"You can hardly go to Paris to consult the book," he said, "in the present state of Mrs. Eyrecourt's health?"

"Certainly not!"

"Perhaps you will send somebody to search the catalogue at the British Museum?"

"I should have done that already, Father Benwell, but for the very kind allusion in your note to your friend in the country. Even if the book is in the Museum Library, I shall be obliged to go to the Reading Room to get my information. It would be far more convenient to me to have the volume at home to consult, if you think your friend will trust me with it."

"I am certain he will trust you with it. My friend is Mr. Winterfield, of Beaupark House, North Devon. Perhaps you may have heard of him?"

"No; the name is quite new to me."

"Then come and see the man himself. He is now in London—and I am entirely at your service."

In half an hour more, Romayne was presented to a well-bred, amiable gentleman in the prime of life, smoking, and reading the newspaper. The bowl of his long pipe rested on the floor, on one side of him, and a handsome red and white spaniel reposed on the other. Before his visitors had been two minutes in the room, he understood the motive which had brought them to consult him, and sent for a telegraphic form.

"My steward will find the book and forward it to your address by passenger train this afternoon," he said. "I will tell him to put my printed catalogue of the library into the parcel, in case I have any other books which may be of use to you."

With those words, he dispatched the telegram to the office. Romayne attempted to make his acknowledgments. Mr. Winterfield would hear no acknowledgments.

"My dear sir," he said, with a smile that brightened his whole face, "you are engaged in writing a great historical work; and I am an obscure country gentleman, who is lucky enough to associate himself with the production of a new book. How do you know that I am not looking forward to a complimentary line in the preface? I am the obliged person, not you. Pray consider me as a handy little boy who runs on errands for the Muse of History. Do you smoke?"

Not even tobacco would soothe Romayne's wasted and irritable nerves. Father Benwell—"all things to all men"—cheerfully accepted a cigar from the box on the table.

"Father Benwell possesses all the social virtues," Mr. Winterfield ran on. "He shall have his coffee, and the largest sugar-basin that the hotel can produce. I can quite understand that your literary labors have tried your nerves," he said to Romayne, when he had ordered the coffee. "The mere title of your work overwhelms an idle man like me. 'The Origin of Religions'—what an immense subject! How far must we look back to find out the first worshipers of the human family?—Where are the hieroglyphics, Mr. Romayne, that will give you the earliest information? In the unknown center of Africa, or among the ruined cities of Yucatan? My own idea, as an ignorant man, is that the first of all forms of worship must have been the worship of the sun. Don't be shocked, Father Benwell—I confess I have a certain sympathy with sun-worship. In the East especially, the rising of the sun is surely the grandest of all objects—the visible symbol of a beneficent Deity, who gives life, warmth and light to the world of his creation."

"Very grand, no doubt," remarked Father Benwell, sweetening his coffee. "But not to be compared with the noble sight at Rome, when the Pope blesses the Christian world from the balcony of St. Peter's."

"So much for professional feeling!" said Mr. Winterfield. "But, surely, something depends on what sort of man the Pope is. If we had lived in the time of Alexander the Sixth, would you have called him a part of that noble sight?"

"Certainly—at a proper distance," Father Benwell briskly replied. "Ah, you heretics only know the worst side of that most unhappy pontiff! Mr. Winterfield, we have every reason to believe that he felt (privately) the truest remorse."

"I should require very good evidence to persuade me of it."

This touched Romayne on a sad side of his own personal experience. "Perhaps," he said, "you don't believe in remorse?"

"Pardon me," Mr. Winterfield rejoined, "I only distinguish between false remorse and true remorse. We will say no more of Alexander the Sixth, Father Benwell. If we want an illustration, I will supply it, and give no offense. True remorse depends, to my mind, on a man's accurate knowledge of his own motives—far from a common knowledge, in my experience. Say, for instance, that I have committed some serious offense—"

Romayne could not resist interrupting him. "Say you have killed one of your fellow-creatures," he suggested.

"Very well. If I know that I really meant to kill him, for some vile purpose of my own; and if (which by no means always follows) I am really capable of feeling the enormity of my own crime—that is, as I think, true remorse. Murderer as I am, I have, in that case, some moral worth still left in me. But if I did not mean to kill the man—if his death was my misfortune as well as his—and if (as frequently happens) I am nevertheless troubled by remorse, the true cause lies in my own inability fairly to realize my own motives—before I look to results. I am the ignorant victim of false remorse; and if I will only ask myself boldly what has blinded me to the true state of the case, I shall find the mischief due to that misdirected appreciation of my own importance which is nothing but egotism in disguise."

"I entirely agree with you," said Father Benwell; "I have had occasion to say the same thing in the confessional."

Mr. Winterfield looked at his dog, and changed the subject. "Do you like dogs, Mr. Romayne?" he asked. "I see my spaniel's eyes saying that he likes you, and his tail begging you to take some notice of him."

Romayne caressed the dog rather absently.

His new friend had unconsciously presented to him a new view of the darker aspect of his own life. Winterfield's refined, pleasant manners, his generous readiness in placing the treasures of his library at a stranger's disposal, had already appealed irresistibly to Romayne's sensitive nature. The favorable impression was now greatly strengthened by the briefly bold treatment which he had just heard of a subject in which he was seriously interested. "I must see more of this man," was his thought, as he patted the companionable spaniel.

Father Benwell's trained observation followed the vivid changes of expression on Romayne's face, and marked the eager look in his eyes as he lifted his head from the dog to the dog's master. The priest saw his opportunity and took it.

"Do you remain long at Ten Acres Lodge?" he said to Romayne.

"I hardly know as yet. We have no other plans at present."

"You inherit the place, I think, from your late aunt, Lady Berrick?"

"Yes."

The tone of the reply was not encouraging; Romayne felt no interest in talking of Ten Acres Lodge. Father Benwell persisted.

"I was told by Mrs. Eyrecourt," he went on "that Lady Berrick had some fine pictures. Are they still at the Lodge?"

"Certainly. I couldn't live in a house without pictures."

Father Benwell looked at Winterfield. "Another taste in common between you and Mr. Romayne," he said, "besides your liking for dogs."

This at once produced the desired result. Romayne eagerly invited Winterfield to see his pictures. "There are not many of them," he said. "But they are really worth looking at. When will you come?"

"The sooner the better," Winterfield answered, cordially. "Will to-morrow do—by the noonday light?"

"Whenever you please. Your time is mine."

Among his other accomplishments, Father Benwell was a chess-player. If his thoughts at that moment had been expressed in language, they would have said, "Check to the queen."



CHAPTER IV.

THE END OF THE HONEYMOON.

ON the next morning, Winterfield arrived alone at Romayne's house.

Having been included, as a matter of course, in the invitation to see the pictures, Father Benwell had made an excuse, and had asked leave to defer the proposed visit. From his point of view, he had nothing further to gain by being present at a second meeting between the two men—in the absence of Stella. He had it on Romayne's own authority that she was in constant attendance on her mother, and that her husband was alone. "Either Mrs. Eyrecourt will get better, or she will die," Father Benwell reasoned. "I shall make constant inquiries after her health, and, in either case, I shall know when Mrs. Romayne returns to Ten Acres Lodge. After that domestic event, the next time Mr. Winterfield visits Mr. Romayne, I shall go and see the pictures."

It is one of the defects of a super-subtle intellect to trust too implicitly to calculation, and to leave nothing to chance. Once or twice already Father Benwell had been (in the popular phrase) a little too clever—and chance had thrown him out. As events happened, chance was destined to throw him out once more.

Of the most modest pretensions, in regard to numbers and size, the pictures collected by the late Lady Berrick were masterly works of modern art. With few exceptions, they had been produced by the matchless English landscape painters of half a century since. There was no formal gallery here. The pictures were so few that they could be hung in excellent lights in the different living-rooms of the villa. Turner, Constable, Collins, Danby, Callcott, Linnell—the master of Beaupark House passed from one to the other with the enjoyment of a man who thoroughly appreciated the truest and finest landscape art that the world has yet seen.

"You had better not have asked me here," he said to Romayne, in his quaintly good-humored way. "I can't part with those pictures when I say good-by to-day. You will find me calling here again and again, till you are perfectly sick of me. Look at this sea piece. Who thinks of the brushes and palette of that painter? There, truth to Nature and poetical feeling go hand in hand together. It is absolutely lovely—I could kiss that picture."

They were in Romayne's study when this odd outburst of enthusiasm escaped Winterfield. He happened to look toward the writing-table next. Some pages of manuscript, blotted and interlined with corrections, at once attracted his attention.

"Is that the forthcoming history?" he asked. "You are not one of the authors who perform the process of correction mentally—you revise and improve with the pen in your hand."

Romayne looked at him in surprise. "I suspect, Mr. Winterfield, you have used your pen for other purposes than writing letters."

"No, indeed; you pay me an undeserved compliment. When you come to see me in Devonshire, I can show you some manuscripts, and corrected proofs, left by our great writers, collected by my father. My knowledge of the secrets of the craft has been gained by examining those literary treasures. If the public only knew that every writer worthy of the name is the severest critic of his own book before it ever gets into the hands of the reviewers, how surprised they would be! The man who has worked in the full fervor of composition yesterday is the same man who sits in severe and merciless judgment to-day on what he has himself produced. What a fascination there must be in the Art which exacts and receives such double labor as this?"

Romayne thought—not unkindly—of his wife. Stella had once asked him how long a time he was usually occupied in writing one page. The reply had filled her with pity and wonder. "Why do you take all that trouble?" she had gently remonstrated. "It would be just the same to the people, darling, if you did it in half the time."

By way of changing the topic, Romayne led his visitor into another room. "I have a picture here," he said, "which belongs to a newer school of painting. You have been talking of hard work in one Art; there it is in another."

"Yes," said Winterfield, "there it is—the misdirected hard work, which has been guided by no critical faculty, and which doesn't know where to stop. I try to admire it; and I end in pitying the poor artist. Look at that leafless felled tree in the middle distance. Every little twig, on the smallest branch, is conscientiously painted—and the result is like a colored photograph. You don't look at a landscape as a series of separate parts; you don't discover every twig on a tree; you see the whole in Nature, and you want to see the whole in a picture. That canvas presents a triumph of patience and pains, produced exactly as a piece of embroidery is produced, all in little separate bits, worked with the same mechanically complete care. I turn away from it to your shrubbery there, with an ungrateful sense of relief."

He walked to the window as he spoke. It looked out on the grounds in front of the house. At the same moment the noise of rolling wheels became audible on the drive. An open carriage appeared at the turn in the road. Winterfield called Romayne to the window. "A visitor," he began—and suddenly drew back, without saying a word more.

Romayne looked out, and recognized his wife.

"Excuse me for one moment," he said, "it is Mrs. Romayne."

On that morning an improvement in the fluctuating state of Mrs. Eyrecourt's health had given Stella another of those opportunities of passing an hour or two with her husband, which she so highly prized. Romayne withdrew, to meet her at the door—too hurriedly to notice Winterfield standing, in the corner to which he had retreated, like a man petrified.

Stella had got out of the carriage when her husband reached the porch. She ascended the few steps that led to the hall as slowly and painfully as if she had been an infirm old woman. The delicately tinted color in her face had faded to an ashy white. She had seen Winterfield at the window.

For the moment, Romayne looked at her in speechless consternation. He led her into the nearest room that opened out of the hall, and took her in his arms. "My love, this nursing of your mother has completely broken you down!" he said, with the tenderest pity for her. "If you won't think of yourself, you must think of me. For my sake remain here, and take the rest that you need. I will be a tyrant, Stella, for the first time; I won't let you go back."

She roused herself, and tried to smile—and hid the sad result from him in a kiss. "I do feel the anxiety and fatigue," she said. "But my mother is really improving; and, if it only continues, the blessed sense of relief will make me strong again." She paused, and roused all her courage, in anticipation of the next words—so trivial and so terrible—that must, sooner or later, be pronounced. "You have a visitor?" she said.

"Did you see him at the window? A really delightful man—I know you will like him. Under any other circumstances, I should have introduced him. You are not well enough to see strangers today."

She was too determined to prevent Winterfield from ever entering the house again to shrink from the meeting. "I am not so ill as you think, Lewis," she said, bravely. "When you go to your new friend, I will go with you. I am a little tired—that's all."

Romayne looked at her anxiously. "Let me get you a glass of wine," he said.

She consented—she really felt the need of it. As he turned away to ring the bell, she put the question which had been in her mind from the moment when she had seen Winterfield.

"How did you become acquainted with this gentleman?"

"Through Father Benwell."

She was not surprised by the answer—her suspicion of the priest had remained in her mind from the night of Lady Loring's ball. The future of her married life depended on her capacity to check the growing intimacy between the two men. In that conviction she found the courage to face Winterfield.

How should she meet him? The impulse of the moment pointed to the shortest way out of the dreadful position in which she was placed—it was to treat him like a stranger. She drank her glass of wine, and took Romayne's arm. "We mustn't keep your friend waiting any longer," she resumed. "Come!"

As they crossed the hall, she looked suspiciously toward the house door. Had he taken the opportunity of leaving the villa? At any other time she would have remembered that the plainest laws of good breeding compelled him to wait for Romayne's return. His own knowledge of the world would tell him that an act of gross rudeness, committed by a well-bred man, would inevitably excite suspicion of some unworthy motive—and might, perhaps, connect that motive with her unexpected appearance at the house. Romayne opened the door, and they entered the room together.

"Mr. Winterfield, let me introduce you to Mrs. Romayne." They bowed to each other; they spoke the conventional words proper to the occasion—but the effort that it cost them showed itself. Romayne perceived an unusual formality in his wife's manner, and a strange disappearance of Winterfield's easy grace of address. Was he one of the few men, in these days, who are shy in the presence of women? And was the change in Stella attributable, perhaps, to the state of her health? The explanation might, in either case, be the right one. He tried to set them at their ease.

"Mr. Winterfield is so pleased with the pictures, that he means to come and see them again," he said to his wife. "And one of his favorites happens to be your favorite, too."

She tried to look at Winterfield, but her eyes sank. She could turn toward him, and that was all. "Is it the sea-piece in the study?" she said to him faintly.

"Yes," he answered, with formal politeness; "it seems to me to be one of the painter's finest works."

Romayne looked at him in unconcealed wonder. To what flat commonplace Winterfield's lively enthusiasm had sunk in Stella's presence! She perceived that some unfavorable impression had been produced on her husband, and interposed with a timely suggestion. Her motive was not only to divert Romayne's attention from Winterfield, but to give him a reason for leaving the room.

"The little water-color drawing in my bedroom is by the same artist," she said. "Mr. Winterfield might like to see it. If you will ring the bell, Lewis, I will send my maid for it."

Romayne had never allowed the servants to touch his works of art, since the day when a zealous housemaid had tried to wash one of his plaster casts. He made the reply which his wife had anticipated.

"No! no!" he said. "I will fetch the drawing myself." He turned gayly to Winterfield. "Prepare yourself for another work that you would like to kiss." He smiled, and left the room.

The instant the door was closed, Stella approached Winterfield. Her beautiful face became distorted by a mingled expression of rage and contempt. She spoke to him in a fierce peremptory whisper.

"Have you any consideration for me left?" His look at her, as she put that question, revealed the most complete contrast between his face and hers. Compassionate sorrow was in his eyes, tender forbearance and respect spoke in his tones, as he answered her.

"I have more than consideration for you, Stella—"

She angrily interrupted him. "How dare you call me by my Christian name?"

He remonstrated, with a gentleness that might have touched the heart of any woman. "Do you still refuse to believe that I never deceived you? Has time not softened your heart to me yet?"

She was more contemptuous toward him than ever. "Spare me your protestations," she said; "I heard enough of them two years since. Will you do what I ask of you?"

"You know that I will."

"Put an end to your acquaintance with my husband. Put an end to it," she repeated vehemently, "from this day, at once and forever! Can I trust you to do it?"

"Do you think I would have entered this house if I had known he was your husband?" He made that reply with a sudden change in him—with a rising color and in firm tones of indignation. In a moment more, his voice softened again, and his kind blue eyes rested on her sadly and devotedly. "You may trust me to do more than you ask," he resumed. "You have made a mistake."

"What mistake?"

"When Mr. Romayne introduced us, you met me like a stranger—and you left me no choice but to do as you did."

"I wish you to be a stranger."

Her sharpest replies made no change in his manner. He spoke as kindly and as patiently as ever.

"You forget that you and your mother were my guests at Beaupark, two years ago—"

Stella understood what he meant—and more. In an instant she remembered that Father Benwell had been at Beaupark House. Had he heard of the visit? She clasped her hands in speechless terror.

Winterfield gently reassured her. "You must not be frightened," he said. "It is in the last degree unlikely that Mr. Romayne will ever find out that you were at my house. If he does—and if you deny it—I will do for you what I would do for no other human creature; I will deny it too. You are safe from discovery. Be happy—and forget me."

For the first time she showed signs of relenting—she turned her head away, and sighed. Although her mind was full of the serious necessity of warning him against Father Benwell, she had not even command enough over her own voice to ask how he had become acquainted with the priest. His manly devotion, the perfect and pathetic sincerity of his respect, pleaded with her, in spite of herself. For a moment she paused to recover her composure. In that moment Romayne returned to them with the drawing in his hand.

"There!" he said. "It's nothing, this time, but some children gathering flowers on the outskirts of a wood. What do you think of it?"

"What I thought of the larger work," Winterfield answered. "I could look at it by the hour together." He consulted his watch. "But time is a hard master, and tells me that my visit must come to an end. Thank you, most sincerely."

He bowed to Stella. Romayne thought his guest might have taken the English freedom of shaking hands. "When will you come and look at the pictures again?" he asked. "Will you dine with us, and see how they bear the lamplight?"

"I am sorry to say I must beg you to excuse me. My plans are altered since we met yesterday. I am obliged to leave London."

Romayne was unwilling to part with him on these terms. "You will let me know when you are next in town?" he said.

"Certainly!"

With that short answer he hurried away.

Romayne waited a little in the hall before he went back to his wife. Stella's reception of Winterfield, though not positively ungracious, was, nevertheless, the reverse of encouraging. What extraordinary caprice had made her insensible to the social attractions of a man so unaffectedly agreeable? It was not wonderful that Winterfield's cordiality should have been chilled by the cold welcome that he had received from the mistress of the house. At the same time, some allowance was to be made for the influence of Stella's domestic anxieties, and some sympathy was claimed by the state of her health. Although her husband shrank from distressing her by any immediate reference to her reception of his friend, he could not disguise from himself that she had disappointed him. When he went back to the room, Stella was lying on the sofa with her face turned toward the wall. She was in tears, and she was afraid to let him see it. "I won't disturb you," he said, and withdrew to his study. The precious volume which Winterfield had so kindly placed at his disposal was on the table, waiting for him.

Father Benwell had lost little by not being present at the introduction of Winterfield to Stella. He had witnessed a plainer betrayal of emotion when they met unexpectedly in Lord Loring's picture gallery. But if he had seen Romayne reading in his study, and Stella crying secretly on the sofa, he might have written to Rome by that day's post, and might have announced that he had sown the first seeds of disunion between husband and wife.



CHAPTER V.

FATHER BENWELL'S CORRESPONDENCE.

To the Secretary, S. J., Rome.

In my last few hasty lines I was only able to inform you of the unexpected arrival of Mrs. Romayne while Winterfield was visiting her husband. If you remember, I warned you not to attach any undue importance to my absence on that occasion. My present report will satisfy my reverend brethren that the interests committed to me are as safe as ever in my hands.

I have paid three visits, at certain intervals. The first to Winterfield (briefly mentioned in my last letter); the second to Romayne; the third to the invalid lady, Mrs. Eyrecourt. In every case I have been rewarded by important results.

We will revert to Winterfield first. I found him at his hotel, enveloped in clouds of tobacco smoke. Having led him, with some difficulty, into talking of his visit to Ten Acres Lodge, I asked how he liked Romayne's pictures.

"I envy him his pictures." That was the only answer.

"And how do you like Mrs. Romayne?" I inquired next.

He laid down his pipe, and looked at me attentively. My face (I flatter myself) defied discovery. He inhaled another mouthful of tobacco, and began to play with his dog. "If I must answer your question," he burst out suddenly, "I didn't get a very gracious reception from Mrs. Romayne." There he abruptly stopped. He is a thoroughly transparent man; you see straight into his mind, through his eyes. I perceived that he was only telling me a part (perhaps a very small part) of the truth.

"Can you account for such a reception as you describe?" I asked. He answered shortly, "No."

"Perhaps I can account for it," I went on. "Did Mr. Romayne tell his wife that I was the means of introducing you to him?"

He fixed another searching look on me. "Mr. Romayne might have said so when he left me to receive his wife at the door."

"In that case, Mr. Winterfield, the explanation is as plain as the sun at noonday. Mrs. Romayne is a strong Protestant, and I am a Catholic priest."

He accepted this method of accounting for his reception with an alacrity that would not have imposed on a child. You see I had relieved him from all further necessity of accounting for the conduct of Mrs. Romayne!

"A lady's religious prejudices," I proceeded in the friendliest way, "are never taken seriously by a sensible man. You have placed Mr. Romayne under obligations to your kindness—he is eager to improve his acquaintance with you. You will go again to Ten Acres Lodge?"

He gave me another short answer. "I think not."

I said I was sorry to hear it. "However," I added, "you can always see him here, when you are in London." He puffed out a big volume of smoke, and made no remark. I declined to be put down by silence and smoke. "Or perhaps," I persisted, "you will honor me by meeting him at a simple little dinner at my lodgings?" Being a gentleman, he was of course obliged to answer this. He said, "You are very kind; I would rather not. Shall we talk of something else, Father Benwell?"

We talked of something else. He was just as amiable as ever—but he was not in good spirits. "I think I shall run over to Paris before the end of the month," he said. "To make a long stay?" I asked. "Oh, no! Call in a week or ten days—and you will find me here again."

When I got up to go, he returned of his own accord to the forbidden subject. He said, "I must beg you to do me two favors. The first is, not to let Mr. Romayne know that I am still in London. The second is, not to ask me for any explanations."

The result of our interview may be stated in very few words. It has advanced me one step nearer to discovery. Winterfield's voice, look, and manner satisfied me of this—the true motive for his sudden change of feeling toward Romayne is jealousy of the man who has married Miss Eyrecourt. Those compromising circumstances which baffled the inquiries of my agent are associated, in plain English, with a love affair. Remember all that I have told you of Romayne's peculiar disposition—and imagine, if you can, what the consequences of such a disclosure will be when we are in a position to enlighten the master of Vange Abbey!

As to the present relations between the husband and wife, I have only to tell you next what passed, when I visited Romayne a day or two later. I did well to keep Penrose at our disposal. We shall want him again.

*****

On arriving at Ten Acres Lodge, I found Romayne in his study. His manuscript lay before him—but he was not at work. He looked worn and haggard. To this day I don't know from what precise nervous malady he suffers; I could only guess that it had been troubling him again since he and I last met.

My first conventional civilities were dedicated, of course, to his wife. She is still in attendance on her mother. Mrs. Eyrecourt is now considered to be out of danger. But the good lady (who is ready enough to recommend doctors to other people) persists in thinking that she is too robust a person to require medical help herself. The physician in attendance trusts entirely to her daughter to persuade her to persevere with the necessary course of medicine. Don't suppose that I trouble you by mentioning these trumpery circumstances without a reason. We shall have occasion to return to Mrs. Eyrecourt and her doctor.

Before I had been five minutes in his company, Romayne asked me if I had seen Winterfield since his visit to Ten Acres Lodge.

I said I had seen him, and waited, anticipating the next question. Romayne fulfilled my expectations. He inquired if Winterfield had left London.

There are certain cases (as I am told by medical authorities) in which the dangerous system of bleeding a patient still has its advantages. There are other cases in which the dangerous system of telling the truth becomes equally judicious. I said to Romayne, "If I answer you honestly, will you consider it as strictly confidential? Mr. Winterfield, I regret to say, has no intention of improving his acquaintance with you. He asked me to conceal from you that he is still in London."

Romayne's face plainly betrayed that he was annoyed and irritated. "Nothing that you say to me, Father Benwell, shall pass the walls of this room," he replied. "Did Winterfield give any reason for not continuing his acquaintance with me?"

I told the truth once more, with courteous expressions of regret. "Mr. Winterfield spoke of an ungracious reception on the part of Mrs. Romayne."

He started to his feet, and walked irritably up and down the room. "It is beyond endurance!" he said to himself.

The truth had served its purpose by this time. I affected not to have heard him. "Did you speak to me?" I asked.

He used a milder form of expression. "It is most unfortunate," he said. "I must immediately send back the valuable book which Mr. Winterfield has lent to me. And that is not the worst of it. There are other volumes in his library which I have the greatest interest in consulting—and it is impossible for me to borrow them now. At this time, too, when I have lost Penrose, I had hoped to find in Winterfield another friend who sympathized with my pursuits. There is something so cheering and attractive in his manner—and he has just the boldness and novelty of view in his opinions that appeal to a man like me. It was a pleasant future to look forward to; and it must be sacrificed—and to what? To a woman's caprice."

From our point of view this was a frame of mind to be encouraged. I tried the experiment of modestly taking the blame on myself. I suggested that I might be (quite innocently) answerable for Romayne's disappointment.

He looked at me thoroughly puzzled. I repeated what I had said to Winterfield. "Did you mention to Mrs. Romayne that I was the means of introducing you—?"

He was too impatient to let me finish the sentence. "I did mention it to Mrs. Romayne," he said. "And what of it?"

"Pardon me for reminding you that Mrs. Romayne has Protestant prejudices," I rejoined. "Mr. Winterfield would, I fear, not be very welcome to her as the friend of a Catholic priest."

He was almost angry with me for suggesting the very explanation which had proved so acceptable to Winterfield.

"Nonsense!" he cried. "My wife is far too well-bred a woman to let her prejudices express themselves in that way. Winterfield's personal appearance must have inspired her with some unreasonable antipathy, or—"

He stopped, and turned away thoughtfully to the window. Some vague suspicion had probably entered his mind, which he had only become aware of at that moment, and which he was not quite able to realize as yet. I did my best to encourage the new train of thought.

"What other reason can there be?" I asked.

He turned on me sharply. "I don't know. Do you?"

I ventured on a courteous remonstrance. "My dear sir! if you can't find another reason, how can I? It must have been a sudden antipathy, as you say. Such things do happen between strangers. I suppose I am right in assuming that Mrs. Romayne and Mr. Winterfield are strangers?"

His eyes flashed with a sudden sinister brightness—the new idea had caught light in his mind. "They met as strangers," he said.

There he stopped again, and returned to the window. I felt that I might lose the place I had gained in his confidence if I pressed the subject any further. Besides, I had my reasons for saying a word about Penrose next. As it happened, I had received a letter from him, relating to his present employment, and sending kindest regards to his dear friend and master in the postscript.

I gave the message. Romayne looked round, with an instant change in his face. The mere sound of Penrose's name seemed to act as a relief to the gloom and suspicion that had oppressed him the moment before. "You don't know how I miss the dear gentle little fellow," he said, sadly.

"Why not write to him?" I suggested. "He would be so glad to hear from you again."

"I don't know where to write."

"Did I not send you his address when I forwarded your letter to him?"

"No."

"Then let me atone for my forgetfulness at once."

I wrote down the address, and took my leave.

As I approached the door I noticed on a side table the Catholic volumes which Penrose left with Romayne. One of them was open, with a pencil lying beside it. I thought that a good sign—but I said nothing.

Romayne pressed my hand at parting. "You have been very kind and friendly, Father Benwell," he said. "I shall be glad to see you again."

Don't mention it in quarters where it might do me harm. Do you know, I really pitied him. He has sacrificed everything to his marriage—and his marriage has disappointed him. He was even reduced to be friendly with Me.

Of course when the right time comes I shall give Penrose leave of absence. Do you foresee, as I do, the speedy return of "the dear gentle little fellow" to his old employment; the resumed work of conversion advancing more rapidly than ever; and the jealousy of the Protestant wife aggravating the false position in which she is already placed by her equivocal reception of Winterfield? You may answer this by reminding me of the darker side of the prospect. An heir may be born; and the heir's mother, backed by general opinion, may insist—if there is any hesitation in the matter—on asserting the boy's natural right to succeed his father.

Patience, my reverend colleague! There is no threatening of any such calamity yet. And, even if it happens, don't forget that Romayne has inherited a second fortune. The Vange estate has an estimated value. If the act of restitution represented that value in ready money, do you think the Church would discourage a good convert by refusing his check? You know better than that—and so do I.

*****

The next day I called to inquire how Mrs. Eyrecourt was getting on. The report was favorable. Three days later I called again. The report was still more encouraging. I was also informed that Mrs. Romayne had returned to Ten Acres Lodge.

Much of my success in life has been achieved by never being in a hurry. I was not in a hurry now. Time sometimes brings opportunities—and opportunities are worth waiting for.

Let me make this clear by an example.

A man of headlong disposition, in my place, would have probably spoken of Miss Eyrecourt's marriage to Romayne at his first meeting with Winterfield, and would have excited their distrust, and put them respectively on their guard, without obtaining any useful result. I can, at any time, make the disclosure to Romayne which informs him that his wife had been Winterfield's guest in Devonshire, when she affected to meet her former host on the footing of a stranger. In the meanwhile, I give Penrose ample opportunity for innocently widening the breach between husband and wife.

You see, I hope, that if I maintain a passive position, it is not from indolence or discouragement. Now we may get on.

After an interval of a few days more I decided on making further inquiries at Mrs. Eyrecourt's house. This time, when I left my card, I sent a message, asking if the lady could receive me. Shall I own my weakness? She possesses all the information that I want, and she has twice baffled my inquiries. Under these humiliating circumstances, it is part of the priestly pugnacity of my disposition to inquire again.

I was invited to go upstairs.

The front and back drawing-rooms of the house were thrown into one. Mrs. Eyrecourt was being gently moved backward and forward in a chair on wheels, propelled by her maid; two gentlemen being present, visitors like myself. In spite of rouge and loosely folded lace and flowing draperies, she presented a deplorable spectacle. The bodily part of her looked like a dead woman, painted and revived—while the moral part, in the strongest contrast, was just as lively as ever.

"So glad to see you again, Father Benwell, and so much obliged by your kind inquiries. I am quite well, though the doctor won't admit it. Isn't it funny to see me being wheeled about, like a child in a perambulator? Returning to first principles, I call it. You see it's a law of my nature that I must go about. The doctor won't let me go about outside the house, so I go about inside the house. Matilda is the nurse, and I am the baby who will learn to walk some of these days. Are you tired, Matilda? No? Then give me another turn, there's a good creature. Movement, perpetual movement, is a law of Nature. Oh, dear no, doctor; I didn't make that discovery for myself. Some eminent scientific person mentioned it in a lecture. The ugliest man I ever saw. Now back again, Matilda. Let me introduce you to my friends, Father Benwell. Introducing is out of fashion, I know. But I am one of the few women who can resist the tyranny of fashion. I like introducing people. Sir John Drone—Father Benwell. Father Benwell—Doctor Wybrow. Ah, yes, you know the doctor by reputation? Shall I give you his character? Personally charming; professionally detestable. Pardon my impudence, doctor, it is one of the consequences of the overflowing state of my health. Another turn, Matilda—and a little faster this time. Oh, how I wish I was traveling by railway!"

There, her breath failed her. She reclined in her chair, and fanned herself silently—for a while.

I was now able to turn my attention to the two visitors. Sir John Drone, it was easy to see, would be no obstacle to confidential conversation with Mrs. Eyrecourt. An excellent country gentleman, with the bald head, the ruddy complexion, and the inexhaustible capacity for silence, so familiar to us in English society—there you have the true description of Sir John. But the famous physician was quite another sort of man. I had only to look at him, and to feel myself condemned to small talk while he was in the room.

You have always heard of it in my correspondence, whenever I have been in the wrong. I was in the wrong again now—I had forgotten the law of chances. Capricious Fortune, after a long interval, was about to declare herself again in my favor, by means of the very woman who had twice already got the better of me. What a recompense for my kind inquiries after Mrs. Eyrecourt! She recovered breath enough to begin talking again.

"Dear me, how dull you are!" she said to us. "Why don't you amuse a poor prisoner confined to the house? Rest a little, Matilda, or you will be falling ill next. Doctor! is this your last professional visit?"

"Promise to take care of yourself, Mrs. Eyrecourt, and I will confess that the professional visits are over. I come here to-day only as a friend."

"You best of men! Do me another favor. Enliven our dullness. Tell us some interesting story about a patient. These great doctors, Sir John, pass their lives in a perfect atmosphere of romance. Dr. Wybrow's consulting-room is like your confessional, Father Benwell. The most fascinating sins and sorrows are poured into his ears. What is the last romance in real life, doctor, that has asked you to treat it medically? We don't want names and places—we are good children; we only want a story."

Dr. Wybrow looked at me with a smile.

"It is impossible to persuade ladies," he said, "that we, too, are father-confessors in our way. The first duty of a doctor, Mrs. Eyrecourt—"

"Is to cure people, of course," she interposed in her smartest manner.

The doctor answered seriously. "No, indeed. That is only the second duty. Our first duty is invariably to respect the confidence of our patients. However," he resumed in his easier tone, "I happen to have seen a patient to-day, under circumstances which the rules of professional honor do not forbid me to mention. I don't know, Mrs. Eyrecourt, whether you will quite like to be introduced to the scene of the story. The scene is in a madhouse."

Mrs. Eyrecourt burst out with a coquettish little scream, and shook her fan at the doctor. "No horrors!" she cried. "The bare idea of a madhouse distracts me with terror. Oh, fie, fie! I won't listen to you—I won't look at you—I positively refuse to be frightened out of my wits. Matilda! wheel me away to the furthest end of the room. My vivid imagination, Father Benwell, is my rock ahead in life. I declare I can smell the odious madhouse. Go straight to the window, Matilda; I want to bury my nose among the flowers."

Sir John, upon this, spoke for the first time. His language consisted entirely of beginnings of sentences, mutely completed by a smile. "Upon my word, you know. Eh, Doctor Wybrow? A man of your experience. Horrors in madhouses. A lady in delicate health. No, really. Upon my honor, now, I cannot. Something funny, oh yes. But such a subject, oh no."

He rose to leave us. Dr. Wybrow gently stopped him. "I had a motive, Sir John," he said, "but I won't trouble you with needless explanations. There is a person, unknown to me, whom I want to discover. You are a great deal in society when you are in London. May I ask if you have ever met with a gentleman named Winterfield?"

I have always considered the power of self-control as one of the strongest points in my character. For the future I shall be more humble. When I heard that name, my surprise so completely mastered me that I sat self-betrayed to Dr. Wybrow as the man who could answer his question.

In the meanwhile, Sir John took his time to consider, and discovered that he had never heard of a person named Winterfield. Having acknowledged his ignorance, in his own eloquent language, he drifted away to the window-box in the next room, and gravely contemplated Mrs. Eyrecourt, with her nose buried in flowers.

The doctor turned to me. "Am I wrong, Father Benwell, in supposing that I had better have addressed myself to you?"

I admitted that I knew a gentleman named Winterfield.

Dr. Wybrow got up directly. "Have you a few minutes to spare?" he asked. It is needless to say that I was at the doctor's disposal. "My house is close by, and my carriage is at the door," he resumed. "When you feel inclined to say good-by to our friend Mrs. Eyrecourt, I have something to say to you which I think you ought to know."

We took our departure at once. Mrs. Eyrecourt (leaving some of the color of her nose among the flowers) patted me encouragingly with her fan, and told the doctor that he was forgiven, on the understanding that he would "never do it again." In five minutes more we were in Dr. Wybrow's study.

My watch tells me that I cannot hope to finish this letter by post time. Accept what I have written thus far—and be assured that the conclusion of my report shall follow a day later.

II.

The doctor began cautiously. "Winterfield is not a very common name," he said. "But it may not be amiss, Father Benwell, to discover, if we can, whether your Winterfield is the man of whom I am in search. Do you only know him by name? or are you a friend of his?"

I answered, of course, that I was a friend.

Dr. Wybrow went on. "Will you pardon me if I venture on an indiscreet question? When you are acquainted with the circumstances, I am sure you will understand and excuse me. Are you aware of any—what shall I call it?—any romantic incident in Mr. Winterfield's past life?"

This time—feeling myself, in all probability, on the brink of discovery—I was careful to preserve my composure. I said, quietly: "Some such incident as you describe has occurred in Mr. Winterfield's past life." There I stopped discreetly, and looked as if I knew all about it.

The doctor showed no curiosity to hear more. "My object," he went on, "was merely to be reasonably sure that I was speaking to the right person, in speaking to you. I may now tell you that I have no personal interest in trying to discover Mr. Winterfield; I only act as the representative of an old friend of mine. He is the proprietor of a private asylum at Sandsworth—a man whose integrity is beyond dispute, or he would not be my friend. You understand my motive in saying this?"

Proprietors of private asylums are, in these days, the objects of very general distrust in England. I understood the doctor's motive perfectly.

He proceeded. "Yesterday evening, my friend called upon me, and said that he had a remarkable case in his house, which he believed would interest me. The person to whom he alluded was a French boy, whose mental powers had been imperfectly developed from his childhood. The mischief had been aggravated, when he was about thirteen years old, by a serious fright. When he was placed in my asylum, he was not idiotic, and not dangerously mad—it was a case (not to use technical language) of deficient intelligence, tending sometimes toward acts of unreasoning mischief and petty theft, but never approaching to acts of downright violence. My friend was especially interested in the lad—won his confidence and affection by acts of kindness—and so improved his bodily health as to justify some hope of also improving the state of his mind, when a misfortune occurred which has altered the whole prospect. The poor creature has fallen ill of a fever, and the fever has developed to typhus. So far, there has been little to interest you—I am coming to a remarkable event at last. At the stage of the fever when delirium usually occurs in patients of sound mind, this crazy French boy has become perfectly sane and reasonable!"

I looked at him, when he made this amazing assertion, with a momentary doubt of his being in earnest. Doctor Wybrow understood me.

"Just what I thought, too, when I first heard it!" he said. "My friend was neither offended nor surprised. After inviting me to go to his house, and judge for myself, he referred me to a similar case, publicly cited in the 'Cornhill Magazine,' for the month of April, 1879, in an article entitled 'Bodily Illness as a Mental Stimulant.' The article is published anonymously; but the character of the periodical in which it appears is a sufficient guarantee of the trustworthiness of the statement. I was so far influenced by the testimony thus cited, that I drove to Sandsworth and examined the case myself."

"Did the examination satisfy you?"

"Thoroughly. When I saw him last night, the poor boy was as sane as I am. There is, however, a complication in this instance, which is not mentioned in the case related in print. The boy appears to have entirely forgotten every event in his past life, reckoning from the time when the bodily illness brought with it the strange mental recovery which I have mentioned to you."

This was a disappointment. I had begun to hope for some coming result, obtained by the lad's confession.

"Is it quite correct to call him sane, when his memory is gone?" I ventured to ask.

"In this case there is no necessity to enter into the question," the doctor answered. "The boy's lapse of memory refers, as I told you, to his past life—that is to say, his life when his intellect was deranged. During the extraordinary interval of sanity that has now declared itself, he is putting his mental powers to their first free use; and none of them fail him, so far as I can see. His new memory (if I may call it so) preserves the knowledge of what has happened since his illness. You may imagine how this problem in brain disease interests me; and you will not wonder that I am going back to Sandsworth tomorrow afternoon, when I have done with my professional visits. But you may be reasonably surprised at my troubling you with details which are mainly interesting to a medical man."

Was he about to ask me to go with him to the asylum? I replied very briefly, merely saying that the details were interesting to every student of human nature. If he could have felt my pulse at that moment, I am afraid he might have thought I was in a fair way of catching the fever too.

"Prepare yourself," he resumed, "for another surprising circumstance. Mr. Winterfield is, by some incomprehensible accident, associated with one of the mischievous tricks played by the French boy, before he was placed under my friend's care. There, at any rate, is the only explanation by which we can account for the discovery of an envelope (with inclosures) found sewn up in the lining of the lad's waistcoat, and directed to Mr. Winterfield—without any place of address."

I leave you to imagine the effect which those words produced on me.

"Now," said the doctor, "you will understand why I put such strange questions to you. My friend and I are both hard-working men. We go very little into society, as the phrase is; and neither he nor I had ever heard the name of Winterfield. As a certain proportion of my patients happen to be people with a large experience of society, I undertook to make inquiries, so that the packet might be delivered, if possible, to the right person. You heard how Mrs. Eyrecourt (surely a likely lady to assist me?) received my unlucky reference to the madhouse; and you saw how I puzzled Sir John. I consider myself most fortunate, Father Benwell, in having had the honor of meeting you. Will you accompany me to the asylum to-morrow? And can you add to the favor by bringing Mr. Winterfield with you?"

This last request it was out of my power—really out of my power—to grant. Winterfield had left London that morning on his visit to Paris. His address there was, thus far, not known to me.

"Well, you must represent your friend," the doctor said. "Time is every way of importance in this case. Will you kindly call here at five to-morrow afternoon?"

I was punctual to my appointment. We drove together to the asylum.

There is no need for me to trouble you with a narrative of what I saw—favored by Doctor Wybrow's introduction—at the French boy's bedside. It was simply a repetition of what I had already heard. There he lay, at the height of the fever, asking, in the intervals of relief, intelligent questions relating to the medicines administered to him; and perfectly understanding the answers. He was only irritable when we asked him to take his memory back to the time before his illness; and then he answered in French, "I haven't got a memory."

But I have something else to tell you, which is deserving of your best attention. The envelope and its inclosures (addressed to "Bernard Winterfield, Esqre.") are in my possession. The Christian name sufficiently identifies the inscription with the Winterfield whom I know.

The circumstances under which the discovery was made were related to me by the proprietor of the asylum.

When the boy was brought to the house, two French ladies (his mother and sister) accompanied him and mentioned what had been their own domestic experience of the case. They described the wandering propensities which took the lad away from home, and the odd concealment of his waistcoat, on the last occasion when he had returned from one of his vagrant outbreaks.

On his first night at the asylum, he became excited by finding himself in a strange place. It was necessary to give him a composing draught. On going to bed, he was purposely not prevented from hiding his waistcoat under the pillow, as usual.

When the sedative had produced its effect, the attendant easily possessed himself of the hidden garment. It was the plain duty of the master of the house to make sure that nothing likely to be turned to evil uses was concealed by a patient. The seal which had secured the envelope was found, on examination, to have been broken.

"I would not have broken the seal myself," our host added. "But, as things were, I thought it my duty to look at the inclosures. They refer to private affairs of Mr. Winterfield, in which he is deeply interested, and they ought to have been long since placed in his possession. I need hardly say that I consider myself bound to preserve the strictest silence as to what I have read. An envelope, containing some blank sheets of paper, was put back in the boy's waistcoat, so that he might feel it in its place under the lining, when he woke. The original envelope and inclosures (with a statement of circumstances signed by my assistant and myself) have been secured under another cover, sealed with my own seal. I have done my best to discover Mr. Bernard Winterfield. He appears not to live in London. At least I failed to find his name in the Directory. I wrote next, mentioning what had happened, to the English gentleman to whom I send reports of the lad's health. He couldn't help me. A second letter to the French ladies only produced the same result. I own I should be glad to get rid of my responsibility on honorable terms."

All this was said in the boy's presence. He lay listening to it as if it had been a story told of some one else. I could not resist the useless desire to question him. Not speaking French myself (although I can read the language), I asked Doctor Wybrow and his friend to interpret for me.

My questions led to nothing. The French boy knew no more about the stolen envelope than I did.

There was no discoverable motive, mind, for suspecting him of imposing on us. When I said, "Perhaps you stole it?" he answered quite composedly, "Very likely; they tell me I have been mad; I don't remember it myself; but mad people do strange things." I tried him again. "Or, perhaps, you took it away out of mischief?" "Yes." "And you broke the seal, and looked at the papers?" "I dare say." "And then you kept them hidden, thinking they might be of some use to you? Or perhaps feeling ashamed of what you had done, and meaning to restore them if you got the opportunity?" "You know best, sir." The same result followed when we tried to find out where he had been, and what people had taken care of him, during his last vagrant escape from home. It was a new revelation to him that he had been anywhere. With evident interest, he applied to us to tell him where he had wandered to, and what people he had seen!

So our last attempts at enlightenment ended. We came to the final question of how to place the papers, with the least possible loss of time, in Mr. Winterfield's hands.

His absence in Paris having been mentioned, I stated plainly my own position toward him at the present time.

"Mr. Winterfield has made an appointment with me to call at his hotel, on his return to London," I said. "I shall probably be the first friend who sees him. If you will trust me with your sealed packet, in consideration of these circumstances, I will give you a formal receipt for it in Doctor Wybrow's presence—and I will add any written pledge that you may require on my part, acting as Mr. Winterfield's representative and friend. Perhaps you would like a reference as well?"

He made a courteous reply. "A friend of Dr. Wybrow's," he said, "requires no other reference."

"Excuse me," I persisted. "I had the honor of meeting Doctor Wybrow, for the first time, yesterday. Permit me to refer you to Lord Loring, who has long known me as his spiritual director and friend."

This account of myself settled the matter. I drew out the necessary securities—and I have all the papers lying before me on my desk at this moment.

You remember how seals were broken, and impressed again, at the Roman post-office, in the revolutionary days when we were both young men? Thanks to the knowledge then obtained, the extraordinary events which once associated Mr. Winterfield and Miss Eyrecourt are at last plainly revealed to me. Copies of the papers are in my possession, and the originals are sealed again, with the crest of the proprietor of the asylum, as if nothing had happened. I make no attempt to excuse myself. You know our motto:—THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS.

I don't propose to make any premature use of the information which I have obtained. The first and foremost necessity, as I have already reminded you, is to give Penrose the undisturbed opportunity of completing the conversion of Romayne. During this interval, my copies of the papers are at the disposal of my reverend brethren at headquarters.

*****

THE STOLEN PAPERS.—(COPIES.)

Number One.—From Emma Winterfield to Bernard Winterfield.

4 Maidwell Buildings, Belhaven.

How shall I address you? Dear Bernard, or Sir? It doesn't matter. I am going to do one of the few good actions of my life: and familiarities or formalities matter nothing to a woman who lies on her deathbed.

Yes—I have met with another accident. Shortly after the date of our separation, you heard, I think, of the fall in the circus that fractured my skull? On that occasion, a surgical operation, and a bit of silver plate in place of the bone, put me right again. This time it has been the kick of a horse, in the stables. Some internal injury is the consequence. I may die to-morrow, or live till next week. Anyway—the doctor has confessed it—my time has come.

Mind one thing. The drink—that vile habit which lost me your love and banished me from your house—the drink is not to blame for this last misfortune. Only the day before it happened I had taken the pledge, under persuasion of the good rector here, the Reverend Mr. Fennick. It is he who has brought me to make this confession, and who takes it down in writing at my bedside. Do you remember how I once hated the very name of a parson—and when you proposed, in joke, to marry me before the registrar, how I took it in downright earnest, and kept you to your word? We poor horse-riders and acrobats only knew clergymen as the worst enemies we had—always using their influence to keep the people out of our show, and the bread out of our mouths. If I had met with Mr. Fennick in my younger days, what a different woman I might have been!

Well, regrets of that kind are useless now. I am truly sorry, Bernard, for the evil that I have done to you; and I ask your pardon with a contrite heart.

You will at least allow it in my favor that your drunken wife knew she was unworthy of you. I refused to accept the allowance that you offered to me. I respected your name. For seven years from the time of our separation I returned to my profession under an assumed name and never troubled you. The one thing I could not do was to forget you. If you were infatuated by my unlucky beauty, I loved devotedly on my side. The well-born gentleman who had sacrificed everything for my sake, was something more than mortal in my estimation; he was—no! I won't shock the good man who writes this by saying what he was. Besides, what do you care for my thoughts of you now?

If you had only been content to remain as I left you—or if I had not found out that you were in love with Miss Eyrecourt, and were likely to marry her, in the belief that death had released you from me—I should have lived and died, doing you no other injury than the first great injury of consenting to be your wife.

But I made the discovery—it doesn't matter how. Our circus was in Devonshire at the time. My jealous rage maddened me, and I had a wicked admirer in a man who was old enough to be my father. I let him suppose that the way to my favor lay through helping my revenge on the woman who was about to take my place. He found the money to have you watched at home and abroad; he put the false announcement of my death in the daily newspapers, to complete your delusion; he baffled the inquiries made through your lawyers to obtain positive proof of my death. And last, and (in those wicked days) best service of all he took me to Brussels and posted me at the door of the English church, so that your lawful wife (with her marriage certificate in her hand) was the first person who met you and the mock Mrs. Winterfield on your way from the altar to the wedding breakfast.

I own it, to my shame. I triumphed in the mischief I had done.

But I had deserved to suffer; and I did suffer, when I heard that Miss Eyrecourt's mother and her two friends took her away from you—with her own entire approval—at the church door, and restored her to society, without a stain on her reputation. How the Brussels marriage was kept a secret, I could not find out. And when I threatened them with exposure, I got a lawyer's letter, and was advised in my own interests to hold my tongue. The rector has since told me that your marriage to Miss Eyrecourt could be lawfully declared null and void, and that the circumstances would excuse you, before any judge in England. I can now well understand that people, with rank and money to help them, can avoid exposure to which the poor, in their places, must submit.

One more duty (the last) still remains to be done.

I declare solemnly, on my deathbed, that you acted in perfect good faith when you married Miss Eyrecourt. You have not only been a man cruelly injured by me, but vilely insulted and misjudged by the two Eyrecourts, and by the lord and lady who encouraged them to set you down as a villain guilty of heartless and shameless deceit.

It is my conviction that these people might have done more than misinterpret your honorable submission to the circumstances in which you were placed. They might have prosecuted you for bigamy—if they could have got me to appear against you. I am comforted when I remember that I did make some small amends. I kept out of their way and yours, from that day to this.

I am told that I owe it to you to leave proof of my death behind me.

When the doctor writes my certificate, he will mention the mark by which I may be identified, if this reaches you (as I hope and believe it will) between the time of my death and my burial. The rector, who will close and seal these lines, as soon as the breath is out of my body, will add what he can to identify me; and the landlady of this house is ready to answer any questions that may be put to her. This time you may be really assured that you are free. When I am buried, and they show you my nameless grave in the churchyard, I know your kind heart—I die, Bernard, in the firm belief that you will forgive me.

There was one thing more that I had to ask of you, relating to a poor lost creature who is in the room with us at this moment. But, oh, I am so weary! Mr. Fennick will tell you what it is. Say to yourself sometimes—perhaps when you have married some lady who is worthy of you—There was good as well as bad in poor Emma. Farewell.

Number Two—From The Rev. Charles Fennick to Bernard Winterfield.

The Rectory, Belhaven.

Sir—It is my sad duty to inform you that Mrs. Emma Winterfield died this morning, a little before five o'clock. I will add no comment of mine to the touching language in which she has addressed you. God has, I most sincerely believe, accepted the poor sinner's repentance. Her contrite spirit is at peace, among the forgiven ones in the world beyond the grave.

In consideration of her wish that you should see her in death, the coffin will be kept open until the last moment. The medical man in attendance has kindly given me a copy of his certificate, which I inclose. You will see that the remains are identified by the description of a small silver plate on the right parietal bone of the skull.

I need hardly add that all the information I can give you is willingly at your service.

She mentions, poor soul, something which she had to ask of you. I prefer the request which, in her exhausted state, she was unable to address to you in her own words.

While the performances of the circus were taking place in the next county to ours, a wandering lad, evidently of deficient intelligence, was discovered, trying to creep under the tent to see what was going on. He could give no intelligible account of himself. The late Mrs. Winterfield (who was born and brought up, as I understand, in France) discovered that the boy was French, and felt interested in the unfortunate creature, from former happy association with kind friends of his nation. She took care of him from that time to the day of her death—and he appeared to be gratefully attached to her.

I say "appeared," because an inveterate reserve marks one of the peculiarities of the mental affliction from which he suffers. Even his benefactress never could persuade him to take her into his confidence. In other respects, her influence (so far as I can learn) had been successfully exerted in restraining certain mischievous propensities in him, which occasionally showed themselves. The effect of her death has been to intensify that reserve to which I have already alluded. He is sullen and irritable—and the good landlady at the lodgings does not disguise that she shrinks from taking care of him, even for a few days. Until I hear from you, he will remain under the charge of my housekeeper at the rectory.

You have, no doubt, anticipated the request which the poor sufferer wished to address to you but a few hours before her death. She hoped that you might be willing to place this friendless and helpless creature under competent protection. Failing your assistance, I shall have no alternative, however I may regret it, but to send him to the workhouse of this town, on his way, probably, to the public asylum.

Believe me, sir, your faithful servant,

CHARLES FENNICK.

P.S.—I fear my letter and its inclosures may be delayed in reaching you.

Yesterday evening, I had returned to my house, before it occurred to me that Mrs. Winterfield had not mentioned your address. My only excuse for this forgetfulness is, that I was very much distressed while I was writing by her bedside. I at once went back to the lodgings, but she had fallen asleep, and I dared not disturb her. This morning, when I returned to the house, she was dead. There is an allusion to Devonshire in her letter, which suggests that your residence may be in that county; and I think she once spoke of you as a person of rank and fortune. Having failed to find your name in a London Directory, I am now about to search our free library here for a county history of Devon, on the chance that it may assist me. Let me add, for your own satisfaction, that no eyes but mine will see these papers. For security's sake, I shall seal them at once, and write your name on the envelope.

Added by Father Benwell.

How the boy contrived to possess himself of the sealed packet we shall probably never discover. Anyhow, we know that he must have escaped from the rectory, with the papers in his possession, and that he did certainly get back to his mother and sister in London.

With such complete information as I now have at my disposal, the prospect is as clear again as we can desire. The separation of Romayne from his wife, and the alteration of his will in favor of the Church, seem to be now merely questions of time.



BOOK THE FOURTH.



CHAPTER I.

THE BREACH IS WIDENED.

A FORTNIGHT after Father Benwell's discovery, Stella followed her husband one morning into his study. "Have you heard from Mr. Penrose?" she inquired.

"Yes. He will be here to-morrow."

"To make a long visit?"

"I hope so. The longer the better."

She looked at him with a mingled expression of surprise and reproach. "Why do you say that?" she asked. "Why do you want him so much—when you have got Me?"

Thus far, he had been sitting at his desk, resting his head on his hand, with his downcast eyes fixed on an open book. When she put her last question to him he suddenly looked up. Through the large window at his side the morning light fell on his face. The haggard look of suffering, which Stella remembered on the day when they met on the deck of the steamboat, was again visible—not softened and chastened now by the touching resignation of the bygone time, but intensified by the dogged and despairing endurance of a man weary of himself and his life. Her heart ached for him. She said, softly: "I don't mean to reproach you."

"Are you jealous of Penrose?" he asked, with a bitter smile.

She desperately told him the truth. "I am afraid of Penrose," she answered.

He eyed her with a strange expression of suspicious surprise. "Why are you afraid of Penrose?"

It was no time to run the risk of irritating him. The torment of the Voice had returned in the past night. The old gnawing remorse of the fatal day of the duel had betrayed itself in the wild words that had escaped him, when he sank into a broken slumber as the morning dawned. Feeling the truest pity for him, she was still resolute to assert herself against the coming interference of Penrose. She tried her ground by a dangerous means—the means of an indirect reply.

"I think you might have told me," she said, "that Mr. Penrose was a Catholic priest."

He looked down again at his book. "How did you know Penrose was a Catholic priest?"

"I had only to look at the direction on your letters to him."

"Well, and what is there to frighten you in his being a priest? You told me at the Loring's ball that you took an interest in Penrose because I liked him."

"I didn't know then, Lewis, that he had concealed his profession from us. I can't help distrusting a man who does that."

He laughed—not very kindly. "You might as well say you distrust a man who conceals that he is an author, by writing an anonymous book. What Penrose did, he did under orders from his superior—and, moreover, he frankly owned to me that he was a priest. If you blame anybody, you had better blame me for respecting his confidence."

She drew back from him, hurt by the tone in which he spoke to her. "I remember the time, Lewis," she said, "when you would have been more indulgent toward my errors—even if I am wrong."

That simple appeal touched his better nature. "I don't mean to be hard on you, Stella," he answered. "It is a little irritating to hear you say that you distrust the most devoted and most affectionate friend that man ever had. Why can't I love my wife, and love my friend, too? You don't know, when I am trying to get on with my book, how I miss the help and sympathy of Penrose. The very sound of his voice used to encourage me. Come, Stella, give me a kiss—and let us, as the children say, make it up!"

He rose from his writing-table. She met him more than half way, and pressed all her love—and perhaps a little of her fear—on his lips. He returned the kiss as warmly as it was given; and then, unhappily for both of them, he went back to the subject.

"My own love," he said, "try to like my friend for my sake; and be tolerant of other forms of Christianity besides the form which happens to be yours."

Her smiling lips closed; she turned from him. With the sensitive selfishness of a woman's love, she looked on Penrose as a robber who had stolen the sympathies which should have been wholly hers. As she moved away, her quick observation noticed the open book on the desk, with notes and lines in pencil on the margin of the page. What had Romayne been reading which interested him in that way? If he had remained silent, she would have addressed the inquiry to him openly. But he was hurt on his side by the sudden manner of her withdrawal from him. He spoke—and his tone was colder than ever.

"I won't attempt to combat your prejudices," he said. "But one thing I must seriously ask of you. When my friend Penrose comes here to-morrow, don't treat him as you treated Mr. Winterfield."

There was a momentary paleness in her face which looked like fear, but it passed away again. She confronted him firmly with steady eyes.

"Why do you refer again to that?" she asked. "Is—" (she hesitated and recovered herself)—"Is Mr. Winterfield another devoted friend of yours?"

He walked to the door, as if he could hardly trust his temper if he answered her—stopped—and, thinking better of it, turned toward her again.

"We won't quarrel, Stella," he rejoined; "I will only say I am sorry you don't appreciate my forbearance. Your reception of Mr. Winterfield has lost me the friendship of a man whom I sincerely liked, and who might have assisted my literary labors. You were ill at the time, and anxious about Mrs. Eyrecourt. I respected your devotion to your mother. I remembered your telling me, when you first went away to nurse her, that your conscience accused you of having sometimes thoughtlessly neglected your mother in her days of health and good spirits, and I admired the motive of atonement which took you to her bedside. For those reasons I shrank from saying a word that might wound you. But, because I was silent, it is not the less true that you surprised and disappointed me. Don't do it again! Whatever you may privately think of Catholic priests, I once more seriously request you not to let Penrose see it."

He left the room.

She stood, looking after him as he closed the door, like a woman thunderstruck. Never yet had he looked at her as he looked when he spoke his last warning words. With a heavy sigh she roused herself. The vague dread with which his tone rather than his words had inspired her, strangely associated itself with the momentary curiosity which she had felt on noticing the annotated book that lay on his desk.

She snatched up the volume and looked at the open page. It contained the closing paragraphs of an eloquent attack on Protestantism, from the Roman Catholic point of view. With trembling hands she turned back to the title-page. It presented this written inscription: "To Lewis Romayne from his attached friend and servant, Arthur Penrose."

"God help me!" she said to herself; "the priest has got between us already!"



CHAPTER II.

A CHRISTIAN JESUIT.

ON the next day Penrose arrived on his visit to Romayne.

The affectionate meeting between the two men tested Stella's self-control as it had never been tried yet. She submitted to the ordeal with the courage of a woman whose happiness depended on her outward graciousness of manner toward her husband's friend. Her reception of Penrose, viewed as an act of refined courtesy, was beyond reproach. When she found her opportunity of leaving the room, Romayne gratefully opened the door for her. "Thank you!" he whispered, with a look which was intended to reward her.

She only bowed to him, and took refuge in her own room.

Even in trifles, a woman's nature is degraded by the falsities of language and manner which the artificial condition of modern society exacts from her. When she yields herself to more serious deceptions, intended to protect her dearest domestic interests, the mischief is increased in proportion. Deceit, which is the natural weapon of defense used by the weak creature against the strong, then ceases to be confined within the limits assigned by the sense of self-respect and by the restraints of education. A woman in this position will descend, self-blinded, to acts of meanness which would be revolting to her if they were related of another person.

Stella had already begun the process of self-degradation by writing secretly to Winterfield. It was only to warn him of the danger of trusting Father Benwell—but it was a letter, claiming him as her accomplice in an act of deception. That morning she had received Penrose with the outward cordialities of welcome which are offered to an old and dear friend. And now, in the safe solitude of her room, she had fallen to a lower depth still. She was deliberately considering the safest means of acquainting herself with the confidential conversation which Romayne and Penrose would certainly hold when she left them together. "He will try to set my husband against me; and I have a right to know what means he uses, in my own defense." With that thought she reconciled herself to an action which she would have despised if she had heard of it as the action of another woman.

It was a beautiful autumn day, brightened by clear sunshine, enlivened by crisp air. Stella put on her hat and went out for a stroll in the grounds.

While she was within view from the windows of the servants' offices she walked away from the house. Turning the corner of a shrubbery, she entered a winding path, on the other side, which led back to the lawn under Romayne's study window. Garden chairs were placed here and there. She took one of them, and seated herself—after a last moment of honorable hesitation—where she could hear the men's voices through the open window above her.

Penrose was speaking at the time.

"Yes. Father Benwell has granted me a holiday," he said; "but I don't come here to be an idle man. You must allow me to employ my term of leave in the pleasantest of all ways. I mean to be your secretary again."

Romayne sighed. "Ah, if you knew how I have missed you!"

(Stella waited, in breathless expectation, for what Penrose would say to this. Would he speak of her? No. There was a natural tact and delicacy in him which waited for the husband to introduce the subject.)

Penrose only said, "How is the great work getting on?"

The answer was sternly spoken in one word—"Badly!"

"I am surprised to hear that, Romayne."

"Why? Were you as innocently hopeful as I was? Did you expect my experience of married life to help me in writing my book?"

Penrose replied after a pause, speaking a little sadly. "I expected your married life to encourage you in all your highest aspirations," he said.

(Stella turned pale with suppressed anger. He had spoken with perfect sincerity. The unhappy woman believed that he lied, for the express purpose of rousing irritation against her, in her husband's irritable mind. She listened anxiously for Romayne's answer.)

He made no answer. Penrose changed the subject. "You are not looking very well," he gently resumed. "I am afraid your health has interfered with your work. Have you had any return—?"

It was still one of the characteristics of Romayne's nervous irritability that he disliked to hear the terrible delusion of the Voice referred to in words. "Yes," he interposed bitterly, "I have heard it again and again. My right hand is as red as ever, Penrose, with the blood of a fellow-creature. Another destruction of my illusions when I married!"

"Romayne! I don't like to hear you speak of your marriage in that way."

"Oh, very well. Let us go back to my book. Perhaps I shall get on better with it now you are here to help me. My ambition to make a name in the world has never taken so strong a hold on me (I don't know why, unless other disappointments have had something to do with it) as at this time, when I find I can't give my mind to my work. We will make a last effort together, my friend! If it fails, we will put my manuscripts into the fire, and I will try some other career. Politics are open to me. Through politics, I might make my mark in diplomacy. There is something in directing the destinies of nations wonderfully attractive to me in my present state of feeling. I hate the idea of being indebted for my position in the world, like the veriest fool living, to the accidents of birth and fortune. Are you content with the obscure life that you lead? Did you not envy that priest (he is no older than I am) who was sent the other day as the Pope's ambassador to Portugal?"

Penrose spoke out at last without hesitation. "You are in a thoroughly unwholesome state of mind," he said.

Romayne laughed recklessly. "When was I ever in a healthy state of mind?" he asked.

Penrose passed the interruption over without notice. "If I am to do you any good," he resumed, "I must know what is really the matter with you. The very last question that I ought to put, and that I wish to put, is the question which you force me to ask."

"What is it?"

"When you speak of your married life," said Penrose, "your tone is the tone of a disappointed man. Have you any serious reason to complain of Mrs. Romayne?"

(Stella rose to her feet, in her eagerness to hear what her husband's answer would be.)

"Serious reason?" Romayne repeated. "How can such an idea have entered your head? I only complain of irritating trifles now and then. Even the best of women is not perfect. It's hard to expect it from any of them."

(The interpretation of this reply depended entirely on the tone in which it was spoken. What was the animating spirit in this case? Irony or Indulgence? Stella was ignorant of the indirect methods of irritation, by means of which Father Benwell had encouraged Romayne's doubts of his wife's motive for the reception of Winterfield. Her husband's tone, expressing this state of mind, was new to her. She sat down again, divided between hope and fear, waiting to hear more. The next words, spoken by Penrose, astounded her. The priest, the Jesuit, the wily spiritual intruder between man and wife, actually took the wife's side!)

"Romayne," he proceeded quietly, "I want you to be happy."

"How am I to be happy?"

"I will try and tell you. I believe your wife to be a good woman. I believe she loves you. There is something in her face that speaks for her—even to an inexperienced person like myself. Don't be impatient with her! Put away from you that besetting temptation to speak in irony—it is so easy to take that tone, and sometimes so cruel. I am only a looker-on, I know. Domestic happiness can never be the happiness of my life. But I have observed my fellow-creatures of all degrees—and this, I tell you, is the result. The largest number of happy men are the husbands and fathers. Yes; I admit that they have terrible anxieties—but they are fortified by unfailing compensations and encouragements. Only the other day I met with a man who had suffered the loss of fortune and, worse still, the loss of health. He endured those afflictions so calmly that he surprised me. 'What is the secret of your philosophy?' I asked. He answered, 'I can bear anything while I have my wife and my children.' Think of that, and judge for yourself how much happiness you may have left yet ungathered in your married life."

(Those words touched Stella's higher nature, as the dew touches the thirsty ground. Surely they were nobly spoken! How would her husband receive them?)

"I must think with your mind, Penrose, before I can do what you ask of me. Is there any method of transformation by which I can change natures with you?" That was all he said—and he said it despondingly.

Penrose understood, and felt for him.

"If there is anything in my nature, worthy to be set as an example to you," he replied, "you know to what blessed influence I owe self-discipline and serenity of mind. Remember what I said when I left you in London, to go back to my friendless life. I told you that I found, in the Faith I held, the one sufficient consolation which helped me to bear my lot. And—if there came a time of sorrow in the future—I entreated you to remember what I had said. Have you remembered it?"

"Look at the book here on my desk—look at the other books, within easy reach, on that table—are you satisfied?"

"More than satisfied. Tell me—do you feel nearer to an understanding of the Faith to which I have tried to convert you?"

There was a pause. "Say that I do feel nearer," Romayne resumed—"say that some of my objections are removed—are you really as eager as ever to make a Catholic of me, now that I am a married man?"

"I am even more eager," Penrose answered. "I have always believed that your one sure way to happiness lay through your conversion. Now, when I know, from what I have seen and heard in this room, that you are not reconciled, as you should be, to your new life, I am doubly confined in my belief. As God is my witness, I speak sincerely. Hesitate no longer! Be converted, and be happy."

"Have you not forgotten something, Penrose?"

"What have I forgotten?"

"A serious consideration, perhaps. I have a Protestant wife."

"I have borne that in mind, Romayne, throughout our conversation."

"And you still say—what you have just said?"

"With my whole heart, I say it! Be converted, and be happy. Be happy, and you will be a good husband. I speak in your wife 's interest as well as in yours. People who are happy in each other's society, will yield a little on either side, even on questions of religious belief. And perhaps there may follow a more profitable result still. So far as I have observed, a good husband's example is gladly followed by his wife. Don't think that I am trying to persuade you against your will! I am only telling you, in my own justification, from what motives of love for yourself, and of true interest in your welfare, I speak. You implied just now that you had still some objections left. If I can remove them—well and good. If I fail—if you cannot act on purely conscientious conviction—I not only advise, I entreat you, to remain as you are. I shall be the first to acknowledge that you have done right."

(This moderation of tone would appeal irresistibly, as Stella well knew, to her husband's ready appreciation of those good qualities in others which he did not himself possess. Once more her suspicion wronged Penrose. Had he his own interested motives for pleading her cause? At the bare thought of it, she left her chair and, standing under the window, boldly interrupted the conversation by calling to Romayne.)

"Lewis!" she cried, "why do you stay indoors on this beautiful day? I am sure Mr. Penrose would like a walk in the grounds."

Penrose appeared alone at the window. "You are quite right, Mrs. Romayne," he said; "we will join you directly."

In a few minutes he turned the corner of the house, and met Stella on the lawn. Romayne was not with him. "Is my husband not coming with us?" she asked. "He will follow us," Penrose answered. "I believe he has some letters to write."

Stella looked at him, suspecting some underhand exercise of influence on her husband.

If she had been able to estimate the noble qualities in the nature of Penrose, she might have done him the justice to arrive at a truer conclusion. It was he who had asked leave (when Stella had interrupted them) to take the opportunity of speaking alone with Mrs. Romayne. He had said to his friend, "If I am wrong in my anticipation of the effect of your change of religion on your wife, let me find it out from herself. My one object is to act justly toward you and toward her. I should never forgive myself if I made mischief between you, no matter how innocent of any evil intention I might be." Romayne had understood him. It was Stella's misfortune ignorantly to misinterpret everything that Penrose said or did, for the all-sufficient reason that he was a Catholic priest. She had drawn the conclusion that her husband had deliberately left her alone with Penrose, to be persuaded or deluded into giving her sanction to aid the influence of the priest. "They shall find they are mistaken," she thought to herself.

"Have I interrupted an interesting conversation?" she inquired abruptly. "When I asked you to come out, were you talking to my husband about his historical work?"

"No, Mrs. Romayne; we were not speaking at that time of the book."

"May I ask an odd question, Mr. Penrose?"

"Certainly!"

"Are you a very zealous Catholic?"

"Pardon me. I am a priest. Surely my profession speaks for me?"

"I hope you are not trying to convert my husband?"

Penrose stopped and looked at her attentively.

"Are you strongly opposed to your husband's conversion?" he asked.

"As strongly," she answered, "as a woman can be."

"By religious conviction, Mrs. Romayne?"

"No. By experience."

Penrose started. "Is it indiscreet," he said gently, "to inquire what your experience may have been?"

"I will tell you what my experience has been," Stella replied. "I am ignorant of theological subtleties, and questions of doctrine are quite beyond me. But this I do know. A well-meaning and zealous Catholic shortened my father's life, and separated me from an only sister whom I dearly loved. I see I shock you—and I daresay you think I am exaggerating?"

"I hear what you say, Mrs. Romayne, with very great pain—I don't presume to form any opinion thus far."

"My sad story can be told in a few words," Stella proceeded. "When my elder sister was still a young girl, an aunt of ours (my mother's sister) came to stay with us. She had married abroad, and she was, as I have said, a zealous Catholic. Unknown to the rest of us, she held conversations on religion with my sister—worked on the enthusiasm which was part of the girl's nature—and accomplished her conversion. Other influences, of which I know nothing, were afterward brought to bear on my sister. She declared her intention of entering a convent. As she was under age, my father had only to interpose his authority to prevent this. She was his favorite child. He had no heart to restrain her by force—he could only try all that the kindest and best of fathers could do to persuade her to remain at home. Even after the years that have passed, I cannot trust myself to speak of it composedly. She persisted; she was as hard as stone. My aunt, when she was entreated to interfere, called her heartless obstinacy 'a vocation.' My poor father's loving resistance was worn out; he slowly drew nearer and nearer to death, from the day when she left us. Let me do her justice, if I can. She has not only never regretted entering the convent—she is so happily absorbed in her religious duties that she has not the slightest wish to see her mother or me. My mother's patience was soon worn out. The last time I went to the convent, I went by myself. I shall never go there again. She could not conceal her sense of relief when I took my leave of her. I need say no more. Arguments are thrown away on me, Mr. Penrose, after what I have seen and felt. I have no right to expect that the consideration of my happiness will influence you—but I may perhaps ask you, as a gentleman, to tell me the truth. Do you come here with the purpose of converting my husband?"

Penrose owned the truth, without an instant's hesitation.

"I cannot take your view of your sister's pious devotion of herself to a religious life," he said. "But I can, and will, answer you truly. From the time when I first knew him, my dearest object has been to convert your husband to the Catholic Faith."

Stella drew back from him, as if he had stung her, and clasped her hands in silent despair.

"But I am bound as a Christian," he went on, "to do to others as I would they should do to me."

She turned on him suddenly, her beautiful face radiant with hope, her hand trembling as it caught him by the arm.

"Speak plainly!" she cried.

He obeyed her to the letter.

"The happiness of my friend's wife, Mrs. Romayne, is sacred to me for his sake. Be the good angel of your husband's life. I abandon the purpose of converting him."

He lifted her hand from his arm and raised it respectfully to his lips. Then, when he had bound himself by a promise that was sacred to him, the terrible influence of the priesthood shook even that brave and lofty soul. He said to himself, as he left her, "God forgive me if I have done wrong!"



CHAPTER III.

WINTERFIELD RETURNS.

TWICE Father Benwell called at Derwent's Hotel, and twice he was informed that no news had been received there of Mr. Winterfield. At the third attempt, his constancy was rewarded. Mr. Winterfield had written, and was expected to arrive at the hotel by five o'clock.

It was then half-past four. Father Benwell decided to await the return of his friend.

He was as anxious to deliver the papers which the proprietor of the asylum had confided to him, as if he had never broken a seal or used a counterfeit to hide the betrayal of a trust. The re-sealed packet was safe in the pocket of his long black frockcoat. His own future proceedings depended, in some degree, on the course which Winterfield might take, when he had read the confession of the unhappy woman who had once been his wife.

Would he show the letter to Stella, at a private interview, as an unanswerable proof that she had cruelly wronged him? And would it in this case be desirable—if the thing could be done—so to handle circumstances as that Romayne might be present, unseen, and might discover the truth for himself? In the other event—that is to say, if Winterfield abstained from communicating the confession to Stella—the responsibility of making the necessary disclosure must remain with the priest.

Father Benwell walked softly up and down the room, looking about him with quietly-observant eye. A side table in a corner was covered with letters, waiting Winterfield's return. Always ready for information of any sort, he even looked at the addresses on the letters.

The handwritings presented the customary variety of character. All but three of the envelopes showed the London district postmarks. Two of the other letters (addressed to Winterfield at his club) bore foreign postmarks; and one, as the altered direction showed, had been forward from Beaupark House to the hotel.