Basset moved in his chair. He was unhappy and ill at ease. He looked at the fire, he looked askance at Mary. "But do you mean," he said, "that you knew nothing about this until you had my letter?"

"Nothing," Mary answered, "not a word." She, too, found it more easy to look at the fire.

"You must have been very much surprised?"

"I was. It was for that reason that I asked you to bring me the papers--to bring me everything, so that I might see for myself how it was."

"I don't understand why Audley did not tell you. He said he would."

It was the question Mary had foreseen and dreaded. She had slept two nights upon the letter and given a long day's thought to it, and she had made up her mind what she would do and how she would do it. But between the planning and the doing there were passages which she would fain have shunned, fain have omitted, had it been possible; and this was one of them. She saw that there was nothing else for it, however--the thing must be told, and told by her. She tried, and not without success, to command her voice. "He did not tell me," she said. "Indeed I have not seen him. And I ought to say, Mr. Basset, you ought to know in these circumstances--that the engagement between my cousin and myself is at an end."

He may have started--he might well be astonished, in view of the business which brought him there. But he did not speak, and Mary could not tell what effect it had on him. She only knew that the silence seemed age-long, the pause cruel, and that her heart was beating so loudly that it seemed to her that he must hear it. At last, "Do you mean," he asked, his voice muffled and uncertain, "that it is all over between you?"

"It is quite over between us," she answered soberly. "It was a mistake from the beginning."

"When--when did he----"

"Oh, before this arose. Some time before this arose." She spoke lightly, but her cheeks were hot.

"He did not tell me."

"No?"

"No," Basset repeated. He spoke angrily, as if he felt this a grievance, but in no other way could he have masked his emotion. Perhaps he did not mask it altogether, for she was observing him--ah, how keenly was she observing him! "On the contrary, he led me to believe," he continued, "that things were as before between you, and that he would tell you this himself. It was for that reason that I let a week go by before I wrote to you."

"Just so," she said, squeezing her handkerchief into a ball, and telling herself that the worst was over now, the story told, that in another minute this would be done and past. "Just so, I quite understand. At any rate there is no longer any question of that, Mr. Basset. And now," briskly, "may I see this famous deed which is to do so much. You brought it with you, I hope?"

"Yes, I brought it," he answered heavily. He took a packet of papers from his breast-pocket, and it did not escape her--she was cooler now--that his fingers were not as steady as a man's fingers should be. The packet he brought out was tied about with old and faded green ribbon, and bore a docket on the outside. She looked at it with curiosity. That ribbon had been tied by a long-dead hand in the reign of Queen Anne! Those yellowish papers had lain in damp and darkness a hundred and forty years, that in the end they might take John Audley's life! "I brought them from the bank this afternoon," he explained. "They have been in the bank's custody since they were handed to me, and I must return them to the bank to-night."

"Everything depends upon them, I suppose?"

"Everything."

"But I thought that it was a deed--just one paper?" she said.

"The actual instrument is a deed. This one!" He took it from the series as he untied the packet. "The other papers are of value as corroboration. They are letters, original letters, bearing on the preparation of the agreement. They were found all together as they are now, and in the same order. I did not disclose the letters to Audley, or to his lawyer, because I had not then gone through them; nor was it necessary to disclose them. I have since examined them, and they provide ample proof of the genuineness of the deed."

"So that you think...?"

"I do not think that it can be contested. I am sure that it cannot--with success. And if it be admitted, your opponent's case is gone. It was practically common ground in the former suit that if this agreement could be produced and proved his claim fell to the ground. Yours remains. I do not suppose," Basset concluded, "that he will contest it, save as a matter of form."

"I am sorry for him," she said thoughtfully. And almost for the first time her eyes met his. But he was not responsive. He shrugged his shoulders. "He has had it long enough to feel the loss of it," she continued, still bidding for his sympathy. "May I look at that now--the deed?" She held out her hand.

He gave it to her. It was a folded sheet of parchment, yellow with age and not very large, perhaps ten inches square. Three or four seals of green wax on ribbon ends dangled from it. It was written all over in a fine and curious penmanship, its initial letter adorned with a portrait of Queen Anne; altogether a pretty and delicate thing, but small--so small, she thought, to effect so great a change, to carry, to wreck, to make the fortunes of a house!

She handled it gently, almost fearfully, with awe and a little distaste. She turned it, she read the signatures. They were clear but faint. The ink had turned brown.

"Peter Paravicini Audley," she murmured. "He must have signed it sadly, to save his wife, his cousin, a young girl, a girl of my age perhaps! To save her name!" There was a quaver in her voice. Basset moved uncomfortably.

"They are all dead," he said.

"Yes, they are all dead," she agreed. "And their joys and failings, hopes and fears--all dead! It seems a pity that this should live to betray them."

"Not a pity on your account."

"No. You are glad, of course?"

"That you should have your rights?" he said manfully. "Of course I am."

"And you congratulate me?" She rose and held out her hand. Her eyes were shining, there were tears in them, and her face was marvellously soft. "You will be the first, won't you, to congratulate me? You who have done so much for me, you who have been my friend through all? You who have brought me this? You will wish me joy?"

He was deeply moved; how deeply he could not hide from her, and her last doubt faded. He took her hand--his own was cold--but he could not speak. At last, "May you be very happy! It is my one wish, Lady Audley!"

She let his hand fall. "Thank you," she said gently. "I think that I shall be happy. And now--now," in a firmer tone, "will you do something for me, Mr. Basset? It is not much. Will you deal with Toft for me? You told me in your letter that he held my uncle's note for £800, to be paid in the event of the discovery of these papers? And that £300, already paid, might be set off against this?"

"That is so."

"The money should be paid, of course."

"I fear it must be paid."

"Will you see him and tell him that it shall be. I--I am fond of Etruria, but I am not so fond of Toft, and I would rather not--would you see him about this?"

"I quite understand," Basset answered. "Of course I will do it." They had both regained the ordinary plane of feeling and he spoke in his usual tone. "You would like me to see him now?"

"If you please."

He went from the room. There were other things that as executor he must arrange, and when he had dealt with Toft, and not without a hard word or two that went home, had settled that matter, he went round the house and gave the orders he had to give. The light was beginning to fail and shadows to fill the corners, and as he glanced into this room and that and viewed the long-remembered places and saw ghosts and heard the voices of the dead, he knew that he was taking leave of many things, of things that had made up a large part of his life.

And he had other thoughts hardly more cheering. Mary's engagement was broken off. But how? By whom? Had she freed herself? Or had Audley, immemor Divum, and little foreseeing the discovery that trod upon his threshold, freed her? And if so, why? He was in the dark as to this and as to all--her attitude, her thoughts, her feelings. He knew only that while her freedom trebled the moment of the news he had brought, the gifts of fortune which that news laid at her feet, rose insuperable between them and formed a barrier he could not pass.

For he could never woo her now. Whatever dawn of hope crept quivering above the horizon--and she had been kind, ah, in that moment of softness and remembrance she had been kind!--he could never speak now.

The dusk was far advanced and firelight was almost the only light when, after half an hour's absence, he returned to the parlor. Mary was standing before the hearth, her slender figure darkly outlined against the blaze. She held the poker in her hand, and she was stooping forward; and something in her pose, something in the tense atmosphere of the room, drew his gaze--he never knew why--to the table on which he had left the papers. It was bare. He looked round, he could not see them, a cry broke from him. "Mary!"

"They don't burn easily," she said, a quaver of exultation and defiance in her tone. "Parchment is so hard to burn--it burns so slowly, though I made a good fire on purpose!"

"D--n!" he cried, and he was going to seize, he tried to seize her arm. But he saw the next moment that it was useless, he saw that it was too late. "Are you mad? Are you mad?" he cried. Frantically, he went down on his knees, he raked among the embers. But he knew that it was futile, he had known it before he knelt, and he stood up again with a gesture of despair. "My G--d!" he said. "Do you know what you have done? You have destroyed what cannot be replaced! You have ruined your claim! You must have been mad! Mad, to do it!"

"Why, mad? Because I do not wish to be Lady Audley?" she said, facing him calmly, with her hands behind her.

"Mad!" he repeated, bitter self-reproach in his voice. For he felt himself to blame, he felt the full burden of his responsibility. He had left the papers with her, the true value of which she might not have known! And she had done this dreadful, this fatal, this irreparable thing!

She faced his anger without a quiver. "Why, mad!" she repeated. She was quite at her ease now. "Because, having been jilted by my cousin, I do not wish for this common, this vulgar, this poor revenge? Because I will not stoop to the game he plays and has played? Because I will not take from him what is little to me who have not had it, but much, nay all, to him who has?"

"But your uncle?" he cried. He was striving desperately to collect himself, trying to see the thing all round and not only as she saw it, but in its consequences. "Your uncle, whose one aim, whose one object in life----"

"Was to be Lord Audley? Believe me," she replied gently, "he sees more clearly now. And he is dead."

"But there are still--those who come after you?"

"Will they be better, happier, more useful?" she answered. "Will they be less Audleys, with less of ancient blood running in their veins because of what I have done? Because I have refused to rake up this old, pitiful, forgotten stain, this scandal of Queen Elizabeth? No, a thousand times no! And do not think, do not think," she continued more soberly, "that I have acted in haste or on impulse. I have not had this out of my thoughts for a moment since I knew the truth. I have weighed, carefully weighed, the price, and as carefully decided to pay it. My duty? I can do it, I hope, as well in one station as another. For the rest there is only one who will lose by it"--she faced him bravely now--"only one who will have the right to blame me--ever."

"I may have no right----"

"No you have no right at present."

"Still----"

"When you have the right--when you have gained the right, if ever--you may blame me."

Was he deceived? Was it the fact or only his fancy, a mere will-o'-the-wisp inviting him to trouble that led him to imagine that she looked at him queerly? With a mingling of raillery and tenderness, with a tear and a smile, with something in her eyes that he had never seen in them before? With--with--but her face was in shadow, she had her back to the blaze that filled the room with dancing lights, and his thoughts were in a turmoil of confusion. "I wish I knew," he said in a low voice, "what you meant by that?"

"By what?"

"By what you have just said. Did you mean that now that he--now that Audley is out of the way, there was a chance for me?"

"A chance for you?" she repeated. She stared at him in seeming astonishment.

"Don't play with me!" he cried, advancing upon her. "You understand me? You understand me very well! Yes, or no, Mary?"

She did not flinch. "There is no chance for you," she answered slowly, still confronting him. "If there be a second chance for me----"

"Ah!"

"For me, Peter?" And with that her tone told him all, all there was to tell. "If you are willing to take me second-hand," she continued, with a tremulous laugh, "you may take me. I don't deserve it, but I know my own mind now. I have known it since the day my uncle died and I heard your step come through the hall. And if you are still willing?"

He did not answer her, but he took her. He held her to him, his heart too full for anything but a thankfulness beyond speech, while she, shaken out of her composure, trembled between tears and laughter. "Peter! Peter!" she said again and again. And once, "We are the same height, Peter!" and so showed him a new side of her nature which thrilled him with surprise and happiness.

That she brought him no title, no lands, that by her own act she had flung away her inheritance and came to him almost empty-handed was no pain to him, no subject for regret. On the contrary, every word she had said on that, every argument she had used, came home to him now with double force. It had been a poor, it had been a common, it had been a pitiful revenge! It had mingled the sordid with the cup, it had cast the shadow of the Great House on their happiness. In that room in which they had shared their first meal on that far May morning, and where the light of the winter fire now shone on the wainscot, now brought life to the ruffed portraits above it, there was no question of name or fortune, or more or less.

So much so, that when Mrs. Toft came in with the tea she well-nigh dropped the tray in her surprise. As she said afterwards, "The sight of them two as close as chives in a barrel, I declare you might ha' knocked me down with a straw! God bless 'em!"