The duke was dead—long live the duke!

All was confusion at Belfayre, and it was not only Trafford who was stunned by the sudden shock. All men must die, and the duke was an old man; but he had seemed so well and strong that those who had seen and talked with him on the night of the party were startled by the news of his death, which was soon flashing over the world. The telegraph-girl at Belfayre was overwhelmed by the number of messages going and coming.

Under ordinary circumstances, Lady Ada must have left Belfayre at once; but Lilias was, for the time, at any rate, completely prostrated by the suddenness of the blow. Like Esmeralda, she had loved the old man dearly, and Lady Ada could do no other than offer to remain with her.

Trafford moved about among the frightened and excited household like a man dazed. He almost forgot that his wife had left him—had flown with his closest and dearest friend—until Lilias came to him, with white face and quivering lips, to tell him that neither she nor Barker could find Esmeralda.

“Esmeralda!” he repeated, vaguely. Then a shudder ran through him; but he controlled his voice, and answered, almost carelessly—too carelessly—if Lilias had been in a condition to notice: “She has gone off to London,” he said in a dry voice—“to—to Lady Wyndover’s. She went up unexpectedly, and—and left word with me to tell you.”

Lilias repeated:

“To London?”

“Yes,” he said, almost impatiently. “Why should she not? She wanted to see Lady Wyndover about—about something, I forget what. Why do you stare at me, Lilias?” Then, as he saw the tears start afresh from her eyes, he went on, remorsefully: “Forgive me; I scarcely know what I am saying. It is so sudden—so sudden! Yes, I am glad that she has gone.” The words stuck in his throat, but he managed to get them out. He must lie for the present, at any rate. Soon the hideous fact must be known, and all the lying in the world would be of no use; but he would screen her, hide the shameful thing as long as he could. “It is a good thing; she would have been terribly frightened and—and cut up. I will go to London directly—as soon as I can—and break the news to her.”

“She will hear it before you can get there,” said Lilias. “It—it will be in the evening papers.”

“Yes,” he said, passing his hand over his brow with a sigh.

How would Esmeralda receive it? It would seem like a stroke from Heaven to punish her.

He went upstairs and entered her room, and absently walked to the dressing-table. There still lay upon it the envelope addressed to him; for Barker had not noticed it, in the confusion of her discovery of Esmeralda’s absence, and the greater confusion of the duke’s death. He took it up, and with shaking hands opened it. The ring fell to the floor, and for a moment or two he seemed incapable of searching for it. When he had found it, he held it in the palm of his hand and gazed at it dully, as if it were something curious and unique; then its meaning bore down upon him, and with a groan he left the room, the ring clinched in his hand.

Telegrams of condolence commenced to pour in at once; friends and neighbors drove up to express their sympathy and to offer assistance, and Trafford opened the telegrams and saw the visitors. They went away impressed by the expression on his face and in his voice.

“The poor fellow seems quite knocked over!” remarked Lord Chesterleigh. “I never saw a man so stunned.”

“There was a very strong affection between him and his father,” said the man to whom he spoke.

“Yes, I know, very strong; but—well, Trafford looks as if he himself were smitten with death. It will be a dreadful blow to the marchioness and Lady Lilias. The marchioness is the duchess now. It sounds strange. We have not had a Duchess of Belfayre among us for so long.”

Nearly all the visitors talked of Esmeralda as they drove away from the hushed house, and some glanced up at the shrouded windows of her apartments, little guessing that she had flown as the angel of death had entered.

Before the day was over something like order was restored, and the vast place settled down into that solemn hush which follows a death. The servants stole about on tiptoe in the darkened house; the tread, that peculiar tread—who does not know and shudder at it?—of the undertaker’s men seemed to pervade the whole place. Lilias, shut up in her room with Lady Ada, heard it, and wept afresh.

“Yes, I am glad—glad that Esmeralda was not here,” she said. “She loved him so; and now she will have heard of it before she comes back, and—and the first bitterness and sorrow will have passed. She must hear of it to-day, of course; and she will be back to-morrow. I dread her coming, and yet I long for her.”

“She will come to-morrow—yes,” said Ada, faintly, as she sat beside the bed on which Lilias lay.

Would Esmeralda stop in her flight and—and come back? Death unites as well as divides. Under the shock of this sudden bereavement her heart might turn to Trafford, and he might melt toward her. It was not of the old man who lay in his death-sleep that Lady Ada was thinking as she sat in the darkened room. Her own fate hung in the balance.

Trafford moved about the house with the restlessness of a lost spirit, yet issuing the necessary orders and answering the inevitable questions with a grim calm. He could not leave Belfayre that day; but the next morning, when Lilias came down and asked, with tremulous eagerness, “Have you heard from Esmeralda?” he answered:

“No; she can not have heard of it. I will go up to town.”

“And bring her back with you? Yes, that will be best,” she said.

“Yes, that will be best,” he repeated, dully, and looking beyond her.

She put her hand on his arm with that touch which is so eloquent of sympathy and consolation.

“You will bear up—for her sake, Trafford?” she said in a low voice. “You look so ill—so worn. Dear, it had to come some day; and—and he must have died so happily! Tell Esmeralda that; it will comfort her.”

“I will tell her,” he said, hoarsely.

He could scarcely restrain himself from crying aloud as he played his part.

All the way up to town he had to keep repeating to himself, “Esmeralda has gone—gone forever,” for his father’s sudden death had, for a time, obscured his other and greater sorrow.

As the cab drove to the house in Grosvenor Square, he looked up and saw that the blinds were down; they had heard the news. The footman who opened the door to him met him with a solemn face.

“Her ladyship is in, your grace,” he said.

Trafford started at the too ready “your grace,” and followed the man up to the boudoir in which he had so often sat with Esmeralda.

Lady Wyndover rose from the couch and came to meet him with both hands extended. She looked pale and shocked, and he saw that she had been crying.

“Oh, Trafford!” she said, with a catch in her voice. “How—how ill you look! Why have you come? Is—is Esmeralda ill? Do you want me? She has sent for me?”

He stood looking at her, yet scarcely seeing her. He did not know how to break the other—and far worse—news to her.

“Sit down,” he said, almost curtly. “Is—is Esmeralda not here?”

He asked the question with that futile hoping against hope which we are all so apt to indulge in.

Lady Wyndover stared at him.

“Esmeralda here!” she said. “No! How—how could she be here? She is at Belfayre; you left her there, did you not?”

“No!” he said in a low voice. “She is not there. I thought she might be here with you.”

He sighed at the destruction of his unreasonable hope.

“She is not here. You thought— Do you mean to say that you don’t know where she is?”

He shook his head.

“That you haven’t heard from her? But I don’t understand! Why do you not answer, Trafford? You—you frighten me!”

“Do not be frightened!” he said, though he knew the injunction was useless; she would be overwhelmed with terror, horror, presently. “She—she left Belfayre the night before last, or—or early yesterday morning.”

“Left Belfayre? Well, where has she gone?”

“I do not know.”

She uttered a cry—a low, inarticulate cry.

“Trafford, something has happened! Where—where is Esmeralda?” she exclaimed; and there was a note of demand in her voice as if he were responsible for Esmeralda, as if he were answerable for her absence.

“I do not know,” he said again, huskily. “She left the house without my knowledge—without leaving a message for me”—he remembered the ring: it seemed to burn his flesh as it lay in his waistcoat pocket—“no letter, no word.”

Lady Wyndover rose, then sunk down again.

“My God, you have quarreled!”

“Yes, we have quarreled.”

“Then—then it was your fault!” she said; and her color glowed crimson through the powder on her face. “It must have been your fault. Oh, Trafford, and so soon!” she wailed.

“It was my fault,” he said. “In the beginning—yes; it was my fault—and yours.”

“Mine!”

He inclined his head with a terrible calmness.

“Yes; she discovered that I married her for her money.”

Lady Wyndover trembled.

“When?” she demanded in a whisper.

“The day of the wedding,” he said. He turned his head away from her gaze. “She—charged me with it on our wedding-night, and—and separated herself from me.”

Lady Wyndover covered her face with her hands, and groaned.

“And—and you? What—what did you say? Surely you, a man—could influence her, could—”

He shook his head dully.

“No. You know her as well as I do. All I could say was of no avail. The poison had entered her mind, her heart: it was hardened against me!”

“And she loved you so—before!”

His face flushed, then went white.

“You are mistaken,” he said, grimly. “She never loved me.”

“Never? You are mad!”

“No! I have been, but I am sane now. She never loved me. She loved the man she has gone off with.”

Lady Wyndover sprung to her feet.

“Oh, you are mad!” she cried, with a kind of helpless scorn. “Esmeralda loved the ground on which you trod! I know it—I know it! Do you hear?”

“I hear,” he said, bitterly. “But you are wrong. She deceived you—all—as she deceived me. She loved Norman Druce—she left Belfayre with him.”

“It is a lie!” sprung from Lady Wyndover’s lips; and she went white with passionate indignation. “It is a foolish lie! She loved you, and only you, I tell you! I have heard her— Oh, what is the use! Do you think a woman does not know whom another woman loves? The girl was like my own—had no secrets from me.”

“Save this one,” he said. “Be calm, and listen to me; you will need all your calmness. Esmeralda and—and Norman”—his teeth clinched after he had spoken the name—“had met at the place she came from—Three Star. He had proposed to her there, and—why, I know not—she had refused him; but she must have loved him, for she has gone away with him. They have been together at Belfayre. Oh, do you not see how the devilish thing has been brought about? Separated from me—a wife in name only—the presence of the man who had loved her in the past, still loved her. Yes, it must be plain enough even to you!”

Lady Wyndover was walking up and down the room like a caged tiger.

“I do not, I will not believe it!” she panted. “She is incapable of it—incapable!”

He sighed almost patiently.

“Then—where is she?” he demanded, grimly.

Lady Wyndover stopped as if she had been shot, and stared at him aghast.

“I—I—do not know!”

“Wherever she is, she must have heard of my father’s death. If she had not gone off with Norman she would have written, telegraphed—come back as fast as horses, trains, could bring her.”

Lady Wyndover sunk on the couch and clasped her head.

“I am bewildered, dazed!” she wailed. “Give me time to think! It is so—so sudden!”

“I have had time,” he said, bitterly, “and I can come to no other conclusion. And you have not heard all. I charged her with—her treachery; I had seen them together in the conservatory at Belfayre, had”—his voice grew hoarse—“seen him kiss her. I charged her with it, and—oh, my God! she confessed it, defied me! The next morning she was gone! They were gone! He went without a word!”

He dropped his head in his hands, and hid his face.

Lady Wyndover sat and gazed beyond him, breathing hard.

“I hear all you say,” she said, at last, huskily, “and still I repeat: it is not true. Esmeralda is incapable of it—and Norman! Yes, he, too, is incapable of it!”

He groaned in his anguish.

“He is only a man—and he loved her—loved her before I saw her, and she—have you forgotten already how beautiful she is? He is only a man, not an angel from heaven to withstand a temptation which only an angel could resist. Why”—he laughed bitterly—“had I been in his place I should have done the same.”

Lady Wyndover broke into a storm of tears.

“If I were only dead!”

“Wish her dead!” he said, grimly. “She has chosen a life worse than death!”

“I don’t believe it!” she reiterated, firmly. “No, if—if she were to confess it to me here at my knees, I could not believe it. I should think her mad, as I think you. She may have gone; that I can understand, but she has not betrayed you. Esmeralda! She is the soul of truth and honor.”

“Then where is she?” he demanded again; but Lady Wyndover was not crushed by the terrible question.

“I do not know. It is your place to find out. Have you searched for her?”

He shook his head wearily.

“No. Wait. You forget—my father—”

“A man should leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife.”

He made a movement of his hand.

“Yes, while she remains with him. God knows that she was all the world to me.”

“Then find her!”

He repeated the movement again.

“No, I shall find him. She will be with him,” he said, almost inaudibly.

“Go at once!” she cried. “Oh, if I only knew where to go—what to do. And all this time people are asking for her—wondering where she is.” She almost screamed as she realized the hideous wreck of Esmeralda’s life.

“Be calm!” he said. “I—I have thought of that. I came to ask you to help me. We must keep the fact of her flight secret—for a time, as long as we can. I have told them—Lilias—that she is with you—”

“Yes—yes,” she panted, eagerly. “I see. But—but the servants here, they know that she is not?”

“Go down to Deepdale,” he said, slowly, as if he were imparting something he had learned by heart. “Tell them that she went there thinking that you were there, that she is ill—the sudden shock of my father’s death. You understand?”

“Yes—yes,” she repeated, getting up and stretching out her hands nervously as if for her out-door things. “I understand. But—but how long can we keep it up?”

He shook his head.

“I know not. But it will give us time. It will be something to have hidden the truth until—until after the funeral.” His head drooped.

Lady Wyndover went over to him and laid her trembling hand upon his arm.

“Forgive me, Trafford. I have been—been hard with you. I had forgotten that he was dead. But I”—her voice broke—“I love her so! I’ve never had a child of my own, and Esmeralda—” Her sobs choked back the words.

“I, too, loved her,” he said, simply.

There was a pause, then he rose in a dazed kind of way.

“You will do as I ask? Go down to Deepdale at once. She may come to you— No, she will not leave him. Why should she? He loves her and she thinks I do not. Wait there till you hear from me, and—and send me word to come to you if you hear anything.”

He moved toward the door, looking so wan and aged that Lady Wyndover, even in the midst of her grief for Esmeralda, could have cried aloud for pity of him.

“Oh, believe in her still, Trafford!” she sobbed.

“If I only could!” he said, with a groan, and went out. He went to his rooms, and sat there brooding—playing the solitary game called, “Looking Back At the Past.” It is a poor game, and one seldom wins at it. He was so lost in his thoughts that he managed to lose the train, and had to remain in town; and so he gave Lady Ada another opportunity.