The clerks were at a stand-still in the banking-house of Godolphin, Crosse, and Godolphin. A certain iron safe had to be opened, and the key was not to be found. There were duplicate keys to it; one of them was kept by Mr. Godolphin, the other by Mr. George. Mr. Hurde, the cashier, appealed to Isaac Hastings.

“Do you think it has not been left with Mrs. George Godolphin?”

“I’ll ask her,” replied Isaac, getting off his stool. “I don’t think it has: or she would have given it to me when she informed me of Mr. George Godolphin’s absence.”

He went into the dining-room: that pleasant room, which it was almost a shame to designate by the name. Maria was listlessly standing against the window-frame, plucking mechanically the fading blossoms of a geranium. She turned her head at the opening of the door, and saw her brother.

“Isaac, what time does the first train come in?”

“From what place?” inquired Isaac.

“Oh—from the Portsmouth direction. It was Portsmouth that Captain St. Aubyn was to embark from, was it not?”

“I don’t know anything about it,” replied Isaac. “Neither can I tell at what hours trains arrive from that direction. Maria, has Mr. George Godolphin left the key of the book-safe with you?”

“No,” was Maria’s answer. “I suppose he must have forgotten to do so. He has left it with me when he has gone away unexpectedly before, after banking-hours.”

Isaac returned to the rest of the clerks. The key was wanted badly, and it was decided that he should go up to Ashlydyat for Mr. Godolphin’s.

He took the nearest road to it. Down Crosse Street, and through the Ash-tree Walk. It was a place, as you have heard, especially shunned at night: it was not much frequented by day. Therefore, it was no surprise to Isaac Hastings that he did not, all through it, meet a single thing, either man or ghost. At the very end, however, on that same broken bench where Thomas Godolphin and his bodily agony had come to an anchor the previous night, sat Charlotte Pain.

She was in deep thought: deep perplexity; there was no mistaking that her countenance betrayed both: some might have fancied in deep pain, either bodily or mental. Pale she was not. Charlotte’s complexion was made up too fashionably for either red or white, born of emotion, to affect it, unless it might be emotion of a most extraordinary nature. Hands clenched, brow knit, lips drawn from her teeth, eyes staring on vacancy—Isaac Hastings could not avoid reading the signs, and he read them with surprise.

“Good morning, Mrs. Pain!” Charlotte started from the seat with a half scream. “What’s the use of startling one like that!” she fiercely exclaimed.

“I did not startle you intentionally,” replied Isaac. “You might have heard my footsteps had you not been so preoccupied. Did you think it was the ghost arriving?” he added, jestingly.

“Of course I did,” returned Charlotte, laughing, as she made an effort, and a successful one, to recover herself. “What do you do here this morning? Did you come to look after the ghost, or after me?”

“After neither,” replied Isaac, with more truth than gallantry. “Mr. George Godolphin has sent me up here.”

Now, in saying this, what Isaac meant to express was nothing more than that his coming up was caused by George Godolphin. Alluding of course to George’s forgetfulness in carrying off the key. Charlotte, however, took the words literally, and her eyes opened.

“Did George Godolphin not go last night?”

“Yes, he went. He forgot——”

“Then what can have brought him back so soon?” was her vehement interruption, not allowing Isaac time to conclude. “There’s no day train in from London yet.”

“Is there not?” was Isaac’s rejoinder, looking keenly at her.

“Why, of course there’s not: as you know, or ought to know. Besides, he could not get through the business he has gone upon and be back yet, unless he came by telegraph. He intended to leave by the eleven o’clock train from Paddington.”

She spoke rapidly, thoughtlessly, in her surprise. Her inward thought was, that to have gone to London, and returned again since the hour at which she parted from him the previous night, one way, at least, must have been accomplished on the telegraph wires. Had she taken a moment for reflection, she would not have so spoken. However familiar she might be with the affairs of Mr. George Godolphin, so much the more reason was there for her shunning open allusion to them.

“Who told you Mr. George Godolphin had gone to London, Mrs. Pain?” asked Isaac, after a pause.

“Do you think I did not know it? Better than you, Mr. Isaac, clever and wise as you deem yourself.”

“I pretend to be neither one nor the other with regard to the movements of Mr. George Godolphin,” was the reply of Isaac. “It is not my place to be so. I heard he had only gone a stage or two towards Portsmouth with a sick friend. Of course if you know he has gone to London, that is a different matter. I can’t stay now, Mrs. Pain: I have a message for Mr. Godolphin.”

“Then he is not back again?” cried Charlotte, as Isaac was going through the turnstile.

“Not yet.”

Charlotte looked after him as he went out of sight, and bit her lips. A doubt was flashing over her—called up by Isaac’s last observation—as to whether she had done right to allude to London. When George had been with her, discussing it, he had wondered what excuse he should invent for taking the journey, and Charlotte never supposed but that it would be known. The bright idea of starting on a benevolent excursion towards Portsmouth, had been an after-thought of Mr. George’s as he journeyed home.

“If I have done mischief,” Charlotte was beginning slowly to murmur. But she threw back her head defiantly. “Oh, nonsense about mischief! What does it matter? George can battle it out.”

Thomas Godolphin was at breakfast in his own room, his face, pale and worn, bearing traces of suffering. Isaac Hastings was admitted, and explained the cause of his appearance. Thomas received the news of George’s absence with considerable surprise.

“He left me late last night—in the night, I may say—to return home. He said nothing then of his intention to be absent. Where do you say he has gone to?”

“Maria delivered a message to me, sir, from him, to the effect that he had accompanied a sick friend, Captain St. Aubyn, a few miles on the Portsmouth line,” replied Isaac. “But Mrs. Pain, whom I have just met, says it is to London that he has gone: she says she knows it.”

Thomas Godolphin made no further comment. It may not have pleased him to remark upon any information touching his brother furnished by Mrs. Charlotte Pain. He handed the key to Isaac, and said he should speedily follow him to the Bank. It had not been Thomas Godolphin’s intention to go to the Bank that day, but hearing of George’s absence caused him to proceed thither. He ordered his carriage, and got there almost as soon as Isaac, bearing an invitation to Maria from Janet.

A quarter of an hour given to business in the manager’s room, George’s, and then Thomas Godolphin went to Maria. She was seated now near the window, in her pretty morning dress, engaged in some sort of fancy work. In her gentle face, her soft sweet eyes, Thomas would sometimes fancy he read a resemblance to his lost Ethel. Thomas greatly loved and esteemed Maria.

She rose to receive him, holding out her hand that he might take it as she quietly but earnestly made inquiries about his state of health. Not so well as he was yesterday, Thomas answered. He supposed George had given her the account of their meeting the previous night, under the ash-trees, and of his, Thomas’s illness.

Maria had not heard it. “How could George have been near the ash-trees last night?” she, wondering, inquired. “Do you mean last night, Thomas?”

“Yes, last night, after I left you. I was taken ill in going home——”

Miss Meta, who had been fluttering about the terrace, fluttered in to see who might be talking to her mamma, and interrupted the conclusion of the sentence. “Uncle Thomas! Uncle Thomas!” cried she, joyously. They were great friends.

Her entrance diverted the channel of their conversation. Thomas took the child on his knee, fondly stroking her golden curls. Thomas remembered to have stroked just such golden curls on the head of his brother George, when he, George, was a little fellow of Meta’s age.

“Janet bade me ask if you would go to Ashlydyat for the day, Maria,” said he. “She——” “Meta go too,” put in the little quick tongue. “Meta go too, Uncle Thomas.”

“Will Meta be good?—and not run away from Aunt Janet, and lose herself in the passages, as she did last time?” said Thomas, with a smile.

“Meta very good,” was the answer, given with an oracular nod of promise. Thomas turned to Maria.

“Where is it that George has gone?” he asked. “With St. Aubyn? or to London?”

“Not to London,” replied Maria. “He has gone with Captain St. Aubyn. What made you think of London?”

“Isaac said Mrs. Pain thought he had gone to London,” replied Thomas. “It was some mistake, I suppose. But I wonder he should go out to-day for anything less urgent than necessity. The Bank wants him.”

Maria was soon to be convinced that she need not have spoken so surely about George’s having gone with Captain St. Aubyn. When she and Meta, with Margery—who would have thought herself grievously wronged had she not been one of the party to Ashlydyat—were starting, Thomas came out of the Bank parlour and accompanied them to the door. While standing there, the porter of the Bell Inn happened to pass, and Maria stopped him to inquire whether Captain St. Aubyn was better when he left.

“He was not at all well, ma’am,” was the man’s answer: “hardly fit to travel. He had been in a sort of fever all the night.”

“And my master, I suppose, must take and sit up with him!” put in Margery, without ceremony, in a resentful tone.

“No, he didn’t,” said the man, looking at Margery, as if he did not understand her. “It was my turn to be up last night, and I was in and out of his room four or five times: but nobody stayed with him.”

“But Mr. George Godolphin went with Captain St. Aubyn this morning?” said Thomas Godolphin to the man.

“Went where, sir?”

“Started with him. On his journey.”

“No, sir; not that I know of. I did not see him at the station.”

Maria thought the man must be stupid. “Mr. George Godolphin returned to the Bell between eleven and twelve last night,” she explained. “And he intended to accompany Captain St. Aubyn this morning on his journey.”

“Mr. George was at the Bell for a few minutes just after eleven, ma’am. It was me that let him out. He did not come back again. And I don’t think he was at the train this morning. I am sure he was not with Captain St. Aubyn, for I never left the captain till the train started.”

Nothing further was said to the porter. He touched his hat, and went his way. Maria’s face wore an air of bewilderment. Thomas smiled at her.

“I think it is you who must be mistaken, Maria,” said he. “Depend upon it, Mrs. Pain is right: he has gone to London.”

“But why should he go to London without telling me?” debated Maria. “Why say he was going with Captain St. Aubyn?” Thomas could offer no opinion upon the subject. Miss Meta began to stamp her pretty shoes, and to drag her mamma by the hand. She was impatient to depart.

They chose the way by the lonely Ash-tree Walk. It was pleasant on a sunny day: sunshine scares away ghosts: and it was also the nearest. As they were turning into it, they met Charlotte Pain. Maria, simple-hearted and straightforward, never casting a suspicion to—to anything undesirable—spoke at once of the uncertainty she was in, as to her husband.

“Why do you think he has gone to London?” she asked.

“I know he has,” replied Charlotte. “He told me he was going there.”

“But he told me he was only going with Captain St. Aubyn,” returned Maria, a doubtful sound in her voice.

“Oh, my dear, gentlemen do not find it always convenient to keep their wives au courant of their little affairs.”

Had it been salvation to her, Charlotte could not have helped launching that shaft at Maria Godolphin. No; not even regard for George’s secrets stopped her. She had done the mischief by speaking to Isaac, and this opportunity was too glorious to be missed, so she braved it out. Had Charlotte dared—for her own sake—she could have sent forth an unlimited number of poisoned arrows daily at George Godolphin’s wife: and she would have relished the sport amazingly. She sailed off: a curiously conspicuous smile of triumph in her eyes as they were bent on Maria, her parting movement being a graciously condescending nod to the child.

Maria was recalled to her senses by Margery. The woman was gazing after Charlotte with a dark, strange look: a look that Maria understood as little as she understood Charlotte’s triumphant one. Margery caught the eye of her mistress upon her, and smoothed her face with a short cough.

“I’m just taking the pattern of her jacket, ma’am. It matches so bravely with the hat. I wonder what the world will come to next? The men will take to women’s clothes, I suppose, now the women have taken to men’s.”

Mr. George—as you may remember—missed his train. And Mr. George debated whether he should order a special. Two reasons withheld him. One was, that his arriving at Prior’s Ash by a special train might excite comment; the other, that a special train was expensive; and of late Mr. George Godolphin had not had any too much ready money to spare. He waited for the next ordinary train, and that deposited him at Prior’s Ash at seven o’clock.

He proceeded home at once. The Bank was closed for the evening. Pierce admitted his master, who went into the dining-room. No sign of dinner; no signs of occupation.

“My mistress is at Ashlydyat, sir. She went up this morning with Miss Meta and Margery. You would like dinner, sir, would you not?”

“I don’t much care for it,” responded George. “Anything will do. Has Mr. Godolphin been at the Bank to-day?”

“Yes, sir. He has been here all day, I think?”

George went into the Bank parlour, then to other of the business rooms. He was looking about for letters: he was looking at books: altogether he seemed to be busy. Presently he came out and called Pierce.

“I want a light.”

Pierce brought it. “I shall be engaged here for half an hour,” said his master. “Should any one call, I cannot be disturbed: under any pretence, you understand.”

“Very well, sir,” replied Pierce, as he withdrew. And George locked the intervening door between the house and the Bank, and took out the key.

He turned into a passage and went diving down a few stairs, the light in his hand; selected one of several keys which he had brought with him, and opened the door of a dry-vaulted room. It was the strong-room of the Bank, secure and fireproof.

“Safe number three, on right,” he read, consulting a bit of paper on which he had copied down the words in pencil upstairs. “Number three? Then it must be this one.”

Taking another of the keys, he put it into the lock. Turned it, and turned it, and—could not open the lock. George snatched it out, and read the label. “Key of safe number two.”

“What an idiot I am! I have brought the wrong key!”

He went up again, grumbling at his stupidity, opened the cupboard where the keys were kept, and looked for the right one. Number three was the one he wanted. And number three was not there.

George stood transfixed. He had custody of the keys. No other person had the power of approaching the place they were guarded in: except his brother. Had the Bank itself disappeared, George Godolphin could not have been much more astonished than at the disappearance of this key. Until this moment, this discovery of its absence, he would have been ready to swear that there it was, before all the judges in the land.

He tossed the keys here; he tossed them there; little heeding how he misplaced them. George became convinced that the Fates were dead against him, in spiriting away, just because he wanted it, this particular key. That no one could have touched it except Thomas, he knew: and why he should have done so, George could not imagine. He could not imagine where it was, or could be, at the present moment. Had Thomas required it to visit the safe, he was far too exact, too methodical, not to return it to its place again.

A quarter of an hour given to hunting, to thinking—and the thinking was not entirely agreeable thinking—and George gave it up in despair.

“I must wait until to-morrow,” was his conclusion. “If Thomas has carried it away with him, through forgetfulness, he will find it out and replace it then.”

He was closing the cupboard door, when something arrested it on its lower shelf, so that it would not close. Bringing the light inside he found—the missing key. George himself must have dropped it there on first opening the cupboard. With a suppressed shout of delight he snatched it up. A shout of delight! Better that George Godolphin had broken into a wail of lamentation! Another moment, and he was going down the stairs to the strong-room, key in hand. Safe number three, on the right, was unlocked without trouble now. In that safe there were some tin boxes, on one of which was inscribed “Lord Averil.” Selecting another and a smaller key from those he held, George opened this.

It was full of papers. George looked them rapidly over with the quick eye of one accustomed to the work, and drew forth one of them. Rather a bulky parcel, some writing upon it. This he thrust into his pocket, and began putting the rest in order. Had a mirror been held before him at that moment, it would have reflected a face utterly colourless. He returned to the office.

Enclosing the packet in a stout envelope, which he directed, he went out, and dropped it into the post-office at the opposite corner of Crosse Street. Very soon he was on his way to Lady Godolphin’s Folly, bearing with him the small parcel sent by Mrs. Verrall—a sufficient excuse for calling there, had George required an excuse. Which he did not.

It was a light night; as it had been the previous night, though the moon was not yet very high. He gained the turnstile at the end of the Ash-tree Walk—where he had been startled by the apparition of Thomas, and where Isaac Hastings had seen Charlotte Pain that morning—and turned into the open way to the right. A few paces more, and he struck into the narrow pathway which would lead him through the grove of trees, leaving Ashlydyat and its approaches to the left.

Did George Godolphin love the darkness, that he should choose that way? Last night and again to-night he had preferred it. It was most unusual for any one to approach the Folly by that obscure path. A few paces round, and he would have skirted the thicket, would have gone on to the Folly in the bright, open moonlight. Possibly George scarcely noticed that he chose it: full of thought, was he, just then.

He went along with his head down. What were his reflections? Was he wishing that he could undo the deeds of the last hour—replace in that tin case what he had taken from it? Was he wishing that he could undo the deeds of the last few years—be again a man without a cloud on his brow, a heavier cloud on his heart? It was too late: he could recall neither the one nor the other. The deed was already on its way to London; the years had rolled into the awful Past, with its doings, bad and good, recorded on high.

What was that? George lifted his head and his ears. A murmur of suppressed voices, angry voices, too, sounded near him, in one of which George thought he recognized the tones of Charlotte Pain. He went through to an intersecting path, so narrow that one person could with difficulty walk down it, just as a scream rang out on the night air.

Panting, scared, breathless, her face distorted with fear or passion, as much as George could see of it in the shaded light, her gauze dress torn by every tree with which it came in contact, flying down the narrow pathway, came Charlotte Pain. And—unless George Godolphin was strangely mistaken—some one else was flying in equal terror in the opposite direction, as if they had just parted.

“Charlotte! What is it? Who has alarmed you?”

In the moment’s first impulse he caught hold of her to protect her; in the second, he loosed his hold, and made after the other fugitive. The impression upon George’s mind was, that some one, perhaps a stranger, had met Charlotte, and frightened her with rude words.

But Charlotte was as swift as he. She flung her hands around George, and held him there. Strong hands they always were: doubly strong in that moment of agitation. George could not unclasp them: unless he had used violence.

“Stay where you are! Stay where you are, for the love of Heaven!” she gasped. “You must not go.”

“What is all this? What is the matter?” he asked in surprise.

She made no other answer. She clung to him with all her weight of strength, her arms and hands straining with the effort, reiterating wildly, “You must not go! you must not go!”

“Nay, I don’t care to go,” replied George: “it was for your sake I was following. Be calm, Charlotte: there’s no necessity for this agitation.”

She went on, down the narrow pathway, drawing him with her. The broader path gained—though that also was but a narrow one—she put her arm within his, and turned towards the house. George could see her white frightened face better now, and all the tricks and cosmetics invented could not hide its ghastliness; he felt her heaving pulses; he heard her beating heart.

Bending down to her, he spoke with a soothing whisper. “Tell me what it was that terrified you.”

She would not answer. She only pressed his arm with a tighter pressure, lest he might break from her again in pursuit; she hurried onwards with a quicker step. Skirting round the trees, which before the house made a half circle, Charlotte came to the end, and then darted rapidly across the lawn to the terrace and into the house by one of the windows. He followed her.

Her first movement was to close the shutters and bar them: her next to sit down on the nearest chair. Ill as she looked, George could scarcely forbear a smile at her gauze dress: the bottom of its skirt was in shreds.

“Will you let me get you something, Charlotte? Or ring for it?”

“I don’t want anything,” she answered. “I shall be all right directly. How could you frighten me so?”

“I frighten you!” returned George. “It was not I who frightened you.”

“Indeed it was. You and no one else. Did you not hear me scream?”

“I did.”

“It was at you, rustling through the trees,” persisted Charlotte. “I had gone out to see if the air would relieve this horrid headache, which has been upon me since last night and won’t go away. I strolled into the thicket, thinking all sorts of lonely things, never suspecting that you or any one else could be near me. I wonder I did not faint, as well as scream.”

“Charlotte, what nonsense! You were whispering angrily with some one; some one who escaped in the opposite direction. Who was it?” “I saw no one; I heard no one. Neither was I whispering.”

He looked at her intently. That she was telling an untruth he believed, for he felt positive that some second person had been there. “Why did you stop me, then, when I would have gone in pursuit?”

“It was your fault for attempting to leave me,” was Charlotte’s answer. “I would not have remained alone for a house full of gold.”

“I suppose it is some secret. I think, whatever it may be, Charlotte, you might trust me.” He spoke significantly, a stress on the last word. Charlotte rose from her seat.

“So I would,” she said, “were there anything to confide. Just look at me! My dress is ruined.”

“You should take it up if you go amidst clumsy trees, whose rough trunks nearly meet.”

“I had it up—until you came,” returned Charlotte, jumping upon a chair that she might survey it in one of the side glasses. “You startled me so that I dropped it. I might have it joined, and a lace flounce put upon it,” she mused. “It cost a great deal of money, did this dress, I can tell you, Mr. George.”

She jumped off the chair again, and George produced the packet confided to him by Mrs. Verrall.

“I promised her that you should have it to-night,” he said. “Hence my unfortunate appearance here, which it seems has so startled you.”

“Oh, that’s over now. When did you get back again?”

“By the seven o’clock train. I saw Verrall.”

“Well?”

“It’s not well. It’s ill. Do you know what I begin to suspect at times?—That Verrall and every one else is playing me false. I am sick of the world.”

“No, he is not, George. If I thought he were, I’d tell you so. I would, on my sacred word of honour. It is not likely that he is. When we are in a bilious mood, everything wears to us a jaundiced tinge. You are in one to-night.”