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 Another Random Document on
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downstairs again; but, oh! what a different house it was from what it
had been a few hours back!
It was by that time eleven o’clock. Monica was still shut up in the
music-room. Nothing had been heard of Haddon; she had hardly
even given him a thought. She went down slowly to the hall, and
found herself face to face with Tom Pendrill. He wore his hat and
great coat. He had evidently just arrived in haste. As he removed the
former she was startled at the look upon his face. She had not
believed it capable of expressing so much feeling.
“Beatrice,” he said hoarsely, “is it true?”
He did not know he had called her by her Christian name, and she
hardly noticed it at the moment. She only bent her head and
answered:
“Yes, it is true.”
Together they passed into the lighted drawing-room, and stood on
either side the glowing hearth, looking at each other fixedly.
“Where is Monica?”
“In the music-room, alone. They were there together when the guns
began. It will kill her, I am certain it will!”
“No,” answered Tom quietly; “she will not die. It would be happier
for her if she could.”
Beatrice looked at him with quivering lips.
“Oh!” she said at last. “You understand her?”
“Yes,” he answered absently, looking away into the fire. “I
understand her. She will not die.”
Both were very silent for a time. Then he spoke.
“You were there?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about it.”
“You have not heard?”
“Only the barest outline. Sit down and tell me all.”
She did not resent his air of authority. She sat down, and did his
bidding. Tom listened in deep silence, weighing every word.
He made no comment on the strange story; but a very dark shadow
rested upon his sharp featured face.
He was a man of keen observation and acuteness of perception, and
his mind often leaped to a conclusion that no present premises
seemed to justify. Not for a moment would he have given utterance
to the question that had suggested itself to his mind; but there it
was, repeating itself again and again with persistent iteration.
“Can there have been foul play?”
He spoke not a word, his face told no tales; but he was musing
intently. Where was that half mad fellow, Fitzgerald; who some
months ago had seemed on the high-road to drink himself to
madness or death? He had not been heard of for some time past;
but Tom could not get the question out of his mind.
In the deep silence that reigned in the room every sound could be
heard distinctly. Beatrice suddenly started, for they were aware that
the door of the music-room had been opened, and that Monica was
coming towards them. The girl turned pale, and looked almost
frightened. Tom stood up as his hostess appeared, setting his face
like a flint.
The long hour that had seemed like a life-time to the wife—the
widow—how could they bring themselves to think of her as such?—
had left no outward traces upon Monica. Her face was calm and still,
and very pale, but it was not convulsed by grief, and her eyes did
not look as though they had shed tears, although there was no
hardness in their depths. They shone with something of star-like
brightness, at once soft and brilliant. The sweet serenity that had
long been the habitual expression of her face seemed intensified
rather than changed.
“Beatrice,” she said quietly, “where is your brother?”
“I don’t know.”
“Has he not come in?”
“Not that I know of.”
“We must inquire. He has been so many hours gone. I am uneasy
about him.”
“Oh, never mind about him,” said Beatrice, quickly. “He will be all
right.”
“We must think of him,” she answered. “Tom, it was good of you to
come back. What brought you? Did you hear?”
“I heard a rumour. Of course I came back. Is there anything I can
do?” He spoke abruptly, like a man labouring under some weight of
oppression.
“I wish you would go and inquire for Lord Haddon. Randolph sent
him to the life-boat station, because he believed he would ride over
faster than anybody else. I think he should be followed now, if he
has not come back. I cannot think what can have detained him so
long.”
“I will go and make inquiries,” said Tom.
“Thank you. I should be much obliged if you would.”
But as it turned out, there was no need for him to do this. Even as
Monica spoke they became aware of a slight stir in the hall.
Uncertain, rapid steps crossed the intervening space, and the next
moment Haddon stood before them in the doorway, white,
drenched, dishevelled, exhausted, leaning as if for support against
the framework, whilst his eyes sought those of his sister with a
strange look of dazed horror.
“Beatrice!” he cried, in a strained, unnatural tone. “Say it is not
true!”
Monica had stepped forward, anxious and startled at his appearance.
The look upon her face must have brought conviction home to
Haddon’s heart, and this terrible conviction completed the work
begun by previous over-fatigue and exhaustion. He made two
uncertain steps forward, looked round him in a dazed bewildered
way; then putting his hand to his head with a sudden gesture as of
pain, called out:
“I say, what is it?—Look out!” and Tom had only just time to spring
forward and guide his fall as he dropped in a dead faint upon the
couch hard by.
“Poor boy!” said Monica gently; “the shock has been too much for
him.”
 CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SIXTH.
MONICA.
Lord Haddon was carried upstairs by Tom’s direction, and put to bed
at once, but it was a very long time before he recovered
consciousness, and the doctor’s face was grave when he rejoined
Monica and Beatrice an hour later.
Afterwards they learned that he had reached the life-boat station,
only to find the boat out in another direction, that he had lost his
way in the darkness, and had been riding for hours over trackless
moors, wet through by driving storms of rain, obliged often to halt,
despite the cold and wet, to wait for passing gleams of moonlight to
show him his way; and this after a long day’s shooting and a long
fast. He had reached the castle at last, utterly worn out and
exhausted, only to hear the terrible news of the death of his best
friend. The strain had been too much, and he had given way.
He awoke to consciousness only in a high state of fever, with pain in
every joint; and Beatrice, in answer to Tom’s question, admitted that
her brother had had a sharp attack of rheumatic fever some three
years before, and had always been rather susceptible to cold and
damp ever since.
Tom looked gravely at Monica.
“I was afraid he was in for something of that kind.”
“Poor boy!” she said again, very gently. “I am so sorry. You will stay
with us, Tom? It will be a comfort to have you.”
“Of course I will stay,” he answered, in his abruptest fashion. “I shall
sit up with Haddon to-night. You two must go to bed at once—I
insist upon it.”
“Come, Beatrice,” said Monica, holding out her hand. “We must obey
orders you see.”
As they went together up the broad staircase, Beatrice said, with a
little sob:
“I cannot bear to think of our giving you all this trouble—just now.”
But Monica stopped her by a kiss.
“Have you not learned by this time Beatrice, that the greatest help in
bearing our own sorrows is to help others with their burdens? I am
grieved for you, dear, that this other trouble should have come; but
Tom is very clever, and we will all nurse him back to health again.
Good-night, dearest. You must try to sleep, that you may be strong
to-morrow.”
The next day Lord Haddon was very ill—dangerously ill—the fever
ran very high, other unfavourable symptoms had showed
themselves. Tom’s face was grave and absorbed, and Raymond, who
came over at his brother’s request, looked even more anxious. Yet
possibly this alarming illness of a guest beneath her roof was the
very best thing that could have happened, as far as Monica herself
was concerned. But for his illness, Beatrice and her brother must
have left Trevlyn at once; it was probable that Monica would have
elected to remain there entirely alone during the early days of her
widowhood, alone in her own desolation, more heart-breaking to
witness than any wild abandonment of grief, alone without even
those last melancholy offices to perform, without even the solemn
pageantry of a funeral to give some little occupation to the mind, or
to bring home in its own incontrovertible way the fact that a loved
being has passed away from the world for ever.
Randolph had, as it were, vanished from this life almost as if spirited
away. There was nothing to be done, no obsequies to be performed.
For just a few days a faint glimmer of hope existed in some minds
that a passing vessel might have picked him up, that a telegram
announcing his safety might yet arrive; but at the end of a week
every spark of such hope had died out, and Monica, who had never
from the first allowed herself to be so buoyed up, put on her heavy
widow’s weeds with the steady unflinching calmness that had
characterised her throughout.
She devoted herself to the task of nursing Lord Haddon, in which
task she showed untiring care and skill. All agreed that it was best
for her to have her thoughts and attention occupied in some quiet
labour of love like this, and certainly her skill at this time was such
as to render her services almost invaluable to the patient.
Haddon lay for weeks in a very critical state, racked with pain and
burning with fever. Without being always delirious, he was not in any
way master of himself, and no one could soothe, or quiet, or
compose him, during these long, weary days, except Monica. She
seemed to possess a power that acted upon him like a charm. He
might not always know her—very often he did not appear to
recognise her, but he always felt her influence. At her bidding he
would cease the restless tossing and muttering that exhausted his
strength and gave him much needless pain. He would take from her
hand food that no one else could persuade him to touch. She could
often soothe him to sleep, simply by the sound of her voice, or the
touch of her hand upon his burning brow.
“If he pulls through it will be your doing,” Tom sometimes said to
her. And Monica felt she could not do enough for the youth, who had
suffered all this in carrying out her husband’s last command, and
who had succumbed when his task was done, in hearing of the fate
that had befallen his friend.
A curious bond seemed established between those two, the power of
which he felt with a throb of keen joy almost akin to pain, when at
last the fever was subdued, and he began to know in a feeble,
uncertain sort of fashion, what it was that had happened, and how
life had been going with him during the past weeks.
It was of Monica he asked the account of that terrible night, and
from her lips he learned the story to which none else had dared to
allude in her presence. It was he who talked to her of Randolph,
recalled incidents of the past, talked of their boyish days and the
escapades they had indulged together, passing on to the increase of
mutual understanding and affection that had bound them together
as manhood advanced.
Nobody else talked to her like this. Haddon never could have done
so, had not weakness and illness brought them into such close
communion one with another. His feelings towards Monica were
those of simple adoration—he worshipped the very ground she trod
on. He often felt that to die with her hand upon his head, her eyes
looking gently and kindly into his, was all and more than he could
wish. His intense loving devotion gave him a sort of insight into her
true nature, and he knew by instinct that he did not hurt her when
he talked to her of him who was gone. Perhaps from no other lips
could Monica have borne that name to be spoken just then; but
Haddon in his hours of wandering had talked so much of Randolph,
that she had grown used to hear him speak of the husband she had
loved and lost, and she knew by the way in which he had betrayed
himself then how deeply and truly he loved him.
When the fever had gone, and the patient lay white and weak,
hardly able to move or speak, yet with a mind cleared from the
haunting shadows of delirium, eager to know the history of all that
had passed, it had not seemed very hard then, in answer to the
wistful look in the big grey eyes, and the whispered words from the
pale lips to tell him all the truth; and the ice once broken thus, it had
been no effort to talk of Randolph afterwards, and to let Haddon talk
of him too.
This outlet did her good. She was not a woman to whom talking was
a necessity, yet it was better for her to speak sometimes of the
sorrow that was weighing upon her crushed spirit; and it was far, far
easier to do this to a listener like Haddon, who from his weakness
and prostration could rise to no great heights of sympathy, could
offer no attempt at consolation, could only look at her with wistful
earnestness, and murmur a broken word from time to time, than it
would have been to those who would have met her with a burst of
tears, or with those quiet caresses and marks of sympathy that must
surely have broken down her hardly-won composure and calm.
So this illness of Haddon’s had really been a boon to her, and
perhaps to others as well; but for a few weeks Monica’s life seemed
passed in a sort of dream, and she was able to notice but little that
passed around her. She was wrapped in a strange trance—she lived
in the past with her husband, who sometimes hardly seemed to
have left her. Only when ministering to the needs of the young earl
did she arouse herself from her waking dream, and even then it
sometimes seemed as if the dream were the reality, and the reality a
dream.
Tom was a great deal at Trevlyn just now. For a long time Haddon’s
condition was so exceedingly critical that his presence was almost a
necessity, and when the patient gradually became convalescent,
Monica needed his help in getting through the business formalities
that began to crowd upon her when all hopes of Randolph’s rescue
became a thing of the past.
Monica was happy at least in this—there was no need for her to
leave her old home—no new earl to claim Trevlyn, and banish her
from the place she loved best in the world. The Trevlyns were a
dying race, as it seemed. Randolph and Monica were the last of their
name, and the entail expired with him. Trevlyn was hers, as well as
all her husband’s property. She was a rich woman, but in the first
instance it was difficult to understand the position, and she naturally
turned in her perplexity to Tom Pendrill, who was a thorough man of
business, shrewd and hard-headed, and who, from his long
acquaintance and connection with Trevlyn, understood more about
the estate than anybody else she could have selected. He was very
good to her, as she always said. He put himself entirely at her
disposal, and played the part of a kind and wise brother. His dry,
matter-of-fact manner of dealing with transfer of property, and such-
like matters, was in itself a comfort. She was never afraid of talking
things over with him. He kept sentiment studiously and entirely in
the back-ground. Although she knew perfectly that his sympathy for
her was very great, he never obtruded it upon her in the least; it
was offered and accepted in perfect silence on both sides.
Mrs. Pendrill, too, was a good deal at Trevlyn. She yearned over
Monica in the days of her early widowhood, and she had grown very
fond of Beatrice and her brother. Haddon wanted so very much care
and nursing that Mrs. Pendrill’s presence in the house was often a
help to all. Whilst Monica was in the sick room, she and Beatrice
spent many long hours together, and strange intimacy of thought
sprang up between those two who were so far from each other in
age and position. Haddon, too, was fond of the gentle-faced old
lady, and he loved sometimes to get her all to herself, and make her
talk to him of Monica.
His illness had left its traces upon the earl. He had, despite his five-
and-twenty years, seemed but a lad all this while; but when he left
his bed, it was curious to see how much of boyishness had passed
out of his face, how much quiet, thoughtful manliness had taken its
place.
Nobody quite knew how or why this change had been so marked.
Perhaps the shock of his friend’s death had had something to do
with it: perhaps the danger he had himself been in. Very near indeed
to the gates of death had the young man stood. He had almost
trodden the shadowy valley, even though his steps had been
retraced to the land of the living. Perhaps it was this knowledge that
made him pass as it were in one bound from boyhood to manhood—
or was there some other cause at work?
His face wore a look of curious purpose and resolution, oddly
combined with a sort of mute, determined patience: his pale,
sharpened face, that had changed so much during the past weeks,
was changed in expression even more than in contour. His grey
eyes, once always full of boyish merriment and laughter, were grave
and earnest now: the eyes of a man full of thought, expressive of a
hidden yet resolute purpose. These hollow eyes followed Monica
about with unconscious persistency, and rested upon her with a
sense of perfect content. When he grew a little stronger, and could
just rise from the sofa and trail himself across the room, it was
strange to mark how eager he was to render her those little
instinctive attentions that come naturally from a man to a woman.
Sometimes Monica would accept them with a smile, oftener she
would restrain him with a gentle commanding gesture, and bid him
keep quiet till he was stronger; but she accepted his chivalrous
admiration in the spirit in which it was offered, and let him look upon
himself as her especial knight, as well he might, since to her skill
and care Tom plainly told him he owed his life.
She let him talk to her of Randolph, though none of the others dared
to breathe that name. Sometimes she played to him in the dimness
of the music-room—and even he hardly knew how privileged he was
to be admitted there. She regarded him in the light of a loved
brother, and felt tenderly towards him, as one who had done and
suffered much in the same cause that had cost her gallant husband
his life. What he felt towards her would be more difficult to analyse.
At present he simply worshipped her, with a humble, devout
singleness of purpose that elevated his whole nature. The vague,
fleeting, distant hope that some day it might be given to him to
comfort her had hardly yet entered into the region of conscious
thought.
 CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SEVENTH
HAUNTED.
Christmas had come and gone whilst Lord Haddon lay hovering
between life and death. As the year turned, he began to regain
health and strength; but his progress was exceedingly slow, and all
idea of leaving Trevlyn was for the present entirely out of the
question. A journey in mid-winter was not to be thought of. It would
be enough to bring the whole illness back again; and Monica would
not listen when he sometimes said, with diffidence and appeal, that
he feared they were encroaching too much upon her hospitality and
goodness. In truth, neither brother nor sister were in haste to leave
Trevlyn, or to leave Monica alone in her desolate widowhood; and as
Haddon’s state of health rendered a move out of the question, the
situation was accepted with the more readiness.
Monica was able now to resume something of the even tenor of her
way, to take up her daily round of duties, and shape out her life in
accordance with her strangely altered circumstances.
All the old sense of dread connected with the sea had now vanished
entirely. It never frowned upon her now. It was her friend always—
the haunting presentiment of dread had passed away with the actual
certainty. Henceforward nothing could hold for her any great
measure of terror. She had passed through the very worst already.
Sometimes Monica had a strange feeling that she was not alone
during her favourite twilight pacings by the sea. She had a sense of
being watched—followed—and the uneasiness of the dogs added to
this impression. It troubled her but little, however. She had no fears
for herself—she knew, too, that she was a little fanciful, and that it
was hardly likely in reality that her footsteps were dogged.
But one dim January evening, as she pursued her way along the
margin of the sea, she was startled by seeing some large object
lying dark upon the pebbly beach. Her heart beat more fast than
was its wont, for she saw as she approached that it was the figure of
a man, lying face downwards upon the damp stones.
He did not look like a fisherman, he was too well dressed, and there
seemed something not altogether unfamiliar in the aspect of the
slight, well-proportioned figure. For a moment she could not recall
the association, but as the dogs ran up snuffing and growling, the
man started and sat up, revealing the pale, haggard face of Conrad
Fitzgerald.
Monica recoiled with an instinctive gesture of aversion. She had not
seen him since those summer days when she had been haunted by
the vision of his vindictive face and sinister eyes. But how he had
changed since then! She could not help looking at him, he was so
pale, so thin; his face was lined as if by pain, and his fiery eyes were
set in deep hollows. There was something rather awful in his
appearance, yet he did not look so wicked, so repulsive, as he had
done many times before.
A strange look of terror gleamed in his eyes as they met those of
Monica.
“Go away!” he cried wildly. “What do you come here for? Why do
you look at me like that? Go—in mercy, go!”
Monica was startled at his wild words and looks. Surely he was mad.
But if so, she must show no fear of him; she knew enough to be
aware of that.
“What are you doing out here in the dark?” she said. “You ought not
to be lying there this cold night. You had better go home, or you will
lose your way in the dark.”
He laughed wildly.
“Lose my way in the dark! It is always dark now—always, since that
dark night—ha! ha!—that night!” His laugh was terrible in its wild
despair. “Why do you look at me? Why do you speak to me? You
should not! You should not! You would not if——oh, God! are you a
ghost too?”
Such an awful look of horror shone out of his eyes that Monica’s
blood ran cold. His gaze was fixed on vacancy. He looked straight at
her, yet as if he did not see her, but something beyond. The anguish
and despair painted upon that wild, yet still beautiful, face smote
Monica’s heart with a sense of deep sorrow and pity.
“I am no ghost, Conrad,” she answered gently, trying if the sound of
the old name would drive that wild madness out of his eyes. “Why
are you afraid? What are you looking at? There is nothing there.”
For his eyes were still glaring wildly into the darkness beyond, and
as Monica spoke he lifted his arm, and pointed to something out at
sea.
“Don’t look at me!” he whispered hoarsely, yet not as if he
addressed Monica. “Don’t speak to me! If you speak, I shall go mad!
I shall go mad, I say! Why do you haunt me so? Why do you look
always like that? I had a right—all is fair in love and war—and hate!
Why did you give me the chance? I had a vow—a vow in heaven—or
hell! Ah! ha! Revenge is sweet, after all!” and he burst into a wild,
discordant laugh, dreadful to hear.
Monica shuddered, a sense of horror creeping over her. She did not
catch the whole of his words, lost as that hoarse whisper was
sometimes in the sullen plash of the advancing waves. The words
were not addressed to her, but to some imaginary object visible only
to the eye of madness. She attached no meaning to what she heard.
She had no clue by which to unravel the workings of his disordered
mind. Yet it was terrible to see his terror-stricken face, and listen to
the exclamations addressed to a phantom foe. She tried to recall him
to himself.
“Conrad, there is no one here but ourselves. You have been
dreaming.”
Conrad turned his wild eyes towards her, but continued to point
wildly over the sea.
“Can you not see him? There—out there! His head—his eyes—ah,
those eyes!—as he looked then—then! Ah, don’t look so at me, I
say! You will kill me!”
He buried his face in his hands and shuddered from head to foot.
Monica, despite the shiver of horror that crept over her, felt more
strongly than anything else a deep pity for one whose mind was so
visibly shattered. Much of the past could be condoned to one whose
mental faculties were so terribly unstrung. She came one step
nearer, and laid her hand upon his arm.
“You should not be out here alone,” she said. “You had better go
home. It is growing dark already. If you will come with me to the
lodge, I will see that you have a lantern; or, if you like, I will send a
servant with a lantern with you.” She felt, indeed, that he was hardly
in a condition to be out alone. She wished Tom Pendrill could see
him now. But at the touch of her hand Conrad sprang back as if she
had struck him. His eyes were full of shrinking horror.
“Go away!” he said fiercely, “your hand burns me—it burns me, I
say! How can you look at me or touch me? What have I done that
you come here day by day to torment me? Is it not enough that he
leaves me no peace night or day?—that he brings me down to this
cursed place, whether I will or no, but you must haunt me too? Ah,
it is too much—it is too much, I say!”
She could not catch all these rapidly-uttered words, but she read the
hopeless misery of his face.
“I do not wish to distress you, Conrad. Will you go home quietly
now? You are not well; you should not be out here alone. Have you
anybody there to take care of you?”
He laughed again, and flung his arms above his head with a wild
gesture of despair.
“You say this to me—you! you! It only wanted this. My God, this is
too much!”
He turned from her and sprang away in the darkness. She heard his
steps as he dashed recklessly up the cliff path—so recklessly that
she half expected to hear the sound of a slip and a fall—and then as
he reached the summit and turned inland, they died away into
silence.
Monica drew a long breath of relief when she found herself alone.
There was something expressibly awful in talking alone to a madman
in the dimness of the dying day, in hearing his wild words addressed
to some phantom shadow seen only by his disordered vision. She
shivered a little as she turned towards him. She could stay no longer
in that lonely place.
She met Tom looking out for her on her return. He said something
about her staying out too long in the darkness. She laid her hand
upon his arm, and pacing up and down the dark avenue, she told
him of her adventure with the madman.
“Tom, I am certain he ought to see a doctor. Will you not see if you
can do something for him?”
She could not see the expression of Tom’s face. Had she been able
to do so, she would have been startled. His voice was very cold as
he answered:
“I am not a lunacy commissioner, Monica.”
She was surprised, and a little hurt.
“You are very hard, Tom. You saw him once before, why not again?”
“If he, or his friends for him, require medical advice, I suppose they
are capable of sending for it,” he said, adding with sudden
fierceness, as it seemed to her, “Monica, Conrad Fitzgerald, ill or
well, is nothing to you. It is not fit you should waste a single thought
upon that scoundrel again!”
She was surprised at his vehemence; it was so unlike Tom to speak
with heat. What had there been in her account of the meeting to
discompose him so greatly? Before she could attempt to frame the
question, he had asked one of her—asked it abruptly, as it seemed
irrelevantly.
“How long has Fitzgerald been in these parts?”
“I don’t know? I have never seen him till to-night, nor heard of him
at all?”
“Nor I. Go in, Monica. It is too late for you to be out.”
“And you?”
“I will come presently.”
“And you will think about what I asked you?”
“I will think about it—yes.”
The tone was enigmatic. She could not make Tom out at all, but she
went in at his bidding. She knew that he wished to be alone, that he
had something disturbing upon his mind, though what it was she
could not divine.
Tom, as it turned out, had no choice in the matter; for his brother
sent to him next day a message to the effect that Fitzgerald’s
servant had been to him with a very sad account of his master, who
seemed to be suffering under an acute attack of delirium tremens.
Raymond thought his brother, who had seen him once before, had
better go the next day in a casual sort of way, and see if he could do
anything. Fitzgerald was furious at the idea of having a doctor near
him; but possibly he would not regard Tom in that light, and the
servants would do all they could to obtain for him access to their
master. They were terrified at his ravings, and half afraid he would
do himself or them an injury if not placed under proper control.
So Tom, upon the following afternoon, started for the old dilapidated
house, without saying a word to anyone as to his destination, and
was eagerly admitted by a haggard-looking servant, who said that
his master was “terrible bad to-day—it was awful like to hear him go
on,” and expressed it as his opinion that he was almost past knowing
who was near him, he was so wild and delirious. He had kept his
bed for the past two days, having been very ill since coming in, wet
and exhausted, on the night Monica had seen him. Between the
attacks of delirium he was as weak as a child; and with this much of
warning and explanation, Tom was ushered upstairs.
An hour later he left that desolate house with a quick, firm tread,
that broke, as he turned a corner and was concealed from view,
almost to a run. His face was very pale; it looked thinner and
sharper than it had done an hour before, and his eyes were full of
an unspeakable horror. Now and again a sort of shudder ran through
his frame; but no word passed his tightly-compressed lips. He
hurried through the tangled park as if some deadly malaria lurked
there. He hardly drew his breath until he had left the trees and
brake behind, and had plunged into the wild trackless moor; even
then, goaded by his thoughts, he plunged blindly along for a mile or
more, until at last, breathless and exhausted, he sank face
downwards upon the heather, trembling in every limb.
How long he lay there he never knew. He was roused at last by a
touch upon his shoulder, and raising himself with a start, he looked
straight into the startled eyes of Beatrice Wentworth.
 CHAPTER THE TWENTY-EIGHTH.
LOVERS.
Tom sprang to his feet, and the two stood gazing at one another for
a moment in mute surprise.
“You are ill,” said Beatrice; “you are as white as a sheet. What is the
matter?”
She spoke anxiously. She looked half frightened at his strange looks;
he saw it, and recovered himself instantly. It was perhaps the first
time he had ever been taken unawares, and he was not altogether
pleased that it had happened now.
“What are you doing out here all alone?” he asked peremptorily.
“What are you doing lying on the ground on a cold January
evening?” she retorted. “Do you want to get rheumatic fever, too?”
“Answer my question first. What are you doing out here, miles away
from home, with the darkness coming on, too?”
“I lost my way,” she answered carelessly. “I never can keep my
bearings in these strange, wild places, where everything looks alike.”
“Then I must take you home,” said Tom shortly.
“You said you were going to dine at St. Maws to-night,” she
objected.
“I shall take you home first,” he said.
“It will be ever so much out of your road. Just show me the way. I
shall find it fast enough.”
“I dare say—After having lost it in broad daylight. You must come
with me. I cannot trust you.”
Beatrice flushed hotly as she turned and walked beside him. Was
more meant than met the ear?
“There is not the least need you should,” she said haughtily, and
seemed disposed to say no more.
Tom spoke first, spoke in his abrupt peremptory fashion. He was
absorbed and distrait. She tried not to feel disappointed at his
words.
“Lady Beatrice, is it true that you knew Randolph Trevlyn intimately
for many years?”
“Ever since I can remember. He was almost like a brother to us.”
“Do you know if he ever had an enemy?”
Beatrice looked up quickly into his pale face.
“Why do you ask?”
“That is my affair. I do not ask without a reason. Think before you
answer—if you can.”
“Randolph was always such a favourite,” she began, but was
interrupted by a quick impatient gesture from Tom.
“Don’t chatter,” he said, almost rudely, “think!”
Oddly enough this brusque reminder did not offend her. She saw
that Tom’s nerves were all on edge, that they were strung to a
painful pitch of tension. She began to catch some of his earnestness
and determination.
Beatrice was taken out of herself, and from that moment her manner
changed for the better. She thought the matter over in silence.
“I have heard that Sir Conrad Fitzgerald had an old grudge against
him.”
“Ah!” breathed Tom softly.
“But I fancied, perhaps, that Monica’s influence had made them
friends. Randolph knew some disreputable story connected with Sir
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