Those words, ‘I am Mrs. Jordan,’ were not unexpected by Margaret. There was no need for her visitor to speak them or to throw back her hood; she had known her from the first. Whatever evil news there was to tell, it was made ten times worse by the messenger that brought it. She felt like Antony’s wife in the presence of Cleopatra. ‘You have been his ruin,’ were the words that trembled on her lips. But there was something in the other’s tone that prevented their utterance. That it was a beautiful face was nothing; she detested and abhorred its beauty. That it was full of sympathy and compassion was nothing; she resented its compassion as an insult. But there was also sorrow in it, genuine and unmistakable sorrow. Whatever wrong this woman had done her—so Margaret reasoned—she had repented of; perhaps had come to confess, when it was too late, but still to confess. There were tears in her eyes; she was an actress it is true, but they were real tears.

‘Well, what is it you want, madam?’

‘Nothing. I am here on your account, not on my own.’

‘And Willie sent you?’

She uttered this with great bitterness, experiencing the same sort of satisfaction in the humiliation it cost her, as some persons in physical pain derive from the self-infliction of another pain.

‘He did not send me: he does not even know that I am here.’

‘But you come from him. You have been with him after he left the theatre?’

‘Yes, for hours; two long miserable hours.’

‘And you dare to tell me that?’

‘Yes. Oh, Margaret—for that is the only name I know you by—put away from you, I beseech you, all thoughts that wrong him. He has sins enough—Heaven help him—to answer for, but not such as you would impute to him. He is faithful to you and despairing.’

‘What do you mean? Why should he despair?’ The other’s words had somewhat disarmed her, the gentleness and pity in her companion’s looks had won upon her in spite of herself. The woman was certainly not there to exult over her. It was a bitter reflection that her lover had not come straight to her; that he had sought a go-between (and such a go-between!) to speak for him. But that sad word ‘despairing’ altered matters in other respects. What Willie in his modesty and self-denunciation doubtless feared, was not only that Mr. Erin would stick to the letter of his agreement respecting his consent to his son’s marriage (which, indeed, he had just announced his intention to do), but that she herself would assent to his change of views; that the idea of waiting, probably for years, until William Henry should have made sufficient means upon which to marry, would be abhorrent to her; that, in a word, her love for him did not comprehend hope and patience. It was possible indeed that his omission to come in person arose from delicacy of mind, and the disinclination to embarrass her by a personal appeal; and as for his choice of an intermediary he had perhaps but poured out his woes into the ears of the first person who had professed to sympathise with them, and who, it must be confessed, had shown him kindness. And yet how mistaken the dear lad had been in supposing for a moment that mere misfortune—the ill success of the play—could cut the bonds that bound her heart to his! It had had an effect indeed, but it was only to strengthen them, for when the object of a woman’s love is in adversity, he becomes the more dear to her in proportion to the difficulties by which he is surrounded. Since his love was as genuine as her own, he ought indeed to have known as much. And that he should despair of her! Well, indeed, might she ask with much amazement, ‘What do you mean? Why should he despair?’

But Mrs. Jordan’s pretty face only grew more grave and sad.

‘I wish to heaven, my dear girl,’ she said, ‘that I could use another word. If you knew the pain it costs me to come here and see you face to face, and tell you what I have to tell, you would pity me—if you shall presently have any pity to spare, save for your unhappy self and your still more wretched Willie.’ The earnestness and fervour of her tone, and its solemnity, which seemed to prepare the way for the revelation of some overwhelming misfortune, made Margaret’s blood run cold.

‘You said that he was not ill,’ she murmured hoarsely, ‘and yet he has not come home. He is not dead? Oh, tell me that my Willie is not dead?’

‘He is not dead, Margaret, but there are worse things that happen to those we love than death. Worse things than even when you thought the worst of your Willie and of me.’

‘Great heaven, how you terrify me! Tell me what has happened in one word.’

‘That is impossible, or, if it were possible, you would never, without proof, believe it. I must begin at the beginning. You know what happened to-night—the failure of the play; the peril only just averted, that threatened your uncle and yourself.’

Margaret shook her head, not so much in denial as in indifference. ‘What mattered anything that had threatened herself, even though the menace had been carried out?’

‘Is it possible that you are unaware of your escape to-night? How the rioters, led by an enemy of you and yours, were rushing to your box, when some young fellow threw himself between it and them; how he seized their leader by the throat, at risk of his own life, and threw him down the stairs, and how all the rest of them came tumbling after him?’

If the actress hoped to lead her companion’s mind into other channels, to interest her for one instant in any subject save that supreme one in which her whole soul was wrapped, her endeavour failed.

‘But Willie?’ murmured Margaret impatiently. ‘Why do you speak of anything save Willie?’

‘That will come soon enough. Too soon, dear girl. I must needs tell you it as it all happened. He was behind the scenes, you know, throughout the evening. At first, things seemed to be going pretty well in spite of the opposition; but he was never very hopeful, even then, as he afterwards told me. The greatness of the reward which would be his in case of the success of the play—that is, his claiming you for his own—oppressed him; it seemed too high a fortune even though he had felt himself to be deserving of it.’

‘He is deserving of it, and of better fortune,’ put in Margaret quietly.

Mrs. Jordan took no notice of the interruption. ‘He seemed depressed and downhearted from the first,’ she continued, ‘though Mrs. Powell and myself said all we could to encourage him. Presently, amid the tempest of disapprobation, he recognised a particular voice—the voice of an enemy; of the same person, I have no doubt, who urged on the mob to your box. From that moment he seemed to give up all hope. “That man is come to ruin me!“ he said; and he spoke the truth.’

‘It was Reginald Talbot,’ exclaimed Margaret suddenly. ‘Frank always warned Willie against him. The vile, treacherous wretch!’

‘Yes, it was Reginald Talbot—a base creature enough, no doubt; but honest people, Margaret, are not ruined by anything the base can say or shout. We must be base ourselves to enable them to ruin us.’

Margaret rose from her chair. ‘I do not understand you, Mrs. Jordan. I thought that you were speaking of my Willie.’

‘Listen, Margaret. Keep calm and listen; I would give half of what I have in the world to spare you, but it must be told.’

‘I will hear no evil of Willie.’

‘You shall hear, at least, nothing that has not fallen from his own lips. When he showed such fear of his enemy, I reproached him for his lack of courage, and through a gap in the stage curtain pointed you out to him as you sat in your box, exposed to all those shouts and jeers, and apparently unmoved by them. But the sight of you only seemed to depress him still more.’

‘“That is the last I shall see of my Margaret,” he said; “I have lost her for ever.” And again he spoke the truth.’

‘He did not,’ cried Margaret vehemently; ‘he only thought he spoke it. He imagined because the play had failed that I should give him back his troth. But what is the play to me? My heart is his; I can wait for him. We are still very young; what need is there for despair?’

‘That is what I thought, that is what I said,’ returned Mrs. Jordan pitifully, ‘because I was in the dark, as you are. I said, “It will matter nothing to Margaret, if she really loves you; you will still be the same to her.”

‘“No, I shall not,“ he answered; “I can never be the same to her. If not to-night, to-morrow, if not to-morrow, the next day, that villain yonder will unmask me; she will know me for what I am, and loathe me.”

‘I had to leave him then, to speak the epilogue, and when I returned, he looked like one who had utterly lost heart and hope. No one troubled himself about him. Mrs. Powell had gone away, and the others departed, cursing the play and all who had had any hand in its production. I dared not leave him to himself, and besought him to go home at once. “I have no home,“ he said; then I took him to my own house.’

‘That was good of you,’ murmured Margaret, pale as death.

Then Mrs. Jordan knew that the worst was over; that what she had to tell, however sad and terrible, would fall upon ears prepared to hear it. And yet even now she could not tell her right out, ‘Your Willie is a cheat and a liar.’

‘In the carriage the poor fellow sat like a dead man, huddled in one corner, without speech and motion; but once within doors, I insisted on his taking some wine, which revived him a little. “You cannot stop here,“ I said, speaking to him as severely as I could, for kindness only seemed to unnerve him; “I will send out and get you a bed at some inn. But if it will be any comfort to you to relieve your mind, I am ready to hear whatever you have to say.“ He made a movement towards his breast-pocket which filled me with apprehensions. “If you have a pistol there,“ I said, “give it to me at once. Whatever you may have done, however you may have wronged Margaret, you will surely not add self-slaughter to your other sins? You will not break her heart by killing yourself?”

‘“No, no,“ he murmured; “it is not that.”

‘I found it was impossible to get any connected narrative out of him, so I put a question or two.

‘“Who is this enemy of yours, and why should it be in his power to harm you?”

‘“Because he knows my secret—my shameful secret. His name is Reginald Talbot, and he was at one time my friend. We quarrelled about some poems of his, and from that moment he has done his best to ruin me. He tried to prove that I had forged one of the Shakespeare papers, and failed in it; he pretended to be satisfied at the time with the evidence in the matter, as the others were, but from that moment he dogged my footsteps. He is a sneaking, prying hound.

‘“One day, when I was at work in my chambers, forging manuscripts, I saw his face at my window; he had climbed up to it by a ladder, and perceived what I was about. There was no hope of concealment any longer, so I unlocked the door and let him in. I told him all—it is a long story, but it is written here (again he touched his breast-pocket), and besought him to have mercy upon me. His heart was like the nether millstone, as I knew it would be. He asked me with a sneer what I should do now, and whether I had any new treasure of Shakespeare’s with which to enrich the world. I told him of the ‘Vortigern,’ which I was then projecting, but which, of course, it was now in his power to put a stop to. Then he proposed a compromise. He was very vain of his verses, and he undertook, upon condition that he was allowed to write some portion of the play himself, to keep silence upon the matter. He had the same mad desire that I had, that the world should take his poetry to be from Shakespeare’s pen. I consented of course, for I had no choice. All his wrath against me seemed to have evaporated at once. He was intensely pleased; and from that time we worked together. Moreover, when the committee appointed to decide upon the genuineness of the Shakespeare manuscripts hesitated to accept them because there was no other witness to their discovery save myself, Talbot came forward, as we had agreed that he should do, and deposed that he had seen my patron from the Temple, and the collection from which the paper had been taken. His evidence carried the day and assured me of my position. On the other hand, Talbot wrote so feebly that I felt convinced not a line of his would survive criticism, and, unknown to him, I composed the whole play independently of his assistance.

‘“He had to leave London for Ireland, so I had no difficulty in deceiving him in this matter. We corresponded in cipher about it, and I led him to imagine that the ‘Vortigern,’ as accepted in Drury Lane, was the play that we had composed together. I thought if it were successful that I should be in a position to defy him, and that only those who were already my enemies would believe his story. He had told me that it was impossible for him to be in London the first night of its performance, and I flattered myself that I was quite safe. The instant I recognised his voice in the theatre, I felt that all was over with me. He would find out the absence of his own rhapsodies from the drama; and that I had deceived him, as indeed I had—whom have I not deceived? From that moment my fate was sealed.”

‘“Unhappy boy!“ cried I; “is it possible, then, that you acknowledge yourself to be a forger and a cheat?”

‘“I do,“ he answered; “here is the record of my transgression.”

‘He took from his breast-pocket this paper, his confession, which, it appears, he always carried about with him; an imprudence which would have been unintelligible in any one else, but to him who had trodden, as it were, every day on the crust of a volcano, it mattered little. I felt sure at once that this was written for your eye, Margaret, in case of discovery; thus, to the very last, some will say, the straightforward course was the one he was disinclined to take. But let us rather believe that to tell you of his own unworthiness to your face was an ordeal beyond his strength. In vain I represented to him the anxiety and apprehensions which his absence must be exciting at home.

‘“I have no home,“ was his reply. “But think of your father!“ “I have no father,“ was his miserable rejoinder. “But Margaret; have you no pity for Margaret?“ “I cannot see her. I dare not see her,“ was his pitiful cry. So I have come to you instead of him.’

Margaret answered nothing, She sat with the confession in her hand, without sign or word, looking straight before her.

‘I must go now,’ continued her companion tenderly. ‘If I can be of any use, if I can say anything for you; a word of forgiveness with your farewell—he is but seventeen, remember—well, another time, perhaps.’ She had reached the door when Margaret called her back with a pitiful cry.

‘Kiss me! kiss me!’

As their lips met, the touch of sympathy, like Moses’ wand, drew the tears from that face of marble, whereby, even though she left no hope and the bitter conviction of a wasted love behind her, the messenger of pity knew that she had not come altogether in vain.