Cynthia was, however, acknowledged to have made in every other way a great success. Madame della Scala was delighted with her pupil, and quite forgot all the little disagreeables of the evening; while Cynthia, during their drive home, was as charming and as lively as she had ever been. When the carriage stopped at the quiet little house in Kensington, the weather had changed, and rain was falling rapidly. One of the servants was in waiting with an umbrella, ready to give an arm to Madame, who alighted first. Cynthia followed, scarcely noticing the man who stepped forward to assist her, until something prompted her suddenly to look at his face. Then she uttered an inarticulate exclamation.

"Yes, it is I," said Hubert. "I have been waiting to help you out. I don't know how I have offended you; but, whatever it is, forgive me, Cynthia--I can't bear your displeasure!"

"Nor I yours," she said, with a sob; and, under the umbrella that he was holding, she actually held up her face to be kissed.

Nobody saw the little ceremony of reconciliation. The next moment Cynthia was in the hall, having her dress shaken out and let down by a yawning maid's attentive hands, and the coachman had driven off, and the hall door was shut, and Hubert Lepel was out in the street, with a wall between him and his love. There were tears in Cynthia's eyes as she went wearily, her gaiety all departed, up to her room. Nobody suspected that the charming singer whose gaiety and audacity, as well as her beauty, had won all hearts that evening passed half the night in weeping on the hard floor--weeping over the fate that divided her from her lover. For ever since the day that she had learned from her father that Hubert Lepel was a cousin of the Vanes--more than ever now she knew that he was the man who had befriended her in her childhood--she felt it to be utterly impossible that she should marry him until he knew the truth; and the truth--that she was Westwood's daughter--would, she felt sure, part him from her for ever.

CHAPTER XXXII.

Early in the sweet June morning--sweet and fair although it brooded over London, the smokiest city in the world--Cynthia was again walking in Kensington Gardens. She had not gone far before she met her father, with whom she had made an appointment for that hour.

"Well, Cynthia, my girl?"

"I have come, you see, father."

"I hardly thought you'd get here so soon after your party-going last night," said her father. "You look pretty tired too. Well, my girl, I told you I'd been staying down at Beechfield."

"Yes; and I was terribly anxious about you all the time, father. It was such a daring thing to do! Suppose any one had suspected you?"

"Not much fear o' that!" said Westwood, a little scornfully. "Why, look at me! Am I like the man I was at Beechfield ten years ago? I was a sort of outcast then, having sunk from bad to worse through my despair when I lost your mother, Cynthia; but, now that I have a new coat on my back and money in my pocket, all through my luck in the States, not to speak of this white hair, which I shall keep to until I'm back in the West again, I'm a different man, and nobody ever thinks of suspecting me."

He was different, Cynthia noticed, in more than one respect--he was far less silent and morose than he used to be. Life in the West had brought out some unexpected reserves of decision and readiness of speech, and his success--his luck, as he sometimes called it--had cheered his spirits. He was defiant and he was often bitter still; but he was no longer downcast.

"They'd not have much chance if they did suspect me," he said, after a little pause; "if they thought that they'd got me again, they'd find their mistake. I'd put a bullet through my head afore ever I went back to Portland!"

"Oh, father, don't speak so!"

"Come, Cynthy, don't you pretend! You're a brave girl and a spirited one. Now wouldn't you yourself sooner die than be cooped up in a gaol, or set to work in a quarry with an armed warder watching you all day long--wouldn't you put an end to it, I ask you--being a brave girl and not a namby-pamby creature as hasn't got a will of her own, and don't know better than to stay where she's put--eh, Cynthia?"

"Don't speak quite so loud, father dear," said Cynthia--"there are people turning round to look at us. I don't know what I should do in those circumstances; perhaps, as you say, I should think it better to end it all." She looked aside as she spoke, for her dark eyes had filled with heavy tears. How she wished at that moment that she could "end it all" as easily as she said the words! "Sit down for a little time, will you, father?" she asked. "It is a warm morning, and I am rather tired."

She had another reason for wishing to sit down. She had observed that for some time a tall woman in black had been apparently regarding them with interest, following them at a little distance, slackening and quickening her pace in accordance with their own. The stranger was thickly veiled; and, when she saw that Cynthia and her father were walking towards a vacant seat, she turned in the same direction. There was nothing to prevent her from sitting down on the same bench, and either putting a stop to all private conversation or listening to what they had to say; but Cynthia was equal to the emergency. She turned her head and gave the woman a long look, half of inquiry, half of disdain, which seemed to overawe the intruder, who stood by the bench for a moment rather uncertainly. Then Cynthia touched her father's arm.

"Do you know this person?" she asked in a low voice, but one so clear that it must have reached the woman's ears.

"Know her?" said Westwood, starting and looking suspiciously at the black figure. "No, I don't know her, unless she's---- She's very much like a person staying with my landlady just now--a Miss Meldreth. I wonder---- Shall I speak to her, Cynthia?"

But the woman had already moved from her standing position by the bench, and was walking away as fast as she could conveniently go. She had fair hair and a fine figure, but her face could not be seen.

"It is very like," said Westwood, standing up and staring after her.

"She's been very friendly with me since I came; and I've had tea with her and Mrs. Gunn more than once. Strange to relate; she comes from Beechfield too. She's the daughter of old Mrs. Meldreth, who used to keep the sweetie-shop; don't you remember her?"

"Then she was watching you--following you! Oh, father, do be careful!"

"What should she be watching me for?" said Westwood, but with rather a troubled look upon his face. "I've never had aught to do with her."

"Did you hear of her at all at Beechfield?"

"There was a bit of gossip about her and her mother; they said that Mrs.

Vane at Beechfield Hall knew them and was kind to them. Some said that she paid them; but nobody knew what for."

"And she is lodging in the same house with you and following you about?

Then I'll tell you what she is, father--she is a spy of the Vanes. She suspects you and wants to put you in prison again. Oh, father, do change your lodgings, or go straight back to America! You have been in England a month, and it is very dangerous. You have nothing to stay for--nothing; and, if you like"--her voice sank almost to a whisper--"I will go back with you."

"Will you, Cynthy? There's my own good girl!" said her father, an unwonted sense of pleasure beaming in his eyes. "You're one of the right sort, you are, and you sha'n't regret it. But, as to danger, I don't see it. There's nobody can recognise me, as you are well aware; and what else have I to fear?" Cynthia had noted before that he was almost childishly vain of his disguise. She herself was not disposed to rely upon it with half so blind a confidence, for she knew how easily the secrets of "making-up" can be read by an experienced eye. "Besides, Miss Meldreth was lodging at Mrs. Gunn's before ever I went there--so that's a pure coincidence. If she'd come after I went down to Beechfield, there might be something in it. But it's an accidental thing."

"It may be accidental, and yet a source of danger," said Cynthia anxiously. "I wish you would go back to the States at once, father. I am quite ready to go. There is nothing to keep me in England now."

"Why, have you broken off with that young man?" said Westwood sharply.

"Not altogether." The remembrance of the previous night's kiss under the umbrella made Cynthia's cheeks burn red as she replied. "But since I know what you have told me--that he is a relative of the Vanes of Beechfield--I have determined that it cannot go on. He and his family would hate me if they knew. I cannot forget the past; I cannot forget what they did and said; and I do not see how I can marry a man who unjustly believes that my father was his kinsman's murderer." The fire came back to her eyes, the firmness to her voice, as she spoke.

Westwood watched her admiringly.

"Well spoke, my little girl--well spoke! I didn't think you had it in you--I didn't indeed! Let him go his way, and let us go ourn. I didn't tell you all that I might ha' done when I came back from Beechfield the other day, because I didn't rightly know whether you was with me or against me."

"With you--always with you, dear father!"

"And I was a little doubtful, so to speak, seeing as how you had taken up, although by accident, with a fellow belonging to the camp of my enemies. But now I'll tell you a little more. Has Mr. Lepel ever told you that he had a sister?"

"No."

"Well, he has; and, what's more, she's married to the old General--you remember him at Beechfield?"

"Yes."

"Maybe you remember her too--a very fair lady, as used to walk out with the little girl--Mr. Sydney Vane's little girl?"

Cynthia was silent for a moment.

"Yes," she said, at length--"I think I remember her."

"You've seen the child too?"

"Yes"--Cynthia's eyes softened; "I am sure I remember her."

"I'll tell you about her presently. I've got a notion in my head about these Lepels. Miss Lepel, as was, and Mr. Sydney Vane was in love with one another and about to run away from England when he was killed. I know that for a fact, so you needn't look so scared. They was on the point of an elopement when he died--I knew that all along; but, stupid-like, I never thought of putting two and two together and connecting it with his death. It just seemed a pity to throw shame and blame on the dead, seeing as how there was his wife and child to bear all the disgrace; and so I held my tongue."

"But how did you know, father?"

"By using my eyes and my ears," said Westwood briefly--"that's how I knew. They used to meet in that little plantation often enough. I've lain low in a dry ditch more than once when they were close by and heard their goings-on. They were going off next day, when Mr. Vane met with his deserts. And what I say is that somebody related to Miss Lepel found out the truth and shot him like a dog."

"Why did you not think of all this at the right time? Oh, father, it is too late now!"

"I'm not so sure of that. And, as for the gun--well, that often puzzled me; for I hadn't fired it myself that afternoon, Cynthy, and yet it had been fired--and that's what made part of the evidence against me. I'd been out that afternoon, and, coming home, who should I see in the distance but two or three gentlemen strolling along the road--Mr. Vane and the General and one or two strangers? Quick as thought, I laid my gun down and walked on as careless as you please. They met me--you know, that was a bit of the General's evidence, I looked back when I'd passed them, and I saw Mr. Sydney Vane separate himself from the other gentlemen and walk into the plantation. I did not like to go back just then; and so I waited. There was two or three ways of getting into the fir plantation, so I don't know who came into it across the fields, as anybody might have done either from the village or from the Hall. But presently I heard the report of a gun--two reports, as far as I remember; and then I saw Miss Lepel flying along the road--and I knew that she'd been in the plantation, any way. So, after watching a little while longer, I went back to the wood; and I found my gun pretty near where I had left it--only it had been moved and fired. So I took it up and walked away home."