"OUT ON BAIL."

Miss Brooke was electrified. Such a thing had never occurred to her as possible. After years of separation, of dispute, of ill-feeling on either side, here was Lady Alice appearing in her husband's house, and expressing a desire to remain in it. She came to Woburn Place on the evening after her interview with Caspar, and at once made known her wishes to Doctor Sophy.

It was a curious interview. Miss Brooke sat bolt upright on a sofa, with an air of repressed indignation which was exceedingly striking: Lady Alice, half enveloped in soft black furs, was leaning back in the lowest and most luxurious chair the room afforded, with rather more the air of the grande dame than she actually wished to convey. In reality her heart was very soft, and there was moisture in her eyes; but it was difficult for her to shake off an appearance of cold indifference to all the world when Miss Sophia Brooke, M. D., was in her society. She had never understood Doctor Sophy, and Miss Brooke had always detested her.

"Am I to understand, Lady Alice," said the spinster, in her stiffest voice, "that my brother wishes you to take up your abode in this house during his absence?"

"Yes, I think so," said Lady Alice, equably. "He has wished me to take up my abode here for some time past."

"Indeed?"

The note of incredulity in her voice angered Caspar's wife.

"I think you hardly understand," she said with some quiet dignity, "that I have been to see Mr. Brooke this afternoon. Strange circumstances demand new treatment, Miss Brooke. I consulted with my husband as to what we had better do, and he agreed with me that it would be better for Lesley if I came here—at any rate for the present."

"Better for Lesley!" Miss Brooke was evidently offended. "I do not think that you need put yourself to any inconvenience—even for Lesley's sake. I will take care of her."

"But I happen to be her mother," said Lady Alice, with a touch of amusement. It struck her as odd that Miss Brooke only amused her now, and did not make her angry at all. "And we have the world to think of, besides."

"I scarcely thought you troubled yourself very much about what the world said," remarked Aunt Sophy, severely. "It has said a good deal during the last ten or twelve years."

"At least it shall not say," responded Lady Alice, "that I believe my husband guilty of murder. I have come back to prevent that."

Miss Brooke looked at her doubtfully. She was not a person of very quick perceptions.

"You mean," she said at last, "that you have come back—because——"

"Because he was accused of murder," said Lady Alice, clearly, "and I choose to show the world that I do not believe it."

And Lesley, entering from the library, heard the words, and stood transfixed for a moment with pure delight. Then she sprang forward, fell on her knees before her mother, and embraced her with such fervor that Miss Brooke put up her eye-glasses and gazed in surprise.

"Mother! my own dearest mother! You do believe in him, then! and you have come to show us that you do! Oh! how delighted he will be when he knows!"

A little color showed itself in Lady Alice's delicate face. "He does know," she whispered, almost with the coyness of a girl.

"And he was delighted, was he not? It would be such a comfort to him—just now when he wants every kind of comfort. Oh, mamma, it is so good of you, and I am so glad. Aunty Sophy, aren't you glad, too?"

Lady Alice tried to stifle this naÏve utterance, but it would not be repressed, and Aunt Sophy had to rise to the occasion as best she could, with rather a grim face, she rose from her seat upon the sofa and advanced towards her brother's wife, holding out a very reluctant hand.

"I appreciate your motives, Lady Alice, and I see that your conduct may be of service to my brother." Then she relapsed into a more colloquial tone. "But how on earth you mean to live in this part of London, I'm sure I can't imagine. No doubt it seems rather smoky and grimy to you after Mayfair and Belgravia."

"London is generally a little smoky," said Lady Alice, smiling in spite of herself. "Thank you, Sophy: I thought you would do me justice."

And the hands of the two women met in a friendlier grasp than ever in the days of yore.

"I must see about your room," said Miss Brooke, practically. It was her way of holding out the olive branch. "You would like to be near Lesley, I suppose. We shall try to make you comfortable, but, of course, you won't expect the luxuries of your own home here."

"I shall be very comfortable, I am sure," said Lady Alice.

"What, does she mean by talking in that tone?" cried Lesley, hotly when Doctor Sophy had left the room. "It was almost insulting!"

"No, my darling, no. It is only a memory of old times when I was—exacting and dissatisfied. Yes, I see that I must have seemed so, then. I had not had much experience in those days; and then your father was not a man of substance as he seems to be now," said Lady Alice, inspecting the room, with a half-smile. The smile died quickly away, however, and was succeeded by a sad look, and a sigh. "Ah, poor Caspar!"

"He will be home in a day or two. Everybody says so."

"I trust so, dearest. And I will stay with—you till he comes home."

"Oh, but now that you have come, mamma you will never be allowed to go away again."

"I never said that, Lesley. I have come to maintain a principle, that is all. A wife ought to show that she trusts her husband, if he is falsely accused."

And then Lady Alice lowered her eyes and changed the subject, for it suddenly occurred to her that she had not been very ready, in her younger years, to give the trust that now seemed to be her husband's due.

But she settled down quite naturally in her husband's home during the next few days. Lesley, remembering the discomfort of her own first few weeks, expected her to say that the house was hideous and the neighborhood detestable. But Lady Alice said nothing of the kind. She thought it a fine old house—well-built and roomy—far preferable, she said, to the places she had often occupied in the West End. With different furniture and a little good taste it might be made absolutely charming. And when she got as far as "absolutely charming," uttered with her chin pillowed on one hand, and her eyes roving meditatively over the drawing-room mantelpiece, Lesley smiled to herself, and gave up all fear that she would ever go away again. Lady Alice had evidently come to the conclusion that it was her duty to see that Caspar's house was thoroughly redecorated from top to bottom.

But she did not come to this conclusion all at once. There were days when the minds of mother and daughter were too full of sorrow and anxiety to occupy themselves with upholstery and bric-a-brac. And the day of the adjourned inquest, when Caspar Brooke was allowed to go to his own house on bail, was one of the worst of all.

He came home quietly that afternoon in company with Maurice Kenyon, greeted his family affectionately but with something of a melancholy air, then went at once to his study, where he shut himself up and began to write and read letters. The cloud was hanging over him still. He knew well enough that if he had been a poor man, of no account in the world, he would at that moment have been occupying a prison cell instead of his own comfortable study. For presumption was strong against him; and it had taken a great deal of influence and extraordinarily high bail to secure his release. At present he stood committed to take his trial for manslaughter within a very short space of time. And nobody had succeeded, or seemed likely to succeed, in throwing any doubt on the testimony of Mary Trent. He was certainly in a very awkward position: it might be a very terrible position by-and-bye.

He was aroused from the reverie into which he had fallen by the entry of a servant with a note. He opened it, read the contents slowly, and then put it into the fire. He stood frowning a little as he watched it burn.

After a few moments of this hesitation he rang the bell, told Sarah that he was going out, and left the house. The three women in the drawing-room upstairs, already nervous and overstrained from long suspense, all started when the reverberation of that closing door made itself heard. Lesley felt her mother's hand close on hers with a quick, convulsive pressure. She looked up.

"He has gone out!" Lady Alice murmured, so that Lesley alone could hear. "He does not come—to us!"

Lesley did not know what to say. She was surprised to find that her mother expected him to come. But then she was only Caspar Brooke's daughter and not his wife.

Lady Alice lay back in her chair, closed her eyes and waited. She had once been a jealous woman: there were the seeds of jealousy in her still. She sat and wondered whether Caspar had gone for sympathy and comfort to any other woman. And after wondering this for half an hour it suddenly occurred to her mind with the vividness of a lightning flash that if things were so—if her husband had found sympathy elsewhere—it was her own fault. She had no right to accuse him, or to blame him, when she had left him for a dozen years.

"I have no right to blame him, perhaps, but I have still a right to know," she said to herself. And then, disengaging her hand from Lesley's clinging fingers, she rose and went downstairs—down to the study which she had so seldom visited. She seated herself in Caspar's arm-chair, and prepared to wait there for his return. Surely he would not be long!—and then she would speak to him, and things should be made clear.

Caspar's note had been written by Mrs. Romaine. It was quite formal, and merely contained a request that he would call on her at his earliest convenience. And he complied at once, as she had surmised that he would do. Her confidential maid opened the door to him, and conducted him to the drawing-room. It was dusk, and the blinds were drawn down. Oliver Trent's funeral had taken place the day before.

Mr. Brooke did not sit down. He knew that the interview which was about to take place was likely to be a painful one, but he could not guess in the least what kind of turn it would take. Did Rosalind believe in his guilt? Did she know what manner of man her brother Oliver had been? Was she going to reproach or to condole? She had done a strange thing in asking him to the house at all, and at another time he might have thought it wiser not to accede to her request; but he was in the mood in which the most extraordinary incidents seem possible, and scarcely anything could have seemed to him too bizarre to happen. He felt curiously impatient of the ordinary conventionalities of civilized life. Since this miraculous thing had come to pass—that he, Caspar Brooke, a respectable, sane, healthy-minded man of middle-age, could be accused of killing a miserable young scamp like Oliver Trent in a moment of passion—the world had certainly seemed somewhat crazy and out of joint. It was not worth while to stand very much on ceremony at such a conjuncture; and if Rosalind Romaine wanted to talk to him about her dead brother, he was willing to go and hear her talk. And yet as he stood in her dainty little drawing-room, it came over him very strongly that he ought not to be there.

He was still musing when the door opened, and Rosalind stole into the room. He did not hear her until she was close upon him, and then he turned with a sudden start. She looked different—she was changed. Her face was very pale: her eyelids were reddened: she was dressed in the deepest black, and over her head she had flung a black lace veil, which gave her—perhaps unintentionally—a tragic look. She held the folds together with her right hand, and spoke to him quietly.

"It was kind of you to come," she said.

"You summoned me. I should not have come without that," he answered, quickly.

"No, I suppose not. And of course—in the ordinary course of things—I ought not to have summoned you. The world would say that I was wrong. But we have been old friends for many years now, have we not?"

"I always thought so," he answered, gravely. "But now—I fear——"

"You mean"—with a strange vibration in her voice— "you mean that we must never be friends again—because—because of Oliver——"

"This accusation must naturally tend to separate the families," he said, in a very calm, grave voice. "Even when it is disproved, we shall not find it easy to resume old relations. I am very sorry for it, Rosalind, just as I need not tell you how sorry I am for the cause——"

She interrupted him hurriedly. "Yes, yes, I know all that; but you speak of disproving the charge. Can you do that?"

He was silent for a moment. "I shall do my best," he said at length, with some emotion in his voice.

"And if it is not disproved—what then?" she asked. "Suppose they call it murder?"

Caspar drew himself up: a certain displeasure began to mark itself upon his features.

"Need you ask me?"

"Yes, I need. I want you to consider the answer that you would give. I have a reason."

Her eager eyes, hot and burning in a face that was strangely white, pled for her. Caspar relented a little, but bent his brows as he replied—

"The extreme penalty of the law, I suppose. It is absurd—but, of course, it is possible. It is not a case in which I should expect penal servitude for life to be substituted, supposing that I were found guilty. But I fail to see your motive for asking what must be to me a rather painful question."

"Oh, you are strong! You can bear it!" she said, dropping her face upon her hands. Caspar gazed at her in amazement. He began to wonder whether she were going out of her mind. But before he could find any word of calming or consoling tendency, she flung down her hands and spoke again. "I want you to fix your mind on it for a moment, even although it hurts you," she said. "You are a strong man—you do not shrink from a thing because, it is a little painful. Think what it would mean for yourself, and not for yourself only; for your friends, for those who love you! A perpetual disgrace—a misery!"

"You seem anxious to assume that I shall be convicted," he said, still with displeasure.

"I tell you I am doing so on purpose. I want you to think of it. You know—you know as well as I do—that the chances are against you!"

"And if they are?"

"If they are—why do you incur such a risk!"

"Mrs. Romaine," said Caspar, gently, but with a steady coldness of tone, of which she did not at first feel the import, "I think you hardly know the force of what you are saying. I do not incur any risk unnecessarily or wantonly: I only wish the truth to be made known. What can I do more—or less?"

"You could go away," she said, almost in a whisper.

If the room had been lighter, she might, perhaps, have seen the frown that was gathering on his brow, the wrath that darkened his eyes as he spoke: but his face was in shadow, and for a moment anger made him speechless. She went on eagerly, breathlessly, without waiting for a reply.

"You might get off quite easily to—to Spain, perhaps, or some place where there was no extradition treaty. You are out on bail, I know; but your friends could not complain. Surely it is a natural enough thing for a man, situated as you are, to wish to escape: nobody would blame you in the long run—they would only say that you were wise. And if you stay, everything is against you. You had so much better take your present chance!"

Caspar muttered something inarticulate, then seemed to choke back further utterance, and kept silence for a minute. When he spoke it was in a curiously tranquil tone.

"You do not seem to have heard of the quality that men call their honor?"

"Oh, honor! I have heard enough about honor," she answered with a nervous, rasping laugh. "And you—you to talk about honor—after—after what you have done!"

Caspar Brooke fell back a step or two and surveyed her curiously. "Good God!" The exclamation broke from him, as if against his will. "You speak as though you thought I was guilty—as though I had—murdered Oliver!"

And she, looking at him as intently as he looked at her, said only, in the simplest possible way—

"And did you not?"