it seemed an age to them. He entered quietly: a tall,
slight man, with silvered hair, and took the whole state of things in at
a glance.

"A sudden shock?" he asked; and then gave orders to the servant to bring
such things as were necessary. Then he spoke to Sophy, and put his
finger upon the motionless wrist. "It is a serious case, sir," he said
to Robert, "very serious; the shock to the brain has been very great. I
must bleed her; it is the only thing to be done. Help me to place her
upon the sofa."

Between them they gently lifted the rigid figure and placed her, half
sitting, half lying, upon the sofa. There was no sign of consciousness.
In another minute the doctor had opened a vein in her arm. At first no
blood came, then a few dark drops, and then gradually a steady stream.

The doctor gave a sigh of relief. Still the blood flowed, on and on,
till Robert Gregory was frightened at the quantity, and looked anxiously
at the doctor, who, with his fingers on her pulse, was watching Sophy's
face. Presently a change came over the stony expression, the eyes lost
their fixed look, the eyelids began to droop down, and the whole figure
to yield; then, as she fell back on the sofa, he prepared to stop the
bleeding.

It had had its effect; Sophy had fainted. The first crisis was over, but
not as yet was the danger past. Very anxiously they watched her waking,
and intense was the relief when they found that she was conscious of
what had happened; but there were still grave apprehensions for the
future. Weak as she was, she was in a state of almost delirious grief
and excitement; indeed, at times her mind wandered.

No reproaches which the Misses Harmer had lavished upon her were
one-tenth as severe as those she bestowed upon herself. Over and over
again she called herself her grandfather's murderess. Constantly she
pictured up harrowing scenes of his death, and how he had died, invoking
the curse of heaven upon her and hers with his latest breath. Above all,
she insisted on returning at any rate to London, that Robert might go
down to Canterbury to hear the particulars.

The doctor had a long talk next day with Robert, who explained, to some
extent, the facts of the case.

"I hardly know what to do, Mr. Gregory. Your wife is in a most critical
state. She has set her mind upon going to London, and ill as she is, I
almost question whether there would not be less danger in her doing so
than remaining here in her present state of nervous anxiety. It is most
essential that, if possible, her mind should be relieved of the present
strain, and that she should obtain some intelligence as to the last
moments of her adopted father. You tell me that he had a seizure before;
it is likely, therefore, that the present attack was very sudden, and in
that case he may not--probably would not--have said anything against
her. This alone would be a relief to her; and, at any rate, she would be
pacified by knowing that she was doing all she could to learn the truth.
I fear that brain fever will be the termination of her attack, but its
character may be modified if her present anxiety is to some extent
allayed. By applying to-day at the railway office, you can have a
carriage with a sleeping couch ready by to-morrow, and I should advise
your taking her up without delay. Of course, upon your arrival there,
you will at once call in medical assistance."

And so it was carried out. Sophy bore the journey better than could have
been anticipated; indeed, the very fact that she was getting nearer to
Canterbury soothed and satisfied her. But she was still in an almost
delirious state of remorse and grief. The doctor who was called in to
her had shaken his head in talking over her case with her husband, and
had told him that unless her mind could be relieved from the terrible
weight upon it, he would not answer for her reason.

And so, leaving a nurse to take care of Sophy, Robert Gregory went down
to Canterbury and saw Dr. Ashleigh. The news which he brought back of
Mr. Harmer's forgiveness before his death, saved her from an attack of
brain fever, if not from entire loss of reason. And yet, although it
allayed her fears, and relieved her mind of the harrowing pictures of
her grandfather's death which she had before conjured up so constantly,
it scarcely lessened her sorrow and remorse; indeed, the knowledge that
his forgiveness had been so instant, and his last thoughts those of
kindness to her, caused her to reproach herself more than ever; but her
grief was now quieter, and the doctor believed that she would escape the
fever he had feared for her. She could now shed tears, and in long and
bitter fits of crying found exhaustion and relief. In another two or
three days she was calmer and better.

Robert had been everything which was kind and consoling to her, and very
gentle and thoughtful in his talk and manners. In her wildest outbursts
of grief she had never blamed him for his share in her fault, and would
not listen to the reproaches which, in the hope of relieving her
conscience somewhat, he would have gladly bestowed upon himself. But
this Sophy would not allow. He had not deceived a benefactor; he had
been actuated only by his love for her, and his entreaties for her to
elope with him had been but natural; it was she only who had been wrong
and wicked in neglecting her plain duty, and in deceiving her more than
father; and upon her, and her only, must the blame and grief fall.

She was very quiet and pale, as she lay that day that he had gone down
to the funeral, and she waited and thought all those long hours that he
was abroad. She thought a good deal of the future, and planned that they
should go upon the Continent first for a while, and upon their return
spend the great proportion of their income in doing good, living quietly
themselves upon very little; she thought that in any other way she
should feel as if this fortune were a curse to her, for it had never
even occurred to her that Mr. Harmer might have altered his will.

It was late in the evening before Robert returned; he came in quiet and
grave, but with no sign of passion or disappointment upon his face as he
kissed her, and asked her how she had been all the long day. Robert
Gregory was not a good man. In many respects he was bad and vicious;
but, as in most men, there was some good in him, and what there was came
out at its brightest in his relations with Sophy.

Deep as had been his disappointment, bitter and fierce the invectives
and curses which, during his journey, he had showered upon the Misses
Harmer, his own unfortunate luck, and upon the world in general, yet, as
he approached the hotel, he curbed himself in, and became calm and
quiet. As he thought of her love and suffering, of the sacrifices her
attachment for him would entail upon her, and upon her trust in himself,
he determined that, come what might, she should not see his
disappointment, and that in addition to her other troubles, she should
never come to know that he had married her for her money; and as he came
into the room where she was lying, pale and weak, upon the sofa, his
brow cleared, his voice softened, and he tried, and tried hard, that she
should see no sign in his face of that bitter sense of disappointment he
was feeling in his breast.

Sophy answered his inquiries as to her health, and then, as he sat down
on a chair close to the sofa, so that she could lean her head upon his
arm, and look up into his face, she said,--

"I am afraid that this has been a very painful day for you, Robert?"

"Not very pleasant, love," he said, almost cheerfully; "but, of course,
I had made up my mind for that."

"Did you see the Misses Harmer, Robert, and did they say anything about
me?"

"I saw them, Sophy, but we did not exchange many words."

"And Dr. Ashleigh, did he speak as kindly as before?"

"More so, Sophy; he could not have been more kind; he took me back in
his carriage to the station."

Sophy looked pleased. There was a little silence. Robert did not know
how to announce his intelligence, and his wife considered all that part
of the affair as so much a matter of course that she did not even think
it necessary to ask any question about it. In a short time Sophy went
on,--

"Do you know, Robert, I have been thinking so much about the future, and
I think that when we come back from our travels we ought to put aside
almost all our money to do good with."

"My dear," Robert said, gently, "I hardly think we need enter into that
now, for an event has occurred which will alter all our plans. The fact
is, darling, the will is missing."

"The will missing, Robert!" Sophy repeated, opening her eyes in
astonishment--"how can it be missing?"

"It is a curious business, darling, and looks very bad. Mr. Harmer, it
seems, had it down some little time since to make some slight
alteration. We know that he did not destroy it upon that morning, but it
is not to be found, and there is strong reason for supposing that the
Misses Harmer have concealed it. In that case, although it may yet turn
up, still we must look the worst in the face, and consider that it is
very probable that it may never be heard of again."

"And in that case should I get nothing?" Sophy asked, eagerly.

"Not one penny, Sophy; it will all go to the Misses Harmer."

Sophy closed her eyes, and leaned back, with a faint "Thank God!" She
looked upon it as a punishment--as a sort of atonement for her fault.
Then in an instant a fresh thought struck her. How would Robert bear it?
Would he love her any the less, now she was penniless, instead of being
a great heiress? And she looked up again with a frightened, inquiring
glance into his eyes. He bore it well, and said, gently,--

"We must bear it bravely, Sophy. It is, of course, a heavy blow. I have
never disguised from you how I am situated. Still, darling, we must do
our best, and I have no doubt we shall pull through somehow. I am very
sorry for your sake, dear, and I bitterly accuse myself for tempting
you. It will be a different life from what you expected, but I will try
hard to make it easy for you."

He spoke tenderly and earnestly, for he, at the time, almost felt what
he said. Sophy had raised herself, and, as he finished, was crying
softly, with her head upon his shoulder, but her tears were quite
different to those which she had shed during the last week.

"I am not crying, Robert, because I have lost the fortune--I am crying
because I am so happy. I know now that you love me quite for my own
sake, and not for my money."

"You did not doubt it, did you, Sophy?" her husband asked, rather
reproachfully, although he felt that he was but a hypocrite while he
said so.

"I never really doubted you, Robert--no, no--I would not have married
you if I had. At times, when I felt low, I could not help wondering how
much my money had to do with it, but I always drove away the thought,
dearest, as an injustice to you; and now I shall never think so again.
Do you know, Robert, this news has been quite a relief to me? I should
always have felt that the wealth was a burden; and now that I am
punished for my fault, I shall not reproach myself quite so much with
it. But I am sorry for your sake, dear. It must be a great blow for you,
and I feel how kind it is of you to hide your disappointment for my
sake. I will try very hard, Robert, to make it up to you by loving you
more and more; and you shall see what a useful little wife I will make
you as soon as I get strong again, which I mean to do very fast now."




CHAPTER III.

THE SEARCH COMMENCED.


Papa wrote several times in the fortnight following the funeral of Mr.
Harmer to Robert Gregory, in answer to his letters inquiring what
progress he was making towards the discovery of the will. At the end of
that time I received a letter from Sophy, and from the handwriting I
could see how ill and shaken she must be. Her letter was very, very
pitiful; she was still evidently suffering the greatest remorse and
sorrow for the death of Mr. Harmer, and she said "she was sure she
should never have recovered at all had she not received the news of the
forgiveness he had written to her before he died." It had been a
dreadful shock to her; but she accepted the loss of her fortune as a
deserved punishment for her wicked conduct. "My husband," she said, "is
very kind indeed to me; and it is on my account entirely that he regrets
the loss of the fortune, as he says that my listening to him has been my
ruin." If the will was not found shortly, he intended to get something
to do, and she meant to try to get some pupils for music. She begged me
to write to her, for that I was the only person she could hope to be a
friend to her now.

Of course I answered her letter, and from that time we kept up an
occasional correspondence.

Papa told me that in his early letters to him, Robert Gregory had
expressed his determination to discover the will at all hazards, but
that he had now, to a certain extent, acquiesced in papa's view, that an
unsuccessful attempt would be certain to prove the signal for the
instant destruction of the will, and that therefore nothing should be
attempted unless success was pretty certain. Robert Gregory was the more
obliged to acquiesce in this decision, as far as he was personally
concerned, for he was unable to appear in Canterbury, as he would have
been arrested if he had done so.

We returned from Ramsgate, as we had agreed upon, about a fortnight
after the funeral. Harry having already left for the North, papa would
still further have postponed our return; but I said it would be very
unpleasant whenever we returned, and we might as well go through it
sooner as later.

Indeed, I got through the next fortnight better than I had expected.
Every one, of course, came to call; but by that time people had heard
pretty well all there was to tell,--namely, that the will was
missing,--so that all I had to do was to receive their condolences.
Almost all were, I believe, sincerely sorry for us, and every one
remarked what an extraordinary business it was; indeed, popular opinion
was strongly against the Misses Harmer, whom every one accused of having
hidden the will. However, papa and I were careful never by any remarks
of ours to appear to confirm these suspicions, as it was evidently our
best policy to keep quiet, and let the matter seem to drop.

In the meanwhile I had commenced taking steps towards what was now our
only hope, the discovery of the "priest's chamber."

The day after I returned from Ramsgate, I went round the garden to see
how things were looking after my long absence, and I found our servant
Andrew--who acted in the general capacity of coachman, groom, and
gardener, having a boy under him to assist in all these labours--busy
banking up some long rows of celery, an article on which he particularly
prided himself. Andrew had been in papa's service a great many years,
and papa would not have parted with him on any account. He was a very
faithful, attached old man. When I say old man, I believe he was not
more than seven or eight and forty; but he looked much older: his face
was pinched and weatherbeaten, he stooped very much, walked with a
short, quick, shuffling step, and looked as if he were momentarily on
the point of falling. This was not to be wondered at, for he had never,
as long as I can remember, had any legs to speak of; and now there did
not seem to be the least flesh upon them. They looked, as Harry once
said, exactly like a pair of very crooked mop-sticks; and as he always
dressed in drab breeches and gaiters to match, it showed the
extraordinary thinness of his legs to the greatest advantage. Andrew,
however, had not the least idea but that he was an active, able man;
and, indeed, would sometimes in confidence lament to me,--

"Master going out in wet, cold nights to visit patients."

"But it is much worse for you than for him, Andrew," I would urge; "you
are outside all in the wet, while he is inside in shelter."

"Lor', Miss Agnes, it is no account along of me. I am a young man by the
side of master. He must be nigh fifteen years older than I am."

And so he was; but papa was a hale, active man, whereas poor Andrew
looked as if a strong wind would blow him off his seat on the box. Even
when he was at his best, and came to papa when we first went to
Canterbury, and he was only thirty, I have heard papa say that he never
had been at all strong; and yet he was so willing, and careful, and
indefatigable, that papa put a great value on him.

Andrew ceased from working among the celery when I came up, and,
touching his hat to me, inquired how I had been all this longtime.

"Bad doings at Harmer Place, Miss," he said, after a few remarks about
the weather, the garden, and the horses.

"Are there, Andrew?" I asked; "anything new?"

"Very bad, Miss; half the servants have had notice to leave. There's my
Mary, who has been there three years last Michaelmas, and who your papa
was kind enough to recommend there as housemaid--she's got warning, and
she came to me last night as savage as ever was; not because she was
going to leave, miss--don't go to think such a thing; but she wanted to
have given warning at once, when we found that Miss Harmer had hid away
the will, and cheated you all out of your money. But I said to her,
'Don't you go to do nothing in a hurry, Mary; the will is hid away, and
you may be useful somehow in watching what they two old cats--saving
your presence, Miss Agnes--is up to. At any rate, you wait.' And now
she's got warning to go, and she's as savage as may be that she did not
have the first word. Didn't she let on to me last night though, till her
mother up and told her to sit down and hold her tongue; but it were
enough to aggravate the girl, surely."

"I am sorry to hear that she will have to leave, Andrew, both for her
own sake and because she might, as you say, have been useful to us in
making a few inquiries."

"That's just what I said to my son Thomas last night when Mary came in
with the news; but he said that it did not matter so much on that
account, because his Sarah's not got warning to leave, and she will find
out everything that is wanted."

"And who is your son Thomas's Sarah?" I asked, smiling.

"She is the under-housemaid, Miss; and she used to go out walks with
Mary on her Sunday evenings out. Thomas, he used to go out to meet his
sister, and so met Sarah too; at last he goes to meet her more than
Mary, and, I suppose, one of these days they will get married. She is
one of the few that are to stay, Miss, for most of the old ones are
going because they don't mean to keep so many servants, and they have
got some new ones coming. All those who are going were recommended to
Mr. Harmer by Master; and they seem to have picked them out a-purpose.
Now Sarah was not; she came from the other end of the county, and was
recommended to Mr. Harmer by some lady last year, at the time of all
those grand doings over there; and as they don't know that her young man
Thomas is my son, seeing he is in service in another place, they have
not given her warning to go."

"And do you think, Andrew, that Sarah would be willing to do anything to
help us?"

"Lor' bless you, Miss, she would do anything for you; she said the other
day she would, and that she did not care whether she lost her place or
not; she did not want to stop with thieves. Oh, you may depend on her,
Miss."

"Well, Andrew, do you think I could get her to come here and have a talk
with me quietly?"

"Sure enough, Miss Agnes. To-day is Friday. On Sunday evening she goes
out, and will walk into town with Mary--and for the matter of that, with
Tom too--and she can very well come here; no one will know her in the
dark, and so she will be quite safe."

Accordingly, on Sunday evening our maid came in to say that Andrew's
daughter, Mary, and another young woman, were in the hall, and would be
glad to see me. And so Mary and Thomas's Sarah were shown in. Mary I
knew well; indeed she had learnt her work with us as under-housemaid
before she went to Mr. Harmer's. She was a stout, well-made, active
girl, with a good-natured honest face, but I should have had some
hesitation in entrusting any delicate and difficult task to her.
Thomas's Sarah, I felt at once, had tact and intelligence sufficient for
my purpose, and I was sure that I could trust her, and that she would do
exactly for what I required.

Thomas had certainly shown good taste in his selection, for his Sarah
was a very pretty little girl,--a slight active figure, a bright clear
complexion, brown hair waving back off her forehead, a cheerful smile,
large speaking eyes with a little touch of sauciness in them--which I
fancied would sometimes vex and puzzle Thomas, who was a steady
matter-of-fact young groom, not a little--and a very prettily cut nose
and mouth. I was altogether very much taken with her appearance.

I asked them to take seats, and Sarah at once began:--

"Miss Ashleigh, I am told by"--and here she paused a little, coloured,
and ended by telling a story and saying--"Mary, that I could be of
service to you. I can only say that I shall be glad to do so by any
means in my power; we are all at Harmer Place very sorry at your losing
your rights, and should rejoice to see you restored to them."

Sarah expressed herself so well that I was really quite surprised. I
thanked her for her offer, and said, "You can, indeed, do us a service
which may turn out of great importance. Now I do not disguise from you,
it will cost you your place if you are discovered; but I need not say
that we will take care that you shall be no loser by that. Now I will at
once tell you how we stand at present, and what we want to find out. We
know, or at least are nearly sure, that the will exists, and that it is
with some other papers large enough to fill a good-sized box. Now we
strongly believe that this box is hidden away in a secret room we know
to exist in the house; and what we want to find out is, where is that
secret room? It must be a pretty good size--I mean much larger than a
mere closet--because we know people used to lay hid there in old times."
Sarah nodded, as much as to say that she had heard legends of the
"priest's chamber." "Now, Sarah, the first thing we want to discover is
the whereabouts of this room--and this can only be done in one way. I
want the exact dimensions--that is to say, the measure, the height,
length, and breadth, of every room, passage, closet, and staircase in
the old part of the house; because as this room existed in the old time,
it is only in the central part of the house, which was the original
building, that the secret chamber need be looked for. When I have got
all these measurements, and put them all down upon paper, I shall see
where there is a space to fill up. Do you understand?"

Sarah did not quite understand; so I got a sheet of paper, drew a rough
plan of a house, and explained the matter more fully.

Sarah understood now, and at once entered into it with all her heart.

"You see," I said, "we want the exact position of the doors, windows,
and chimneys. Here is a small pocket-book and pencil: take one page for
each room; mark down first in this way, the extreme length and breadth,
then the positions of the doors and windows thus, and put 'in small
figures' their distances from each other."

I then showed her a small plan of Harmer Place, which I had drawn from
my recollection of it, and Sarah understood perfectly what she had to
do.

"Make a notch the length of a yard on the handle of your broom," I said,
"and measure the exact length of the bottom of your apron. With your
broom you can get the height of the room, and with your apron the other
measurements, so that you will be able to get all the sizes; and even if
you are disturbed, no one would have the slightest idea of what you are
doing."

I then asked her to measure the room we were in, and to make a little
sort of plan of it, and I found her so quick and intelligent, that I
felt certain she would execute her task with sufficient accuracy to
enable us to find out where the secret room was situated.

The two girls then took their leave, and I really felt strong hope in
the success of my plan--not indeed that it was mine, for it was Harry's
idea entirely, and I only gave her the instructions he had previously
given me.

After this, a small packet arrived every week, sent by Sarah, through
Thomas, to his father, containing seven or eight leaves of the
pocket-book.

In little more than a month we had all the measurements, and were
enabled to make out the entire plan, in doing which, of course our
previous knowledge of the house assisted us greatly. Papa assisted me in
this. I had not, at first, told him anything of what I was doing, as I
wished that, in case by any chance my scheme was detected, he should be
able to say that he knew nothing about it. At last, however, I was
obliged to let him into the secret, and when I told him, he was very
much interested and pleased; and I do not think that I should ever have
succeeded in putting the parts together, and certainly have never
arrived at any accurate conclusion, without his assistance.

When it was done, we found the blank space precisely where we had
anticipated that we should do. It is difficult to explain the exact
position, but I will endeavour to do so.

On entering the house, from the front, one found oneself in a large
square hall, from one side of which the library opened, and from the
other the dining-room. Opposite to the front door was an immense
fireplace, in which still stood two large iron dogs, and in which in
winter a great wood fire always blazed; on one side of this fireplace,
the grand staircase went up, and on the other a passage led down to a
room which had originally been a drawing-room, but which, from its
windows being at the back of the house, had been long since turned into
a kitchen; the fireplace of this room stood back to back to the one in
the hall. It was in the block contained in the square formed by the
backs of the kitchen and hall, the staircase and the passage, that we
came to the conclusion that the secret room must be, for, even allowing
for immense thickness of masonry, there was yet a large space
unaccounted for. On the floor above there was also a space, directly
over this, considerably larger than would have been required for the
chimneys of the hall and kitchen fire, even had there been two of
them--which there were not, for Sarah found that the chimney of the hall
made almost a right angle, and ran into the kitchen chimney.

Papa, after going very carefully into the measurements, came to the
conclusion that the room itself was situated nearly over the hall
fireplace; that it might be some seven or eight feet long, by five or
six wide, and that it could be little over six feet high. He thought it
was approached by some short staircase opening into the hall fireplace,
or into one of the bedrooms above, which abutted on the vacant space on
that floor. One of these rooms had been occupied by Herbert Harmer, and
the other had been, and was still, Miss Harmer's room.

Indeed papa suspected both entrances to exist, as by them, in case of
necessity, provisions could be so much more readily and secretly
supplied, and escape made in some disguise from the one exit, should an
entrance be forcibly made at the other.

"All this is mere guesswork, my dear; but when there is so much ground
to go upon as we have got, one can guess very closely indeed to the
truth."

"And where should you think, papa, that the entrance is most likely to
be discovered?"

"Most likely in the hall fireplace. The back and sides, if I remember
right, are formed of iron, with rude ornaments upon it. The mantelpiece,
too, is of old oak, and is covered with carving; undoubtedly in some of
all this the secret spring is concealed. The hall is the best place to
try for another reason; early in the morning, and at various times
indeed, Sarah might search among all these ornaments and knobs for the
spring, and if any one came suddenly into the hall, her presence there
would appear only natural; whereas in either of the bedrooms, and
especially that of Mr. Harmer, which is not now in use, she could hardly
be often without exciting suspicion."

Sarah came on the following Saturday evening, and I showed her the plan
we had made, and explained to her where we thought the entrance was, and
how she was most likely to find the secret spring.

Sarah was much pleased with the success which had so far attended her
efforts, and promised to find the spring if it existed. She said she
would get up half an hour before the other servants, and try every knob
and roughness on or near the grate.

However, week after week rolled on, and every Saturday came a message,
"No result;" and the week before Christmas she sent to say she had tried
every possible place, but could not find any signs of it. I sent back in
answer to ask her to try all the stones and bricks as far up the chimney
as she could reach.

With Christmas, Polly came home from school, and this time to stop for
good, for papa could not very well afford to keep her at so expensive a
school as Grendon House; and indeed we wanted her bright face and happy
laugh back again among us. Papa's practice was not very lucrative; it
was a large, but not a good-paying one. A great proportion of it lay
among the lower classes; in any serious cases among them he was always
ready to give his time and skill. Indeed for the last three years, since
there was an apparent certainty that we should be all so handsomely
provided for, papa had purposely given up much of his paying practice.
Many among the upper classes have the habit of calling in a medical man
on the slightest pretext, and like him, indeed, to call regularly, and
have an hour's chat on all sorts of subjects; this time papa could not
spare, and indeed I know that he said to two or three of his very best
patients,--

"You have nothing serious the matter with you. All you want is a little
occasional medicine, and a good chat of a day to do you good and cheer
you up; this I have no time to give you, when I have half a dozen dying
people waiting anxiously for me. Send to Harper; he is a clever fellow;
knows all about everything; will amuse you more than I do. He has a
large family, and your money will be of use to him. If you get seriously
ill, and want me, I will of course come to you."

So papa had gradually withdrawn himself from much of his paying
practice; he had still an income sufficient to keep us comfortably, but
it was not nearly what it had been four or five years before. However,
he was quite content to work as he did, giving his skill and time to
those who most required but were least able to pay for them.

Harry came home, too, a little before Christmas. He had finished his
last piece of work, and had now obtained an appointment of L150 a year
to superintend a railway in the course of construction in the north of
Ireland.

The evening after Christmas Day I received a note from Sarah, saying,
that that morning, she had, in feeling up the chimney, found a
projecting knob immediately behind the mantelpiece; that on pressing
this it went into the wall, and that every time it did so, she could
hear a click, but that she could not find that anything else moved.

"Hurrah, Sarah!" Harry shouted when I read the note aloud; "we are on
the right track. 'The king shall enjoy his own again!'" he sang in his
stentorian way.

"I really do begin to think we are on the track," papa said. "You must
tell Sarah that no doubt there is some other spring which must be
pressed either together or before or after this; for generally there
were two springs to these old hiding-places, in case one should be
touched accidentally."

This I told Sarah, who came on the next Sunday evening to see me. She
had rather began to despair before; but now that she had found something
tangible she became quite enthusiastic, and said that she was determined
to find the other spring if she were years engaged in the search. She
was now certain that we were right, that the secret chamber existed, and
that the entrance was there, of neither of which facts had she been
quite sure in her own mind before.




CHAPTER IV.

EVIL DAYS.


With the cheering thought that she was punished, and that perhaps her
fault was thus in some little way atoned for, and with the happy
conviction that her husband loved her for her own sake, and not for that
of her money, Sophy Gregory recovered from the weight of her sorrow and
remorse more quickly than could have been expected; and by the end of
another ten days she was able to leave her room, and go for a little
walk leaning upon Robert's arm. That evening they were sitting before
the fire; Robert looking moodily into it, but sometimes rousing himself
and trying to talk pleasantly to Sophy, who was watching him a little
anxiously, when she said, after one of these pauses,--

"I think, Robert, now that I am getting strong again, we ought to talk
about the future. I am sure that by the time we have paid all we owe
here, we shall not have much left out of our hundred pounds."

Sophy might have said, "my hundred pounds;" for it was she who had
furnished the funds for their elopement. Mr. Harmer had been in the
habit of giving her money from time to time, for which she had little
use; and this had, at the time she left home with Robert Gregory,
accumulated to rather more than a hundred pounds.

"The first thing to be done, Robert, is to find some very cheap
lodgings. How cheap could you get two little rooms?"

Robert roused himself; he was pleased at Sophy's broaching the subject;
for he had been all day wondering what they were to do, as of course it
was out of the question that they could remain where they were. It was a
small private hotel where Robert had gone the night of their return from
Scotland, thinking that their stay there would not have exceeded three
or four days at most, whereas now it had run on to more than a
fortnight.

"You are quite right, Sophy, although I did not like to begin the
conversation. It seems so hard for you, accustomed as you have been to
luxury, to go into all the discomfort of small lodgings."

"My dear Robert," Sophy said, "please don't talk in that way. I am your
wife, and shall be very happy anywhere with you; besides I have not been
always accustomed to luxury. I was born and lived until I was twelve or
thirteen in a cottage as a poor village girl. And please do not remind
me of scenes where I had no right, and where I never deserved to have
been. Do not let us think of the past at all, Robert; it is perhaps not
very pleasant for either of us. Let us think of the future--it is all
before us, and we are not worse off than thousands of others; but you
did not answer my question, how cheap could we get a little parlour and
bedroom?"

"We could get them, Sophy, in some out-of-the-way place, such as
Islington, or Camberwell, or Chelsea, at about twelve shillings a week;
but remember, they would be very small."

"That is of no consequence at all," Sophy said, cheerfully. "Now I will
tell you what I have been thinking of. I have been thinking that when we
have gone into some little lodgings, and people come to know us, the
tradesmen round will let me put some cards into the windows, saying that
a lady wishes to give some lessons in music, French, and German. If I
charge very little, say one shilling an hour, I should think I might get
five or six daily pupils, which would bring us in some thirty or
thirty-six shillings a week, and we might manage on that, Robert, for a
time; after paying our bill here, there will be enough to keep us for
some time till I can get some pupils."

"Sophy," Robert said, in a deep, husky voice, "God forgive me, I have
been a great scoundrel. I have ruined you. I have dragged you down to
this; and here are you now, hardly able to walk, offering to support us
both. Oh, Sophy, I wish to heaven I had never known you." And the
strong, bad man put his face between his hands and fairly cried.

"But I do not wish so, Robert," Sophy said, getting up from her seat,
taking his hands from his face, kissing him fondly, and then seating
herself on his knees, and nestling up to him as a child might have done;
"I do not, and therefore why should you? Would it not be a pleasure to
you to work for both of us, if you had any way to do so? but as of
course you cannot, why should I not have the pleasure? It need not in
any case be for long, dear. Agnes Ashleigh in her letter this morning
says that she does not give up hope, and that she has already got a
servant at Harmer Place to look for the secret chamber; let us wait for
the issue of the search, and let me do as I propose for that time. If
after a time the will cannot be found, will it not be better for us to
go either to Australia or America? I hear any one can get work there,
and we will both work and get quite rich, and that will be much more
enjoyable than owing it to another. I am sure Dr. Ashleigh will lend us
enough money to take us out there. What do you think, Robert?"

"Yes, darling, it will be far best. I shall never do any good here: out
there I may. But I shall not give up the will for a long time yet; but
once assured, quite assured, that it is not in existence, I shall be
ready to start with you at once."

And then they talked over a new life in a new land, as thousands and
thousands have done since then; and the future looked bright and happy
out there. Australia is indeed a land of promise, a bright star in the
horizon, to countless numbers whose fate it never is to reach it; but
who have yet--when almost hopeless of keeping themselves afloat in the
fierce struggle for existence in this crowded land--looked longingly
over across the wide ocean, and said, "At the worst, we can go there,
where every strong arm and willing heart is welcome. If we cannot get on
here, we will go." Perhaps they never do go, but still it has served its
purpose; it has given them hope when hope was most needed, and when
without it they might have yielded in despair to the reverses of
fortune.

The next morning Robert Gregory started in search of lodgings, and
returned in the afternoon, saying that he had found some across in
Lambeth, which were very small, but were clean and respectable, and
which were to be had for the twelve shillings a week. Into this they
moved next day, and they found on paying their hotel bill, that they had
twenty pounds left out of Sophy's hundred, and this they calculated
would, with care, last for three months. The lodgings, which were
situated in King Edward Street, Westminster Bridge Road, consisted of a
parlour, and bedroom behind it. The parlour was very small, but clean,
and Sophy felt quite happy as mistress of her little domain, which under
her care soon assumed a homelike appearance.

The first step was to clear away those innumerable extraordinary
knicknacks with which small lodging-house keepers delight to cumber
their rooms. The inevitable shepherdesses and imitation Bohemian glass
vases on the mantelpiece, the equally inevitable shells on coloured
worsted mats, and the basket of wax fruit under a glass shade, standing
on the little round table in the middle of the window.

These alterations the landlady complied with without hesitation, rather
pleased indeed that these valuables should be placed beyond risk of
breakage; but the next change proposed was evidently very wounding to
her feelings, and was not complied with until it was made the sole
condition on which her lodgers would take the rooms beyond the first
week for which they had engaged them.

Over the chimneypiece was a glass, about three feet by two; it could not
fairly be termed a looking-glass, for its ripply surface seemed agitated
as by a gale, and no reflexion which it gave back in the slightest
degree resembled the original. Still it was to a certain extent
ornamental; for it was enclosed in a wide, dark wood frame, with a gilt
ornament at each corner, which in summer Mrs. Billow protected by
elaborate fly-papers of red, blue, and yellow. As this glass, although
not useful, was so ornamental, no objection was raised to it. On the
walls round the room were suspended a great variety of pictures, mostly
landscapes, in the pure tea-tray style. These as a general thing,
although by no means ornamental in themselves, yet served to enliven the
very dingy paper, and to them too, as a whole, no objection was taken;
but on the side opposite to the fireplace hung two half-length
portraits, which at once inevitably and unpleasantly attracted the
attention of any one entering the room--almost, indeed, to the exclusion
of everything else. These were the portraits of Mr. Billow, the
landlord, and his wife, taken when they were much younger, probably at
the time of their nuptials. These paintings were in the early
Pre-Raphaelite style. Their dresses were of an elaborate description;
the lady in green silk, with a gold brooch of immense size and massive
pattern; the gentleman in blue coat, black satin waistcoat, showing an
immense extent of white shirt, and a resplendent watch chain. Their
faces were charmingly pink and white, perfectly flat, and with an entire
absence of shade. They were alike characterized by a ghastly smile
impressed upon them, and a staring fixed look in the eyes very painful
to behold. This stare of their eyes looked into every corner of the
room, and could in no way be avoided. Robert declared that it was as bad
as a nightmare; and even Sophy, disposed as she was to be pleased, and
to like everything, confessed that she really should feel uncomfortable
with those staring eyes constantly watching her. Mrs. Billow urged that
they were considered remarkable pieces of art, and had been very much
admired; indeed that when they were first painted the artist had
frequently asked permission to bring strangers in to see them, as they
were quite an advertisement for him.

Sophy seeing that Robert was about to express an opinion respecting the
portraits which would irreparably injure the feelings of their landlady,
hastily said, "That, beyond question, they were remarkable paintings;
but that she had been ill, and that the eyes had such a very lifelike
expression, that she should never feel quiet and alone with them looking
at her."

Mrs. Billow thereupon acceded, and the cherished portraits were removed
upstairs to her own bedroom, leaving two large light patches upon the
dingy paper. They were, however, partially covered by two framed prints,
which were displaced upstairs to make room for the portraits.

After a few days, when they were settled, and found that they should be
comfortable, Robert wrote to Miss Harmer, requesting that Sophy's things
might be forwarded to her there.

In a few days a railway van arrived with quite a number of packages. All
Sophy's wearing apparel, her work-table, her desk and music-stand; all
the paintings she had executed under a master at school, and which had
been framed and hung in the drawing-room at Harmer Place; her books; her
grand piano, given to her by Mr. Harmer when she left school, and which
was much too large to go into their little room, and was therefore sent
to a warehouse for the present, to be reclaimed or sold, according as
their circumstances might demand; and lastly, a pony-carriage, with two
beautiful ponies, which Mr. Harmer had presented to her a few months
before his death.

This was at once sent to be sold, and the money it fetched was a welcome
addition to their little store, which the amount to be paid for the
conveyance of all these things had nearly exhausted.

The ponies and carriage fetched seventy guineas, and Robert was at once
anxious to move into larger lodgings; but Sophy persuaded him to wait as
they were for the present, at any rate, until they saw what success
attended her project for teaching. The only thing to which she would
agree was that a few shillings should be laid out in repapering their
sitting-room; and when this was done with a light, pretty paper, all the
tea-tray landscapes removed, and her own paintings hung up in their
place, the room looked so different that Sophy was quite delighted with
it, and even Robert allowed that, although very small, it was really a
pretty, snug little room.

In a short time, Sophy went round to the various tradesmen in the
neighbourhood with whom they dealt, and asked them to allow her modest
little cards to appear in their windows; and in a month she had obtained
two pupils, three times a week, for an hour in French or German, and
three every day for an hour in music--in all twenty-four shillings a
week.

It was tedious work, no doubt; but Sophy felt so much pleasure in
bringing home her earnings at the end of the week, that, as she said,
she really liked it. Besides this, it was a break to the monotony of her
life; for, after a while, Robert took to going out after breakfast and
not returning until five o'clock to dinner, being engaged, as he said,
in looking for something to do; and, indeed, he did believe that he was
trying very hard to get employment, although he had not the least idea
what kind of work he needed. He sauntered across the bridge, went into a
public-house to read the paper, and look through all the advertisements
in the vague hope of seeing something to suit him. Three or four
advertisements, indeed, he answered; but received no reply. Still he
comforted himself with the assurance that it did not matter for
that--the will was sure to be found; and that it was therefore really as
well that he should not undertake a situation which he should, when he
became a rich man, be sorry that he had filled. For the same reason he
tried hard to persuade Sophy not to enter into the teaching business, as
it would be humiliating to look back upon afterwards; but Sophy replied
that she could see nothing to be ashamed of in the remembrance that she
had tried her best to get her living, at a time when she had thought it
necessary that she should do so. And in this particular she insisted on
having her own way.

After another month Sophy got four more pupils, but two of them were in
the evening, and this brought with it a more than countervailing
drawback; for Robert was now left at home by himself on the evenings
when she gave her lessons. Finding his own society dull, he would
saunter out to seek other companionship, and on one or two of these
occasions he came back with his face flushed, his tread unsteady, and
his voice thick and uncertain; and Sophy felt with a terrible fear that
his old habits were coming back upon him, and that, even for her sake,
he could not keep from drink. On the morning after the first time that
this happened, he was very penitent, called himself hard names, and
promised that it should not happen again; but after a time he ceased to
make excuses for himself, but was only sulky and sullen of a morning as
if he resented the reproaches which Sophy never made. Sophy's evil time
was coming, and she felt it; the bright smile with which she had lit up
their little home, came only with an effort now; the roses which had
began to bloom in her pale cheeks, faded out again, but she bore it
unflinchingly. Sophy was a quiet, undemonstrative girl, but she had a
brave heart; she felt that she deserved any punishment she might
receive, and she tried hard to bear it uncomplainingly. When Robert
found this, and that no cold looks or reproaches greeted him, he did try
hard to please the patient loving woman who had suffered so much for his
sake, and withdrew himself, for awhile, from the new friends he was
making. Sophy on her part gave up her evening pupils, and stopped at
home with him; and so for a time things went on smoothly again.

Sophy had now become accustomed to the place, and had learned from Mrs.
Billow--who was a good-hearted, talkative old woman, in a very large
cap, and who waited upon them herself--all about their various
neighbours. King Edward Street was a quiet, semi-respectable little
street, and although it was a thoroughfare leading into the Westminster
Bridge Road, very few people except its own inhabitants ever passed
through it. It was, it seemed, quite a little professional colony. Next
door, in the parlours, played first violin at a theatre on that side of
the water, and the one beyond that was second cornet at the Adelphi. The
two sisters in the house opposite danced in the ballet at the opera, and
worked as milliners in their spare time; next door was a comic singer at
Cremorne; and beyond him again lived a leading star and his wife--who
was a singing chambermaid, both at the Victoria. They were a kindly,
cheerful lot, sociable among themselves, and ready to do any kindness or
service to each other. There were a few black sheep among them, but the
very blackest of all, Robert and Sophy now suspected Mr. Billow himself,
to be.

Mr. Billow was a bad-tempered, cross-grained old man, dirty, and almost
always unshaven, very unlike the pink and white gentleman which his
portrait represented him to have been; indeed it is almost certain that
his habits must have changed greatly for the worse since that was taken;
for it was otherwise inconceivable how he could ever have got himself up
in that dazzling degree of cleanliness, both of face and shirt front.
Mr. Billow's ordinary custom was to get drunk three or four times a day,
and then to doze by the fireside into a state of comparative sobriety.
All this was bad, but it was not the worst.

Mr. Billow was supposed to be a retired watchmaker, living upon his
savings, but he was in reality engaged in a far more profitable trade
than that had ever been. At various times of the day ill-looking fellows
would lounge in at the little front gate, and instead of going up the
stairs to the front door, would knock at the window, and be admitted by
a little door under the steps into the kitchen. Mr. Billow would then
postpone his sleep for a few minutes, tell Mrs. Billow to "hook it;" and
when alone, would enter into a low but animated conversation with his
visitors, who had generally small parcels of goods to display to him;
the ownership of these, after much altercation, generally changed
hands--that is to say the nominal ownership, the real owner being some
third person, whose rights and interests were entirely unrepresented and
overlooked. Sometimes men would come in the same way late of an evening,
with a bundle too large to be carried openly through the streets in the
broad daylight; and on all these occasions Mrs. Billow was dismissed
while the conversation was going on. Once, too, at three or four in the
morning, Robert Gregory hearing a noise below, went down, stairs and
found Mr. Billow engaged over a fire in the kitchen, apparently cooking.
Finding that all was safe, Robert had gone up to bed again, and in the
morning, Mrs. Billow mentioned casually that Mr. Billow had started very
early, and that Robert had found him cooking his breakfast. But Robert
knew that if Mr. Billow had required breakfast at any hour, his wife
would have had to get up to prepare it; he had moreover detected that
the smell of the ingredients in the pot on the fire, much more resembled
the fumes of melting metal, than the savory steam of Mr. Billow's
breakfast. He was therefore confirmed in what he had previously strongly
suspected, namely, that his landlord was neither more nor less than a
receiver of stolen goods. Sophy objected to this, "Why then should he
let lodgings?" But Robert told her, with a laugh, that this was merely a
blind to deceive the police as to the character of the house. Sophy when
she made this discovery, wished at once to leave their lodgings, but
Robert said that it could make no difference to them what the old rogue
was; that the lodgings were clean and comfortable, and that it would be
a pity to change without some better reason. And so, this time against
Sophy's judgment, they determined to stay for the present as they were.




CHAPTER V.

OVERTURES FROM THE ENEMY.


I have as yet said nothing about my own feelings during these three
months, nor told how I bore the loss. At first I felt it very, very
much. I made sure the will was gone for ever; and although I had
concerted with Harry our plan to find the secret chamber, and pretended
to believe in it, I did so with the same feeling with which, as a child,
one pretends a chair is a ship, and makes voyages upon it; shouting as
lustily as if on board a real vessel, apparently quite as anxious if an
imaginary wind arises and threatens to wreck our bark, and making our
escape on to the sofa, which represents a desert island, with as much
joy as if our rescue had been all real.

We elders smile at these pretences, and wonder at the lively interest,
the loud joy, and the terrible panics with which children enter into
these imaginary games of theirs; but I am sure we often play at ships
too. We make believe that our barks are going safe to port, and sing
poeans of joy, while in our heart of hearts we know it is quite
otherwise, and that a disastrous shipwreck is inevitable; we ignore the
threatening black cloud on the horizon, and congratulate ourselves that
the sun is shining so brightly. Some of us, indeed, do this through
long, long years--play it till the curtain falls, and all play is over.

I do not think that men thus wilfully shut their eyes as we women do:
they have not the same happy faculty for self-deceit. But do we not all
know many women who are for ever playing this game of ships? Do they not
cling confidently all their lives to the idea that the bark to which
they have entrusted themselves and their fortunes is indeed a gallant
vessel, built of true heart of oak, marked A 1, fit to contend against
any tempest and storm whatever, and certain to make a delightful and
prosperous voyage to the end--cling to it even when the rotten timbers
show through as soon as the fresh paint wears off, even when the water
pours in through the leaky sides, and she tosses about without helm or
rudder, a mere sport to every breeze? Happy are the women who are adepts
at playing at this game--happy those who can go through life persisting
in it; driving back with angry self-reproach any thought which may
intrude itself that their dolls are not princesses--that the idol which
they worship is not a god after all, but a mere image, made of very
common clay indeed.

So I played at ships with myself, and made believe that we were certain
to find the secret chamber. After a time, indeed, I did come to believe
in it--that is, after we had put the plan together, and found out
whereabouts it lay,--but even then an incredulous doubt would
occasionally occur, which, however, I never allowed to stop there long.
All this wore me very much--this constant anxiety, this endeavour to be
cheerful, this trying to believe that all would be right yet.

When the news of Mr. Harmer's death came to us at Ramsgate, I had
written to Lady Desborough, and had received in reply from her a letter
of condolence, which indeed, from the tone it was written in, resembled
rather one of congratulation. It was evident that Lady Desborough
considered that L25,000 at once was a very much more comfortable thing
than L10,000 on my marriage, and the remaining L15,000 at some
uncertain, and perhaps distant, period. Ada and Percy both wrote, really
sympathizing with me in the loss of so very dear and kind a friend.

When, however, I had to write, ten days after, and say that the will was
missing, I confess that I did so almost with the feelings of a man
signing his own death-warrant. I wrote to Ada this time, and related the
whole history to her. I told her--what I tried to believe myself--that
we might find it yet; indeed, that we did not by any means give up all
hope. I said that we felt quite sure that it was concealed in a secret
chamber, and that until we found that chamber we should never give up
the search. In truth, I was a coward--I dreaded what might happen if I
said that all hope was gone, and that I had no idea of ever finding it;
for that I knew would bring on a crisis from which, although I felt sure
it must some day come, I shrank with a terrible fear. I believe now that
if I had allowed to myself that it was hopeless, I should, whatever came
of it, have written and said so; but I was playing at ships, and I
really persuaded myself that I believed as I wrote.

Ada's answer came in a day or two; it was, as I knew it would be,
everything which was kind and affectionate. She "was sorry, so, so sorry
for us all," and she was indignant and furious against "those dreadful
old hags," as she irreverently termed the Misses Harmer, "and she should
only like--" and Ada's wishes and intentions towards them were terrible.
Nothing indeed could be kinder or more satisfactory than the first part
of Ada's letter; but when she came to write about her mamma, her pen
evidently went slower, and her words were cautiously chosen. Mamma, she
said, was very sorry indeed to hear of the will being missing, and
indeed was made quite ill by the news. She begged her to say how much
she condoled with me upon it, and what a dreadful affair it was. "In
short," Ada finally scribbled, evidently puzzled how to put it--"in
short, you know exactly what mamma would say under the circumstances."

Ada and I continued to correspond regularly, and I kept her posted up in
the proceedings of our plot to discover the chamber. In answer to the
joyous letter I wrote to Ada after Christmas--saying that we had
discovered one of the secret openings which opened the door, and had now
every hope of finding the other--Lady Desborough herself wrote, for the
first time since the will had been lost. She said how glad she was that,
after all, it seemed by what Ada said, we were likely to find the
missing will, and regain our fortunes. She stated that she had always
expressed herself as certain that the infamous conspiracy against us
would be defeated, and she wound up by saying that she sincerely trusted
that the document would be discovered before long, both for my sake and
Percy's, who, she believed, would sail for India in the following
autumn.

As I read this letter, it appeared to me that the pith of the whole
contents was contained in that last line. To me it said as plainly as if
she had so written it--"He goes to India in the autumn, but, of course,
unless you find the will before that, he will have to go without you." I
was neither hurt nor surprised at this. I knew Lady Desborough well
enough to be perfectly assured that with her consent I should never
marry Percy unless I regained the lost fortune.

Percy's letters to me were always alike; he told me that he did not care
whether I had the fortune or not. That for my own sake he should of
course have preferred that I should have had money, in order that in our
Indian home we might be surrounded by more comforts and luxuries, but
that for no other reason did he in the least care. That, of course, his
pay as a cornet was next to nothing, but he expected that before many
months he should get a step. He calculated that his lieutenant's pay in
India, with the staff appointment--which he made sure, from his
proficiency in the native languages, he should speedily obtain--together
with the L300 a year his mother allowed him, would enable us to live in
tolerable comfort.

He spoke always of the L300 a year as if it were a certainty, but I was
sure that in case of his marrying me his mother would at once stop it.

Lady Desborough, although she lived in so fashionable a style, was by no
means a very rich woman. Her income, with the trifling exception of her
pension as a General's widow, was derived entirely from property she
possessed previous to her marriage, and which had been settled upon her
at that time. Of this she had the entire income during her lifetime, and
could leave it as she chose between her children.

Percy's letters to me were very loving and tender, and he was never
tired of drawing happy pictures of our future. My answers to him, since
the loss of the will, were not less loving, perhaps, than before; but
they were far less confident and hopeful, and I could not trust myself
to speak much of a future which I so feared in my heart could never come
for me.

Altogether, I was very nervous and anxious all this time, and I looked
forward to Sarah's communications with feverish eagerness. I felt that
to me far more depended on the discovery of this will than the mere
matter of money. It was not the question of wealth or the reverse, it
was--a life of happiness with Percy, or one of solitary unhappiness. Had
it not been for the search Sarah was making, which kept hope alive, I
should have felt it even more than I did. But when the secret spring was
found, I did begin to think that all would come right again.

On New Year's Day we had a great surprise--a letter came to papa from
Miss Harmer; a messenger brought it, and it was sent in just as we had
finished dinner. Papa opened it, glanced it through, and gave a long
whistle of astonishment. "The man who brought this is not waiting, I
suppose?" he asked the servant.

"No, sir, he said that he was told there was no answer."

"You can clear away the dinner things at once, and put the dessert on."

We were all quiet while this was being done, wondering what it could be
about--and papa was evidently waiting only till the servant left the
room to read the letter to us. When she had finished, and had gone out,
without any preface he opened the letter and read it aloud:--

     "Dear Dr. Ashleigh,

     "The will of our late brother Herbert not having been found,
     and it therefore being now extremely improbable that it ever
     will be so, my sister and myself have naturally, as his only
     relatives, come into possession of his property. At our death
     that property will go, as originally intended by our elder
     brothers, to the destination from which it was only diverted by
     one of those extraordinary combinations of events by which
     Providence sometimes upsets our best-laid plans. My brother
     Herbert had, however, some property of his own, which he
     acquired in India, in addition to that which he inherited from
     his brothers. The amount of this property was, our man of
     business informs us, about L30,000. This sum we propose to
     devote to carrying out a portion of his expressed wishes. We
     are willing therefore to pay over at once the sum of L10,000 to
     each of your children--on the one condition that not one single
     penny shall they ever directly or indirectly bestow to or for
     the benefit of the person formerly known as Sophy Needham, and
     now as Sophy Gregory, she having by her conduct caused our
     brother's death. And that they all bind themselves to this
     condition under an oath solemnly taken on the Bible, and under
     penalty of forfeiture of the amount should this condition not
     be strictly observed.

     "Awaiting your reply,
     "&c., &c.,
     "CECILIA AND ANGELA HARMER."

What an astonishment that was to us, and in what silent amazement we
looked at each other when papa had finished reading the letter.

No one spoke for some time.

At last papa said, "This is a very serious question, my dears; and the
offer ought to be thoroughly discussed before being either accepted or
refused. L10,000 each is a handsome provision for you. It will start
Harry in a good business, and it will enable you girls to marry well and
yet to feel that you bring your share to the expenses of the household."
And here papa glanced at me, and I saw at once that although he had
never spoken to me on the subject, he had yet thought a good deal about
my engagement with Percy. He then went on: "All this is the bright side
of the picture--now for the reverse;--you are unquestionably entitled to
a much larger amount, and those who make this offer are the very people
who are keeping you out of it. Then, too, the condition about Sophy is
most repugnant; as you would naturally have wished in the event of your
accepting this sum, to make her at any rate an equal participator in it
with each of yourselves. The matter is one which must be thought over
very seriously, and no conclusion should be hastily arrived at. Talk it
over quietly together: it is a question on which I would rather give no
opinion whatever, but leave you to decide it entirely by yourselves."

"There is one thing, papa, you have not mentioned," Polly said, "and
that is, that if we take this money we must give up all search for the
will; we cannot accept the Misses Harmer's money, and then get their
servants to work against them."

"Certainly, my dear; that must of course be quite understood. If you
accept this money, you must give up all further search for the will, and
dismiss all idea of ever hearing of it again. There, don't say any more
about it now. Let us have a glass of wine and some nuts, and after that
I shall go into my study, and you can talk it over among yourselves."

When papa left us, we drew round the fire, and Harry said the first
thing to be done was to smoke the calumet of council; accordingly in a
minute or two he was puffing clouds of smoke from an immense meerschaum,
of which he was very proud.

"Now," he said, "the council is begun; let my sisters speak."

Neither of us took advantage of the invitation, but sat looking steadily
into the fire.

Polly--who was now sixteen, and who had grown up a very dear, loveable
girl--was seated between us, in a high-backed, old-fashioned chair, with
her feet on a low stool. I have not hitherto described her, and I could
not choose a moment to do so in which she would look prettier than she
did as she sat there; with the light on the table behind her shining on
the gold of her hair, and her face lit only by the dancing light of the
fire. She was a blonde, her hair looked almost brown in shadow; but when
the light fell on it, it had still the bright golden tinge that every
one had admired when she was a child. Her eyes were a pure blue, her
complexion was bright and clear, she had a particularly lithe lissom
figure, and her small head was very gracefully set on her neck and
shoulders. She was very lively and full of fun; indeed I sometimes had
to call her to order. She was a little positive and wilful sometimes,
but she was a very loving and loveable girl. She was at present hardly
as tall as I was, but as she had another year to grow, it was very
probable she would be the taller in time. She had very long eyelashes,
nearly the longest I ever saw, and these added greatly to the effect of
her great blue eyes. The mouth and nose might both have been better, but
for all that she had grown into a very pretty girl.

"Well, girls, what do you think about this offer of ours?" Harry
repeated, finding that neither of us answered him.

My own mind was pretty well made up on the subject, but I wished to hear
what the others thought, so I said, "What do you think yourself about
it, Harry?"

Harry did not seem more inclined to give an opinion than we had been,
for he sat and puffed out such huge volumes of smoke, that Polly
threatened to take his pipe away if he did not smoke more quietly. At
last he took it from between his lips, and began: "The fact is, girls, I
am loath to give my opinion, not because I have not one, but because I
do not wish to influence you. Your cases are so very different from
mine, that there is no comparison at all between us. I am now just
twenty-one; I am in a position to keep myself, and consequently the
advantage this sum of money would be to me, is not sufficient to
counterbalance the repugnance I feel--as far as I am concerned--to
taking the money from these women who have robbed us. Still understand,
I am not so much against it as to decide to refuse it, should you both
agree to accept it. This is rather a suggestion of mine, as it were,
than a positive and final opinion. I mean to say that for my own sake I
certainly would not accept of the offer, but you are so differently
placed that if you give your vote for accepting it, I shall be quite
ready to agree with you."

Harry made this unusually long speech, for him, with some difficulty. I
could see that personally he was very strongly opposed to taking any
favour from the Misses Harmer, after the way in which they had treated
us. Being quite of the same opinion myself, I thought the matter was
settled, as I made sure Polly would refuse. When Harry had done, he took
another puff or two at his pipe, and then turning to Polly, who was next
to him, said,--

"Now, Polly, you have heard what I have to say, let us have your
opinion."

For some time sister Polly did not answer, but sat gazing into the fire,
with the long lashes nearly shading her eyes, and looking more womanly
and thoughtful than I had ever seen her before. At last, without moving,
or lifting her eyes, she said,--

"I think we had better accept."

Harry, evidently surprised, gave one or two short puffs at his pipe. I
was myself astonished. I had made sure that Polly would of all the three
be the most indignant and determined to reject the offer; for she had
been most bitter in her invectives at the Misses Harmer, and money had
at present no particular value in her eyes. However, I made no remark
expressive of my surprise, but only said,--

"Let us have your reasons, Polly."

"Yes," Harry repeated, "let us have your reasons."

Polly was again silent a little, and sat thoughtfully twining her long
taper fingers one over the other; then without looking up she asked,--

"Is it understood and agreed between us that two votes carry the day?"

"Certainly," I said, knowing that my vote would be on Harry's side.

"Quite so," Harry agreed, "if you two girls make up your minds that it
is best to accept this offer, I, as I said before, shall offer no
objection."

"Well then, Harry, I say--accept, and I will tell you why;" and now,
although Polly had not changed her attitude, she spoke clearly and
firmly, and her eyes were fixed on the fire with a steady resolute look.
"But you must both agree not to interrupt me till I have done."

"I promise," Harry said, looking rather puzzled at Polly's very unusual
demeanour.

"I promise," I repeated, amused and rather surprised, too.

"Very well," Polly said, "please remember that. Now, Harry, you are a
great big strong fellow, but you know you are hardly fit to entrust any
delicate business to, and that in any affair of that sort you would know
no more than a child."

"Well, Miss Polly," Harry said in astonishment, taking his pipe out of
his mouth, "you are a pretty cool hand to talk to your elders; what
next, I wonder!"

"You promised not to interrupt, Harry. As I said, you are very good and
kind, and all that, but you know you are not--not so to say sharp."

I could hardly help laughing, Harry's eyes opened so very wide in
amazement at the girl's remarks, and Polly herself was looking so very
serious and earnest.

"Now we women----"

"We women, indeed!" Harry repeated.

"Yes, we women," Polly continued unmoved,--"I have left school now, and
I am more of a woman as far as these things go than you are of a man--we
women look very deeply into these matters. Now there is only one of us
three, who, as we stand at present, will be greatly affected by this
gift. I do not say that L10,000 is not a nice sum to have, or that it
might not some day assist me to get a husband, but at present I can
manage very well without one----"

"I should think so," put in Harry.

"And you can get on without it, and keep yourself comfortably. Therefore
to us the money has no peculiar charms at present, and we might both be
rather disposed to refuse it, than to accept it as a gift from people
who have robbed us of a large sum. There is a good deal in that, Harry,
is there not?"

Harry nodded; he had not yet sufficiently recovered from the
astonishment into which the position of superiority taken up by Polly
had thrown him, while I on my part could not fancy what was coming next.

"Well you see, Harry, we have agreed that we neither of us are in a
position rightly to estimate the value of this L10,000 at present. Now
Agnes, on the contrary, is in a position to appreciate it keenly."

Here Harry again opened his eyes, and looked at me with such
astonishment, that I really thought he must fancy that I wanted the
money to pay off a gambling debt or something of that sort.

"Agnes appreciate it!" he exclaimed.

"Of course," Polly said; "and please do not interrupt me so, Harry. Now
this L10,000 will, in all probability, be the turning-point in Agnes's
life, and her future happiness or unhappiness may depend upon it. Let us
see how she is situated. She is engaged to Percy Desborough----"

"Thank goodness," Harry muttered to himself, "she has said something I
can understand at last."

"She is engaged to him, and he is a capital fellow; but for all that
unless we find the will, or she has this L10,000, she knows, and I know
it by her face, that it may be years before she marries Percy
Desborough, if she ever does so."

"By George," Harry exclaimed, taking his pipe suddenly from his mouth,
and jumping up from his chair,--"By George, if I thought for a moment
that Percy Desborough----"

"There, you will interrupt me, Harry," Polly said, looking for the first
time up from the fire with a little glance of amusement into his angry
face. "Do sit down and hear me out, and you will see that there is no
vengeance to be taken upon any one."

Harry looked more than half inclined to be very angry; however he
resumed his seat, and took short sulky puffs at his pipe.

"The fact is, Harry, you have heard of Lady Desborough, and from what
you have heard you must know----"

"My dear Polly," I interrupted in my turn, assured at last that she had
intuitively arrived at a correct conclusion about the state of my
engagement with Percy,--"My dear Polly----"

"My dear Agnes," she said, "you promised to hear me out. But, my
darling,"--and she spoke in a very soft tender voice, turning round to
me, and laying her hand on mine,--"you know what I am going to say to
Harry; if it is painful, will you go away till I have done? Harry must
hear it before he can come to any correct conclusion about this money."

I shook my head silently, but pressed her hand, which, while she went
on, still remained resting in mine.

"Lady Desborough," and now she was looking steadily into the fire again,
as if she read there all she was saying, "is a proud woman of the world,
very ambitious, and very self-willed. Had Percy followed her wishes, and
remained in the Guards, she would have expected him to have made a
first-rate match; as it is, she could not hope that any earl's daughter
would unite her fortunes to those of a cornet in a cavalry regiment, and
troop with him out to India. When Percy therefore succeeded in
persuading our Agnes here, that it was the best thing she could do, Lady
Desborough was delighted at the match, which, with Agnes's L25,000, was
vastly better than she could have expected. But when Mr. Harmer dies,
what happens? Agnes has no fortune. All this time that I have been at
school since Mr. Harmer died, and the will was missing, I have wondered
and thought over what Lady Desborough would do. I came to the conclusion
that she would wait for a bit, and would take no decided steps until it
was clear that the will would never be found, but that unquestionably
when it was proved to be gone she would interfere to break off the
engagement between Percy and Agnes. I come back here, and what do I
find? I find very little said about the engagement, and Agnes looking
pale and depressed. Percy's letters come regularly; Agnes takes them up
into her room, and comes down again after a very long time, with flushed
cheeks, and a soft look, and yet not perfectly happy--that is not
brightly happy. What does this mean? Just what I had anticipated. Percy
is unchanged; the money, in his eyes, makes no difference whatever, but
there is an obstacle somewhere; that obstacle being of course Lady
Desborough. Probably by the continuance of the correspondence, she has
not yet given up hopes of the will being found, and has not therefore
taken any decided step, but has, I should imagine, plainly shown what
her intentions will be if the fortune is not recovered. In support of
this view, I see Agnes absorbed in the result of this search for the
secret room; I saw her delight when one of the hidden springs was
found--and this not because Agnes loves money, but because she loves
Percy Desborough, and knows that without the fortune she cannot be
married to him."

"Why cannot Percy marry her in spite of his mother?" Harry growled in an
unconvinced way. "He is not a boy; why can he not do as he likes?"

"Because his present income and his future fortune depend upon her. I
heard Agnes say so the last time I was at home. She could refuse to
allow him one penny, and leave every farthing she possesses to Ada. You
don't suppose that a subaltern in a cavalry regiment can keep a wife on
his pay, even if Agnes would marry him under the circumstances, which
she would not. Is all this true, Agnes darling?" she said, turning again
to me, and this time I saw the tears were brimming up in her great blue
eyes.

"You are certainly a witch, Polly," I answered, trying to smile, but the
tears were stealing down my cheeks too, as I got up and kissed her
flushed face very tenderly and affectionately. To me all this was a
perfect revelation. Here was my little sister Polly, whom I had always
looked upon as a mere child, thinking and talking like a woman, and a
very sensible, loving woman, too. I felt that in that half hour's
conversation my child-sister was gone for ever, and that I had gained in
her place a dear friend in whom I could trust and confide every secret
of my heart. As for Harry, he was completely silenced.

"Well, oh most sapient brother," Polly asked, turning to him in her old
laughing way, "do you confess that all this never entered into your
mind; indeed, that you knew no more about it than the man in the moon?"

"By Jove!" Harry said with a great effort, "I confess you have fairly
astonished me, as much by yourself as by your story. I think that you
are right, and that in these matters you are more of a woman than I am
of a man. How you found this all out I cannot conceive; it certainly
never entered into my head. I thought of the effect which the money
would have upon myself, and upon you, but Agnes I hardly took into
consideration. I thought of her marriage with Percy as a sort of settled
thing, and knowing him to have a handsome allowance, I never gave her
case a second thought. But I see you are quite right, and that we must,
of course, accept this money."

"Indeed, we will not," I said; "with my consent, this money shall never
be accepted."

"That is not fair, Agnes," Polly said. "You know we agreed that two
votes should carry the day."

"I did, Polly; but I have a right to say what I think about it before it
is put to the vote. I acknowledge all that Polly has said about my
affairs to be true. I allow that I do believe that my marriage with
Percy depends upon this will being found. But for all that, I say we
cannot take this money. These women have robbed us of L25,000 each; they
have robbed Sophy of L75,000; robbed us as actually as if they had
stolen it from our possession--and now they offer, as a gift, L10,000
each to us. If we take it, it is on an understanding that we renounce
all further claim, that we receive it as a free gift from these enemies
of ours; and by this act not only should we, as it were, pledge
ourselves to make no further efforts to find the will, we should not
only sell our birthright to our enemies, but we should be bound to
desert Sophy, and so leave her in hopeless poverty, for without our
assistance she has not the slightest chance of ever finding the will.
All this would be a miserable degradation--a degradation so deep that
nothing could satisfy our own consciences to it; even my marriage to
Percy could not reconcile it to myself, and he himself would blame me
for it. No, no, dears, this would be a shameful action. Let us refuse it
at once. You, I know, would do it for my sake; but I would not do it for
myself, much less allow you to do so. We have really, at present, strong
hopes of finding the will; let us trust to that; let us believe that in
the end we shall be righted. If not, God's will be done. The evil may
seem to prosper at present, but at any rate let us make no terms with
it."

Polly and Harry were both silent. Polly was crying fast now--crying,
that her little scheme for my happiness had failed; but yet they both
felt as I did, and she could urge nothing further.

"There, dears, I know you both agree with me in your hearts, so let us
say no more about it."

And so it was settled; and when papa came in soon after, I told him that
we were unanimously of opinion that the money could not be accepted.
Papa then said, that although he had not wished to bias us in our
decision, yet that he quite agreed with us, and was very glad we had so
decided. So the next day he wrote to Miss Harmer, acknowledging the
receipt of her letter, and stating that, for various reasons into which
it was not necessary to enter, we felt ourselves obliged to decline the
offer. This affair had one consequence among us, and that was, that
Polly henceforth occupied a very different position amongst us from what
she had heretofore done. Harry looked up to her as a prodigy of
intellect and acuteness; and I myself felt deeply not only her
intelligence, but the thoughtful, loving kindness she had evinced
towards me. From that time Polly became quite one of ourselves; and,
indeed, I think that insensibly she fell into her natural position as
the clever one of the family.




CHAPTER VI.

THE PRIEST'S CHAMBER.


I was very glad that Polly had left school and come home for good. It
was far more cheerful and pleasant than it had been at all since I left
school. Polly made the place so cheerful with her bright happy smile,
and was so full of life and fun, that I never found time to sit and
muse, and wonder and fret over the future, as I had done before she came
home. She never left me long alone for any time, but every day would
make me go out for long walks with her, and indeed devoted herself
entirely to cheering and amusing me. Papa too very much recovered his
spirits under her genial influence; and altogether she made our home
much brighter and more cheerful than before.

So our life went on for nearly three months, and then one Friday evening
I was told that Sarah was below waiting to speak to me. I was rather
surprised, for she had been to the house very seldom before, and then
always on Sunday evenings.

However, the moment she came in, I saw that she had something very
important to tell. Her bright face was quite pale with excitement, and
her whole figure was in a nervous tremble.

"Oh, miss," she burst out directly the door was closed behind her, "Oh,
miss, I have found the secret door!"

Although I had tried all along to hope that she would some day do so,
that hope had been so long deferred that it had almost died away; and
now at the sudden news, I felt all the blood rush to my heart, the room
swam round with me, and I sat on a chair quite overwhelmed by the sudden
shock.

"Shall I get you some water, miss?"

"No, no, Sarah, I shall be myself in a minute or two."

I had to sit quiet a little time, before I could steady myself
sufficiently to listen to the account of the wonderful discovery, which
was to lead to fortune and happiness. Then I said,--

"I am not very strong, Sarah, and the surprise has been almost too much
for me, for I own I hardly expected that you ever would find it. Now
tell me all about it, or stay, let me ask papa and my sister to come in
to share in this wonderful news of yours." So saying, I ran down to the
study where papa was busy writing.

"Papa," I said, "I want you to come up stairs directly."

"What for my dear? I am really very busy at present."

"Never mind, papa; but put by your writing at once and come up. Sarah is
here, and oh, papa, she has found the secret door."

"That is news, indeed!" papa said, pushing back his chair at once; "I am
sure I never expected it."

So saying, he followed me upstairs. I called Polly as we went up, and
she came running up after us, and as she went into the drawing-room with
me, I whispered to her that the secret door was found. She gave me a
little squeeze of congratulation, and I saw that even in that first
flush of pleasure at the news, it was only the consequences to me that
she thought of, and that her own personal interest in the matter never
entered into her mind.

"Well, Sarah," papa began, "so I hear you have discovered the secret
entrance at last."

"Yes sir, I have. From the time I found the first spring at Christmas, I
have never ceased looking for another one. I had felt every knob on the
fireplace and chimneypiece, and every stone up the chimney as far as I
could reach. You know, sir, it is only in the half hour I get of a
morning by being up before the other servants that I can try; indeed I
only have half that time, for I must get some of the shutters open and
appear to have began to do something to account for my time. Well, sir,
at last I really seemed to have tried everywhere, and I almost gave up
all hope of finding it, although I had quite made up my mind to go on
searching as long as I stayed there, even if it was for ten years. Well,
sir, yesterday morning I quite got out of temper with the thing, and I
sat down on the ground in the great fireplace quite out of heart; my
face was quite close to the great iron dogs, so I said, "Drat you, you
look for all the world as if you were putting out your long tongues at
me;" and I took hold of the tongue nearest to me, and gave it a twist,
and do you know, sir, it quite gave me a turn to find that the tongue
twisted round in my hand. I twisted and twisted till the tongue came out
in my hand, then I touched the spring behind the mantel, but nothing
moved; then I tried the tongue of the other dog, and that came out too;
but still nothing moved. Just then I heard the cook moving in the
kitchen, so I had to put the tongues back again and go to my work; but
all day I hardly knew whether I stood on my head or my heels, I wanted
so much to see whether anything would come of it. Well, miss, this
morning I got up quite early, and unscrewed the dogs' tongues, and
looked in the places they had come out of, but could not see anything.
Then I pushed the sharp end of the tongue into the hole, and twisted and
poked about, but I could not find anything moved; then I put that tongue
in again, and tried the other, and directly I pushed the sharp end in, I
felt something give way, and then I heard a click. I jumped up and
pushed the knob in the chimney, and directly something creaked, and the
whole of the left hand side of the fireplace swung open like a low door,
about four feet high, and beyond it was a little flight of stone stairs.
I was so excited, sir, when I saw the door and the steps, and knew I had
found the place I had been looking for so long, that I had to lean
against the wall to support myself. After a little while I pushed the
door back again, and heard it close with a click. Then I screwed the
tongue into the mouth again, and went about my work, but all day I have
hardly known whether I stood upon my head or my heels."

We were all silent when Sarah finished. So far, then, we had succeeded
in our search. What was to be done next? We turned to papa.

"You have indeed done well, Sarah, and have laid us under a deep
obligation to you for the perseverance you have shown, and the clearness
with which you have carried out my daughter's plans. But this we will
talk about hereafter. The thing to be done now is to follow up your
discovery. The most important point is to find out the size of the box
or safe in which the will is kept in this secret room. If it is small
enough to be carried away easily, our course will be very simple. If, on
the other hand, the chest or safe should be too heavy to be moved, I
shall first take a lawyer's opinion on the subject, and either get a
search warrant, or else go quietly into the chamber with a locksmith,
force the lock, and take out the will, which, when found, will be ample
justification for our forcible entrance. The first thing to be done is
for Sarah to examine the room, and to bring us word how large the box
is."

"Do you mean, sir," Sarah asked, in a terrified tone, "for me to go up
that staircase by myself? I could not do such a thing for the world. I
could not, indeed, sir."

"We will reward you handsomely, Sarah," papa began.

"Don't ask me, Dr. Ashleigh. I could not do it if it were to make me a
rich woman all my life. Please, sir, don't ask me."

The girl was so evidently terrified at the idea of going up the secret
staircase, and she had already done so much for us, that we felt it
would not be right to urge her further, and we looked at each other for
a moment or two in silence. Then Polly said,--

"The proper persons to go are certainly Agnes and I. It is our property
for which the search is made, and it is our place to make it. I think
that the best plan will be for Sarah to get up some morning an hour
earlier than usual. We will be waiting outside for her to open the
doors; papa will be with us, and will stay there while we go inside,
examine the room, and bring out the box in which the will is kept, if it
is not too heavy for us to carry. What do you say, Agnes?"

I confess I was frightened at the idea, not of going up into the
priest's chamber, but of entering the house in that sort of secret
midnight way, and at the thought of the scene which would ensue if we
were detected. However, Polly seemed so brave and confident about it,
that I was ashamed to offer any opposition, and so said that I thought
it would be a very good plan.

"I think so, too," papa said. "It certainly seems a strange expedition
for us to make at five o'clock on a March morning; still, with such a
fortune depending upon it, one does not mind doing strange things to
obtain it. But before we do it, write to Sophy; tell her what has
happened, and what you intend doing, and ask her to send you by return
of post an authority from her to search in her name as well as your own
for the will. It would be as well, in case of any misadventure, that we
should be able to prove that we are acting in the joint interest of the
heirs. Let me see; to-day is Friday. She cannot get the letter now till
Monday, and you will have her answer on Tuesday. So let us say
Wednesday, Sarah. What time is the house stirring?"

"At seven, sir, the servants get up."

"Very well; will you be at the front door as the clock strikes six? We
shall be there. If not, some change will have taken place in our plans.
And now, Sarah, whether we succeed in our aim or not, we are equally
indebted to you. Here are twenty pounds for you, for what you have done
for us; and if we get the will, you may rely upon it that you shall have
a present which will make you comfortable for life."

Sarah retired delighted with her present, and promising to be ready on
Wednesday. We then had a long chat over our plans. Papa, who had, I
think, a strange tinge of romance in his disposition, quite looked
forward to the adventure, and he and Polly talked it over with great
glee. Papa said that he should write to Mr. Petersfield, tell him that
we had found the chamber, and ask him to come down and be present at the
finding of the will, so that he could--should the box be too large for
us to carry--give us his advice as to the best course for us to pursue.

On Tuesday morning we received the answers to the two letters;--that
from Sophy written in high spirits at our discovery, and authorizing us
to act in her name; that from Mr. Petersfield, also written in terms of
warm congratulation, and saying that, although the legality of our
course was at least doubtful, he had felt so warm an interest in our
search, that he would come down to be present at the _denouement_, and
he felt quite sure that the will, when found, would amply justify our
proceedings. He said that he should leave town by the afternoon train.
And so nothing whatever seemed likely to occur to postpone our
expedition, as I could not help hoping in my heart that something would
do.

Mr. Petersfield came down in the evening, and was full of spirits at the
prospect of recovering the will, and made several jokes about female
burglars, which amused Polly very much, but made me feel shivery and
uncomfortable.

At night, after we had gone up to bed, Polly came into my room, and
said,--

"Agnes, darling, I can see you are nervous and frightened about this
expedition of ours. You are not strong, you know, and I think that
really you had better stay at home. I can just as well go by myself; it
is only to see if it is there, and when I find it, if the box should be
too heavy for me to carry, Sarah will not mind going up with me the
second time to help me to bring it down."

"No, no, Polly," I answered; "I know I am a coward, but I am not so bad
as that. I will most certainly go with you; nothing would induce me to
stay at home and let you go alone. Still, I cannot look at it in the
same amusing way that you do. It is to me a very awful business; but you
will see that when it comes to the point I shall be able to go through
it all calmly. And now, good-night, dear. I will call you at half-past
five."

That night I did not close my eyes. I thought over every possible
accident by which we might be detected, and at last made myself so
nervous that I could remain in bed no longer; so I got up, lighted a
candle, dressed, and then wrapped myself in a warm shawl, and read till
it was time to call the others. Then I went and woke Polly, who was
sleeping as quietly and peacefully as if she were a girl again at
Grendon House, with nothing on her mind but the extreme difficulty of
her German lesson. She woke up with a cheerful laugh as she remembered
what was to be done. I afterwards knocked at papa's and Mr.
Petersfield's doors, and then lighted a large spirit-lamp under a
kettle, which papa had to make coffee when he went out or returned from
any night visit.

At five o'clock we all met in the dining-room--looking, as papa said,
like a lot of conspirators; and I quite agreed with him. However, by the
time we had taken a cup of coffee and some bread and butter and a slice
of cold ham, our spirits quite rose again, and we all responded gaily to
Polly's funny remarks; even I felt more confident and less nervous than
I had done since the expedition had been proposed.

It was just a quarter past five when we started, and still quite dark.
The stars were shining brightly, and the keen March wind made us shiver
and draw our wraps more closely round us as we went out into it. The
carriage was waiting at the door for us, and old Andrew, to whom we had
confided somewhat of our intended attempt, was stamping up and down, and
swinging his arms in the attempt to warm himself. Papa had at first
intended to walk, but he afterwards came to the conclusion that the
carriage passing through the streets at that hour would excite no
attention at all, whereas if we were seen walking it would be sure to
give rise to all sorts of surmises and conjectures. We pulled down the
blinds, and drove out through the town. When we were fairly past the
barracks, we again pulled them up and looked out. There was a faint
light growing up in the east, but the country round was as dark as ever.
We met or passed two or three solitary individuals going towards or from
the town to their work.

We were a silent party. Papa and Mr. Petersfield made an occasional
remark, and Polly tried once or twice to enliven us, but it would not
do. We all felt that we were engaged upon a serious business, and that
the future of our lives depended upon its result.

As we passed through Sturry, we again pulled down the blinds, for the
villagers were astir there. The light smoke was curling up from the
chimneys, the flickering fire-light could be seen through the latticed
windows, and many of the men were starting to their work. We drove up
the hill behind the village, and then the carriage turned up a narrow
lane, where it would be concealed from the sight of any one going along
the highroad. Here we got out, entered Mr. Harmer's grounds by a small
gate, and followed a footpath across the park up to the house, and then
went round to the front door. Now I was once there, I felt no longer
frightened, and the excitement of the adventure set my blood in a glow.

"What time is it?" I asked papa.

"Ten minutes to six," he said, "but I dare say Sarah is waiting for us."

She was, for the moment that we reached the door she opened it, and
stepped out to meet us.

"It is all ready, sir," she said to papa. "I oiled the lock and bolts
yesterday, and I had everything undone ready, so as to open the door
when I heard your footsteps on the gravel. I am not afraid now, sir, and
will go up with the young ladies if they like."

"No, Sarah--you had better wait in the hall, to let them know if you
hear any one stirring in the house. We shall remain out here. Now,
girls, courage and victory!"

"Now for it!" Polly said, and we went into the hall together.

There were three candlesticks with lighted candles on the table. We each
took one of them, and with light steps crossed the hall to the
chimney-place. Sarah at once knelt down, and unscrewed the dog's tongue,
touched the spring, then the one in the chimney, and the door swung
round with a slight creak, startling us, although we expected it.

While she was doing this, I looked round the hall, and I do not think
that the least trace of my past fear remained. I was thinking of the
last time I had been in that hall, some little time before my dear
mother's death. How different was my position then, and what changes had
these sad nine months brought about! I thought, too, for a moment of how
it might be the next time I entered it, with Sophy as undisputed
mistress; and, quickly as all these thoughts had flitted across my mind,
I had only got thus far when the creak of the opening door made me turn
sharply round, and prepare for the business on hand.

"Shall I go first, Agnes?" Polly asked, offering to pass me.

"No, no," I answered; "I am not in the least afraid now."

Nor was I. My pulse beat quick, but it was purely from excitement, and I
do not think at that moment, had the Misses Harmer suddenly stepped down
the staircase, before me, I should have been afraid of them. Holding my
candle well in front of me, I stooped under the low doorway, and began
to ascend the narrow stone stairs, Polly following closely behind. The
stairs, as papa had calculated, were only five or six in number, and we
then stood at once in the chamber into which for so many months we had
been so longing to penetrate. Now for the will!

After the first breathless look round, a low exclamation of
disappointment broke from each of us. There was no box or chest of any
kind to be seen. The room was a mere cell, a little more than six feet
high, eight feet long, and six wide. The walls were of rough stone,
which had been whitewashed at no very distant time. The only furniture
in it was a small table and an easy chair, both quite modern; indeed,
the chair was the fellow to one I remembered in Mr. Harmer's library. On
the table stood an inkstand, some pens and paper, and there were some
torn scraps of paper on the floor; on picking up one of which I
perceived words in Mr. Harmer's well-known handwriting. On the table,
too, were placed two or three of his scientific books, and a
half-consumed cigar lay beside them.

It was evident, from all this, that Mr. Harmer had been in the habit of
using this room for a study, and the warmth which we felt the moment
that we came into it, from its being against the kitchen chimney,
suggested his reasons for so using it. It was apparent that the room had
not been disturbed since he left it after reading there--on, perhaps,
the very night before his death.

There was no other furniture, and no place whatever where the will could
be concealed. We examined the walls closely, but without any result, the
only opening being a small hole near the roof, about four inches square,
and evidently leading into the kitchen chimney for the purpose of
ventilation. Hiding-place, as far as we could see, there was none.

The stairs did not stop on reaching the room, but wound upwards. I
ascended them very cautiously, and found that they went up about ten
steps, and then ended at a small door, on which were two bolts with
which any one inside could fasten it, and so prevent its opening, even
if the secret springs outside were discovered and touched. This door, I
had no doubt, formed the entrance into Mr. Harmer's room, and opened by
some spring which I could not perceive; nor indeed did I look for it,
but returned with a heavy heart to Polly, who had remained in the
chamber, and who was in vain examining the walls for any sign of a
hidden closet. We looked ruefully in each others faces.

"It is no use, Polly," I said, as cheerfully as I could. "We shall not
find the will here."

"I am afraid not," she said, and gave me a silent kiss, expressing her
sorrow for my sake; and then taking our candles, we went down the stairs
into the hall again.

Sarah was standing listening with hushed breath.

"Have you found it, miss?"

"No, Sarah--the place is quite empty."

"Oh dear! oh dear!" Sarah exclaimed, almost crying with vexation. "I am
so sorry."

We put our candles down on the hall table, and went out into the open
air. We shook our heads in answer to the looks of papa and Mr.
Petersfield. They asked no questions, for they saw at once by our looks
that we had found no signs of the will, and the present was no time or
place for explanation. So we turned off from the house, and walked fast
across the grounds, and out to where the carriage was standing, for the
morning was fairly broken now, and our figures could have been seen for
a considerable distance.

Once in the carriage, we related all that we had seen, and that there
was no sign of the will to be found. Mr. Petersfield and papa were both
very much disappointed. Mr. Petersfield remarked that most likely we had
been within arm's reach of the will, for it was certain now that Mr.
Harmer did use that room for a study, and that no doubt there was some
secret hiding-place there, made originally for the concealment of
important papers in case the entrance to the secret chamber should be
discovered. It was a singular fancy of Mr. Harmer's to use that little
place for writing in.

"I can quite understand that," papa said. "Mr. Harmer lived a long time
in India, where the night and early morning are the pleasantest part of
the twenty-four hours, and I have heard him say that he often rose at
four o'clock, and got through five hours' writing before breakfast; and
I can remember now that I once said to him that he must find it very
cold in winter, and he said, 'Oh, I have a very snug little place for
it.' I did not ask him where it was, although I dare say had I done so
he would have told me. But it is evident now that it was in this
chamber, which from its warmth, and from it so immediately adjoining his
room, would be very convenient for him, as he would not be under any
fear of disturbing the house by his movements. I have no doubt you are
correct in your conjecture, and that there is some secret receptacle
there for papers, which could never be discovered without the secret
being communicated."

"At any rate we must give it up now," I said, "and I have not the least
idea that we shall ever hear any more of it."

The others were silent, for they, too, felt that it was in vain now to
cherish any further hopes of its discovery.




CHAPTER VII.

THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE.


We reached home after the expedition a little before seven o'clock, and
then sat down to a regular breakfast, under the influence of which our
spirits rose somewhat, and we recovered a little from our
disappointment. Polly and I agreed that it was settled that we were not
to be heiresses, and that it was no use our repining. We talked a good
deal of Sophy, and we agreed that the loss was a matter of far more
serious importance to her than it was to us. We feared she had a
terrible life before her, and we wondered what she and her husband would
do.

For some time while we were talking, Mr. Petersfield ate his breakfast
in silence, and was evidently not attending to what we were saying, but
was lost in his own contemplations.

"What are you thinking of?" papa asked him, at last.

"I am thinking, doctor--that is, I am wondering how Herbert Harmer came
to know of that secret hiding-place. Of course his sisters may have told
him of it, but I should doubt if they did. I am wondering if he found it
described in any old family documents, and if so, where they are now.
There are no longer any papers in my possession, as at Miss Harmer's
request I gave them all up a week after the funeral to their new
solicitor."

"I should think," I said, "that Mr. Harmer was shown this secret
hiding-place at the time when he first knew of the chamber itself; that
is, when he went into it as a boy with his father."

"No doubt," papa said,--"no doubt he was. Don't say any more about it,
Petersfield; let us make up our minds to the inevitable. We have done
our best, and now let us give it up. There is not, I believe, the
slightest chance in the world of our ever hearing any more about it, and
it is far better to give it up, than to go on hoping against hope, and
keeping ourselves in a fever about what will never take place. Let us
give the matter up altogether, and turn over a fresh page of our lives.
We are no worse off than other people. Let us look forward as if it had
never been, and give up the past altogether."

And so it was settled, and the will henceforth ceased to be a subject of
conversation among us.

After breakfast, Mr. Petersfield took his leave and returned to London;
and when papa had gone out on his round of visits, and sister Polly had
sat down for her usual hour's practice on the piano, I went up into my
own room, shut and locked the door, and prepared for the task I had
before me. For it was clear to me that I must now face my position. I
could no longer play at ships with myself. I knew that my last hope had
fled. The last anchor, to which I had so fondly trusted, was gone now,
and my bark of happiness was destined to certain and irretrievable
wreck. I knew that my engagement with Percy must come to an end, and
that this letter which I must write would be the means of making it do
so.

How long I sat there on that dreary March morning I do not know, with
the paper lying open and untouched before me, its black edge a fitting
symbol of the dead hopes, whose tale I had to write upon it. Not that I
think I looked at that; my eyes were fixed blankly on the wall before
me; but not one word did I write, although all the time my hand held the
pen ready to set down what my heart and brain should dictate. But
nothing came; my heart seemed cold and dead, as if it could feel no
motion, while my brain was in a strange whirl of thought, and yet no
thought framed itself into any tangible shape. I hardly know what
current they took, the past or the future; I cannot recall one single
thought; indeed, I question if one stood out prominently enough among
the others to have been seized, even at the time.

How long I sat there I do not know. But at last I was recalled to myself
by a loud, continued knocking at my door. I think I heard it some time
before I answered; it did not seem to me to be connected at all with me,
but to be some noise a long way off. Even when I was sure that it was at
my door, and that it was a loud, urgent knocking it was some little time
before I could rouse myself sufficiently to answer. At last I said,
"What is it?" But the knocking was so loud that my voice was not heard,
and I now distinguished Polly's voice calling to me. I tried to rise,
but I found that my limbs were stiff and numbed. However, with a great
effort, for I was really frightened at the noise, I got up, and with
great difficulty moved to the door and opened it. I was about to repeat
my question, "What is it?" when Polly burst in, pale and
terror-stricken, the tears rolling fast down her cheeks. She fell upon
my neck, and sobbed out, "Oh, Agnes, Agnes, how you have frightened me!"

"Frightened you!" I said. "How? What is the matter?"

"What have you been doing? and why did you not answer my knocking?"

"I answered directly I heard it."

"Then what have you been doing, Agnes? I have been knocking for ten
minutes. How pale you are, and your hands are as cold as ice, and so is
your face; you are nearly frozen. There don't say anything now, but come
down to the dining-room."

I had some difficulty in getting downstairs; I had sat so long
motionless in the cold, that I was, as Polly said, nearly frozen, and it
required all the assistance she could give me, before I was able to get
down at all. Once in the dining-room, Polly wheeled the sofa up in front
of the fire, and then ran off and got some boiling water from the
kitchen, and made me a glass of hot port wine and water, which she
insisted on my drinking scalding hot,--all the time scolding and petting
me; then when I began to get warm again, she told me that when she had
done practising, not finding me anywhere, she asked the housemaid if she
had seen me, and the girl told her that I had gone into my room more
than an hour before, and that she had not seen me since. Polly went back
to the dining-room, but finding that time went on, and I did not come
down, she came up to my room to scold me for staying up in the cold so
long, and to suggest that if I had not finished writing, I should go
into papa's consulting-room, where I should be quite secure from
interruption. She had knocked, but receiving no answer, had at first
gone away again, thinking that perhaps I had lain down, and gone to
sleep, having had such a short night; but after she had gone down stairs
again, she came to the conclusion that I should not have done that
without telling her of my intention; so she had come up to my door
again, and finding that her first gentle knocking had produced no
effect, she had continued, getting louder and louder, and becoming more
and more terrified, until at last, just as I had opened the door, she
had worked herself into such an agony of terror, that she was on the
point of running down into the kitchen to send out for some one to come
in to force the door.

I told Polly that I was very sorry that I had frightened her so much,
but that I really did not know what had come over me; that I had sat
there thinking, and that I supposed I had got regularly numbed, and had
not noticed her knocking until I got up and opened the door. When I was
thoroughly warmed again, I proposed going into the library to write my
letters, but Polly would not let me, as she said that I had had more
than enough excitement for one day. So I yielded to her entreaties, not
sorry indeed to put off the painful task, if only for one day.

On the following morning, however, I went into papa's study to write my
letters, and got through them more easily than I had expected. Polly
came in from time to time to see that I was not agitating myself too
much, only staying just for a minute or two to kiss me, and say some
little word of consolation and love. My first letter was to Percy. I
told him what had happened, and that all hope which I might previously
have entertained of finding the will, was now entirely extinguished. I
told him that I knew he loved me for my own sake; and no unworthy doubt
that this would make any difference in him had ever entered my mind; but
I frankly said that I feared Lady Desborough would no longer give her
approval and consent, and that I foresaw painful times in store for us,
for it was of course out of the question that we could marry in the face
of her determined opposition. Putting aside pecuniary considerations,
which even lovers could not entirely ignore, I could not consent to
marry into a family where my presence would be the cause of dissension
and division between mother and son. I said this was my fixed
determination, and begged him to acquiesce in it, and not pain me by
solicitations--to which I could not yield--to do otherwise than what I
felt to be right, in the event of his mother's insisting on his breaking
off his engagement with me.

My letter to Percy finished, I had the other and more difficult one
before me, and I was some considerable time before I could make up my
mind respecting it. In the first place, should it be to Lady Desborough
or Ada? and then, how should I put it? Of course I must say that all
hope of finding the will was gone; but should I add that in consequence
I considered my engagement with Percy to be at an end, or should I leave
her to do so? At one time I resolved upon the former, and wrote the
beginnings of two or three letters to that effect. But then I said to
myself, why should I do this? Why should I assume that she would stop
the allowance of 300l. a year, which Percy has, when he thinks that with
that and the staff pay he expects to get in India, there is no reason
why we could not manage very well? I accordingly came to the conclusion
to write to Ada. I told her all that we had done, and that the will was
now unquestionably lost for ever; I said that this was of course a
grievous disappointment to me, and then after a little chit-chat upon
ordinary matters, I wound up by asking her to show to Lady Desborough
the part relating to the loss of the will.

Although I wrote these letters at the same time, I did not send off the
one to Ada until the following day. I delayed it in this way in order
that Lady Desborough might get a letter from Percy within a few hours of
receiving mine; so that she might not answer me until she had heard
Percy's arguments and entreaties that she would not withdraw her
approval of the engagement.

The second letter sent off, I had nothing to do but to wait patiently,
but oh, how anxiously, for the result.

Percy's letter came by return of post; it was just what I knew it would
be, a repetition of the one he had written when the will was first found
missing,--full of passionate protestations of love, and assurances that
my fortune had only value in his eyes on my account, and that therefore
to him its loss could make no difference. He said that it was quite
impossible that his mother could withdraw her consent, previously so
warmly given, merely from a matter of money; and he affirmed that
indeed, at the age he was, he did not consider that under any
circumstances she had any right to dictate his choice to him. He told me
that he was that day writing to her, to inform her that of course what
had happened had not made the slightest change in his intentions, and
that he felt assured she would be entirely of his opinion. The next day
passed without any letter from Lady Desborough; the next and the next--a
week passed. How my heart ached. I knew what the delay meant, and could
guess at the angry correspondence which must be passing between mother
and son. I knew what the result must be, and yet I hoped against hope
until the eighth day, when the long-expected letter arrived; it was as
follows:--

     "My dear Miss Ashleigh,

     "You may imagine how extremely sorry we all were to hear that
     the will under which you ought to come into possession of the
     fortune to which I always understood that you were entitled, is
     missing, and I fear from what you say in your letter to Ada
     irretrievably lost. This is a terrible event for you, and the
     more so, since it of course alters your position with respect
     to my son Percy. You will I am sure be sorry to hear that it
     has caused a very serious misunderstanding between him and me.
     I gather from what he has let drop, that you yourself quite see
     that it is out of the question that your engagement with him
     can continue, and I know that you will regret with me that he
     should not like ourselves submit to what is inevitable. Knowing
     your good sense, I felt sure that you would, as a matter of
     course, view the matter in the same light that I do, and it
     gives me pleasure to know that I had so correctly judged your
     character. I am sure, my dear Miss Ashleigh, that you would be
     grieved that any serious estrangement should take place between
     Percy and myself; but I am sorry to say his obstinate and
     violent conduct at present renders this not only probable, but
     imminent. I rely upon your aid to assist me in bringing him to
     the same way of thinking as ourselves. Percy will, I am sure,
     listen to your arguments with more politeness and deference
     than he pays to mine. His allowance, as you are aware, depends
     entirely upon me, and it is quite impossible, as he surely must
     see, that he can support a wife, even in India, on a bare
     lieutenant's pay. I rely upon your good sense to convince him
     of this, and you will be doing a great service to us all by
     your assistance in this matter. I need not say, in conclusion,
     how much all this sad affair, and my son's headstrong folly,
     have shaken and disturbed me, and how much I regret that
     circumstances should have occurred to prevent an alliance on
     which I had set my heart. And now, with my sincere condolence,

     "Believe me, my dear Miss Ashleigh,

     "Yours very faithfully,

     "EVELINE DESBOROUGH."

I really could hardly help smiling, pained and heartsick as I felt, at
the quiet way in which Lady Desborough arranged the affair, and claimed
me as an ally against Percy. When I had finished the letter, I gave it
to Polly--who was watching my face most anxiously--to read, and I do
think that if Lady Desborough had been there my sister Polly would have
been very near committing a breach of the peace. She did not say
much--only the one word "infamous," as she threw the letter on to the
table, and then sat down by the fire, biting her lips with anger, with
her large eyes ablaze, and her fingers and feet twitching and quivering
with suppressed rage.

A letter arrived by the same post from Ada, which I will also copy from
the original, which has been so long laying in my desk:--

     "My darling Agnes,

     "This is a terrible affair, and I am quite ill with it all. My
     eyes are red and swollen, and, altogether, I was never so
     wretched in my life. I should have written to you at once to
     tell you how sorry I was about it, and that I love you more
     dearly than ever, but mamma positively ordered me not to do so
     at first, so that I was obliged to wait; but as I know that she
     has written to you to-day, I must do the same. We have had such
     dreadful scenes here, Agnes, you can hardly imagine. On the
     same morning your letter arrived, one came from Percy. It did
     not come till the eleven o'clock post, and I had sent your
     letter up to mamma in her room before that. Mamma wrote to
     Percy the same day; what she said I do not know; but two days
     afterwards Percy himself arrived, and for the last three days
     there have been the most dreadful scenes here. That is, the
     scenes have been all on Percy's side. He is half out of his
     mind, while mamma is very cold, and----Well, you can guess what
     she could be if she pleased. To-day she has not been out of her
     room, and has sent word to Percy that as long as he remains in
     the house she shall not leave it. So things are at a dead-lock.
     What is to be done I have no idea. Of course I agree with
     Percy, and think mamma very wrong. But what can I do? My head
     is aching so, I can hardly write; and indeed, Agnes, I think I
     am as wretched as you can be. I do not see what is to come of
     it. Mamma and Percy are equally obstinate, and which will give
     way I know not. Mamma holds the purse-strings, and therefore
     she has a great advantage over him. I am afraid it will be a
     permanent quarrel, which will be dreadful. My darling Agnes,
     what can I say or do? I believe Percy will go down to see you,
     although I have begged him not to do so for your sake; but he
     only asked me if I was going to turn against him, too; so, of
     course, I could do nothing but cry. How will it end? Oh, Agnes,
     who would have thought it would ever come to this? I will write
     again in a day or two. Goodbye, my own Agnes.

     "Your most affectionate

     "ADA."

At twelve o'clock that day there was a knock at the door, and Percy
Desborough was ushered in. I was prepared for his coming, and therefore
received him with tolerable composure; and although I dreaded the
painful scene I knew I should have to go through, I was yet glad that he
had come, for I felt that it was better that all this should come to an
end. Percy was looking very pale and worn, and as he came up to me, much
as I had schooled myself, I could hardly keep my tears down. He came up,
took me in his arms, and kissed me. I suffered him to do so. I knew that
it was nearly the last kiss that I should ever have from him. Polly,
after the first salutation, would have left the room, but I said,--

"Stop here, please, Polly. She knows all about it, Percy; and it is
better for us both that she should be here. I have heard this morning
from Lady Desborough, and also from Ada, so I know what you have come
down for."

"I have come down, Agnes," Percy said, solemnly, "to renew and confirm
my engagement to you. I have come down, that you may hear me swear
before God that I will never marry any other woman but you."

"And I, Percy, will marry no other man; but you, even you, I will never
marry without your mother's consent. I will never divide mother and son.
Besides which, without her consent, it would be impossible."

"Impossible just at present, Agnes, I admit. My mother has refused to
allow me one farthing if I marry you, and I know I cannot ask you to go
out to India as a lieutenant's wife, on a lieutenant's pay; but in a
short time I am sure to get a staff appointment; and although it will
not be such a home as I had hoped to offer you, it will be at least a
home in which we could have every necessary comfort; and I know you too
well, not to feel sure that you would be content with it."

"Percy," I said, "why do you tempt me? You know well how gladly I would
go with you anywhere, that comfort or discomfort would make little
difference to me if they were shared by you. But you know Lady
Desborough, and you know well that she will not only refuse to assist
you now, but that she will utterly disown and cast you off if you act in
defiance of her will. You are choosing between wife and mother; if you
take the one, you lose the other. Has she not told you, Percy, that if
you marry me, you are no longer son of hers?"

Percy hesitated. "She has," he said, "she has; but, Agnes, although in
any just exercise of her authority, I, as a son, would yield to her; yet
at my age, I have a perfect right, in a matter of this sort, to choose
for myself; besides, she has already given her entire approval, and it
is not because circumstances have changed that she has any right to
withdraw that consent. It was you she approved of, and you are
unaltered."

"She is acting, as she believes, for your good, Percy. You think her
mistaken and cruel, but she will never change, and I will never marry
you without her consent. See, Percy, I have no false pride. I would have
come to you, had there been nothing to prevent it, as a penniless wife,
although I had hoped it would have been otherwise; but no true woman
will drag her husband down; no true woman will marry a man when, instead
of bringing him a fortune, she brings him ruin. You are now
comparatively well off; some day you will be much better; and I will not
be the means of your losing this--losing not only this, but your
mother."

"But my happiness, Agnes!--what is money to happiness?" Percy exclaimed,
impetuously.

"Nothing, Percy,--I know and feel that; but I also feel that my decision
is right, and not wrong. I know that I could not decide otherwise, and
that whatever unhappiness it may cause us both, yet that, without your
mother's consent, I can never be yours."

"You will make me wish my mother dead, Agnes," Percy said, passionately.

"No, no, Percy, do not say that; I know I am doing right. Do not make it
harder for me than I can bear."

Percy strode up and down the room. Once or twice he stopped before me,
as if he would speak, but he did not. I was crying freely now, and I
could not look up at him.

"Can you not say something for me?" he said to Polly, at last.

Polly got up when he spoke to her--before that she had been sitting on
the sofa by me, holding one of my hands in hers--now she went up to him.
She put one of her hands on his shoulder, took one of his hands in her
other, and looked up into his face.

"Percy, she is right--you know in your own heart she is so. Have pity
upon her; she will not do it--she cannot. I love her better than myself,
but I could not advise her to do, even for her happiness, what she
believes is not right;--she cannot come between you and your mother.
Wait, Percy, and be patient--time works wonders. You may be sure she
will be yours in heart to the end of her life. Have pity on her, Percy,
and go."

"Oh, Polly, have pity on me, too," Percy said, and his lips quivered
now; and although he kept the features of his face still rigid and under
control, the tears were starting from his eyes. "What shall I do!"

"Go, Percy," I said, getting up. "Go. Let us help each other;" and I
took his hands now, and looked up into his face. "Go. I do not say,
forget me; I do not say, goodbye for ever; I only say, go, now. I cannot
do what you ask me; let us wait--let us wait and hope."

"Agnes," Percy said, solemnly, "I go now; I leave you for a time, but
our engagement is not over, and again hear me swear never to marry any
woman but you."

"And I no other man, Percy; and now kiss me and go."

For a little while Percy held me strained to his heart, his tears rained
down upon my face, his lips pressed mine again and again, then one long,
long kiss--I felt it was the last; then he gave me to Polly, who was
standing near. I heard the door close behind him, and for a long time I
heard no other sound. I had fainted.




CHAPTER VIII.

STRUGGLES FOR A LIVING.


When at Christmas time Robert Gregory heard that one of the springs
which were supposed to open the secret door was found, he gave up for a
time even the pretence of looking for anything to do; but not very long
afterwards he met an old friend, and most unexpectedly went into a
business with him, and that perhaps the only one which could have been
named for which he was really fitted.

He had one day, as was his usual custom, entered a public-house where he
was well known, and had gone into the bar parlour, where he was sitting
reading the paper, smoking his pipe, and drinking a glass of spirits and
water, when another man entered the room, looked carelessly at Gregory,
then more attentively, and finally burst out,--

"Hallo, Robert? is that you? How fares the world with you all this
time?"

"By Jove, Fielding! is that you? How are you, my boy?"

They greeted each other warmly, for they had been a great deal together
in the time when Gregory was in London, and their satisfaction at
meeting was mutual. After a while, they sat down before the fire,
ordered fresh glasses of spirits and water, and prepared for a long talk
over all that had happened since they had parted some four years
ago--Robert to return to his father at Canterbury, Fielding to continue
for a short time longer the reckless life they were living about town.

"Now, Gregory," Fielding said, "let me hear what you have been doing
first."

Robert, in reply, related pretty accurately the whole of his life since
he had left London.

"Well, that is a rum start," his companion said when he had finished his
story. "And you really think that you will some day come in for all this
money?"

"I do," Robert answered. "As I have told you they are trying down there
now, and have a good chance; but if that fails, I mean to try for it
myself. And now what have you been doing?"

"The easiest way to answer would be to tell you what I have not been
doing. You left us in the winter, and I held on, as I had been doing
before, till the next Derby Day; but I dropped so much upon that, that I
had to make myself scarce for a bit. Then I came back again, and set to
work to earn my living, and very hard work I found it."

"I should think so," Robert Gregory put in. "I have been trying to get
something to do for the last three months, and I am no nearer, as far as
I can see, than when I began. How did you set about it?"

"To tell you the truth, Robert, I found it rather up-hill work at first.
I worked for the papers for a bit,--went to all the fires, and the
inquests, and the hospitals, and sent accounts to all the dailies. Of
course at first they did not often put them in, still they did
sometimes, and after a month or two they came to take them pretty
regularly. At last I did what I really very seldom did do; but I was
very hard-up, and I sent an account of a fire which only existed in my
imagination. Well, it turned out that there was a row about it, and of
course that put an end to that line. It was winter then, and I was very
hard-up, and was glad to earn a few shillings a week as super at one of
the pantomimes. Then I happened to meet with a man with a few pounds,
and together we set up a very profitable business--advertising to find
situations for clerks and servants. They paid us five shillings to enter
their names in our books; then we answered every advertisement that
appeared in any of the papers for that sort of thing, and sent them to
look after the situations. If they got them, they paid us thirty per
cent, on the first year's earnings, down on the nail. There were three
or four of us in that game. I kept the head office, and they took places
in other parts, and each of them wanted clerks at L150 a year. It was a
capital dodge, and we made a lot of money; but at last it got blown
upon, and we had to give it up.

"Then I did the ladies employment business. Lessons given for a guinea,
and constant employment guaranteed when the art was learnt. We used to
send them a book on illuminating, which by the gross cost us twopence
each. None of the ladies, as it turned out, ever became perfect enough
for us to give them employment; but that was their fault you know, not
ours. Well, that paid uncommonly well for a bit. After that, I tried no
end of moves, and did sometimes well, sometimes badly; still I was not
often without a sovereign in my pocket. At last I took up my present
line; I have been at it now a year and a half, and I mean to stick to
it."

"What is it?" Robert Gregory asked rather curiously, for his companion
had the look of a well-to-do man, although perhaps rather of a sporting
cut. He wore a good substantial great-coat with a velvet collar, a very
good hat, put rather on one side of his head, and a quiet scarf, with a
gold pin representing a jockey's cap and whip.

"I am a betting man," Fielding said. "I make a book on all the races. I
have certain places--public-houses, quiet streets, and so on--where I am
always to be found at regular hours of the day, and I do a very fair
business."

"And do you always win, Fielding?"

"Not always; occasionally one gets hit hard, but nineteen times out of
twenty, if one is careful, one wins. The great thing is always to have
enough in hand to pay your losses the day after the race; and as one
receives all the money when the bets are made, two or three months
before a race, it is hard if one cannot do that. In this way I have got
a good name, am looked upon as a safe man, and so am getting a good
business together.

"What do you make on an average a week?"

"Well, on an average, five or six pounds--more than that a good deal in
the season, but very little just at this time of year; in a month or so
I shall be beginning again."

"I should like to join you, Fielding," Robert said, eagerly.

"Aye, but what capital could you put in? I acknowledge I could do very
well with a partner who would take one end of the town while I took the
other. I could easily double the business. But I should want a good sum
of money with one. I have been, as I told you, a year and a half at it,
and have got a good connection together."

"How much do you call a good sum?"

"That would depend upon the man," Fielding answered. "I have known you
well, and I am sure we should pull well together. I would take a hundred
pounds with you; not for my own use, mind, but to lay in a bank in our
joint names. You see it makes the beginning of an account, and we could
pay in there all we took, and settle our losses by cheques, which looks
much better, and would give us a much better name altogether."

"I should have difficulty in getting a hundred pounds," Robert said; and
indeed the sixty pounds the pony carriage had fetched had melted away
very fast; for Robert had spent a large amount in this daily search for
employment, and Sophy often wondered to herself, with a little sigh, how
Robert could possibly spend as much money as he did. "No, Fielding, I am
sure I could not manage a hundred, but I think I could go as far as
sixty."

"Suppose you think it over, Gregory, and see what you can do. Let us
meet here again to-morrow at the same time, and then we will enter into
it again; and I will bring you some of my old books to show you that
what I say is correct."

"Very well," Robert said, and they parted to meet again next day.

That evening Robert told Sophy what had occurred, and said that it
seemed to him an opportunity for getting on which might not occur to him
again, but that he would be guided entirely by her.

Sophy was a little alarmed at the thought of their whole available
capital being embarked; but she assented cheerfully to the proposal, as
she was delighted at anything which seemed likely to occupy Robert's
time and thoughts, and prevent him being driven, from sheer want of
something to do, to spend his time in drinking. So the next day the
grand pianoforte was sent to an auction-room to be sold; it fetched
fifty-five pounds, and with this and twenty-five of their former stock
Robert joined Fielding as a partner, leaving a solitary ten pounds only
in Sophy's charge. But as she was now regularly giving lessons six hours
a day, she had very little occasion to break in upon this, as the
thirty-six shillings she earned quite covered her household expenses;
and she was now able to go to her work with a light heart, knowing that
her absence from home no longer drove her husband to spend his time in
public-houses.

The firm of Gregory and Fielding flourished; in a short time they had
plenty to do; and as the spring came on and the racing season began,
they had their hands quite full. At first they went about together; and
then, when Robert became known to Fielding's connection, the one took
the east end of the town, the other the west, meeting twice a day at
some middle point to compare their books and see how they stood. They
now, too, started as racing prophets and commission agents, and
advertised in the sporting papers, and by the end of April they were
making a large income. How large a portion of the money they received
would be clear profit, they could not tell until the races were over, so
they agreed to draw five pounds a week each, and to pay the rest into
the bank to draw from as required. Sophy knew Robert was doing well; for
he again begged her to give up teaching, and generally gave her four
pounds out of the five he drew every week for the expenses. This was, as
she told him double what they spent; but he said that he was making
that, and therefore gave it to her; that he did not want to know how it
went, but any she could save she might put by with her own earnings, in
case of a rainy day.

For the first two months after Robert Gregory had commenced his work,
his wife did not see much of him, for his business now often kept him
out the whole evening; and when he came back late he was seldom quite
sober, and he was frequently not up when she started to her work at nine
o'clock. This went on until, in the middle of March, the news came that
the secret of the door was found, and Robert was in such a state of
excitement at what he considered the certainty of the missing will being
found, that he was quite unable to attend to his business, so Fielding
agreed to give him a holiday at any rate until he heard of the result.
These three days Robert spent in going about from public-house to
public-house treating every one he knew; telling them all it was
probable that this was the last time he should see them, as he was about
to come into an immense fortune. Proportionate therefore to his
exultation, was the disappointment when the news came that the secret
chamber had been entered, and that the will was not there. Sophy had
never seen him in a rage before, indeed she had never seen any one
really in a passion, and she was thoroughly frightened and horror-struck
by it. She listened in silence to the terrible imprecations and oaths
which he poured out, and which shocked and terrified her indeed, but of
the meaning of which she had, of course, not the slightest idea.

At last he calmed down, but from that time he was a changed man. Among
his associates he had no longer a loud laugh and ready joke; he was
become a moody, surly man, doing all that he had to do in a dogged,
resolute way, as if it was only by sheer force of will that he could
keep his attention to the work upon which he was engaged. He came to be
known among them as a dangerous customer; for one or two of them who had
ventured to joke him about the fortune he had told them of, had been
warned fiercely and savagely to leave that subject alone; while one who,
more adventurous than the others, had disregarded the warning and
continued his jokes, had been attacked with such fury, that had not
Robert been pulled off him by the bystanders, the consequences would
have been most serious. So it came to be understood amongst them that he
was a man who was safer to be left alone.

Still the business did not suffer by the change, but, as I have said,
throve and increased wonderfully through the months of April and May.
People seemed to fancy that their money was safer with "Surly Bob," as
he generally came to be known among them, than with some of the other
offhand, careless, joking speculators. At any rate, the firm throve.
They were lucky on the "Two Thousand," and won heavily upon the "Derby;"
so the money in the bank accumulated, and Fielding and Gregory came to
be looked well upon among their associates.

Robert now arranged for his partner to take as much as possible of the
evening work off his hands. He gave up all his former companions, and
returned back to Sophy at half-past six, after which, except on the week
preceding very important races, when he was obliged to be at work, he
did not go out again.

But he did not give up drinking. He told Sophy that he would stop at
home of an evening if she would not interfere with him, but that he
could not give up drink till the will was found or they started for
Australia: in either of which cases, he swore a great oath that he would
never touch spirits again.

Sophy tried in vain to point out to him that the will now seemed
altogether lost, and that it would be better to start for abroad at
once. But Robert said that he did not give it up yet, and that, as he
was doing very well, he was in no hurry to start; but that if by the end
of the next racing season--that was to say, in about eighteen months--it
was not found, he would give up his present work and go abroad, for by
that time he should have made enough money to take them out comfortably,
and to start them fairly in the new country.

Indeed, in his heart Robert Gregory would rather have gone on as he was,
for he knew that he should find no work out in the colony so easy and
suitable for him as his present; but yet he was determined that he would
go, for Sophy's sake. He thought that there, with hard work as a
settler, he could keep from drink, and he was sincere in his
determination never again to touch it. There he might be a respectable
man yet, and, cost him what it would, he was resolved to try.

Sophy was satisfied with the new arrangement. She was glad to know that,
at any rate, he was now safe at home of an evening. It relieved her from
the anxiety with which she had sat, sometimes for hours, listening for
his heavy, and usually unsteady, footfall. So after that Robert,
whenever he could, stayed at home, drank large quantities of spirits,
and smoked moodily; arousing himself sometimes to talk with Sophy, who
would sit by working, and always ready to answer with a cheerful smile.
Occasionally he brought home some book or paper about Australia, and
Sophy looked through it and read out to him such parts as she thought
would interest him; and then he would leave his spirits untasted for a
while, and listen to the accounts of the struggles of the back-wood
settler, of the clearings in the dark forests, and of the abundant
return nature gave for the labour; and his eye would brighten, and his
finger tighten as if on the handle of an axe, and he longed for the time
to come when he too would be there, away from all debasing associations,
and out of reach of the spirit-bottle. And sometimes he told Sophy that
perhaps, after all, he should not wait as long as he had said, but might
start in the early spring. The spirits he drank of an evening had little
effect upon his hardened frame, and he generally went to bed, if not
quite sober, at any rate not very drunk.

He now succeeded in persuading Sophy to give up teaching; telling her
that she might be of the greatest use answering the correspondence of
the firm, for that this was now growing too large for them to manage. He
urged that they would otherwise have to pay some one else to do it, and
that it would be a great annoyance to have to let a stranger into all
their secrets. He added that of course they should be glad to pay her
for her work instead of a clerk, and that they would give her
thirty-five shillings per week, which she should have for her own
private use.

Sophy, seeing that she really could be of service, at once agreed; and
telling her pupils that for a time she must give up teaching, she
settled to her new employment. Accordingly, the first thing after
breakfast of a morning, she now sat down to her writing-desk, with the
list, on one side of her, of the horses selected by the firm as the
probable winners of the various races; on the other, of the entries for
the different races, and the current odds against each horse. She then
opened the letters received that morning, and made a list of the various
commissions sent to back different horses, to be given to Robert when he
came in for them at one o'clock; then she answered those which required
reply, and sent out circulars and lists to their numerous town and
country subscribers. Generally she had done her work about twelve
o'clock, but on the few days preceding great races she was frequently
engaged until quite late in the evening.

However, she liked it much better than the teaching, for there was a
certain excitement in seeing whether the prophecies of the firm were
correct; and as she now knew pretty nearly what horses they stood to win
or lose upon in each race, she quite shared in their interest in the
result of the different events. Every Saturday she received her pay,
which she put by as regularly. She had now two funds. The one she
considered the common fund; this consisted of the ten pounds which
remained in hand after paying the partnership money to Fielding, and
which had been increasing at the rate of nearly two pounds a week--her
savings out of the housekeeping money--ever since that time; the other
was her private fund, her own earnings since Robert had been able to pay
their expenses. Of the existence of either of these hoards Robert was
quite ignorant. He was himself so careless in money matters, and had
always parted with his money so freely, that he never thought what Sophy
was saving. He knew that she always had everything very comfortable for
him, and he asked nothing more. If he had been asked, he would have
said, perhaps, that Sophy might have laid by a few pounds; but if he had
been told what the total amount came to at the end of the six months, he
would have been perfectly astounded. But Sophy said nothing about it.
She was laying it by till the time should come for starting abroad.

She was more comfortable now than she had been at all. Her husband,
although he was gloomy, and talked little, still was not unkind, and
very, very seldom spoke harshly to her.

Mrs. Billow had turned out a really kind-hearted, motherly old woman,
and had conceived quite an affection for her quiet, pale young lodger.

Mr. Billow she saw very little of. He was generally quite drunk or
asleep, and she never heard him except as he tumbled upstairs to bed. At
first, indeed, he had been inclined to be disagreeable, and had taken
upon himself to tell Robert Gregory that he would not have his lodgers
coming in drunk at all times of the night. But Robert turned upon him
fiercely, loaded him with abuse, told him that he was a drunken old
vagabond, and a receiver of stolen goods; and that if he ever ventured
to say a word to him again, he would go the next morning to Scotland
Yard, and mention what he knew of his goings on.

Mr. Billow cowered under this fierce and unexpected attack, and was from
that time in deadly fear of his lodger, and kept scrupulously out of his
sight.

Sophy, too, had by this time got to know many of her neighbours,--most
of them professional people, simple, kind-hearted women with families,
struggling hard for existence. Some of these would frequently bring
their work over of an afternoon, and sit awhile with her. They would on
these occasions talk unrestrainedly of their lives and struggles; and
Sophy came to take quite an interest in their histories, and occasional
little triumphs, and in talk with them forgot her own trials and
troubles. They would have been much more sociable had Sophy chosen, and
several times asked her and her husband over to take tea with them, on
evenings when they were not professionally engaged. But Sophy declined
these invitations, saying that her husband had a dislike to society, and
would not go out anywhere. Their only visitor of an evening was
Fielding, who occasionally came over for a quiet talk with his partner,
to compare their books, and discuss at leisure the chances of the
various horses, and which to lay against. He took a strong liking to
Robert's quiet lady-wife, reminding him as she did of the women he used
to meet when he was young, before he left his father, a quiet country
clergyman, and came up to London.

Sophy's great treat was upon occasions when the firm had done
particularly well, and when Robert had come home in an unusually good
temper. Then Sophy would petition him to take her to the theatre; and as
it was so very seldom that Sophy did ask for anything, Robert, on these
occasions, would give up his pipe and his spirit-bottle, and go with her
to the pit of one of the theatres. These were the great treats of
Sophy's life, and she enjoyed them immensely. She had never been to a
theatre before the first of these expeditions, and she entered into it
with all her heart. Even Robert was pleased at seeing her gratified, and
promised himself that he would come oftener with her, as when so little
made her happy he would be a brute not to let her have that little. It
was too much self-denial, however, for him voluntarily to suggest giving
up his spirits and his pipe, but he never refused on the rare occasions
when she proposed it; and when he did go, he went willingly, and with an
air of pleasure which doubled Sophy's enjoyment. After their return from
the theatre, Sophy always had a nice little supper ready--some oysters,
or a lobster; and they would chat over their evening's entertainment,
while Robert drank a glass of spirits-and-water, before going to bed;
and Sophy, for the time, would really feel as happy as she had long ago
dreamt she should be when Robert Gregory was her husband.




CHAPTER IX.

POLLY TO THE RESCUE.


In three or four days after that terrible interview with Percy, in which
we agreed--well, I don't know that we actually did agree to
anything,--but in which it was at any rate understood that my resolution
was immovable, and that I would not marry and accompany him to India
without Lady Desborough's consent to our union--I received a letter from
him. It was written from Newry, where his regiment was stationed, and
was as follows:--

     "My darling Agnes,

     "I do not write this letter to you to ask you to reconsider
     your determination. Deeply as I feel the disappointment of my
     dearest hopes, I yet bow to your decision. Indeed, although it
     is against me, I feel, now that I can consider it calmly, that
     it is the only one which you, with your feelings of delicacy,
     could have arrived at. Forgive me, Agnes, for the cruel way in
     which I tried and agitated you the other day; but my mother's
     hardness and obduracy had driven me nearly out of my mind. I
     went away, Agnes, with your words ringing in my ears, 'Wait and
     hope!' and I am ready to do so. But how long, Agnes? My
     regiment may not improbably remain in India fifteen years; but
     at the end of eight years out there, I can return home for, at
     any rate, a year's leave; so that I may expect to be in England
     again in nine years from the present time. I shall by that time
     have got my troop; and my pay as a captain in India, together
     with the extra pay I may get from any staff appointment, would
     enable us to live in tolerable comfort. Should my regiment be
     returning before the time I name, I can exchange into another;
     so as to remain in India, at any rate, for another six or seven
     years.

     "Will you, Agnes, when I return in nine years from this time,
     be my wife?--I mean, whether my mother still oppose or not? I
     cannot think she will; but let us suppose the worst. Will you
     then be my wife? Will you continue your engagement to me, and
     correspond with me for that time? Will you give me that fixed
     period to look forward to, instead of a restless waiting for my
     mother's death? If you do this, I shall be comparatively happy;
     for I should then have something certain to look forward to. If
     you answer 'yes,' I shall write to my mother, whom I have
     neither seen nor heard from, and say that I am willing--at your
     request--so far to give in to her that I will agree not to
     marry you before proceeding to India, and that we will wait, at
     any rate, until my return. But that I shall, of course, expect
     on her part that my allowance will be continued as before. The
     three hundred a-year which I receive from her I shall
     scrupulously lay by, as I can manage very well in India upon my
     lieutenant's pay; and as this, without counting what I may make
     by my staff appointment, will amount to nearly three thousand
     pounds in the nine years, I shall--even in the event of my
     mother refusing to assist me farther after my marriage with
     you--have accumulated enough to purchase my majority when the
     time comes. This is my future, if you agree to my proposal,
     dearest. If you tell me that you will not promise, if you write
     and repeat that you will not ruin me by marrying without my
     mother's consent, my mind is made up. I shall at once send in
     my papers to the Horse Guards, sell my commission, and embark
     for Australia, where, I am told, with a thousand pounds capital
     to start with, I may in a few years be a rich man. I shall then
     return and claim you, and no one will have a right to discuss
     my choice. Upon your decision, dearest Agnes, rests my future.
     What is it to be?

     "Your own,

     "PERCY."

After I had read this letter through many times, I resolved to lay it
before Polly, in whose judgment I felt the most perfect confidence. My
sister did not hesitate a moment.

"What Percy asks is only fair, Agnes. He must not, as he says, be made
to look forward to his mother's death as the only hope of his marriage
with you. If you and he make this great sacrifice to her wishes, and at
the end of nine years are of the same mind, I think that he at
thirty-two and you at twenty-seven, have a perfect right to marry even
without her consent; and by that time, as he says, his position will be
so secured that he can afford to make the money sacrifice. Write and
agree to his proposal, dear, by all means."

My own opinion tallied with Polly's, and I wrote to Percy to tell him
that I agreed to remain engaged to him, and that, at the end of the nine
years, if he claimed me, I would be his. That I would not cease all
correspondence with him, although I felt that I had better do so, but
that I would agree to exchange letters once every three months.

Percy wrote at once, thanking me very much for my decision, but begging
that I would not insist on such long intervals between the letters. I
would not, however, relax that condition. I knew how few long
engagements ever came to anything, and how hard it is for a man to wait
through the best part of his life. I determined, therefore, not to keep
up a too frequent exchange of letters, which would, I felt, however much
he might wish it at present, prove terribly tiresome to him long before
the expiration of the period of trial; and yet he would not like to fall
off in his correspondence, for he would know that I should feel it a
great trial when he began to write less frequently. So I maintained my
resolution, but told him that, in the event of illness, or of any
particular news, the rule might, of course, be broken.

In another day or two I heard again from him, saying that his
mother--while on her part reiterating her assertion that she should
never alter her determination, or consent to his marriage with any woman
without either money or rank to assist him--had yet agreed willingly to
his proposal, namely, that things should go on as before, and that the
breach between them should be healed if he would go to India by himself.

And so it was settled; and when my letter to Percy in answer to his was
written, the three months' rule began. And now that I could have no
letter for that time, I settled down into a dreamy, despondent state,
from which, although I tried to rouse myself, I could not succeed in
doing so. Nine years! It was such a long, long time to look forward to;
and so few long engagements ever came to anything, even when there were
no difficulties in the way. How could I hope that my case would form an
exception to the rule?

Under all this, my health, which had never since my mother's death been
strong, failed rapidly, in spite of papa's tonics, and sister Polly's
kindness and tender care. Papa I could see was growing very anxious
about me, and I myself thought that I was going into a decline. I was
thin and pale; I had no longer strength to go for long walks with Polly,
but seldom went out beyond the garden. I felt the heat, too, dreadfully.
I do not know that it was a particularly hot summer, but I was weak, and
the heat tired me sadly. Polly was unceasing in her kindness and
attention; she read to me, chatted to me, talked cheerfully about the
future, pictured Percy's return to claim me, painted our life in India,
and laughingly said that if she could not get a husband here, that she
would come out to us on spec. Indeed she did everything in her power to
cheer and amuse me. I tried hard to respond to all this kindness, but
with little result; I was ashamed of myself for giving way, and yet I
gave way, and daily became weaker and weaker. I am sure that Polly
thought I was going to die, and she came to a resolution of the result
of which I was not told till long afterwards.

She ascertained that the elder Miss Harmer was in the habit of coming in
on Sunday mornings, to the little Catholic chapel in the town, and that
she was very seldom accompanied by her sister. Accordingly, one morning
when I was unusually poorly, and was unable to go to church, she started
early, and walked through the town, and out upon the road to Sturry;
presently she saw the well-known Harmer carriage approaching, and she
pulled down her veil as it approached her, to prevent any possibility of
her being recognized.

She pursued her way until she reached the lodge gate of Harmer Place,
turned in, went up the drive, and rang at the hall door. Sarah opened
it, and looked not a little surprised at seeing Polly.

"Is Miss Angela Harmer in, Sarah?"

"Yes, Miss, she has just come down into the drawing-room."

"Do not ask her if she will see me, Sarah, as I have no doubt she would
refuse, and it is absolutely necessary that I should have a talk with
her."

"Very well, Miss," Sarah said; "I gave notice better than three weeks
ago, and my month is up on Thursday, so I do not care in the least what
they say to me." Accordingly Sarah led the way to the drawing-room,
opened the door, and announced "Miss Mary Ashleigh." Polly went in, the
door closed behind her, and she was alone with Angela Harmer.

The old lady had changed much since Polly had seen her a year before;
she had aged wonderfully, and was evidently breaking fast; her cheeks
had fallen in, her face was wrinkled, and her whole figure was thinner
and feebler than before; her hands, too, which had before been plump and
well shaped--and upon which, if Angela Harmer had a single thought of
personal vanity, she rather prided herself--were thin and bony,
unmistakably the hands of an old woman.

As Polly Ashleigh was announced and entered, Angela Harmer half rose,
with an exclamation almost of terror, and looked round with a wild,
frightened look, as if seeking some outlet of escape; but there was
none, and even had there been she could not have availed herself of it,
for her knees gave way under her, and she sank down with a scared,
helpless look, into the chair from which she had half risen.

Polly raised her veil, and looked down with a rather heightened colour,
but with a steady look, at the cowering old woman before her, and then
said, "You are surprised to see me here, Miss Harmer; and you well may
be; for myself--had it been to make me the richest woman in the
world--would not have set foot as a petitioner within the walls; but on
behalf of my sister, I would do this and much more."

"What do you want, Miss Ashleigh?" Angela Harmer said, in hurried,
anxious tones. "You must not talk to me; you must see my sister; she is
more able to talk upon business than I am."

"I do not go to your sister, Miss Harmer, because I know my errand would
then be a fruitless one. I come to you in her absence, because from what
I know and have heard of you, I believe that your heart is accessible to
impulses of kindness and pity; I come to you because I believe you to
have been a mere passive participator in the wrong which others have
committed."

"What do you want?" again Miss Harmer asked, in the same frightened,
helpless way.

"I ask at your hands my sister's life--Miss Harmer, she is dying; do you
know why? She was happy, she was loved; and was engaged to a man worthy
of her, and they would before this have been married. But this man is
dependent upon another, and that other's consent was only given for him
to wed an heiress; my sister is an heiress no longer. This man would
gladly take her penniless as she is, take her to the ruin of his worldly
prospects, but she cannot accept the sacrifice; and she is dying--dying;
do you hear that, Miss Harmer? And you are assuredly her
murderess,--far, far more so than you allege Sophy to have been of your
brother; for he was an old man, suffering from a deadly malady, by which
he might at any moment have been carried off, while this is a fair,
young, happy girl, whom you have struck down. She is dying;--Miss
Harmer, I demand her life of you!"

Miss Harmer cowered back into her chair before the young girl who stood
looking down with her earnest face upon her; and raised her hands
feebly, as if to keep her accuser at a distance.

"I pity you," Polly went on, "I pity you from my heart; but yet I demand
my sister's life; give her back to us again, and you will be
doubly--yes, tenfold repaid; for your peace of mind will be restored to
you. I know what you must have suffered--your changed face shows it; I
know what misery you must have undergone, and the struggle between your
conscience, your innate sense of right, and what you had been led to
believe. This was terrible before; but it was nothing to what you will
feel now, with the thought of my sister, whom you are sending to her
grave, before you. You cannot--I see it in your face--you cannot
reconcile with your conscience what you are doing; for your own sake,
Miss Harmer, and for my sister's, I call upon you to do what is right."

"What would you have?" Miss Harmer asked, wringing her hands in helpless
despair; "we offered at Christmas----"

"You did," Polly broke in, "you tried to cheat your conscience, as
Ananias did of old, by giving part while you held back the rest; but we
could not accept it: not even to save life, could we receive as a gift
part of our own, and so become almost participators in the robbery of
Sophy and ourselves. No, Miss Harmer, we must have our own, or nothing.
I call upon you now, solemnly in the names of your dead brother, and of
my dying sister, to give me this will you are hiding. Give it to me, and
I promise you in the name of us all, that the past shall never be
alluded to; I offer you a clear conscience, and our blessing, as the
saviour of my sister's life."

"But my sister!--Father Eustace!" Miss Harmer murmured, in a terrified
tone to herself. "Oh, no, no, no, I dare not!" and she again wrung her
hands despairingly.

"You dare not refuse, Miss Harmer; you dare not go down to your grave
with this grievous wrong and with my sister's death upon your soul; you
will have to meet then, One whose wrath will be far more terrible than
that of the anger of mortal. Miss Harmer, give me the will,--come," and
with an air of mingled entreaty and command, Sophy took Miss Harmer's
hands, looking down upon her with her earnest eyes, and Miss Harmer
almost unconsciously rose to her feet.

"Come," Polly said again, "save my sister's life, earn peace and
happiness for yourself, here and hereafter."

The girl led the old woman to the door, never taking her eyes from her
face, for she felt that somehow she was exercising a strange power over
her, that she was leading her, as it were, against her own will and
volition, and that if nothing occurred to break the spell, the victory
was hers. Miss Harmer's eyes were wide open, but she hardly seemed to
see, but went mechanically, like a person walking in her sleep; her lips
moved, but no sound came from them; then they went out of the door, and
up the stairs, and turned towards the door of Mr. Harmer's former
bedroom, when a noiseless step came up the stairs behind them, a hand
was placed upon Miss Harmer's shoulder, and the deep voice of Father
Eustace said,--

"Sister Angela, what are you doing?"

As a sleep-walker startled at some sudden touch from a dream, the old
woman turned round with a convulsive start, and then with a loud cry
fell senseless to the ground.

"Who are you?" the priest asked of Polly, as he stooped to raise the
fallen woman. "Who are you?"

"One of the rightful possessors of this house," Polly said, proudly; and
then turning round--for she saw that the prize was hopelessly lost at
the moment of victory--she went down stairs and out of the house,
telling Sarah, whom she found in the hall, to go upstairs to help the
astonished Father Eustace to carry the insensible woman to her room.

Polly, when she got home again, went straight to the library, and told
papa of her visit to Harmer Place, and its results, and how nearly she
had been to the recovery of the will. Papa looked thoughtful over it for
some time.

"It was a dangerous experiment, Polly, but the fact that you so nearly
succeeded, proves that it was not a hopeless one, as I should have
unhesitatingly have pronounced it to be, had you asked my opinion before
starting. It shows that the will is in existence still, and no doubt as
she was leading you towards Mr. Harmer's room, she was going down the
upper staircase towards the secret chamber, in some closet in which it
is undoubtedly concealed. I only hope that Miss Harmer will not, when
she returns home, and hears what a narrow escape she has had, destroy
the will at once. However, we must do as we have done before, hope for
the best."

Papa and Polly had a long talk again over Miss Harmer, and they quite
agreed that her religious bigotry and personal obstinacy were both so
great that it was hopeless to expect any change in her. Her superstition
was the only weak point in her character. So great was this, that papa
said that, strong-minded woman as she was 

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