Alan Walcott knew perfectly well that he had done a mad, if not an unaccountable thing in writing his letter to Miss Campion. He knew it, that is to say, after the letter was gone, for when he was writing it, and his heart was breaking through the bonds of common-sense which generally restrained him, he did not feel the difficulty of accounting either for his emotions or for his action. The wild words, as he wrote them, had for him not only the impress of paramount truth, but also the sanction of his convictions and impulse at the moment. No stronger excuse has been forthcoming for heroic deeds which have shaken the world and lived in history.

Who amongst us all, when young and ardent, with the fire of generosity and imagination in the soul, has not written at least one such letter, casting reserve and prudence to the winds, and placing the writer absolutely at the mercy of the man or woman who received it?

This man was a poet by nature and by cultivation; but what is the culture of a poet save the fostering of a distempered imagination? I do not mean the culture of a prize poet, or a poet on a newspaper staff, or a gentleman who writes verses for society, or a professor of poetry, or an authority who knows the history and laws of prosody in every tongue, and can play the bard or the critic with equal facility. Alan Walcott had never ceased to work in distemper, because his nature was distempered to begin with, and his taste had not been modified to suit the conventional canons of his critics. Therefore it was not much to be wondered at if his prose poem to the woman he loved was a distempered composition.

The exaltation of the mood in which he had betrayed himself to Lettice was followed by a mood of terrible depression, and almost before it would have been possible for an answer to reach him, even if she had sat down and written to him without an hour's delay, he began to assure himself that she intended to treat him with silent contempt—that his folly had cost him not only her sympathy but her consideration, and that there was no hope left for him.

He had indeed told her that he did not expect a reply; but now he tortured himself with the belief that silence on her part could have only one explanation. Either she pitied him, and would write to prevent his despair, or she was indignant, and would tell him so, or else she held him in such contempt that she would not trouble herself to take the slightest notice of his effusion. He craved for her indignation now as he had craved for her sympathy before; but he could not endure her indifference.

A man of five-and-thirty whose youth has been spent amongst the prodigal sons and daughters of the world's great family, who has wasted his moral patrimony, and served masters and mistresses whom he despised, is not easily brought to believe that he can be happy again in the love of a pure woman. He has lost confidence in his own romantic feelings, and in his power to satisfy the higher needs of a woman's delicate and exacting heart. Usually, as was once the case with Walcott, he is a cynic and a professed despiser of women, affecting to judge them all by the few whom he has met, in spite of the fact that he has put himself in the way of knowing only the weakest and giddiest of the sex. But when such a man, gradually and with difficulty, has found a pearl among women, gentle and true, intellectual yet tenderly human, with whom his instinct tells him he might spend the rest of his life in honor and peace, he is ready in the truest sense to go and sell all that he has in order to secure the prize. Nothing has any further value for him in comparison with her, and all the roots of his nature lay firm hold upon her. Alas for this man if his mature love is given in vain, or if, like Alan Walcott, he is debarred from happiness by self-imposed fetters which no effort can shake off!

For four-and-twenty hours he struggled with his misery. Then, to his indescribable joy, there came a message from Lettice.

It was very short, and it brought him bad news; but at any rate it proved that she took an interest in his welfare, and made him comparatively happy.

Not a word as to his letter; but he was not much troubled on this score. That she had written to him at all, and written evidently because she felt some concern for his safety, was enough to console him at the moment.

When he began to consider the contents of her note it disturbed him more than a little. He had not imagined that his secret, such as it was, had passed into the keeping of any other man, still less that it had become club-talk in London. He saw at once what evil construction might be put upon it by malicious gossip-mongers, and he knew that henceforth he was face to face with a danger which he could do little or nothing to avert.

What should he attempt in his defence? How should he use the weapon which Lettice had put into his hand by forewarning him? One reasonable idea suggested itself, and this was that he should tell the true story to those who knew him best, in order that they might at any rate have the power to meet inventions and exaggerations by his own version of the facts. He busied himself during the next few days in this melancholy task, calling at the house of his friends, and making the best pretext he could for introducing his chapter of autobiography.

He called on the Grahams, amongst others, and was astonished to find that they knew the story already.

"I have told the facts to one or two," he said, "for the reason that I have just mentioned to you, but I think they understood that it would do me no good to talk about it, except in contradiction of unfriendly versions. How did you hear it?"

Graham took out of his pocket a copy of The Gadabout and said,

"I'm afraid you have made enemies, Walcott, and if you have not seen this precious concoction it would be no kindness to you to conceal it. Here—you will see at a glance how much they have embellished it."

Walcott took the paper, and read as follows:—

"It is probable that before long the public may be startled by a judicial inquiry into the truth of a story which has been told with much circumstantiality concerning the remarkable disappearance of the wife of a well-known poet some three or four years ago."

Then came the details, without any mention of persons or places, and the paragraph concluded in this fashion. "It is not certain how the matter will come into court, but rumor states that there is another lady in the case, that the buried secret came to light in a most dramatic way, and that evidence is forthcoming from very unexpected quarters."

The victim of this sorry piece of scandal gazed at the paper in a state of stupefaction.

"Of course," said Graham, "it is not worth while to notice that rag. Half of what it says is clearly a downright invention. If only you could get hold of the writer and thrash him, it might do some good; but these liars are very hard to catch. As to the 'other lady,' there is nothing in that, is there?"

Both Graham and his wife looked anxiously at Walcott. They knew of his attentions to Lettice, and were jealous of him on that account; and they had been discussing with each other the possibility of their friend's name being dragged into a scandal.

Walcott was livid with rage.

"The cur!" he cried; "the lying hound! He has entirely fabricated the beginning and the end of this paragraph. There is no ground whatever for saying that a case may come into court. There is no 'lady in the case' at all. He has simply put on that tag to make his scrap of gossip worth another half-crown. Is it not abominable, Graham?"

"It is something more than abominable. To my mind this sort of thing is one of the worst scandals of the present day. But I felt sure there was nothing in it, and the few who guess that it refers to you will draw the same conclusion. Don't think any more about it!"

"A lie sticks when it is well told," said Walcott, gloomily. "There are plenty of men who would rather believe it than the uninteresting truth."

But the Grahams, relieved on the point that mainly concerned them, could not see much gravity in the rest of the concoction, and Walcott had scant pity from them. He went home disconsolate, little dreaming of the reception which awaited him there.

He occupied a floor in Montagu Place, Bloomsbury, consisting of three rooms: a drawing-room, a bed-room, and a small study; and, latterly, Mrs. Bundlecombe, whose acquaintance the reader has already made, had used a bed-room at the top of the house.

Alan's mother and Mrs. Bundlecombe had been sisters. They were the daughters of a well-to-do farmer in Essex, and, as will often happen with sisters of the same family, brought up and cared for in a precisely similar way, they had exhibited a marked contrast in intellect, habits of thought, and outward bearing. The one had absorbed the natural refinement of her mother, who had come of an old Huguenot family long ago settled on English soil; the other was moulded in the robust and coarse type of her father. Bessy was by preference the household factotum not to say the drudge of the family, with a turn for puddings, poultry, and the management of servants. Lucy clung to her mother, and books (though both were constant students of The Family Herald), and was nothing if not romantic. Both found some one to love them, and both, as it happened, were married on the same day. Their parents had died within a year of each other, and then the orphaned girls had come to terms with their lovers, and accepted a yoke of which they had previously fought shy. Bessy's husband was a middle-aged bookseller in the neighboring town of Thorley, who had admired her thrifty and homely ways, and had not been deterred by her want of intelligence. Lucy, though her dreams had soared higher, was fairly happy with a schoolmaster from Southampton, whose acquaintance she had made on a holiday at the seaside.

Alan, who was the only offspring of this latter union, had been well brought up, for his father's careful teaching and his mother's gentleness and imagination supplied the complementary touches which are necessary to form the basis of culture. The sisters had not drifted apart after their marriage so much as might have been expected. They had visited each other, and Alan, as he grew up, conceived a strong affection for his uncle at Thorley, who—a childless man himself—gave him delightful books, and showed him others still more delightful, who talked to him on the subjects which chiefly attracted him, and was the first to fire his brain with an ambition to write and be famous. Aunt Bessy was tolerated for her husband's sake, but it was Uncle Samuel who drew the lad to Thorley. In due time Alan began to teach in his father's school, and before he was twenty-one had taken his degree at London University. Then his mother died, and shortly afterwards he was left comparatively alone in the world.

Now, school-keeping had never been a congenial occupation to Alan, whose poetic temperament was chafed by the strict and ungrateful routine of the business. His father had been to the manner born, and things had prospered with him, but Alan by himself would not have been able to achieve a like success. He knew this, and was proud of his incapacity; and he took the first opportunity of handing over the establishment to a successor. The money which he received for the transfer, added to that which his father had left, secured him an income on which it was possible to live, and to travel, and to print a volume of poems. For a short time, at least, he lived as seemed best in his own eyes, and was happy.

When he was in England he still occasionally visited Thorley; and it was thus that Milly Harrington came to know him by sight. Her grandmother did not know the Bundlecombes, but Milly came to the conclusion that Alan was their son, and this was the tale which she had told to Sydney Campion, and which Sydney had repeated to his sister.

The last visit paid by Alan to Thorley was some time after his uncle's death, and he had then confided to his aunt the story of his marriage, and of its unfortunate sequel. He happened to have learned that the man with whom he had fought at Aix-les-Bains was back in London, and it seemed not improbable at that moment that he would soon hear news of his fugitive wife. When he mentioned this to the widow—who was already taking steps to sell her stock-in-trade—she immediately conceived the idea that her boy, as she called Alan, was in imminent danger, that the wife would undoubtedly turn up again, and that it was absolutely necessary for his personal safety that he should have an intrepid and watchful woman living in the same house with him. So she proposed the arrangement which now existed, and Alan had equably fallen in with her plan. He did not see much of her when she came to London, and there was very little in their tastes which was congenial or compatible; but she kept him straight in the matter of his weekly bills and his laundress, and he had no desire to quarrel with the way in which she managed these affairs for him.

When Alan came home after his call at the Grahams', weary and disconsolate, with a weight on his mind of which he could not rid himself, the door was opened by his aunt. Her white face startled him, and still more the gesture with which she pointed upstairs, in the direction of their rooms. His heart sank at once, for he knew that the worst had befallen him.

"Hush!" said his aunt in a hoarse whisper, "do not go up. She is there. She came in the morning and would not go away."

"How is she? I mean what does she look like?"

He was very quiet; but he had leaned both hands upon the hall table, and was gazing at his aunt with despairing eyes.

"Bad, my boy, bad! The worst that a woman can look, Oh, Alan, go away, and do not come near her. Fly, immediately, anywhere out of her reach! Let me tell her that you have gone to the other end of the world rather than touch her again. Oh, Alan, my sister's child!—go, go, and grace abounding be with you."

"No, Aunt Bessy, that will never do. I cannot run away. Why, don't you see for one thing that this will prove what lies they have been telling about me? They said I was a murderer—" he laughed somewhat wildly as he spoke—"and here is the murdered woman. And they said there was evidence coming to prove it. Perhaps she will tell them how it happened, and how she came to life again. There, you see, there is good in everything—even in ghosts that come to life again!"

Then his voice dropped, and the color went out of his face.

"What is she doing?" he asked, in a sombre tone.

"She went to sleep on the sofa in the drawing-room. She made me send out for brandy, and began to rave at me in such a way that I was bound to do it, just to keep her quiet. And now she is in her drunken sleep!"

Alan shuddered. He knew what that meant.

"Come," he said: "let us go up. We cannot stand here any longer."

They went into his study, which was on the same floor as the drawing-room, and here Alan sank upon a chair, looking doggedly at the closed door which separated him from the curse of his existence. After a while he got up, walked across the landing, and quietly opened the door.

There she lay, a repulsive looking woman, with the beauty of her youth corrupted into a hateful mask of vice. She had thrown her arms above her head and seemed to be fast asleep.

He returned to the study, shut the door again, and sat down at the table, leaning his head upon his hands. Aunt Bessy came and sat beside him—not to speak, but only that he might know he was not alone.

"That," he muttered to himself at last, "is my wife!"

The old woman at his side trembled, and laid her hand upon his arm.

"I am beginning to know her," he said, after another long pause. "Some men discover the charms of their wives before marriage; others—the fools—find them out after. In the first year she was unfaithful to me. Then she shot me like a dog. What will the end be?"

"It can be nothing worse, my boy. She has ruined you already; she cannot do it twice. Oh, why did you ever meet her! Why did not Heaven grant that a good woman, like Lettice Campion——"

"Do not name her here!" he cried sharply. "Let there be something sacred in the world!"

He looked at his aunt as he spoke; but she did not return his gaze. She was sitting rigid in her chair, staring over his shoulder with affrighted eyes. Alan turned round quickly, and started to his feet.

The woman in the other room had stealthily opened the door, and stood there, disheveled and half-dressed, with a cunning smile on her face.

"Alan, my husband!" she said, in French, holding out both hands to him, and reeling a step nearer, "here we are at last. I have longed for this day, my friend—let us be happy. After so many misfortunes, to be reunited once again! Is it not charming?"

She spoke incoherently, running her words into one another, and yet doing her best to be understood.

Alan looked at her steadily. "What do you want?" he asked. "Why have you sought me out?"

"My faith, what should I want? Money, to begin with."

"And then?"

"And then—justice! Bah! Am I not the daughter of Testard, who dispensed with his own hand the justice of Heaven against his persecutors?"

"I have heard that before," Alan said. "It was at Aix-les-Bains. And you still want justice!"

"Justice, my child. Was it not at Aix-les-Bains that you tried to kill Henri de Hauteville? Was it not in the park hard by that you shot at me, and almost assassinated me? But, have no fear! All I ask is money—the half of your income will satisfy me. Pay me that, and you are safe—unless my rage should transport me one of these fine days! Refuse, and I denounce you through the town, and play the game of scandal—as I know how to play it! Which shall it be?"

"You are my wife. Perhaps there is a remedy for that—now that you are here, we shall see! But, meanwhile, you have a claim. To-morrow morning I Will settle it as you wish. You shall not be left to want."

"It is reasonable. Good-night, my friend! I am going to sleep again."

She went back into the drawing-room, laughing aloud, whilst Alan, after doing his best to console Mrs. Bundlecombe, departed in search of a night's lodging under another roof.