Tod arrived at Lefford. I met him at the train, just as I had met Miss Cattledon, who was with us still. As we walked out of the station together, many a man cast a glance after the tall, fine young fellow—who looked strong enough to move the world, if, like Archimedes, the geometrician of Syracuse, he had only possessed the necessary lever.

“Shall you be able to stay a week, Tod?”

“Two weeks if they’d like it, Johnny. How you have picked up, lad!”

“Picked up?”

“In looks. They are all your own again. Glad to see it, old fellow.”

Some few days had elapsed since the latest event recorded in this veritable little history—the call that Major Leckie made on Captain Collinson, and found his brother there, instead of himself—but no change worth noting to the reader had occurred in the town politics. Lady Jenkins was ailing as much as ever, and Madame St. Vincent was keeping a sharp watch on the maid, Lettice Lane, without, as yet, detecting her in any evil practices: the soirÉes were numerous, one being held at some house or other every night in the work-a-day week: and the engagement of Captain Collinson to Miss Belmont was now talked of as an assured fact. Collinson himself had been away from Lefford during these intervening days. Pink, the hairdresser, thought he had taken a run up to London, on some little matter of business. As to the brother, we had heard no more of him.

But, if Captain Collinson had taken a run up to London, he had unquestionably run down again, though not to Lefford. On the day but one before the coming of Tod, Janet and Miss Cattledon went over by train to do some shopping at the county town, which stood fifteen miles from Lefford, I being with them. Turning into a pastry-cook’s in the middle of the day to get something to eat, we turned in upon Captain Collinson. He sat at a white marble-topped table in the corner of the shop, eating an oyster patty.

“We heard you were in London,” said Janet, shaking hands with him, as he rose to offer her his seat.

“Got back this morning. Shall be at Lefford to-morrow: perhaps to-night,” he answered.

He stood gobbling up his patty quickly. I said something to him, just because the recollection came into my mind, about the visit of his brother.

“My brother!” he exclaimed in answer, staring at me with all his eyes. “What brother? How do you know anything about my brother?”

“Major Leckie saw him when he called at your lodgings. Saw him instead of you. You had gone to Toome. We took it to be your brother, from the description; he was so like yourself.”

The captain smiled. “I forgot that,” he said. “We are much alike. Ned told me of Leckie’s call. A pity I could not see him! Things always happen cross and contrary. Has Leckie left Foxgrove yet?”

“Oh, he left it that same night. I should think he is on his way back to India by this time.”

“His visit to Lefford seems to have been as flying a one as my brother’s was, and his did not last a day. How much?” to the girl behind the counter. “Sixpence? There it is.” And, with a general adieu nodded to the rest of us, the captain left the shop.

“I don’t like that dandy,” spoke Cattledon, in her severest tone. “I have said so before. I’m sure he is a man who cannot be trusted.”

I answered nothing: but I had for a little time now thought the same. There was that about him that gave you the idea he was in some way or other not true. And it may as well be mentioned here that Captain Collinson got back to Lefford that same evening, in time to make his appearance at Mrs. Parker’s soirÉe, at which both Miss Belmont and Mina Knox were present.

So now we come to Tod again, and to the day of his arrival. Talking of one thing and another, telling him of this and that, of the native politics, as we all like to do when a stranger comes to set himself down, however temporarily, amidst us, I mentioned the familiarity that in two of the people struck upon my memory. Never did I see this same Captain Collinson, never did I see Madame St. Vincent, or hear them speak, or listen to their laugh, but the feeling that I had met them before—had been, so to say, intimate with both one and the other—came forcibly upon me.

“And yet it would seem, upon the face of things, that I never have been,” I continued to Tod, when telling of this. “Madame St. Vincent says she never left the South of France until last year; and the captain has been nearly all his life in India.”

“You know you do take fancies, Johnny.”

“True. But, are not those fancies generally borne out by the result? Any way, they puzzle me, both of them: and there’s a ring in their voices that——”

“A ring in their voices!” put in Tod, laughing.

“Say an accent, then; especially in madame’s; and it sounds, to my ears, unmistakably Worcestershire.”

“Johnny, you are fanciful!”

I never got anything better from Tod. “You will have the honour of meeting them both here to-night,” I said to him, “for it is Janet’s turn to give the soirÉe, and I know they are expected.”

Evening came. At six o’clock the first instalment of guests knocked at the door; by half-past six the soirÉe was in full glory: a regular crowd. Every one seemed to have come, with the exception of the ladies from Jenkins House. Sam Jenkins brought in their excuses.

Sam had run up to Jenkins House with some physic for the butler, who said he had a surfeit (from drinking too much old ale, Tamlyn thought), and Sam had made use of the opportunity to see his aunt. Madame St. Vincent objected. It would try the dear old lady too much, madame said. She was lying in a sweet sleep on the sofa in her own room; had been quite blithe and lively all day, but was drowsy now; and she had better not be disturbed until bedtime. Perhaps Mr. Sam would kindly make their excuses to Mrs. Arnold Knox.

“Can’t you come yourself, madame?” asked Sam, politely. “If Aunt Jenkins is asleep, and means to keep asleep till bed-time, she can’t want you.”

“I could not think of leaving her,” objected madame. “She looks for me the moment she wakes.”

So Sam, I say, brought back the message. Putting himself into his evening-coat, he came into the room while tea was going on, and delivered madame’s excuses to Janet as distinctly as the rattle of cups and saucers allowed. You should have seen Cattledon that evening:—in a grey silk gown that stood on end, a gold necklace, and dancing shoes.

“This is the second soirÉe this week that Lady Jenkins has failed to appear at,” spoke Mrs. Knox—not Janet—in a resentful tone. “My firm opinion is that Madame St. Vincent keeps her away.”

“Keeps her away,” cried Arnold. “Why should she do that?”

“Well, yes; gives way to her fads and fancies about being ill, instead of rousing her out of them. As to why she does it,” continued Mrs. Knox, “I suppose she is beginning to grow nervous about her. As if an innocent, quiet soirÉe could hurt Lady Jenkins!”

“Johnny,” whispered Sam, subsiding into the background after delivering his message, “may I never stir again if I didn’t see Collinson hiding in aunt’s garden!”

“Hiding in your aunt’s garden!” I exclaimed. “What was he doing that for?”

“Goodness knows. Did you ever notice a big bay-tree that you pass on the left, between the door and the gate? Well, he was standing behind it. I came out of the house at a double quick pace, knowing I should be late for the soirÉe, cleared the steps at a leap, and the path to the gate at another. Too quick, I suppose, for Collinson. He was bending forward to look at the parlour windows, and drew back as I passed.”

“Did you speak, Sam?”

“No, I came flying on, taking no notice. I dare say he thinks I did not see him. One does not like, you know, to speak to a man who evidently wants to avoid you. But now—I wonder what he was doing there?” continued Sam, reflectively. “Watching Madame St. Vincent, I should say, through the lace curtains.”

“But for what purpose?”

“I can’t even imagine. There he was.”

To my mind this sounded curious. But that Mina Knox was before my eyes—just at the moment listening to the whispers of Dan Jenkins—I should have thought the captain was looking after her. Or, rather, not listening to Dan. Mina had a pained, restless look on her face, not in the least natural to it, and kept her head turned away. And the more Dan whispered, the more she turned it from him.

“Here he is, Sam.”

Sam looked round at my words, and saw Captain Collinson, then coming in. He was got up to perfection as usual, and wore a white rose in his button-hole. His purple-black hair, beard, whiskers and moustache were grand; his voice had its ordinary fashionable drawl. I saw Tod—at the opposite side of the room—cease talking with old Tamlyn, to fix his keen eyes on the captain.

“Very sorry to be so late,” apologized the captain, bowing over Janet’s hand. “Been detained at home writing letters for India. Overland mail goes out to-morrow night.”

Sam gave me a knock with his elbow. “What a confounded story!” he whispered. “Wonder what the gallant captain means, Johnny! Wonder what game he is up to?”

It was, I dare say, nearly an hour after this that I came across Tod. He was standing against the wall, laughing slightly to himself, evidently in some glee. Captain Collinson was at the piano opposite, his back to us, turning over the leaves for Caroline Parker, who was singing.

“What are you amused at, Tod?”

“At you, lad. Thinking what a muff you are.”

“I always am a muff, I know. But why am I one just now in particular?”

“For not knowing that man,” nodding towards Collinson. “I thought I recognized him as he came in; felt sure of him when I heard him speak. Men may disguise their faces almost at will; but not their voices, Johnny.”

“Why, who is he?” I asked in surprise.

“I’ll tell you when we are alone. I should have known him had we met amid the Hottentots. I thought he was over in Australia; knew he went there.”

“But—is he not Captain Collinson?”

Tod laughed. “Just as much as I am, Johnny. Of course he may have assumed the name of Collinson in place of his own: if so, nobody has a right, I take it, to say him nay. But, as to his being a captain in the Bengal Cavalry—well, I don’t think he is.”

“And you say I know him!”

“I say you ought to—but for being a muff. I suppose it is the hair he is adorned with that has thrown you off the scent.”

“But, where have I seen him, Tod? Who——”

“Hush, lad. We may be overheard.”

As a general rule, all the guests at these soirÉes left together. They did so to-night. The last to file out at the door were the Hampshires, with Mrs. Knox, her daughter, and Miss Mack—for Janet had made a point of inviting poor hard-worked, put-upon Macky. Both families lived in the London Road, and would go home in company. Dan had meant to escort Mina, but she pointedly told him he was not wanted, and took the offered arm of Captain Collinson. Upon which, Dan turned back in a huff. Sam laughed at that, and ran after them himself.

How long a time had elapsed afterwards, I hardly know. Perhaps half-an-hour; perhaps not so much. We had not parted for the night: in fact, Mr. Tamlyn and Tod were still over the game at chess they had begun since supper; which game seemed in no mood to be finished. I watched it: Dr. Knox and Miss Cattledon stood talking over the fire; while Janet, ever an active housekeeper, was in the supper-room, helping the maids to clear the table. In the midst of this, Charlotte Knox came back, rushing into the room in a state of intense excitement, with the news that Mina and Captain Collinson were eloping together.

The account she gave was this—though just at first nothing clear could be made out of her. Upon starting, the Hampshires, Mrs. Knox, and Miss Mack went on in front; Captain Collinson and Mina walked next, and Charlotte fell behind with Sam. Fell very much behind, as it appeared; for when people are talking of what interests them, their steps are apt to linger; and Sam was telling her of having seen Captain Collinson behind the bay-tree. It was a beautiful night, warm and pleasant.

Charlotte and Sam let the captain and Mina get pretty nearly the length of a street before them; and they, in their turn, were as much behind the party in advance. Suddenly Sam exclaimed that the captain was taking the wrong way. His good eyes had discerned that, instead of keeping straight on, which was the proper (and only) route to the London Road, he and Mina had turned down the lane leading to the railway-station. “Halloa!” he exclaimed to Charlotte, “what’s that for?” “They must be dreaming,” was Charlotte’s laughing reply: “or, perhaps the captain wants to take an excursion by a night-train!” Whether anything in the last remark, spoken in jest, struck particularly on the mind of Sam, Charlotte did not know: away he started as if he had been shot, Charlotte running after him in curiosity. Arrived at the lane, Sam saw the other two flying along, just as if they wanted to catch a train and had not a minute to do it in. Onward went Sam’s long legs in pursuit; but the captain’s legs were long also, and he was pulling Mina with him: altogether Sam did not gain much upon them. The half-past eleven o’clock train was then gliding into the station, where it was timed to halt two minutes. The captain and Mina dashed on to the platform, and, when Sam got up, he was putting her into the nearest carriage. Such was Charlotte’s statement: and her eyes looked wild, and her breath was laboured as she made it.

“Have they gone?—gone on by the train?” questioned Dr. Knox, who seemed unnaturally calm.

“Goodness, no!” panted the excited Charlotte. “Sam managed to get his arm round Mina’s waist, and the captain could not pull her away from him. It was a regular struggle on the platform, Arnold. I appealed to the station-master, who stood by. I told him it was my sister, and that she was being kidnapped against her will; Sam also appealed to him. So he gave the signal when the time was up, and let the train go on.”

“Not against her will, I fear,” spoke Arnold Knox from between his condemning lips. “Where are they now, Lotty?”

“On the platform, quarrelling; and still struggling which shall keep possession of Mina. I came running here to fetch you, Arnold, and I believe I shall never get my breath again.”

With one accord we all, Cattledon excepted, set off to the station; even old Tamlyn proved he had some go in his legs yet. Tod reached it first: few young men could come up to him at running.

Sam Jenkins had exchanged his hold of Mina for a hold on Captain Collinson. The two were struggling together; but Sam’s grasp was firm, and he held him as in a vice. “No, no,” he was saying, “you don’t escape me, captain, until some one comes here to take charge of Mina.” As to Mina, little simpleton, she cowered in the shade of the corner, shivering and crying. The station-master and the two night-porters stood about, gaping and staring.

Tod put his hand on the captain’s shoulder; his other hand momentarily holding back Dr. Knox. “Since when have you been Captain Collinson,” he quietly asked.

The captain turned his angry eyes upon him. “What is that to you?” he retorted. “I am Captain Collinson; that is enough for you.”

“Enough for me, and welcome. Not enough, as I judge, for this gentleman here,” indicating the doctor. “When I knew you your name was not Collinson.”

“How dare you insult me?” hissed the captain. “My name not Collinson!”

“Not at all!” was Tod’s equable answer. “It used to be Fabian Pell.”

II.

The history of the Clement-Pells and their downfall was given in the First Series of these stories, and the reader can have no difficulty in recalling Fabian to his memory. There are times, even to this day, when it seems to me that I must have been a muff, as Tod said, not to know him. But, some years had elapsed since I saw him; and those years, with their ill-fortune and exposure, and the hard life he had led in Australia, had served to change him greatly; above all, there was now the mass of hair disguising the greater part of his face. Bit by bit my recollection came to me, and I knew that he was, beyond all shadow of doubt, Fabian Pell.

How long we sat up that night at Mr. Tamlyn’s, talking over its events, I cannot precisely tell. For quite the half of what was left of it. Mina, brought to his own home by Arnold for safety, was consigned to Cattledon’s charge and bed, and retired to the latter in a state of humiliation and collapse.

The scene on the platform had soon come to a conclusion. With the security of Mina assured by the presence of her brother and the rest of us, Sam let go his hold of the captain. It had been a nice little plot this, that the captain had set on foot in secret, and persuaded that silly girl, not much better than a child, to accede to. They were to have run away to London that night, and been married there the next day; the captain, as was found out later, having already managed to procure a licence. You see, if Mina became his wife without any settlement, her money at once lapsed to him and he could do what he would with it. How, as Captain Collinson, he would have braved the matter out to Dr. Knox that night, and excused himself for his treachery, he best knew. Tod checkmated him by proclaiming him as Fabian Pell. A lame attempt at denial, which Tod, secure in his assertion, laughed at; a little bravado, and Captain Collinson collapsed. Against the truth—that he was Fabian Pell—brought home to him so suddenly and clearly, he could not hold out; the man’s hardihood deserted him; and he turned tail and went off the platform, calling back that Mr. Todhetley should hear from him in the morning.

We came away then, bringing Mina. Sam went to escort Charlotte home, where they would have the pleasure of imparting the news to Mrs. Knox, who probably by that time was thinking that Lotty had eloped as well as Mina. And now we were sitting round the fire in old Tamlyn’s room, discussing what had happened. Sam came back in the midst of it. Arnold was down in the mouth, and no mistake.

“Did you see Mrs. Knox?” he asked of Sam.

“Not to speak to, sir. I saw her through the kitchen window. She was spreading bread-and-jam for Dicky, who had come down in his night-gown and would not be coaxed back to bed.”

“What an injudicious woman she is!” put in old Tamlyn. “Enough to ruin the boy.”

Perhaps Dr. Knox was thinking, as he sat there, his hand pressed upon his brow, that if she had been a less injudicious woman, a different mother altogether, Mina might not have been in danger of falling into the present escapade: but he said nothing.

“I remember hearing of the notorious break-up of the Clement-Pells at the time it took place,” observed old Tamlyn to Tod. “And to think that this man should be one of them!”

“He must carry his impudence about with him,” was Tod’s remark.

“They ruined hundreds of poor men and women, if not thousands,” continued old Tamlyn. “I conclude your people knew all about it?”

“Indeed, yes. We were in the midst of it. My father lost—how much was it, Johnny?”

“Two hundred pounds,” I answered; the question bringing vividly back to me our adventures in Boulogne, when the pater and Mr. Brandon went over there to try to get the money back.

“I suppose,” resumed the surgeon, “your father had that much balance lying in their hands, and lost it all?”

“No,” said Tod, “he did not bank with them. A day or two before Clement-Pell burst up, he drove to our house as bold as brass, asking my father in the most off-hand manner to let him have a cheque for two hundred pounds until the next day. The Squire did let him have it, without scruple, and of course lost it. He would have let him have two thousand had Pell asked for it.”

“But that was a fraud. Pell might have been punished for it.”

“I don’t know that it was so much a fraud as many other things Pell did, and might have been punished for,” observed Tod. “At any rate, not as great a one. He escaped out of the way, as I dare say you know, sir, and his family escaped with him. It was hard on them. They had been brought up in the greatest possible extravagance, in all kinds of luxury. This one, Fabian, was in the army. He, of course, had to retire. His own debts would have forced that step upon him, apart from the family disgrace.”

“Did he re-enter it, I wonder.”

Tod laughed. “I should say not. He went to Australia. Not above a year ago I heard that he was still there. He must have come back here fortune-hunting; bread-hunting; and passed himself off as Captain Collinson the better to do it. Miss Mina Knox’s seven thousand pounds was a prize to fight for.”

“That’s it!” cried Sam. “Dan has said all along it was the money he was after, dishonourable wretch, not Mina herself. He cares too much for Madame St. Vincent to care for Mina: at least we think so. How did he get the funds, I wonder, that he has been flourishing about upon?”

“Won them at billiards,” suggested Tod.

“No,” said Sam, “I don’t think that. By all accounts he lost more than he won in the billiard-rooms.”

Dr. Knox looked up from a reverie. “Was it himself that Major Leckie saw?—and did he pass himself off as another man to escape detection? Did he go off for the remainder of the week lest the major should look him up again?”

And we knew it must have been so.

Little sleep did I get that night, or, rather, morning, for the small hours had struck when we went to bed. The association of ideas is a great thing in this world; a help in many an emergency. This association led me from Fabian Pell to his sisters: and the mysterious memory of Madame St. Vincent that had so puzzled my mind cleared itself up. As though a veil had been withdrawn from my eyes, leaving the recollection unclouded and distinct, I saw she was one of those sisters: the eldest of them, Martha Jane. And, let not the reader call me a muff, as Tod again did later, for not having found her out before. When I knew her she was an angular, raw-boned girl, with rather a haggard and very pale face, and nothing to say for herself. Now she was a filled-out woman, her face round, her colour healthy, and one of the most self-possessed talkers I ever listened to. In the old days her hair was reddish and fell in curls: now it was dark, and worn in braids and plaits fashionably incomprehensible. Whether the intervening years had darkened the hair, or whether madame cunningly dyed it, must remain a question.

Dan Jenkins and his brother were right. They no doubt had seen looks of anxious interest given to Madame St. Vincent by Captain Collinson. Not as a lover, however; they were mistaken there; but as a brother who was living in a state of peril, and whom she was doubtless protecting and trying to aid. But how far had her aid gone? That she kept up the ball, as to his being Captain Collinson, the rich, honourable, and well-connected Indian officer, went without saying, as the French have it; and no one could expect her to proclaim him as Fabian Pell, the swindler; but had she been helping him in his schemes upon Mina? As to her display of formal coolness to him, it must have been put on to mislead the public.

And what was I to do? Must I quietly bury my discovery within me and say nothing? or must I tell Dr. Knox that Madame St. Vincent was no other than Martha Jane Pell? What ought I to do? It was that question that kept me awake. Never liking to do harm where I could not do good, I asked myself whether I had any right to ruin her. It might be that she was not able to help herself; that she had done no worse than keep Fabian’s secret: it might be that she had wanted him gone just as much as Dan Jenkins had wanted it.

“I’ll tell Tod in the morning,” was my final conclusion, “and hear what he thinks.”

When I got downstairs they were beginning breakfast, and Miss Cattledon was turning from the table to carry up Mina’s tea. Mina remained in the depths of tears and contrition, and Cattledon had graciously told her she might lie in bed. Breakfast was taken very late that morning, the result of the previous night’s disturbance, and the clock was striking ten when we rose from it.

“Tod, I want to speak to you,” I said in his ear. “I want to tell you something.”

“All right, lad. Tell away.”

“Not here. Won’t you come out with me somewhere? We must be alone.”

“Then it must wait, Johnny. I am going round to the stables with Tamlyn. He wishes me to see the horse they have got on trial. By the description, I don’t think much of him: should give him a pretty long trial before I bought him.”

They went out. Not long after that, I was strolling across the court-yard with Sam Jenkins, who had been despatched on some professional errand, when we saw Sir Henry Westmorland ride up and rein in his horse. He asked for Dr. Knox. Sam went back to the house to say so, while Sir Henry talked to me.

“Look here,” said Sir Henry to the doctor, after they had shaken hands, “I have had a curious letter from Major Leckie this morning. At least”—taking the letter from his pocket and opening it—“it contains an odd bit of news. He says—where is it?—stand still, sir,”—to the horse. “Here it is; just listen, doctor. ‘Dr. Knox must have made a mistake in saying Collinson was at Lefford. Collinson is in India; has not been home at all. I have had a letter from him by the overland mail just in, asking me to do a commission for him. Tell Dr. Knox this. If the man he spoke of is passing himself off for Collinson of ours, he must be an impostor.’ What do you think of that, doctor?” concluded Sir Henry, folding the letter again.

“He is an impostor,” replied Dr. Knox. “We found him out last night.”

“What a rogue! Has he been taking people in—fleecing them?”

“He has taken us all in, Sir Henry, in one sense of the word; he was on the point of doing it more effectually, when he was stopped. As to fleecing people, I don’t know about that. He seems to have had plenty of money at his command—whence obtained is another question.”

“Cheated some one out of it; rely upon that,” remarked the baronet, as he nodded a good-day to us, and rode off.

Mina was downstairs when we returned indoors. Anything more pitiful than her state of contrition and distress I should not care to see. No doubt the discovery, just made, tended to strengthen her repentance. In a silly girl’s mind some romance might attach to the notion of an elopement with a gallant captain of consideration, brave in Her Majesty’s service; but to elope with Mr. Fabian Pell, the chevalier d’industrie, was quite another affair. Mina was mild in temperament, gentle in manners, yet she might have flown at the ex-captain’s face with sharp nails, had he come in her way.

“I did not really like him,” she sobbed forth: and there was no doubt that she spoke truth. “But they were always on at me, persuading me; they never let me alone.”

“Who persuaded you, my dear?” asked Janet.

“He did. He was for ever meeting me in private, and urging me. I could not go out for a walk, or just cross the garden, or run into the next door, but he would be there. Madame St. Vincent persuaded me. She did not say to me, in words, ‘you had better do as he asks you and run away,’ but all her counsels tended towards it. She would say to me how happy his wife would be; what a fine position it was for any young lady lucky enough to be chosen by him; and that all the world thought me old enough to marry, though Arnold did not, and for that reason Arnold would do his best to prevent it. And so—and so——”

“And so they persuaded you against your better judgment,” added Janet pityingly, as Mina broke down in a burst of tears.

“There, child, take this, and don’t cry your eyes out,” interposed Cattledon, bringing in a beaten-up egg.

Cattledon was coming out uncommonly strong in the way of compassion, all her tartness gone. She certainly did not look with an eye of favour on elopements; but she was ready to take up Mina’s cause against the man who had deceived her. Cattledon hated the Pells: for Cattledon had been done out of fifty pounds at the time of old Pell’s failure, money she had rashly entrusted to him. She could not very well afford to lose it, and she had been bitter on the Pells, one and all, ever since.

That morning was destined to be one of elucidation. Mr. Tamlyn was in the surgery, saying a last word to Dr. Knox before the latter went out to visit his patients, when Lettice Lane marched in. She looked so fresh and innocent that three parts of Tamlyn’s suspicions of her melted away.

“Anything amiss at home?” asked he.

“No, sir,” replied Lettice, “I have only brought this note”—handing one in. “Madame St. Vincent told the butler to bring it; but his pains are worse this morning; and, as I chanced to be coming out at the moment, he asked me to leave it here for him.”

“Wait an instant,” said Mr. Tamlyn, as he opened the note.

It contained nothing of consequence. Madame St. Vincent had written to say that Lady Jenkins was pretty well, but had finished her medicine: perhaps Mr. Tamlyn would send her some more. Old Tamlyn’s injunction to wait an instant had been given in consequence of a sudden resolution he had then come to (as he phrased it in his mind), to “tackle” Lettice.

“Lettice Lane,” he began, winking at Dr. Knox, “your mistress’s state is giving us concern. She seems to be always sleeping.”

“She is nearly always dozing off, sir,” replied Lettice, her tone and looks open and honest as the day.

“Ay. I can’t quite come to the bottom of it,” returned old Tamlyn, making believe to be confidential. “To me, it looks just as though she took—took opiates.”

“Opiates, sir?” repeated Lettice, as if she hardly understood the word: while Dr. Knox, behind the desk, was glancing keenly at her from underneath his compressed eyebrows.

“Opium. Laudanum.”

Lettice shook her head. “No, sir, my mistress does not take anything of that sort, I am sure; we have nothing of the kind in the house. But Madame St. Vincent is for ever dosing her with brandy-and-water.”

“What?” shouted old Tamlyn.

“I have said a long while, sir, that I thought you ought to know it; I’ve said so to the housemaid. I don’t believe an hour hardly passes, day or night, but madame administers to her a drop of brandy-and-water. Half a wine-glass, maybe, or a full wine-glass, as the case may happen; and sometimes I know it’s pretty strong.”

“That’s it,” said Dr. Knox quietly: and a curious smile crossed his face.

Mr. Tamlyn sat down on the stool in consternation. “Brandy-and-water!” he repeated, more than once, “Perpetually dosed with brandy-and-water! And now, Lettice Lane, how is it you have not come here before to tell me of this?”

“I did not come to tell you now, sir,” returned Lettice. “Madame St. Vincent says that Lady Jenkins needs it: she seems to give it her for her good. It is only lately that I have doubted whether it can be right. I have not liked to say anything: servants don’t care to interfere. Ten times a-day she will give her these drops of cold brandy-and-water: and I know she gets up for the same purpose once or twice in the night.”

“Does Lady Jenkins take it without remonstrance?” asked Dr. Knox, speaking for the first time.

“She does, sir, now. At first she did not. Many a time I have heard my lady say, ‘Do you think so much brandy can be good for me, Patty? I feel so dull after it,’ and Madame St. Vincent has replied, that it is the only thing that can get her strength back and bring her round.”

“The jade!” spoke Dr. Knox, between his teeth. “And to assure us both that all the old lady took was a drop of it weak twice a-day at her meals! Lettice Lane,” he added aloud, and there was a great sternness in his tone, “you are to blame for not having spoken of this. A little longer silence, and it might have cost your mistress her life.” And Lettice went out in contrition.

“What can the woman’s motive be, for thus dosing her into stupidity?” spoke the one doctor to the other when they were shut in together.

“That: the dosing her into it,” said Dr. Knox.

“But the motive, Arnold?—the reason? She must have had a motive.”

“That remains to be found out.”

It turned out to be too true. The culprit was Madame St. Vincent. She had been administering these constant doses of brandy-and-water for months. Not giving enough at a time to put Lady Jenkins into a state of intoxication; only to reduce her to a chronic state of semi-stupidity.

Tod called me, as I tell you, a muff: first for not knowing Madame St. Vincent; and next for thinking to screen her. Of course this revelation of Lettice Lane’s had put a new complexion upon things. I left the matter with Tod, and he told the doctors at once: Madame St. Vincent was, or used to be, Martha Jane Pell, own sister to Captain Collinson the false.

III.

Quietly knocking at the door of Jenkins House this same sunny morning went three gentlemen: old Tamlyn, Mr. Lawrence, and Joseph Todhetley. Mr. Lawrence was a magistrate and ex-mayor; he had preceded the late Sir Daniel Jenkins in the civic chair, and was intimate with him as a brother. Just as old Tamlyn tackled Lettice, so they were now about to tackle Madame St. Vincent on the score of the brandy-and-water; and they had deemed it advisable to take Tod with them.

Lady Jenkins was better than usual; rather less stupid. She was seated with madame in the cheerful garden-room, its glass-doors standing open to the sunshine and the flowers. The visitors were cordially received; it was supposed they had only come to pay a morning visit. Madame St. Vincent sat behind a table in the corner, writing notes of invitation for a soirÉe, to be held that day week. Tod, who had his wits about him, went straight up to her. It must be remembered that they had not yet met.

“Ah! how are you?” cried he, holding out his hand. “Surprised to see you here.” And she turned white, and stared, uncertain how to take his words, or whether he had really recognized her, and bowed stiffly as to a stranger, and never put out her own hand in answer.

I cannot tell you much about the interview: Tod’s account to me was not very clear. Lady Jenkins began talking about Captain Collinson—that he had turned out to be some unworthy man of the name of Pell, and had endeavoured to kidnap poor little Mina. Charlotte Knox imparted the news to her that morning, in defiance of Madame St. Vincent, who had tried to prevent her. Madame had said it must be altogether some mistake, and that no doubt Captain Collinson would be able to explain: but she, Lady Jenkins, did not know. After that there was a pause; Lady Jenkins shut her eyes, and madame went on writing her notes.

It was old Tamlyn who opened the ball. He drew his chair nearer the old lady, and spoke out without circumlocution.

“What is this that we hear about your taking so much brandy-and-water?”

“Eh?” cried the old lady, opening her eyes. Madame paused in her writing, and looked up. Tamlyn waited for an answer.

“Lady Jenkins does not take much brandy-and-water,” cried madame.

“I am speaking to Lady Jenkins, madame,” returned old Tamlyn, severely: “be so kind as not to interfere. My dear lady, listen to me”—taking her hand; “I am come here with your life-long old friend, William Lawrence, to talk to you. We have reason to believe that you continually take, and have taken for some time past, small doses of brandy-and-water. Is it so?”

“Patty gives it me,” cried Lady Jenkins, looking first at them and then at Patty, in a helpless sort of manner.

“Just so: we know she does. But, are you aware that brandy-and-water, taken in this way, is so much poison?”

“Tell them, Patty, that you give it me for my good,” said the poor lady, in affectionate appeal.

“Yes, it is for your good, dear Lady Jenkins,” resentfully affirmed Madame St. Vincent, regarding the company with flashing eyes. “Does any one dare to suppose that I should give Lady Jenkins sufficient to hurt her? I may be allowed, I presume, as her ladyship’s close companion, constantly watching her, to be the best judge of what is proper for her to take.”

Well, a shindy ensued—as Tod called it—all of them talking altogether, except himself and poor Lady Jenkins: and madame defying every one and everything. They told her that she could no longer be trusted with Lady Jenkins; that she must leave the house that day; and when madame defied this with a double defiance, the magistrate intimated that he had come up to enforce the measure, if necessary, and he meant to stay there until she was gone.

She saw it was serious then, and the defiant tone changed. “What I have given Lady Jenkins has been for her good,” she said; “to do her good. But for being supported by a little brandy-and-water, the system could never have held out after that serious attack she had in Boulogne. I have prolonged her life.”

“No, madame, you have been doing your best to shorten her life,” corrected old Tamlyn. “A little brandy-and-water, as you term it, might have been good for her while she was recovering her strength, but you have gone beyond the little; you have made her life a constant lethargy; you would shortly have killed her. What your motive was, Heaven knows.”

“My motive was a kind one,” flashed madame. “Out of this house I will not go.”

So, upon that, they played their trump card, and informed Lady Jenkins, who was crying softly, that this lady was the sister of the impostor, Collinson. The very helplessness, the utter docility to which the treatment had reduced her, prevented her expressing (and most probably feeling) any dissent. She yielded passively to all, like a child, and told Patty that she must go, as her old friends said so.

A bitter pill for madame to take. But she could not help herself.

“You will be as well as ever in a little time,” Tamlyn said to Lady Jenkins. “You would have died, had this gone on: it must have induced some malady or other from which you could not have rallied.”

Madame St. Vincent went out of the house that afternoon, and Cattledon entered it. She had offered herself to Lady Jenkins for a few days in the emergency.

It was, perhaps, curious that I should meet Madame St. Vincent before she left the town. Janet was in trouble over a basket of butter and fowls that had been sent her by one of the country patients, and of which the railway people denied the arrival. I went again to the station in the afternoon to see whether they had news of it: and there, seated on the platform bench, her boxes around her, and waiting for the London train, was madame.

I showed myself as respectful to her as ever, for you can’t humiliate fallen people to their faces, telling her, in the pleasantest way I could, that I was sorry things had turned out so. The tone seemed to tell upon her, and she burst into tears. I never saw a woman so subdued in the space of a few hours.

“I have been treated shamefully, Johnny Ludlow,” she said, gulping down her sobs. “Day and night for the past nine months have I been about Lady Jenkins, wearing myself out in attendance on her. The poor old lady had learnt to love me and to depend upon me. I was like a daughter to her.”

“I dare say,” I answered, conveniently ignoring the dosing.

“And what I gave her, I gave her for the best,” went on madame. “It was for the best. People seventy years old need it. Their nerves and system require soothing: to induce sleep now and then is a boon to them. It was a boon to her, poor old thing. And this is my recompense!—turned from the house like a dog!”

“It does seem hard.”

“Seem! It is hard. I have had nothing but hardships all my life,” she continued, lifting her veil to wipe away the tears. “Where I am to go now, or how make a living, I know not. They told me I need not apply to Lady Jenkins for references: and ladies won’t engage a companion who has none.”

“Is your husband really dead?” I ventured to ask.

“My poor husband is really dead, Johnny Ludlow—I don’t know why you should imply a doubt of it. He left me nothing: he had nothing to leave. He was only a master in the college at BrÉtage—a place in the South of France—and he died, I verily believe, of poor living. We had not been married twelve months. I had a little baby, and that died. Oh, I assure you I have had my troubles.”

“How are—Mr. and Mrs. Clement-Pell?” I next asked, with hesitation. “And Conny?—and the rest of them?”

“Oh, they were well when I last heard,” she answered, slightingly. “I don’t hear often. Foreign postage is expensive. Conny was to have come here shortly on a visit.”

“Where is Gusty? Is——”

“I know nothing at all about my brothers,” she interrupted sharply. “And this, I suppose, is my train. Good-bye, Johnny Ludlow; you and I at least can part friends. You are always kind. I wish the world was like you.”

I saw her into the carriage—first-class—and her boxes into the van. And thus she disappeared from Lefford. And her brother, “Captain Collinson,” as we found later, had taken his departure for London by an early morning train, telling little Pink, his landlord, as he paid his week’s rent, that he was going up to attend a levee.

It was found that the rumour of his engagement to Miss Belmont was altogether untrue. Miss Belmont was rather indignant about it, freely saying that she was ten years his senior. He had never hinted at such a thing to her, and she should have stopped him if he had. We concluded that the report had been set afloat by himself, to take attention from his pursuit of Mina Knox.

Madame St. Vincent had feathered her nest. As the days went on, and Lady Jenkins grew clearer, better able to see a little into matters, she could not at all account for the money that had been drawn from the bank. Cheque after cheque had been presented and cashed; and not one-tenth of the money could have been spent upon home expenses. Lady Jenkins had been always signing cheques; she remembered that much; never so much as asking, in her loss of will, what they were needed for. “I want a cheque to-day, dear Lady Jenkins,” her companion would say, producing the cheque-book from her desk; and Lady Jenkins would docilely sign it. That a great portion of the proceeds had found their way to Mr. Fabian Pell was looked upon as a certainty.

And to obtaining this money might be traced the motive for dosing Lady Jenkins. Once let her intellect become clear, her will reassert itself, and the game would be stopped. Madame St. Vincent had also another scheme in her head—for the past month or two she had been trying to persuade Lady Jenkins to make a codicil to her will, leaving her a few thousand pounds. Lady Jenkins might have fallen blindly into that; but they had not as yet been able to agree upon the details: Madame St. Vincent urging that a lawyer should be called in from a distance; Lady Jenkins clinging to old Belford. That this codicil would have been made in time, and by the remote lawyer, there existed no doubt whatever.

Ah, well: it was a deep-laid plot altogether. And my visit to Lefford, with Tod’s later one, had served, under Heaven, to frustrate it.

Lady Jenkins grew rapidly better, now that she was no longer drugged. In a few days she was herself again. Cattledon came out amazingly strong in the way of care and kindness, and was gracious to every one, even to Lettice.

“She always forbade me to say that I took the brandy-and-water,” Lady Jenkins said to me one day when I was sitting with her under the laburnum tree on her lawn, talking of the past, her bright green silk dress and pink cap ribbons glistening in the sun. “She made my will hers. In other respects she was as kind as she could be to me.”

“That must have been part of her plan,” I answered. “It was the great kindness that won you to her. After that, she took care that you should have no will of your own.”

“And the poor thing might have been so happy with me had she only chosen to be straightforward, and not try to play tricks! I gave her a handsome salary, and new gowns besides; and I don’t suppose I should have forgotten her at my death.”

“Well, it is all over, dear Lady Jenkins, and you will be just as well and brisk as you used to be.”

“Not quite that, Johnny,” she said, shaking her head; “I cannot expect that. At seventy, grim old age is laying its hand upon us. What we need then, my dear,” she added, turning her kindly blue eyes upon me, in which the tears were gathering, “is to go to the mill to be ground young again. And that is a mill that does not exist in this world.”

“Ah no!”

“I thank God for the mercy He has shown me,” she continued, the tears overflowing. “I might have gone to the grave in the half-witted state to which I was reduced. And, Johnny, I often wonder, as I lie awake at night thinking, whether I should have been held responsible for it.”

The first use Lady Jenkins made of her liberty was to invite all her relations, the young nephews and nieces, up to dinner, as she used to do. Madame St. Vincent had set her face against these family entertainments, and they had fallen through. The ex-mayor, William Lawrence, and his good old wife, made part of the company, as did Dr. Knox and Janet. Lady Jenkins beamed on them once more from her place at the head of the table, and Tamlyn sat at the foot and served the big plum-pudding.

“Never more, I trust, shall I be estranged from you, my dears, until it pleases Heaven to bring about the final estrangement,” she said to the young people when they were leaving. And she gave them all a sovereign a-piece.

Cattledon could not remain on for ever. Miss Deveen wanted her: so Mina Knox went to stay at Jenkins House, until a suitable lady should be found to replace Madame St. Vincent. Upon that, Dan Jenkins was taken with an anxious solicitude for his aunt’s health, and was for ever finding his way up to inquire after it.

“You will never care to notice me again, Dan,” Mina said to him, with a swelling heart and throat, one day when he was tilting himself by her on the arm of the sofa.

“Shan’t I!” returned Dan.

“Oh, I am so ashamed of my folly; I feel more ashamed of it, day by day,” cried Mina, bursting into tears. “I shall never, never get over the mortification.”

“Won’t you!” added Dan.

“And I never liked him much: I think I dis-liked him. At first I did dislike him; only he kept saying how fond he was of me; and Madame St. Vincent was always praising him up. And you know he was all the fashion.”

“Quite so,” assented Dan.

“Don’t you think it would be almost as well if I were dead, Dan—for all the use I am likely to be to any one?”

“Almost, perhaps; not quite,” laughed Dan; and he suddenly stooped and kissed her.

That’s all. And now, at the time I write this, Dan Jenkins is a flourishing lawyer at Lefford, and Mina is his wife. Little feet patter up and down the staircase and along the passages that good old Lady Jenkins used to tread. She treads them no more. There was no mill to grind her young again here; but she is gone to that better land where such mills are not needed.

Her will was a just one. She left her property to her nephews and nieces; a substantial sum to each. Dan had Jenkins House in addition. But it is no longer Jenkins House; for he had that name taken off the entrance pillars forthwith, replacing it by the one that had been there before—Rose Bank.