"How am I to save her?" repeated Valentine, with the same helpless manner. He could not bring himself to consider Tom Halliday's death. The subject was too far away from him—remote as the dim shadows of departed centuries. In all the universe there were but two figures standing out in lurid brightness against the dense night of chaos—a helpless girl held in the clutches of a secret assassin; and it was his work to rescue her.

"What am I to do?" he asked. "Tell me what I am to do."

"What it may be wisest to do I cannot tell you," answered Mr. Burkham, almost as helplessly as the other had asked the question. "I can give you the name of the best man to get to the bottom of such a case—a man who gave evidence on the Fryar trial—Jedd. You have heard of Jedd, I daresay. You had better go straight to Jedd, and take him down with you to Miss Halliday. His very name will frighten Sheldon."

"I will go at once. Stay—the address! Where am I to find Dr. Jedd?"

"In Burlington Row. But there is one thing to be considered."

"What?"

"The interference of Jedd may only make that man desperate. He may hasten matters now as he hastened matters before. If you had seen his coolness at that time; if you had seen him, as I saw him, standing by that poor fellow's deathbed, comforting him—yes, with friendly speeches—laughing and joking, watching the agonising pain and the miserable sickness, and all the dreary wretchedness of such a death, and never swerving from his work; if you had seen him, you would understand why I am afraid to advise you. That man was as desperate as he was cool when he murdered his friend. He will be more reckless this time."

"Why?"

"Because he has reached a higher stage in the science of murder. The symptoms of that poor Yorkshireman were the symptoms of arsenical poisoning; the symptoms of which you have told me to-day denote a vegetable poison. That affords very vague diagnosis, and leaves no trace. That was the agent which enabled the Borgias to decimate Rome. It is older than classic Greece, and simple as a b c, and will remain so until the medical expert is a recognized officer of the law, the faithful guardian of the bed over which the suspected poisoner loiters—past-master of the science in which the murderer is rarely more than an experimentalist, and protected from all the hazards of plain speaking by the nature of his office."

"Great Heaven, how am I to save her?" exclaimed Valentine. He could not contemplate the subject in its broad social aspect; he could only think of this one dear life at stake. "To send this Dr. Jedd might be to hasten her death; to send a less efficient man would be mere childishness. WHAT shall I do?"

He looked despairingly at the surgeon, and in that one glance perceived what a frail reed this was upon which he was leaning. And then, like the sudden gleam of lightning, a name flashed across his mind,—George Sheldon, the lawyer, the schemer, the man who of all the world best knew this vile enemy and assassin against whom he was matched; he it was of whom counsel should be asked in this crisis. Once perceiving this, Valentine was prompt to act. It was the first flash of light in the darkness.

"You mean to stand by me in this, don't you?" he asked Mr. Burkham.

"With all my heart and soul."

"Good. Then you must go to Dr. Jedd instantly. Tell him all you know—Tom Halliday's death; the symptoms of Charlotte's decline, as you have heard them from me—everything; and let him hold himself in readiness to start for Hastings directly he hears from or sees me. I am going to a man who of all men can tell me how to deal with Philip Sheldon. I shall try to be in Burlington Row in an hour from this time; but in any case you will wait there till I come. I suppose, in a desperate case like this, Dr. Jedd will put aside all less urgent work?"

"No doubt of that."

"I trust to you to secure his sympathy," said Valentine.

He was in the darksome entrance-hall by this time. Mr. Burkham followed, and opened the door for him.

"Have no fear of me," he said. "Good bye."

The two men shook hands with a grip significant as masonic sign-manual. It meant on the one part hearty co-operation, on the other implicit confidence. In the next moment Valentine sprang into the cab.

"King's Road—entrance to Gray's Inn, and drive like mad!" he shouted to the driver. The hansom rattled across the stones, dashed round corners, struck consternation to scudding children in pinafores, all but annihilated more than one perambulator, and in less than ten minutes after leaving Mr. Burkham's door, ground against the kerbstone before the little gate of Gray's Inn.

"God grant that George Sheldon may be at home!" Valentine said to himself, as he hurried towards that gentleman's office. George Sheldon was at home. In this fight against time, Mr. Hawkehurst had so far found the odds in his favour.

"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the lawyer, looking up from his desk, as Valentine appeared on the threshold of the door, pale and breathless; "to what do I owe the unusual honour of a visit from Mr. Hawkehurst? I thought that rising litterateur had cut all old acquaintances, and gone in for the upper circles."

"I have come to you on a matter of life and death, George Sheldon," said Valentine; "this is no time to talk of why I haven't been to you before. When you and I last met, you advised me to beware of your brother Philip. It wasn't the first, or the second, or the third time that you so warned me. And now speak out like an honest man, and tell me what you meant by that warning? For God's sake, speak plainly this time."

"I cannot afford to speak more plainly than I have spoken half a dozen times already. I told you to beware of my brother Phil, and I meant that warning in its fullest significance. If you had chosen to take my advice, you would have placed Charlotte Halliday's fortune, and Charlotte Halliday herself, beyond his power, by an immediate marriage. You didn't choose to do that, and there was an end of the matter. I have been a heavy loser by your pigheaded obstinacy; and I dare say before you and Phil Sheldon have done with each other, you too will find yourself a loser."

"God help me, yes!" cried Valentine, with a groan; "I stand to make the heaviest loss that was ever made by man."

"What do you mean?" exclaimed George.

"Shall I tell you what you meant when you warned me against your own brother? Shall I tell you why you so warned me? You know that Philip Sheldon murdered Tom Halliday."

"Great God!"

"Yes; the secret is out. You knew it; how or when you discovered it I cannot tell. You knew of that one hellish crime, and would have prevented the commission of a second murder. You should have spoken more plainly. To know what you knew, and to confine yourself to cautious hints and vague suggestions, as you did, was to have part in that devilish work. If Charlotte Halliday dies, her blood be upon your head—upon yours—as well as upon his!"

The young man had risen in his passion, and stood before George Sheldon with uplifted hands, and eyes that flashed angry lightnings. It seemed almost as if he would have called down the Divine vengeance upon this man's head.

"If Charlotte Halliday dies!" repeated George, in a horror-stricken whisper; "why should you suggest such a thing?"

"Because she is dying."

There was a pause. Valentine flung himself passionately upon the chair from which he had just risen, with his back to George Sheldon, and his face bent over the back of the chair. The lawyer sat looking straight before him, with a ghastly countenance.

"I told him he meant this," he said to himself, in a hoarse whisper. "I told him in this office not six months ago. Powers of hell, what a villain he is! And there are people who do not believe there is a devil!"

For a few moments Valentine gave free vent to his passion of grief. These tears of rage, of agony the most supreme, were the first he had shed since he had bent his face over Charlotte's soft brown hair, to hide the evidence of his sorrow. When he had dashed these bitter drops away from his burning eyes, he turned to confront George Sheldon, pale as death, but very calm. And after this he gave way no more to his passion. He was matched against Time, of all enemies the most pitiless and unrelenting, and every minute wasted was a point scored by his foe.

"I want your help, George Sheldon," he said. "If you have ever been sorry that you made no effort to save Charlotte Halliday's father, prove yourself his friend by trying to save her."

"If I have ever been sorry!" echoed the lawyer. "Why, my miserable dreams have never been free from the horror of that man's face. You don't know what it is—murder! Nobody knows who hasn't been concerned in it. You read of murders in your newspapers. A shot B, or C poisoned D, and so on, all through the letters of the alphabet, with a fresh batch for every Sunday; but it never comes home to you. You think of the horror of it in a shadowy kind of way, as you might think of having a snake twisted round your waist and legs, like that blessed man and boys one never sees the last of. But if you were to look at that plaster cast all your life, you couldn't realize ten per cent of the horror you'd feel if the snake was there, alive, crushing your bones, and hissing in your ear. I have been face to face with murder, Valentine Hawkehurst; and if I were to live a century, I should never forget what I felt when I stood by Tom Halliday's deathbed, and it flashed upon me, all at once, that my brother Phil was poisoning him."

"And you did not try to save him—your friend?" cried Valentine.

"Why, you see," replied the other, in a strange slow way, "it was too late to save him: I knew that, and—I held my tongue. What could I do? Against my own brother! That sort of thing in a family is ruin for every one! Do you think anybody would have brought their business to me after my brother had stood in the Old Bailey dock to take his trial for murder? No; my only course was to keep my own counsel, and I kept it. Phil made eighteen thousand pounds by his marriage with poor Tom's widow, and a paltry hundred or two is all I ever touched of that money."

"And you could touch that money?" cried Valentine, aghast.

"Money carries no infection. Did you ever ask any questions about the money you won at German gaming-tables. I dare say some of your napoleons and ten-thaler notes could have told queer stories if they had been able to talk. Taking Phil's money has never weighed upon my conscience. I'm not very inquisitive about the antecedents of a five-pound note; but I'll tell you what it is, Hawkehurst, I'd give all I have, and all I ever hope to have, and would go out and sweep a crossing to-morrow, if I could get Tom Halliday's face out of my mind, with the look that he turned upon me the last time I saw him. 'Ah, George,' he said, 'in illness a man feels the comfort of being among friends!' And he took my hand and squeezed it, in his old hearty way. We had been boys together, Hawkehurst, birds-nesting in Hyley Woods; on the same side in our Barlingford cricket-matches. And I shook his hand, and went away, and left him to die!"

And here Mr. Sheldon of Gray's Inn, the Sheldon who was in with the money-lenders, sharpest of legal prestigitators, most ruthless of opponents, most unscrupulous of allies, buried his face in a flaming bandanna, and fairly sobbed aloud. When the passion had passed, he got up and walked hastily to the window, more ashamed of this one touch of honest emotion than of all the falsehoods and chicaneries of his career.

"I didn't think I could have been such an ass," he muttered sheepishly.

"I did not hope that you could feel so deeply," answered Valentine. "And now help me to save the only child of your ill-fated friend. I am sure that you can help me."

Without waiting to be questioned, Valentine related the circumstances of Charlotte's illness, and of his interview with Mr. Burkham.

"I did not even know that the poor girl was ill," said George Sheldon. "I have not seen Phil for months. He came here one day, and I gave him a bit of my mind. I told him if he tried to harm her I'd let the light in upon him and his doings. And I'll keep my word."

"But his motive? What, in the name of Heaven, can be his motive for taking her innocent life? He knows of the Haygarth estate, and must hope to profit by her fortune if she lives."

"Yes, and to secure the whole of that fortune if she dies. Her death would make her mother sole heir to that estate, and the mother is the merest tool in his hands. He may even have induced Charlotte to make a will in his favour, so that he himself may stand in her shoes."

"She would not have made a will without telling me of it."

"You don't know that. My brother Phil can do anything. It would be as easy for him to persuade her to maintain secrecy about the transaction as to persuade her to make the will. Do you suppose he shrinks from multiplying lies and forgeries and hypocrisies? Do you suppose anything in that small way comes amiss to the man who has once brought his mind to murder? Why, look at the Scotch play of that fellow Shakespeare's. At the beginning, your Macbeth is a respectable trustworthy sort of person, anxious to get on in life, and so on, and that's all; but no sooner has he made an end of poor old Duncan, than he lays about him right and left—Banquo, Fleance, anybody and everybody that happens to be in his way. It was lucky for that Tartar of a wife of his that she hook'd it, or he'd soon have put a stop to her sleep-walking. There's no such wide difference between a man and a tiger, after all. The tiger's a decent fellow enough till he has tasted human blood; but when once he has, Lord save the country-side from the jaws of the man-eater!"

"For Heaven's sake let us waste no time in talk!" Valentine cried, impetuously. "I am to meet Burkham in Burlington Row directly I have got your advice."

"What for?"

"To see Dr. Jedd, and take him down to Hastings, if possible."

"That won't do."

"Why not?"

"Because Jedd's appearance would give Phil the office. Jedd gave evidence on the Fryar trial, and must be a marked man to him. All Jedd can tell you is that Charlotte is being poisoned. You know that already. Of course she'll want medical treatment, and so on, to bring her round; but she can't get that under my brother's roof. What you have to do is to get her away from that house."

"You do not know how ill she is. I doubt if she could bear the removal."

"Anything is better than to remain. That is certain death."

"But your brother would surely dispute her removal."

"He would, and oppose it inch by inch. We must get him away, before we attempt to remove her."

"How?"

"I will find the means for that. I know something of his business relations, and can invent some false cry for luring him off the trail. We must get him away. The poor girl was not in actual danger when you left her, was she?"

"No, thank God, there was no appearance of immediate danger. But she was very ill. And that man holds her life in his hand. He knows that I have come to London in search of a doctor. What if—"

"Keep yourself quiet, Hawkehurst. He will not hasten her death unless he is desperate; for a death occurring immediately after your first expression of alarm would seem sudden. He'll avoid any appearance of suddenness, if he can, depend upon it. The first thing is to get him away. But the question is, how to do it? There must be a bait. What bait? Don't talk to me, Hawkehurst. Let me think it out, if I can."

The lawyer leaned his elbows on the table, and abandoned himself to profound cogitation, with his forehead supported by his clenched hands. Valentine waited patiently while he thus cogitated.

"I must go down to Phil's office," he said at last, "and ferret out some of his secrets. Nothing but stock-exchange business, of an important character, would induce him to leave Charlotte Halliday. But if I can telegraph such a message as will bring him to town, I'll do it. Leave all that to me. And now, what about your work?"

"I am at a loss what to do, if I am not to take Dr. Jedd to Harold's Hill."

"Take him to St. Leonards; and if I get my brother out of the way, you can have Charlotte conveyed to an hotel in St. Leonard's, where she can stop till she picks up strength enough to come to London."

"Do you think her mother will consent to her removal?

"Do I think you will be such an idiot as to ask for her consent?" cried George Sheldon impatiently. "My brother's wife is so weak a fool, that the chances are she'd insist on her daughter stopping quietly, to be poisoned. No; you must get Mrs. Sheldon out of the way somehow. Send her to look at the shops, or to bathe, or to pick up shells on the beach, or anything else equally inane. She's easy enough to deal with. There's that young woman, Paget's daughter, with them still, I suppose? Yes. Very well, then, you and she can get Charlotte away between you."

"But for me to take those two girls to an hotel—the chance of scandal, of wonder, of inquiry? There ought to be some other person—some nurse. Stay, there's Nancy Woolper—the very woman! My darling has told me of that old woman's affectionate anxiety about her health—an anxiety which was singularly intense, it seemed to Lotta. Good God! do you think she, Nancy Woolper, could have suspected the cause of Mr. Halliday's death?"

"I dare say she did. She was in the house when he died, and nursed him all through his illness. She's a clever old woman. Yes, you might take her down with you; I think she would be of use in getting Charlotte away."

"I'll take her, if she will go."

"I am not sure of that; our north-country folks have stiffish notions about fidelity to old masters, and that kind of thing. Nancy Woolper nursed my brother Phil."

"If she knows or suspects the fate of Charlotte's father, she will try to save Charlotte," said Valentine, with conviction. "And now, good bye! I trust to you for getting your brother out of the way, George Sheldon; remember that."

He held out his hand; the lawyer took it with a muscular grip, which, on this occasion, meant something more than that base coin of jolly good fellowship which so often passes current for friendship's virgin gold.

"You may trust me," George Sheldon said gravely. "Stop a moment, though; I have a proposition to make. If my brother Philip has induced that girl to make a will, as it is my belief he has, we must counter him. Come down with me to Doctors' Commons. You've a cab? Yes; the business won't take half an hour."

"What business?"

"A special licence for your marriage with Charlotte Halliday."

"A marriage?"

"Yes; her marriage invalidates her will, if she has made one, and does away with Phil's motive. Come along; we'll get the licence."

"But the delay?"

"Exactly half an hour. Come!"

The lawyer dashed out of his office. "At home in an hour," he shouted to the clerk, and then ran downstairs, followed closely by Valentine, and did not cease running until he was in the King's Road, where the cab was waiting.

"Newgate Street and Warwick Lane to Doctors' Commons!" he cried to the cabman; and Valentine was fain to take his seat in the cab without further remonstrance.

"I don't understand—" he began, as the cabman drove away.

"I do. It's all right; you'll put the licence in your pocket, and call at the church nearest which you hang out, Edgware Road way, give notice of the marriage, and so on; and as soon as Charlotte can bear the journey, bring her to London and marry her. I told you your course six months ago. Your obstinacy has caused the hazard of that young woman's life. Don't let us have a second edition of it."

"I will be governed by your advice," answered Valentine, submissively. "It is the delay that tortures me."

The delay was indeed torture to him. Everything and everybody in Doctors' Commons seemed the very incarnation of slowness. The hansom cab might tear and grind the pavement, the hansom cabman might swear until even monster waggons swerved aside to give him passage; but neither tearing nor swearing could move the incarnate stolidity of Doctors' Commons. When he left that quaint sanctuary of old usages, he carried with him the Archbishop of Canterbury's benign permission for his union with Charlotte Halliday. But he knew not whether it was only a morsel of waste paper which he carried in his pocket; and whether there might not ere long be need of a ghastlier certificate, giving leave and licence for the rendering back of "ashes to ashes, and dust to dust."

Valentine's first call, after leaving George Sheldon at the gate of Doctors' Commons, was at the head-quarters of the Ragamuffins. His heart sank as he ran into the bar of the hostelry to ask for the telegram which might be waiting for him.

Happily there was no telegram. To find no tidings of a change for the worse seemed to him almost equivalent to hearing of a change for the better. What had he not feared after his interview with the surgeon of Bloomsbury!

From Covent Garden the hansom bowled swiftly to Burlington Row. Here Valentine found Mr. Burkham, pale and anxious, waiting in a little den of a third room, on the ground-floor—a ghastly little room, hung with anatomical plates, and with some wax preparations in jars, on the mantelpiece, by way of ornament. To them presently came Dr. Jedd, as lively and business-like as if Miss Halliday's case had been a question of taking out a double-tooth.

"Very sad!" he said; "these vegetable poisons—hands of unscrupulous man. Very interesting article in the Medical Quarterly—speculative analysis of the science of toxicology as known to the ancients."

"You will come down to Harold's Hill at once, sir?" said Valentine, imploringly.

"Well, yes; your friend here, Mr. Burkham, has persuaded me to do so, though I need hardly tell you that such a journey will be to the last degree inconvenient."

"It is an affair of life and death," faltered the young man.

"Of course, my dear sir. But then, you see, I have half-a-dozen other affairs of life and death on my hands at this moment. However, I have promised. My consultations will be over in half an hour; I have a round of visits after that, and by—well, say by the five o'clock express, I will go to St. Leonards."

"The delay will be very long," said Valentine.

"It cannot be done sooner. I ought to go down to Hertfordshire this evening—most interesting case—carbuncle—three operations in three consecutive weeks—Swain as operator. At five o'clock I shall be at the London Bridge station. Until then, gentlemen, good day. Lawson, the door."

Dr. Jedd left his visitors to follow the respectable white-cravatted butler, and darted back to his consulting-room.

Mr. Burkham and Valentine walked slowly up and down Burlington Row before the latter returned to his cab.

"I thank you heartily for your help," said Valentine to the surgeon; "and I believe, with God's grace, we shall save this dear girl's life. It was the hand of Providence that guided me to you this morning. I can but believe the same hand will guide me to the end."

On this they parted. Valentine told his cabman to drive to the Edgware Road; and in one of the churches of the immediate neighbourhood of that thoroughfare he gave notice of his intention to enter the bonds of holy matrimony. He had some difficulty in arranging matters with the clerk, whom he saw in his private abode and non-official guise. That functionary was scarcely able to grasp the idea of an intending Benedick who would not state positively when he wanted to be married. Happily, however, the administration of half-a-sovereign considerably brightened the clerk's perceptions.

"I see what you want," he said. "Young lady a invalid, which she wants to leave her home as she finds uncomfortable, she being over twenty-one years of age and her own mistress. It's what you may call a runaway match, although the parties ain't beholden to any one, in a manner of speaking. I understand. You give me half an hour's notice any morning within the legal hours, and I'll have one of our young curates ready for you as soon as you're ready for them; and have you and the young lady tied up tight enough before you know where you are. We ain't very long over our marriages, unless it is something out of the common way."

The clerk's familiarity was more good-natured than flattering to the applicant's self-esteem; but Valentine was in no mood to object to this easy-going treatment of the affair. He promised to give the clerk the required notice; and having arranged everything in strictly legal manner, hurried back to his cab, and directed the man to drive to the Lawn.

It was now three o'clock. At five he was to meet Dr. Jedd at the station. He had two hours for his interview with Nancy Woolper, and his drive from Bayswater to London Bridge.

He had tasted nothing since daybreak; but the necessity to eat and drink never occurred to him. He was dimly conscious of feeling sick and faint, but the reason of this sickness and faintness did not enter into his thoughts. He took off his hat, and leant his head back against the cushion of the hansom as that vehicle rattled across the squares of Paddington. The summer day, the waving of green trees in those suburban squares; the busy life and motion of the world through which he went, mixed themselves into one jarring whirl of light and colour, noise and motion. He found himself wondering how long it was since he left Harold's Hill. Between the summer morning in which he had walked along the dusty high-road, with fields of ripening corn upon his left, and all the broad blue sea upon his right, and the summer afternoon in which he drove in a jingling cab through the noisy streets and squares of Bayswater, there seemed to him a gulf so wide, that his tried brain shrank from scanning it.

He struggled with this feeling of helplessness and bewilderment, and overcame it.

"Let me remember what I have to do," he said to himself; "and let me keep my wits about me till that is done."



CHAPTER II.

PHOENICIANS ARE RISING.

While Mr. Hawkehurst arranged his affairs with the clerk of St. Matthias-in-the-fields, in the parish of Marylebone, George Sheldon sat in his brother's office writing a letter to that distinguished stockbroker. The pretext of writing a letter was the simplest pretext for being alone in his brother's room; and to be alone in Philip Sheldon's room was the first step in the business which George had to do.

The room was distractingly neat, and as handsomely furnished as it is possible for an office to be within the closest official limits. A Spanish mahogany desk with a cylinder cover, and innumerable drawers fitted with invisible Bramah locks, occupied the centre of the room; and four ponderous Spanish mahogany chairs, with padded backs, and seats covered with crimson morocco, were primly ranged against the wall. Upon the mantelpiece ticked a skeleton clock; above which there hung the sternest and grimmest of almanacks, on either whereof were fastened divers lists and calendars of awful character, affected by gentlemen on 'Change.

Before penetrating to this innermost and sacred chamber, George Sheldon wasted some little time in agreeable gossip with a gentleman whom he found yawning over the Times newspaper in an outer and less richly furnished apartment. This gentleman was Philip Sheldon's clerk, the younger son of a rich Yorkshire farmer, who had come to London with the intention of making his fortune on the Stock Exchange, and whose father had paid a considerable sum in order to obtain for this young man the privilege of reading the Times in Mr. Sheldon's office, and picking up whatever knowledge might be obtained from the business transactions of his employer.

The career of Philip Sheldon had been watched with some interest by his fellow-townsmen of Barlingford. They had seen him leave that town with a few hundreds in his pocket, and they had heard of him twelve years afterwards as a prosperous stockbroker, with a handsome house and a handsome carriage, and the reputation of being one of the sharpest men in the City. The accounts of him that came to Barlingford were all more or less exaggerated; and the men who discussed his cleverness and his good luck were apt to forget that he owed the beginning of his fortunes to Tom Halliday's eighteen thousand pounds. The one fact that impressed Philip Sheldon's townsmen was the fact that a Barlingford man had made money on the Stock Exchange; and the one inference they drew therefrom was the inference that other Barlingford men might do the same.

Thus it had happened that Mr. Stephen Orcott, of Plymley Rise farm, near Barlingford, being at a loss what to do with a somewhat refractory younger son, resolved upon planting his footsteps in the path so victoriously trodden by Philip Sheldon. He wrote to Philip, asking him to receive the young man as clerk, assistant, secretary—anything, with a view to an ultimate junior partnership; and Philip consented, upon certain conditions. The sum he demanded was rather a stiff one, as it seemed to Stephen Orcott, but he opined that such a sum would not have been asked if the advantages had not been proportionately large. The bargain was therefore concluded, and Mr. Frederick Orcott came to London. He was a young man of horsey propensities, gifted with a sublime contempt for any kind of business requiring application or industry, and with a supreme belief in his own merits.

George Sheldon had known Frederick Orcott as a boy, and had been in his society some half-dozen times since his coming to London. He apprehended no difficulty in obtaining from this young gentleman any information he had the power to afford.

"How do, Orcott?" he said, with agreeable familiarity. "My brother Phil not come back yet?"

"No," replied the other, sulkily. "There have been ever so many people here bothering me about him. Where has he gone? and when will he be back? and so on. I might as well be some d——d footman, if I'm to sit here answering questions all day. High Wickham races are on to-day, and I wanted to see Barmaid run before I put my money on her for Goodwood. She was bred down our way, you see, and I know she's like enough to win the cup, if she's fit. They don't know much about her this way, either, though she's own sister to Boots, that won the Chester Cup last year, owing to Topham's being swindled into letting him off with seven lbs. He ran at the York Spring, you see, for a twopenny-halfpenny plate, and the boy that rode him pulled his head half off—I saw him do it—and then he won the Chester, and brought his owners a pot of money."

This information was not exactly what George Sheldon wanted, but he planted himself on the hearthrug in an easy attitude, with his back against the mantelpiece, and appeared much interested in Mr. Orcott's discourse.

"Anything stirring in the City?" he asked presently.

"Stirring? No—nothing stirring but stagnation, as some fellow said in a play I saw the other night. Barlingford folks say your brother Philip has made a heap of money on the Stock Exchange; but if he has, he must have done a good deal more business before I came to him than he has done lately. I can't see how a man is to develop into a Rothschild out of an occasional two-and-sixpence per cent on the transfer of some old woman's savings from railway stock to consols; and that's about the only kind of business I've seen much of lately. Of course Phil Sheldon has got irons of his own in the fire; for he's an uncommonly deep card, you see, that brother of yours, and it isn't to be expected he'll tell me all he's up to. I know he's up to his eyebrows in companies, but I don't see how he's to make his fortune out of them, for limited liability now-a-days seems only another name for unlimited crash. However, I don't care. It pleased my governor to get me into Sheldon's office, and it suited my book to come to London; but if the author of my being thinks I'm going to addle my blessed brains with the decline and fall of the money market, he's a greater fool than I took him for—and that's saying a great deal."

And here Mr. Frederick Orcott lapsed into admiring contemplation of his boots, which were the chefs-d'oeuvre of a sporting bootmaker; boots that were of the ring, ringy, and of the corner, cornery.

"Ah," said George, "and Phil doesn't tell you much of his affairs, doesn't he? That's rather a bad sign, I should think. Looks as if he was rather down upon his luck, eh?"

"Well, there's no knowing, you see, with that sort of close fish. He may have made his book for a great haul, and may be keeping himself quiet till the event comes off. He may be laying on to something with all his might, you know, on safe information. But there's one thing I know he stands to lose by."

"What's that?"

"The Phoenician Loan. He speculated in the bonds when they began to go down; and I'm blessed if they haven't been dropping ever since, an eighth a day, as regular as the day comes round. He bought them for the March account, and has been paying contango since then, and holding on in hopes of a rise. I don't know whether the purchase was a large one, but I know he's been uncommonly savage about the drop. He bought on the strength of private information from the other side of the Channel. The Emperor was putting his own money into the Phoenician business, and it was the best game out, and so on. But he seems to have been made a fool of, for once in a way."

"The bonds may steady themselves."

"Yes, they may; but, on the other hand, they mayn't. There are the Stock Exchange lists, with Phoenicians ticked off by your brother's own pen. A steady drop, you see. 'Let me have a telegram if there's a sudden rise,' said Sheldon to me the day he left London; 'they'll go up with rush when they do move.' But they've been moving the other way ever since; and I think if he stayed away till doomsday it would be pretty much the same."

"Phoenicians are rising rapidly. Come back to town."

These were the words of the telegraphic despatch which shaped itself in George Sheldon's brain, as his brother's clerk revealed the secrets of his employer.

It was found—the solution of the one great question as to how Philip Sheldon was to be lured away from the bedside of his unconscious victim. Here was the bait.

"I knew I could do it; I knew I could get all I wanted to know out of this shallow-brained idiot," he said to himself, triumphantly.

And then he told the shallow-brained idiot that he thought he would write a line to his brother; and on that pretence went into Philip's office.

Here, use his eyes as he might, he could discover nothing; he could glean no stray scrap of information. The secrets that could be guarded by concealed Bramah locks and iron safes, with mystic words to be learned by the man who would open them, Philip Sheldon knew how to protect. Unhappily for himself, he had been compelled to confide some of his secrets to human receptacles not to be guarded by Bramah locks or mystic words.

The lawyer did not waste much time in his brother's office. A very hasty investigation showed him there was nothing to be learned from those bare walls and that inviolable cylinder-topped desk. He scribbled a few lines of commonplace at a table by the window, sealed and addressed his note, and then departed to despatch his telegram, "Phoenicians are rising rapidly," he wrote, and that was all. He signed the despatch Frederick Orcott.

"Phil and Orcott may settle the business between them," he said to himself, as he forged the Yorkshireman's name. "What I have to do is to get Phil away, and give Hawkehurst a chance of saving Tom Halliday's daughter; and I shan't stand upon trifles in the doing of it."

After having despatched this telegram, George Sheldon found himself much too restless and excited for ordinary business. He, so renowned even amongst cool hands for exceptional coolness, was on this occasion thoroughly unnerved. He dropped into a City tavern, and refreshed himself with a dram. But, amidst all the bustle and clatter of a crowded bar, the face of Tom Halliday, haggard and worn with illness, was before his eyes, and the sound of Tom Halliday's voice was in his ears. "I can't settle to anything this afternoon," he said to himself. "I'll run down to Bayswater, and see whether Hawkehurst has managed matters with Nancy Woolper."



CHAPTER III.

THE SORTES VIRGILIANAE.

While George Sheldon was still in the depths of the City Valentine Hawkehurst arrived at the gothic villa, where he asked to see Mrs. Woolper. Of the woman herself he knew very little: he had seen her once or twice when some special mission brought her to the drawing-room; and from Charlotte he had heard much of her affectionate solicitude. To have been kind to his Charlotte was the strongest claim to his regard.

"This woman's help would be of inestimable service," he thought; "her age, her experience of sickness, her familiarity with the patient, especially adapt her for the office she will be required to fill. If Dr. Jedd should order a nurse to watch by the sick-bed, here is the nurse. If it should prove possible to remove the dear sufferer, here is the guardian best calculated to protect and attend her removal." That the desperate step of an immediate marriage would be a wise step Valentine could not doubt, since it would at once annihilate Mr. Sheldon's chances, and destroy his motive. But in contemplating this desperate step Valentine had to consider the reputation as well as the safety of his future wife. He was determined that there should be no opportunity for scandal in the circumstances of his stolen marriage, no scope for future mischief from the malignity of that baffled villain to whose schemes their marriage would give the death-blow. He, who from his cradle had been familiar with the darker side of life, knew how often the innocent carry a lifelong burden, and perform a perpetual pennance for the sins or the follies of others. And over his darling's life in the future, should it please God that he might save her, he would have no shadow cast by imprudence of his in the present.

"This sharp-witted, sharp-tongued Yorkshirewoman will be the woman of women to protect her," he thought, as he seated himself in Mr. Sheldon's study, whither the prim parlour-maid had ushered him.

"Mrs. Woolper have just gone upstairs to clean herself," she said; "which we are a-having the dining-room and droring-room carpets up, while the family are away. Would you please to wait?"

Valentine looked at his watch.

"I cannot wait very long," he said; "and I shall be obliged if you will tell Mrs. Woolper that I wish to see her on very important business."

The parlour-maid departed, and Valentine was left to endure the weariness of waiting until Mrs. Woolper should have "cleaned herself."

Mr. Sheldon's study at Bayswater did not offer much more to the eye of the investigator than Mr. Sheldon's office in the City. There were the handsomely bound books behind the inviolable plate-glass doors, and there was the neat writing-table with the machine for weighing letters, and the large business-like looking blotting-pad, and the ponderous brass-rimmed inkstand, with no nonsense about it; and yonder, on a clumsy little oak table with thick legs, appeared the copying machine, with a big black iron lever, and a massive screw with which to screw all the spontaneous feeling out of every letter that came beneath its crushing influence.

Up and down this joyless den Valentine Hawkehurst paced, with the demon of impatience raging in his breast. The July sunshine blazed hot upon the window, and the voices of croquet-players in adjacent gardens rose shrill upon the summer air. And there were girls playing croquet while she, his "rose of the garden, garden of girls," lay sick unto death! O, why could he not offer a hecatomb of these common creatures as a substitute for that one fair spirit?

He looked into the garden—the prim modern garden, but a few years reclaimed from that abomination of desolation, the "eligible lot of building land." Across the well-kept lawn there brooded no shadow of Old-World cedar; no century-old espaliers divided flower and kitchen ground; no box-edging of the early Hanoverian era bordered the beds of roses and mignonette. From one boundary-wall to the other there was not a bush old enough to hang an association upon. The stereotyped bed of flaming yellow calceolaria balanced the conventional bed of flaming crimson verbena; the lavender heliotrope faced the scarlet geranium, like the four corners in a quadrille. The garden was the modern nurserymen's ideal of suburban horticulture, and no more. But to Valentine this half-acre of smooth lawn and Wimbledon gravel pathway had seemed fair as those pleasure gardens of Semiramis, at the foot of the Bagistanos mountain, the fame whereof tempted Alexander to turn aside from the direct road, during his march from Chelone to the Nysaic horse pastures.

To-day the contemplation of that commonplace garden gave him direful pain. Should he ever walk there again with his dear love, or in any other garden upon earth?

And then he thought of fairer gardens, in supernal regions whither his soul was slow to travel. "Not easy is the journey from earth to the stars," says the sage; and from this young wanderer the stain of earthly travel had yet to be washed away.

"If she is taken from me, shall I ever be pure enough to follow her?" he asked himself. "Will a life that began in such darkness ever rise to the light which is her natural element? If she is taken, and I stay behind, and bear my burden patiently in the hope to follow her, will there not be a gate closed against me in the skies, beyond which I shall see her, shining among her kindred spirits, in the white robes of perfect innocence? Ah, my love, my love, as between, us on this earth must for ever be a gulf your pure soul cannot pass, so between us in the skies will rise a barrier to sever me from your sweet company!"

The thought of probable separation upon earth, of possible separation in heaven, was too bitter to him.

"I will not think of these things," he said to himself; "I will not believe in that possibility of this sacrifice. Ah, no! she will be saved. Against the bright young life the awful fiat has not gone forth. Providence has been with me to-day. Providence will go with me till the end."

He thought how other men had so stood, as he was standing now, face to face with the great uncertainty, the crisis, the turning-point—the pivot on which life itself revolved. The pendulum of the mighty clock swings solemnly to and fro; with every vibration a moment; with every moment each man's shrouded fates move another step in their inexorable progress. And the end? What was the goal towards which those dark relentless shapes were moving?

He thought of Rousseau, balancing the awful question of his soul's salvation—his poor weak soul adrift upon a sea of doubt.

"Behold yonder tree which faces me, as I sit and meditate the problem of my destiny—the destiny of me, Jean Jacques Rousseau, self-conscious genius, and future regenerator of my age. I pick up a pebble, and poise it between my fingers before taking my aim. In another moment the question will be answered. If the pebble hits the tree, I, Jean Jacques, am reserved for salvation. If I miss—O awful, overwhelming possibility!—my name will blaze upon that dreadful scroll which numbers the damned."

Happily the tree is bulky, and within but a few yards of the speculator; and the great enigma of the Calvinistic church is answered in favour of Madame de Warenne's protege, whose propensities and proclivities at that period did not very strongly indicate his claim to a place among the elect.

Valentine remembered the sortes Virgilianae—the Wesleyan's drawing of inferences from Bible texts. Ah, could he not find an answer to the question that was the one thought of his mind? He would find some answer—a lying oracle, perhaps. It might be a voice from heaven,—some temporary assuagement of this storm of doubt that raged in his breast. "I doubt if Mr. Sheldon owns either a Bible or an, 'AEneid,'" he said to himself, as he stopped in his rapid pacing of the room; "I will open the first book I can put my hand upon, and from the first line my eye falls on will draw an augury."

He looked about the room. Behind the glazed doors of the mahogany bookcase appeared Hume and Smollett, Scott and Shakespeare; and conspicuous among these a handsome family Bible. But the glazed doors were locked. In Mr. Sheldon's study there appeared to be no other books than these few standard works. Yes, on some obscure little shelves, low down in one of the recesses formed by the projection of the fireplace and the chimney, there were three rows of large quarto volumes, in dingy dark-green cloth cases.

What these volumes might contain Valentine Hawkehurst knew not; and the very fact of his ignorance rendered these books all the more suitable for the purpose of augury. To dip for a sentence into any of these unknown volumes would be a leap in darkness more profound than he could find in the Bible or the "AEneid," where his own foreknowledge of the text might unwittingly influence the oracle. He went over to the recess, bent down, and ran his hand along the backs of the volumes, with his face turned away from the books towards the window.

"The first obstruction that arrests my hand shall determine my choice of the volume," he said to himself.

His hand ran easily along the volumes on the upper shelf—easily along the volumes on the second shelf; and he began to doubt whether this mode of determining his choice could be persisted in. But in its progress along the third and lowest range of volumes, his hand was arrested midway by a book which projected about half an inch beyond its fellows.

He took this book out and carried it to the table, still without looking at it. He opened it, or rather let its leaves fall open of their own accord—still without looking at it; and then, with a strange superstitious fear—mingled in his mind with the natural shame that accompanied his conscious folly—he looked at the page before him. The line on which he fixed his eye was the heading of a letter. It was in larger type than the rest of the page, and it was very plain to him as he stood a little way from the table, looking down at the open book.

The line ran thus:

"ON THE FALLIBILITY OF COPPER GAUZE AS A TEST FOR THE DETECTION OF ARSENIC."

The book was a volume of the Lancet; the date twenty years ago.

"What an oracle!" thought Valentine, with a cynical laugh at his own folly, and some slight sense of relief. In all feeble tamperings with powers invisible there lurks a sense of terror in the weak human heart. He had tempted those invisible ones, and the oracle he only half believed in might have spoken to his confusion and dismay. He was glad to think the oracle meant nothing.

And yet, even in this dry as dust title of a scientific communication from a distinguished toxicologist there was some sinister significance. It was the letter of a great chemist, who demonstrated therein the fallibility of all tests in relation to a certain poison. It was one of those papers which, while they aid the cause of science, may also further the dark processes of the poisoner, by showing him the forces he has to encounter, and the weapons with which he may defend himself from their power. It is needless to dwell here upon the contents of this letter—one of a series on the same subject, or range of subjects. Valentine read it with eager interest. For him it had a terrible importance in its relation to the past and to the present.

"I let the book fall open, and it opened at that letter," he thought to himself. "Will it open there a second time, I wonder?"

He repeated the experiment, and the book opened in the same place. Again; and again the book opened as before. Again, many times, and the result was still the same.

After this he examined the book, and found that it had been pressed open at this page, as by a reader leaning on the opened volume. He examined it still more closely, and found here and there on the page faint indications of a pencil, which had under-scored certain lines, and the marks of which had been as far as possible erased. The deduction to be drawn from these small facts seemed only too clear to Valentine Hawkehurst. By some one reader the pages had been deliberately and carefully studied. Could he doubt that reader to have been the man in whose possession he found the book, the man whom that very day he had heard plainly denounced as a poisoner?

He drew out the previous volume, and in this a rapid search revealed to him a second fact, significant as the last.

An old envelope marked the place where appeared an article on the coincidences common to the diagnostics of a certain type of low fever and the diagnostics of a certain class of poisons. Here the volume again opened of itself, and a blot of ink on the page seemed to indicate that the open book had been leant upon by a person engaged in making memoranda of its contents. Nor was this all. The forgotten envelope that marked the place had its own dismal significance. The postmark bore the date of the year and the month in which Charlotte's father had died.

While this volume was still open in his hand the door opened suddenly, and Mrs. Woolper came into the room.

She had kept Valentine waiting more than half an hour. He had little more than half an hour at most in which to break the ice of absolute strangeness, and sound the very depths of this woman's character. If she had come to him earlier, when his plan of action was clear and definite, his imagination in abeyance, he would have gone cautiously to work, with slowness and deliberation. Coming to him now, when his mind, unsettled by the discovery of fresh evidence against Philip Sheldon, was divided between the past and the present, she took him off his guard, and he plunged at once into the subject that absorbed all his thoughts.

Mrs. Woolper looked from Valentine to the open books on the table with a vague terror in her face.

"I am sorry I was so long, sir; but I'd been polishing the grates and fenders, and such like, and my hands and face were blacker than a sweep's. I hope there's nothing wrong at the seaside, where Miss—"

"There is much that's wrong, Mrs. Woolper—hopelessly, irrecoverably wrong. Miss Halliday is ill, very ill—doomed to die, if she remain in your master's keeping."

"Lord help us, Mr. Hawkehurst! what do you mean?"

The terror in her face was no longer a vague terror. It had taken a form and substance, and was a terror unutterably hideous, if ever human countenance gave expression to human thought.

"I mean that your master is better skilled in the use of the agents that kill than the agents that cure. Charlotte's father came to Philip Sheldon's house a hale strong man, in the very prime of manhood. In that house he sickened of a nameless disease, and died, carefully tended by his watchful friend. The same careful watcher stands by Charlotte Halliday's deathbed, and she is dying!"

"Dying! O, sir, for God's sake, don't say that!"

"She is dying, as her father died before her, by the hand of Philip Sheldon."

"O, sir! Mr. Hawkehurst!" cried the old woman, with clasped hands lifted in piteous supplication towards her master's denouncer. "It's not true. It is not true. For God's dear love don't tell me it is true! I nursed him when he was a baby, sir; and there wasn't a little trouble I had to bear with him that didn't make him all the dearer to me. I have sat up all the night through, sir, times and often, when he was ill, and have heard Barlingford church clock strike every hour of the long night; and O, if I had known that this could ever come to him, I should have wished him dead in the little crib where he lay and seemed so innocent. I tell you, sir, it can't be true! His father and mother had been respected and looked up to in Barlingford for many a year,—his grandfather and grandmother before them. There isn't a name that stands better in those parts than the name of Sheldon. Do you think such a man would poison his friend?"

"I said nothing about poison, Mrs. Woolper," said Valentine, sternly.

This woman had known all, and had held her tongue, like the rest, it seemed. To Valentine there was unutterable horror in the thought that a cold-blooded murder could be thus perpetrated in the sight of several people, and yet no voice be raised to denounce the assassin.

"And this is our modern civilization!" he said to himself. "Give me the desert or the jungle. The sons of Bowanee are no worse than Mr. Sheldon, and one might be on one's guard against them."

Nancy Woolper looked at him aghast. He had said nothing about poison! What, then—had she betrayed her master?

He saw that she had known, or strongly suspected, the worst in the case of Tom Halliday, and that she would easily be influenced to do all he wanted of her.

"Mrs. Woolper, you must help me to save Charlotte," he said, with intensity. "You made no attempt to save her father, though you suspected the cause of his death. I have this day seen Mr. Burkham, the doctor who attended Mr. Halliday, and from his lips I have heard the truth. I want you to accompany me to Hastings, and to take your place by Charlotte's bed, as her nurse and guardian. If Mr. Sheldon suspects your knowledge of the past, and I have little doubt that he does"—a look in the housekeeper's face told him that he was right—"you are of all people best fitted to guard that dear girl. Your part will not be a difficult one. If we dare remove her, we will remove her beyond the reach of that man's power. If not, your task will be to prevent food or medicine, that his hand has touched, from approaching her lips. You can do it. It will only be a question of tact and firmness. We shall have one of the greatest doctors in London for our guide. Will you come?"

"I don't believe my master poisoned his friend," said Nancy Woolper, doggedly; "nor I won't believe it. You can't force me to think bad of him I loved when he was little and helpless, and I carried him in my arms. What are you and your fine London doctor, Mr. Burkham—he was but a poor fondy, as I mind well—that I should take your word against my master? If that young man thought as Mr. Halliday was being poisoned, why didn't he speak out, like a man, then? It's a fine piece of work to bring it up against my master eleven years afterwards. As for young missy, she's as sweet a young creature as ever lived, and I'd do anything to serve her. But I won't think, and I can't think, that my master would hurt a hair of her head. What would he gain by it?"

"He has settled that with himself. He has gained by the death of Tom Halliday, and depend upon it he has made his plans to gain by the death of Tom Halliday's daughter."

"I won't believe it," the old woman repeated in the same dogged tone.

For such resistance as this Mr. Hawkehurst was in no manner prepared. He looked at his watch. The half hour was nearly gone. There was little more time for argument.

"Great Heaven!" he said to himself, "what argument can I employ to influence this woman's obdurate heart?"

What argument, indeed? He knew of none stronger than those he had used. He stood for some moments battled and helpless, staring absently at the face of his watch, and wondering what he was to do next.

As Valentine Hawkehurst stood thus, there came a loud ringing of the bell, following quickly on the sound of wheels grinding against the kerbstone.

Mrs. Woolper opened the door and looked out into the hall.

"It's master!" cried one of the maids, emerging from the disorganized dining-room, "and missus, and Miss Halliday, and Mass Paget—and all the house topsy-turvy!"

"Charlotte here!" exclaimed Valentine. "You are dreaming, girl!"

"And you told me she was dying!" said Mrs. Woolper, with a look of triumph. "What becomes of your fine story now?"

"It is Miss Halliday!" cried the housemaid, as she opened the door. "And O my!" she added, looking back into the hall with a sorrowful face, "how bad she do look!"

Valentine ran out to the gate. Yes; there were two cabs, one laden with luggage, the two cabmen busy about the doors of the vehicles, a little group of stragglers waiting to see the invalid young lady alight. It was the next best thing to a funeral.

"O, don't she look white!" cried a shrill girl with a baby in her arms.

"In a decline, I dessay, pore young thing," said a matron, in an audible aside to her companion.

Valentine dashed amongst the group of stragglers. He pushed away the girl with the baby, the housemaid who had run out behind him, Mr. Sheldon, the cabman, every one; and in the next moment Charlotte was in his arms, and he was carrying her into the house.

He felt as if he had been in a dream; and all that exceptional force which the dreamer sometimes feels he felt in this crisis. He carried his dear burden into the study, followed by Mr. Sheldon and Diana Paget. The face that dropped upon his shoulder showed deadly white against his dark-blue coat; the hand which he clasped in his, ah, how listless and feeble!

"Valentine!" the girl said, in a low drowsy voice, lifting her eyes to his face, "is this you? I have been so ill, so tired; and they would bring me away. To be near the doctors, papa says. Do you think any doctors will be able to cure me?"

"Yes, dear, with God's help. I am glad he has brought you here. And now I must run away," he said; when he had placed Charlotte in Mr. Sheldon's arm-chair, "for a very little while, darling. I have seen a doctor, a man in whom I have more confidence than I have in Dr. Doddleson. I am going to fetch him, my dearest," he added tenderly, as he felt the feeble hand cling to his; "I shall not be long. Do you think I shall not hurry back to you? My dearest one, when I return, it will be to stay with you—for ever."

She was too ill to note the significance of his words; she only knew that they gave her comfort. He hurried from the room. In less than an hour he must be at the London Bridge terminus, or in all probability the five o'clock train would carry Dr. Jedd to St. Leonards; and on Dr. Jedd his chief hope rested.

"Do you believe me now?" he asked of Mrs. Woolper as he went out into the hall.

"I do," she answered in a whisper; "and I will do what you want."

She took his hand in her wrinkled horny palm and grasped it firmly. He felt that in this firm pressure there was a promise sacred as any oath ever registered on earth. He met Mr. Sheldon on the threshold, and passed him without a word. The time might come in which he would have to mask his thoughts, and stoop to the hateful hypocrisy of civility to this man; but he had not yet schooled himself to do this. At the gate he met George Sheldon.

"What's up now?" asked the lawyer.

"Did you send your message?"

"Yes; I telegraphed to Phil."

"It has been trouble wasted. He has brought her home."

"What does that mean?"

"Who knows? I pray God that he may have overreached himself. I have set a watch upon my dear love, and no further harm shall come to her. I am going to fetch Dr. Jedd."

"And you are not afraid of Phil's smelling a rat?"

"I am afraid of nothing that he can do henceforward. If it is not too late to save her, I will save her."

He waited for no more, but jumped into the cab. "London Bridge terminus! You must get me there by a quarter to five," he said to the driver.

George Sheldon went no further than the gate of his brother's domain.

"I wonder whether the Harold's Hill people will send that telegram after him," he thought. "It'll be rather unpleasant for Fred Orcott if they do. But it's ten to one they won't. The normal condition of every seaside lodging-house keeper in one degree removed from idiotcy."



Book the Ninth.



THROUGH THE FURNACE



CHAPTER I.

SOMETHING TOO MUCH.

"Is that young man mad?" asked Philip Sheldon, as he went into his study immediately after Valentine had passed him in the hall.

The question was not addressed to any particular individual; and Diana, who was standing near the door by which Mr. Sheldon entered, took upon herself to answer it.

"I think he is very anxious," she said in a half whisper.

"What brought him here just now? He did not know we were coming home."

Mrs. Woolper answered this question.

"He came for something for Miss Charlotte, sir; some books as she'd had from the library. They'd not been sent back; and he came to see about their being sent."

"What books?" murmured Charlotte. But a pressure from Mrs. Woolper's hand prevented her saying more.

"I never encountered any one with so little self-command," said Mr. Sheldon. "If he is going to rush in and out of my house in that manner, I must really put a stop to his visits altogether. I cannot suffer that kind of thing. For Charlotte's welfare quiet is indispensable; and if Mr. Hawkehurst's presence is to bring noise and excitement, Mr. Hawkehurst must not cross this threshold."

He spoke with suppressed anger; with such evident effort to restrain his anger, that it would have seemed as if his indignation against Valentine was no common wrath.

Charlotte caught his last words.

"Dear papa," she pleaded in her faint voice, "pray do not be angry with Valentine; he is so anxious about me."

"I am not angry with him; but while you are ill, I will have quiet—at any price."

"Then I'm sure you should not have brought Charlotte home," exclaimed Georgy, in tones of wailing and lamentation; "for of all the miseries in life, there is nothing worse than coming home in the very midst of a general cleaning. It was agreed between Ann Woolper and me that there should be a general cleaning while we were away at the seaside. We were to be away a fortnight, and everything was to be as neat as a new pin when we came home. But here we are back in less than a week, and everything at sixes-and-sevens. Where we are to dine I know not; and as for the carpets, they are all away at the beating-place, and Ann tells me they won't be home till Friday."

"We can exist without carpets," answered Mr. Sheldon, in a hard dry voice. "I suppose they are seeing to Miss Halliday's room?" he added, addressing himself to Mrs. Woolper. "Why don't you go and look after them, Nancy?"

"Sarah knows what she has to do. The bed-rooms was done first; and there's not much amiss in Miss Charlotte's room."

Mr. Sheldon dropped wearily into a chair. He looked pale and haggard. Throughout the journey he had been unfailing in his attention to the invalid; but the journey had been fatiguing; for Charlotte Halliday was very ill—so ill as to be unable to avoid inflicting trouble upon others. The weariness—the dizziness—the dull intervals of semi-consciousness—the helpless tottering walk, which was like the walk of intoxication rather than ordinary weakness—the clouded sight—all the worst symptoms of this nameless disease, had every hour grown more alarming.

Against this journey to London Mrs. Sheldon and Diana had pleaded—Georgy with as much earnestness as she could command; Diana as forcibly as she dared argue a question in which her voice had so little weight.

But upon this point Mr. Sheldon was adamant.

"She will be better off in London," he said resolutely. "This trip to the seaside was a whim of my wife's; and, like most other whims of my wife's, it has entailed trouble and expense upon me. Of course I know that Georgy did it for the best," he added, in reply to a reproachful "O Philip!" from Mrs. Sheldon. "But the whole business has been a mistake. No sooner are we comfortably settled down here, than Hawkehurst takes it into his head to be outrageously alarmed about Charlotte, and wants to bring half-a-dozen doctors round the poor girl's bed, to her inevitable peril; for in an illness which begins and ends in mental depression, all appearance of alarm is calculated to do mischief."

Having said this, Mr. Sheldon lost no time in making arrangements for the journey. A carriage was ordered; all possible preparations were made for the comfort of the invalid—everything that care or kindness could do was done; but the cruelty of the removal was not the less obvious. Georgy wailed piteously about the sixes-and-sevens to which they were being taken. Diana cared nothing about sixes-and-sevens; but she felt supreme indignation against Charlotte's stepfather, and she did not attempt to conceal her feelings.

Nor was it without an effort to oppose Mr. Sheldon's authority that Miss Paget succumbed to the force of circumstances. She appealed to his wife.

"Dear Mrs. Sheldon, I beg you not to suffer Lotta's removal," she said earnestly. "You do not know how ill she is—nor can Mr. Sheldon know, or he would not take such a step. As her mother, your authority is superior to his; you have but to say that she shall not be taken from this house in her present state of prostration and sickness."

"I have only to say!" cried Georgy, piteously. "O Diana, how can you say such a thing? What would be Mr. Sheldon's feelings if I were to stand up against him, and declare that Charlotte should not be moved? And he so anxious too, and so clever. I'm sure his conduct about my poor dear Lotta is positively beautiful. I never saw such anxiety. Why, he has grown ten years older in his looks since the beginning of her illness. People go on about stepfather this, and stepfather that, until a poor young widow is almost frightened to marry again. But I don't believe a real father ever was more thoughtful or more careful about a real daughter than Philip has been about Lotta. And what a poor return it would be if I were to oppose him now, when he says that the removal will be for Charlotte's good, and that she will be near clever doctors—if she should require clever doctors! You don't know how experienced he is, and how thoughtful. I shall never forget his kindness to poor Tom."

"Yes," exclaimed Miss Paget impatiently, "but Mr. Halliday died."

"O Diana," whimpered Georgy, "I did not think you could be so unkind as to remind me of that."

"I only want to remind you that Mr. Sheldon is not infallible."

Mr. Sheldon entered the room at this juncture, and Diana left it, passionately indignant against the poor weak creature, to whom no crisis, no danger, could give strength of mind or will.

"A sheep would make some struggle for her lamb," she thought, angrily. "Mrs. Sheldon is lower than a sheep."

It was the first time she had thought unkindly of this weak soul, and her anger soon melted to pity for the powerless nature which Mr. Sheldon held in such supreme control. She made no further attempt at resistance after this; but went to Charlotte's room and prepared for the journey.

"O, why am I to be moved, dear?" the girl asked piteously. "I am too ill to be moved."

"It is for your good, darling. Mr. Sheldon wants you to be near the great physicians, who can give you health and strength."

"There are no physicians who can do that. Let me stay here, Di. Beg papa to let me stay here."

Diana hid her face upon the invalid's shoulder. Her tears choked her. To repress her grief was agony scarcely endurable. But she did hide all trace of anger and sorrow, and cheered the helpless traveller throughout the weariness of the journey.

* * * * *

Charlotte was lying on a sofa in her bedroom, with Mrs. Woolper in attendance upon her, when Dr. Jedd arrived. It was a quarter to six, and the low western sunshine flooded the room.

The physician came with Valentine, and did not ask to see Mr. Sheldon before going to his patient's room. He told the housemaid who admitted him to show the way to Miss Halliday's room.

"The nurse is there, I suppose?" he said to the girl.

"Yes, sir; leastways, Mrs. Woolper."

"That will do."

Mr. Sheldon heard the voice in the hall, and came out of the library as the doctor mounted the step of the stairs.

"Who is this? What is this?" he asked of Valentine Hawkehurst.

"I told you I was not satisfied with Dr. Doddleson's opinion," answered the young man coolly. "This gentleman is here by appointment with me."

"And pray by what right do you bring a doctor of your own choosing to visit my stepdaughter without previous consultation with me?"

"By the right of my love for her. I am not satisfied as to the medical treatment your stepdaughter has received in this house, Mr. Sheldon, and I want to be satisfied. Miss Halliday is something more than your, stepdaughter, remember: she is my promised wife. Dr. Jedd's opinion will be more assuring to me than the opinion of Dr. Doddleson."

At the sound of Dr. Jedd's name Mr. Sheldon started slightly. It was a name he knew only too well—a name he had seen among the medical witnesses in the great Fryar trial, the record of which had for him possessed a hideous fascination. He had fancied himself in the poisoner Fryar's place; and the fancy had sent an icy chill through his veins. But in the next minute he had said to himself, "I am not such a reckless fool as that man Fryar was; and have run no such risks as he ran."

At the name of Jedd the same icy shiver ran through his veins again. His tone of suppressed anger changed to a tone of civility which was almost sycophantic.

"I have the honour to know Dr. Jedd by repute very well indeed, and I withdraw my objection to your course of proceeding, my dear Hawkehurst; though I am sure Dr. Jedd will agree with me that such a course is completely against all professional etiquette, and that Dr. Doddleson will have the right to consider himself aggrieved."

"There are cases in which one hardly considers professional etiquette. I shall be very happy to meet Dr. Doddleson to-morrow morning. But as Mr. Hawkehurst was very anxious that I should see Miss Halliday to-night, I consented to waive all ceremony, and come with him on the spot."

"I cannot blame his anxiety to secure so valuable an opinion. I only wonder what lucky star guided him to so excellent an adviser."

Mr. Sheldon looked from Dr. Jedd to Valentine Hawkehurst as he said this. The physician's face told him no more than he might have learnt from a blank sheet of paper. Valentine's face was dark and gloomy; but that gloomy darkness might mean no more than natural grief.

"I will take you to my stepdaughter's room at once," he said to the physician.

"I think it will be better for me to see the young lady alone," the doctor answered coolly: "that is to say, in the presence of her nurse only."

"As you please," Mr. Sheldon replied.

He went back to his study. Georgy was sitting there, whimpering in a feeble way at intervals; and near her sat Diana, silent and gloomy. A settled gloom, as of the grave itself, brooded over the house. Mr. Sheldon flung himself into a chair with an impatient gesture. He had sneered at the inconvenience involved in uncarpeted floors, but he was beginning to feel the aggravation of that inconvenience. These two women in his study were insupportable to him. It seemed as if there was no room in the house in which he could be alone; and just now he had bitter need of solitary meditation.

"Let them arrange the dining-room somehow, carpet or no carpet," he said to his wife. "We must have some room to dine in; and I can't have you here, Georgy; I have letters to write."

Mrs. Sheldon and Diana were not slow to take the hint.

"I'm sure I don't want to be here, or anywhere," exclaimed Georgy in piteous accents; "I feel so miserable about Charlotte, that if I could lie down and die, it would be a comfort to me. And it really seems a mockery having dinner at such a time. It's just as it was during poor Tom's illness; there were fowls and all sorts of things cooked, and no one ever ate them."

"For God's sake go away!" cried Mr. Sheldon passionately; "your perpetual clack is torture to me."

Georgy hurried from the room, followed closely by Diana.

"Did you ever see any one more anxious?" Mrs. Sheldon asked, with something like pride.

"I would rather see Mr. Sheldon less anxious!" Diana answered gravely.



CHAPTER II.

DR. JEDD'S OPINION.

Alone, Philip Sheldon breathed more freely. He paced the room, waiting for the appearance of the doctor; and with almost every turn he looked at the clock upon the chimneypiece.

How intolerable seemed the slow progress of the moments! How long that man Jedd was staying in the sick-room! And yet not long; it was he, Philip Sheldon, who was losing count of time. Where was Valentine? He opened the door of the room, and looked out. Yes, there was a figure on the stairs. The lover was waiting the physician's verdict.

A door on the landing above opened, and the step of the Doctor sounded on the upper flight. Mr. Sheldon waited for Dr. Jedd's appearance.

"I shall be glad to hear your opinion," he said quietly; and the Doctor followed him into the study. Valentine followed the Doctor, to Mr. Sheldon's evident surprise.

"Mr. Hawkehurst is very anxious to hear what I have to say," said Dr. Jedd; "and I really see no objection to his hearing it."

"If you have no objection, I can have none," Mr. Sheldon answered. "I must confess, your course of proceeding appears to me altogether exceptional, and—"

"Yes, Mr. Sheldon; but then, you see, the case is altogether an exceptional case," said the physician, gravely.

"You think so?"

"Decidedly. The young lady is in extreme danger. Yes, Mr. Sheldon, in extreme danger. The mistake involved in her removal to-day is a mistake which I cannot denounce too strongly. If you had wanted to kill your stepdaughter, you could scarcely have pursued a more likely course for the attainment of your object. No doubt you were actuated by the most amiable motives. I can only regret that you should have acted without competent advice."

"I believed myself to be acting for the best," replied Philip Sheldon, in a strange mechanical way.

He was trying to estimate the true meaning of the Doctor's address. Was he merely expressing anger against an error of ignorance or stupidity, or was there a more fatal significance in his words?

"You overwhelm me," the stockbroker said presently; "you positively overwhelm me by your view of my daughter's condition. Dr. Doddleson apprehended no danger. He saw our dear girl on Sunday morning—yesterday morning," added Mr. Sheldon, wonder-stricken to find that the interval was so brief between the time in which he had walked with Valentine and Dr. Doddleson in the garden at Harold's Hill and the present moment. To Valentine it seemed still more wonderful. What a bridgeless gulf between yesterday morning and to-night! All his knowledge of this man Sheldon, all the horror involved in Tom Halliday's death, had come upon him in that brief span.

"I should like to see Dr. Doddleson's prescriptions," said Dr. Jedd, with grave politeness.

Mr. Sheldon produced them from his pocket-book with an unshaken hand. No change of countenance, no tremulous hand, no broken voice, betrayed his apprehension. The one distinguishing mark of his manner was an absent, half-mechanical tone, as of a man whose mind is employed otherwise than in the conversation of the moment. Prompt at calculation always, he was at this crisis engaged in a kind of mental arithmetic. "The chances of defeat, so much; the chances of detection—?"

A rapid survey of his position told him what those chances were. Detection by Dr. Jedd? Yes. That had come to him already perhaps. But would any actual harm to him come of such detection?

He calculated the chances for and against this—and the result was in his favour. That Dr. Jedd should form certain opinions of Miss Halliday's case was one thing; that he should give public utterance to those opinions was another thing.

"What can his opinion matter to me?" Mr. Sheldon asked himself; "opinion cannot touch me in a case where there is no such thing as certainty. He has seen the dilatation of the pupil—even that old fool Doddleson saw it—and has taken fright. But no jury in England would hang a man on such evidence as that; or if a jury could be found to put the rope round a man's neck, the British public and the British press would be pretty sure to get the rope taken off again."

"Chloric aether, spirits of ammonia—hum, ha, hum—yes," muttered Dr. Jedd, looking at one prescription. "Quinine, yes; aqua pura," he murmured, looking at another.

He threw them aside with a half-contemptuous gesture, and then took up a pen and began to write.

"My mode of treatment will be quite different from that adopted by Dr. Doddleson," he said; "but I apprehend no difficulty in bringing that gentleman round to my view of the case when we meet."

As he wrote his prescription Philip Sheldon rose and looked over his shoulder.

The form of the prescription told him that Dr. Jedd knew—all! He had suspected this from the first, and the confirmation of this suspicion did not shake him. He grew firmer, indeed; for now he knew on what ground he was standing, and what forces were arrayed against him.

"I really do not understand the basis of your treatment," he said, still looking over the physician's shoulder.

Dr. Jedd turned his chair with a sudden movement, and faced him.

"Am I talking to Mr. Sheldon the stockbroker, or Mr. Sheldon the surgeon-dentist?" he asked.

This was a blow. This allusion to the past was a sharper stroke than any that Philip Sheldon had before received. He looked at Valentine; from Valentine to the physician. What did it mean, this mention of the past? That blabbing fool George had talked to his friend of the days in Fitzgeorge Street, no doubt; and Valentine had blabbed Mr. Sheldon's antecedents to the physician.

Was this what it all meant? Or did it mean more than this? Whatever it might mean, he faced the hidden danger, and met the uncertainties of his position as calmly as he met its certainties.

"I have no desire to interfere with your treatment," he said, very quietly; "but I have some knowledge of the Pharmacopoeia, and I confess myself quite at a loss to understand your prescription."

"Dr. Doddleson will understand it when he has heard my opinion. There is no time to be lost—Mr. Hawkehurst, will you take this to the chemist, and wait for the medicine? Miss Halliday cannot take it too soon. I shall be here to-morrow at nine o'clock.—If you wish me to see Dr. Doddleson, Mr. Sheldon, you will perhaps arrange an appointment with him for that hour."

"It is rather an early hour."

"No hour is too early in a case attended with so much danger. Perhaps it will be as well for me to call on Dr. Doddleson as I drive home. I shall make a point of seeing Miss Halliday twice a day. I find your housekeeper a very sensible person. She will remain in close attendance upon the sick-room; and I must beg that there is no quackery—no home-made remedies. I have given your housekeeper all directions as to treatment and diet, and she has my orders to allow no one but herself in the invalid's room. There is a marked tendency to delirium, and quiet is indispensable."

"I have said as much myself," answered Mr. Sheldon.

"Mr. Hawkehurst will undertake to see to the making-up of my prescriptions," continued Dr. Jedd, as he drew on his gloves. "He is very anxious about the young lady, and it will afford him some relief of mind to be employed in her service. No, thanks," he said, putting aside Mr. Sheldon's hand as that gentleman offered him his fee. "I have already received my honorarium from Mr. Hawkehurst."

There was no more to be said. The physician wished the two men good evening, and returned to his carriage, to be driven home to dinner by way of Plantagenet Square, where he saw Dr. Doddleson, and appointed to meet him next day, much to the delight of that individual, who was proud to be engaged in a case with the great Jedd.

Valentine left the house on the heels of the Doctor. He came back in about twenty minutes with the medicine. He did not go to the principal gate, but to a little side gate, near the offices of the gothic villa—a gate to which butchers and bakers came with their wares in the morning.

"I want to see Miss Paget," he said to the maid who answered his summons; "and I want to see her without disturbing Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon. Do you know where to find her?"

"Yes, sir; she's in her own room. I took her a cup of tea there ten minutes ago. She's got a headache with fretting about our poor young lady, and she won't go down to dinner with master and missus."

"Will you ask her to step out here and speak to me for a few minutes?"

"Won't you come indoors and see her, sir?"

"No; I'd rather see her in the garden."

It was still daylight here, but it was growing shadowy among the avenues in Kensington Gardens. The gate near which Valentine waited was not to be seen from the windows of dining or drawing-room.

The housemaid ran off to summon Miss Paget; and in less than five minutes Diana appeared, dressed in her hat and garden jacket.

"Will you come out into the road with me, dear?" asked Valentine. "I have something serious to say to you."

"And I am so anxious to hear what the Doctor has said," answered Diana, as she took Valentine's arm.

"The road before the Lawn was very quiet at this hour of the evening, and here they were safely beyond Mr. Sheldon's ken.

"Tell me the Doctor's opinion, Valentine," Diana said, eagerly. "Does he think the case very serious?"

"He does. It is more serious than you or I could have imagined, if Providence had not helped me to discover the truth."

"What do you mean, Valentine?"

He gave her in brief the story of his day's work. She listened to him breathlessly, but uttered no exclamation until his story was finished.

"It is most horrible," she said at last; "but I believe it is most true. There has been so much in that man's conduct that has mystified me; and this explains all. But what earthly motive can have prompted this hideous crime?"

"He believes that he has a beneficial interest in her death. I cannot fully understand his motive; but, rely upon it, there is a motive, and a sufficient one. And I have let that man delude me into belief in his honesty after I had been warned against him! But there is no time for regrets. Diana, I look to you to help me in saving my dear love."

"It is not too late to save her?"

"Dr. Jedd will commit himself to no positive statement. He tells me she is in danger, but he does not refuse all hope. Now listen, my dear. In that house I have only two people to help me—Ann Woolper and yourself. Ann Woolper I hold only by a feeble bond. I think she will be true to us; but I am not sure of her. Sheldon's influence over her is a powerful one; and God knows what concession he might extort from her. She is the ostensible guardian of Charlotte's room; you must contrive to be the real guardian. You must keep custody over the custodian. How is your room situated in relation to Charlotte's room?"

"The doors of the two rooms are exactly opposite."

"Providence favours us there. Can you keep watch over Charlotte's door from your room without making your guardianship too apparent?"

"I can."

"Day and night?"

"Day and night."

"God bless you, dear! Her life may be saved by your fidelity."

"I would do as much to render her a smaller service."

"My dear girl! And now go back to the house. Here is the medicine. You will give that into Mrs. Woolper's hands; she has received her instructions from Dr. Jedd, and those instructions leave no room for doubt. If she permits Sheldon to tamper with the medicine or the food of her patient, she will be the wilful accomplice of a murderer. I think she may be trusted."

"I will watch her."

"The charge of procuring the medicine is mine. I shall come to this house many times in the course of every day; but I am bound to prepare myself for the hour in which Mr. Sheldon may forbid me his house. In that event I shall come to this gate. I suppose the servants would stand by me if you pleaded for me?"

"I am sure they would."

"And now, dear, go; the medicine is wanted. I shall come back in a few hours to inquire if there is any change for the better. Go."

They had returned to the gate ere this. He grasped the hand which she held out to him, and stood by the little gate watching her till she had disappeared through the door of the servants' quarters. When the door closed, he walked slowly away. He had done all that it was possible for him to do, and now came his worst misery. There was nothing left for him but to wait the issue of events.

What was he to do? Go home to his lodgings—eat, drink, sleep? Was it possible for him to eat or to sleep while that precious life trembled in the balance? He walked slowly along the endless roads and terraces in a purposeless way. Careless people pushed against him, or he pushed against them; children brushed past him as they ran. What a noisy, busy, clattering world it seemed! And she lay dying! O, the droning, dreary organs, and the hackneyed, common tunes, how excruciating they were to him to-night!

He emerged into the high road by-and-by, in all the bustle and riot of Netting Hill. The crowded shops, the clamorous people, seemed strange to him. It was like the clamour of a foreign city. He walked on past the bustle and riot, by the quieter terraces near Holland Park, and still held on to Shepherd's Bush, where he went into a little public-house and called for some brandy.

There was a bench on one side of the space in front of the bar, and towards this he pushed his way.

"Where are you shoving to, my young swell?" growled a sturdy cabman, indignant at the outrage inflicted by Valentine's elbows; but in the next moment the sturdy cabman dashed suddenly forward and caught the young swell in his strong arms.

"My eye, young un!" he cried; "where do you want to go to? Here, some one bring a mug of cold water: I'm blest if he ain't in a fit!"

Happily it was no fit, only a dead faint into which Mr. Hawkehurst had fallen. He came back to consciousness presently, after a few spoonfuls of brandy had been forced into his mouth, and looked about him with a helpless stare.

"I'm jiggered if I don't believe he's fainted for the want of wittles!" cried the cabman. "They keeps up till they drop, sometimes, these seedy swells—walks about, lookin' like so many Dossays, on a hempty stomach. Here, some one bring a plate o' cold meat, and look sharp about it. I'll stand sam."

Valentine looked up with a faint smile.

"And I'll stand sam for anything you like to order, my friend," he said, holding out his hand to the good-natured cabman. "I've eaten nothing since last night; but I haven't fasted for want of money. There are worse troubles than an empty pocket,—and I'm not unacquainted with that."

"I'm sure I beg your pardon, sir," said the man, sheepishly, very much ashamed of his benevolence; "but, you see, it ain't the fust time I've seen a swell come to the pavement with a cropper, in consequence of having gone it too fast, and cleaned hisself out, in a manner of speaking."



CHAPTER III.

NON DORMIT JUDAS.

The summer darkness closed round the Bayswater villa, but of sleep there was little for any one in that household during this sad night. Is there not, in almost every household, a memory of such days and nights—dread intervals in which the common course of life and time seems to be suspended, and all the interests of the universe hang upon the fitful breath of one dear sufferer?

Lonely were the watchers in Mr. Sheldon's house. Georgy was in her own room, forbidden to disturb the invalid by her restless presence—now lying down, now pacing to and fro, now praying a little, now crying a little—the very ideal of helpless misery.

In the sick-room there was no one but the invalid and Ann Woolper. In the room opposite watched Diana Paget, her door ajar, her senses sharpened by anxiety, quick to hear the faintest sound of footfall on the stairs, or to feel the slightest vibration from stealthily opened door on the story below.

Alone in the study sat Philip Sheldon, at the table where he was accustomed to write—a blank sheet of paper before him, a pen held loosely in his outstretched hand, and his eyes fixed in an unseeing gaze upon the bookcase opposite—the living image of care. Now that the turmoil of the day was done, and there was silence in the house, he had set himself to face his position. It was no trifling task which he had to perform. Not one difficulty, or one set of difficulties, had he to meet and master. The armed enemies up-springing from the dragon's teeth which he had sown were not to be set fighting amongst themselves, nor were they to be smashed by any rocks that he could hurl amongst them. They stood around him in an awful circle, and turn which way he would, he saw the same appalling figure, armed to the teeth, and invincible as death.

What had he to fear?

Detection of a past crime? No, that was a fool's terror which shook him at the sound of Tom Halliday's name—a child's fear of the nursery bogie. Detection in the present was more to be dreaded. The work that he had done was, according to his belief, work that could not be proved against him. But there are crimes of which to be accused is to be condemned. Lawyers may plead, and juries may acquit; but the fiat of public opinion goes forth against the suspected wretch, and on his forehead for ever shows the dark brand of Cain.

For the criminal of almost every shade of colour, save this one dread hue, society has a sanctuary and earth a refuge. The forger may find a circle in which the signing of another man's name, under the pressure of circumstances, is held to be a misfortune rather than an offence. The swindler has the gentlemanly brotherhood and sisterhood of Macaire for his family, and need never be lonely. The thief may dance away his jovial nights among kindred spirits, and be carried to his grave by sorrowing fellow-artists. The coiner may be jolly in his hiding-place among his chosen band of brother coiners. But for the murderer there is no such thing as human sympathy; and, when the blood of Nancy dyes his cruel hand, Bill Sykes may thank God if he has a dog that will follow him to his wretched end, for from mankind he can hope nothing.

Mr. Sheldon did not contemplate his position from any sentimental point of view; but he told himself that to be suspected of having poisoned his friend, and to be accused of poisoning, or attempting to poison, his daughter, would be ruin—ruin social and commercial, ruin complete and irretrievable.

And having faced one of these dread armed antagonists, he passed on to another shadowy enemy.

What if Charlotte recovered, and he escaped the taint of uttered suspicion—for Dr. Jedd's private opinion he cared very little—what then?

Then the grim antagonist lifted his visor, and showed him the countenance of Commercial Disgrace.

Unless within the next few weeks he could command from eight to ten thousand pounds, his disgrace as a member of the Stock Exchange was inevitable. Charlotte's death would give him the means of raising as much upon the policies of assurance obtained by her, and which, by the terms of her will, he would inherit. The life-insurance people might be somewhat slow to settle his claims; but he had all possible facilities for the raising of money upon any tangible security, and he could count upon immediate cash, in the event of Charlotte's death.

But what if she should not die? What if this nameless languor, this mysterious atrophy, taken vigorously in hand by Dr. Jedd, should be vanquished, and the girl should live?

What indeed? A sharp spasm contracted the stockbroker's hard cold face as he pictured to himself the result of failure.

He saw the crowd of busy faces in the House, and heard the low hum of many voices, and the dull sound of the big half-glass doors swinging to and fro, and the constant tread of hurrying feet. He heard the buzz of voices and the tramp of feet stop as suddenly as if that busy tide of human life had been arrested by an enchanter's wand. The enchanter is no other than the head-waiter of the Stock Exchange, who takes his position by a stand in the midst of that great meeting-place, and removes his hat.

After that sudden silence comes a faint sound of anxious whisperings; and then again a second silence, still more profound, prevails in that assembly. Three times, with wooden hammer sounding dull against the woodwork of his stand, the waiter raps his awful rap. To some it is the call of doom. The commercial Nemesis hides her awful countenance. Slow and solemn sound those three deliberate strokes of the wooden hammer. You can hear the stertorous breathing of an apoplectic stockbroker, the short panting respiration of some eager speculator—the rest is silence. And then the voice of the waiter—proxy for the commercial Nemesis—calmly enunciates the dread decree.

"Philip Sheldon begs to inform the members of the House that he cannot comply with his bargains."

A sudden flutter of the leaves of many note-books follows that awful announcement. Voices rise loud in united utterance of surprise or indignation. The doors swing to and fro, as hurrying members dash in and out to scan the market and ascertain how far they may be affected by this unlooked-for failure.

This was the scene which the watcher pictured to himself; and for him Fate could wear no aspect more terrible. Respectability, solvency, success—these were the idols to which he had given worship and tribute in all the days of his life. To propitiate these inexorable ones he had sacrificed all the dearest and best blessings which earth and heaven offer to mankind. Best or happiness, as other men consider these blessings, he had never known; the sense of triumph in success of the present, the feverish expectation of success in the future—these had stood to him in the place of love and hope, pleasure and idlesse, all the joys and comforts of this lower world, and all the holy dreams of purer pleasures in a world to come.

One vague brief thought of all that he had sacrificed flashed across his brain; and swift upon his track followed the thought of what he stood to lose.

Something more than his position upon the Stock Exchange was at stake. He had done desperate things in the vain hope of sustaining that position against the destroying sweep of Fortune's turning tide. Bills were afloat which he must meet, or stand before the world a detected forger,—bills drawn upon companies that were shadowy as the regions of their supposed operations. Bills amounting to five thousand pounds, drawn, upon the Honduras Mahogany Company, Limited; other bills amounting to upwards of three thousand pounds, against the Pennsylvanian Anthracite Coal Corporation, Limited. The sum he might raise on the policies of insurance would about cover these bills; and, simultaneously with their withdrawal, fresh bills might be floated, and the horse-leech cry of the brokers for contango might be satisfied until there came a reaction in the City, and the turning tide should float him into some harbour of safety. Beyond this harbour shone a splendid beacon, the dead girl's inheritance—his, to claim by right of the same will that would give him the sum insured upon her life.

Without this immediate ready money there was no extraction from the hideous labyrinth. His position had been already too long sustained by bills of exchange. There were people in the City who wanted, in vulgar parlance, to see the colour of his money. He knew this—and knew how frail the tenure by which he held his position, and how dire the crash which would hurl him down to ruin.

After the proclamation of his inability to meet his differences—the Deluge: and, looking gloomily athwart the flood and tempest, he saw neither ark nor Ararat.

Charlotte's death was the one chance of redemption; and to that event he looked as to a figure in a mathematical proposition. Of this girl herself, with all her wealth of beauty and goodness, of hope and love, he had scarcely any definite idea. She had so long been no more to him than an important figure in the mathematics of his life, that he had lost the power to behold her in any other light.

The hardness of his nature was something lower than absolute cruelty of heart. It was less human than the half-insane ferocity of a Nero. It was a calm indifference to the waste of human life, which, displayed upon a larger field of operation, would have made a monster cold and passionless as Sphinx or Chimaera.

"I must see Ann Woolper," he said to himself, presently, "she will not dare to exclude me from that room."

He listened to the striking of the Bayswater clocks. Two o'clock. Within and without the house reigned a profound silence. The room immediately over Mr. Sheldon's study was Charlotte's room, and here there had been for a long time no sound of life or movement.