"Was he here yesterday?"

"He was here last night. He called to tell us he was going to Westover on some business for his father. I suppose he wanted you to know."

"But you never thought of telling me. How selfish girls in love are!

They cannot think a thought beyond their own lover. I declare I was going without giving you my news,--the d.u.c.h.ess has a large dinner party on the first of March. The Tory ladies will wait in her rooms the reading of this famous Reform Bill that Lord John Russell is concocting, and there will be a great crowd. Kate, if I was you, I would wear your court dress. It is very unlikely that the Queen will receive at all this season."

"Perhaps we shall not be invited to the dinner."

"You certainly will be invited. I heard the list read, and as your name begins with 'A' it was almost the first. If Mr. Atheling does come to lunch, give him my respects and describe my pelisse to him."

She went away with this mocking message, and was driven first to a famous jeweller's, where she bought a sapphire band sufficiently like the one Lord Exham had lost to pa.s.s for it, if the view was cursory and at a distance. Kate's confidence had made one course exceedingly plain to Annabel. She said to herself as she drove through the city streets, "My best plan is evidently to arouse Squire Atheling's suspicions.

I will let him see the ring on my hand. I will lead him to think Piers gave it to me. He will of course make inquiries, and I wonder what Mrs.

Atheling and Kate will say. It is a pretty piece of confusion--and, if the matter goes too far, I reserve the power to play the good fairy and put all right. This is a complication I shall enjoy thoroughly, and I am sure, with nothing on earth but Reform and Revolution in my ears, I deserve some little private amus.e.m.e.nt. All I have to do is to be constantly ready for opportunities."

Opportunities, however, with Squire Atheling, were few and far between.

It was not until the day before the first of March she found one. On that afternoon she called at the Athelings, and found Mrs. and Miss Atheling out. The Squire was walking from the fire-place to the window, and from the window to the fire-place, and grumbling at their absence.

Miss Vyner's entrance diverted him for a few minutes; and as they were talking a servant brought in a small package. The Squire took it up, and laid it down, and then took it up again, and was evidently either anxious or curious concerning its contents.

"Why do you not open your package, Squire?" asked Annabel.

"Well, young lady, I am not going to act as if your presence was not entertainment enough and to spare."

"Nonsense! Please do not stand on ceremony with me. It may contain important papers--something relating to Church or State. I am only a young woman. Open it, Squire."

"Well, then, if you say so, I will open it," and he began fumbling at the well-tied string. Annabel saw her opportunity. In a moment she had slipped on to the forefinger of her right hand the lost ring, and the next moment she had gently pushed aside the Squire's hands, and was saying, "Let me unfasten the knots. I am cleverer at that work than you."

"To be sure you are. There is work little fingers do better than big ones, and this is that kind of a job. But I will get my knife and cut the knots; that is the best and quickest way."

He began to hunt in his pockets for his knife, but could not find it.

"Dobson never does put things where they ought to be," he said fretfully; and then he pulled the bell-rope for Dobson with a force that fully indicated his annoyance. In the mean time, Annabel was quietly untying the string, and the Squire naturally watched her efforts. He was complaining and scolding his servant and his womenkind, and Annabel did not heed him; but when he suddenly stopped speaking, in the middle of a sentence, she looked into his face. It expressed the blankest wonder and curiosity. His eyes were fixed upon her hands, and he would probably have asked her some inconvenient question if Dobson had not entered at the moment. Then Annabel retired. Dobson had taken the parcel in charge, and she excused herself from further delay.

"I have several things to do," she said, "and I shall only be in the way of the parcel and its contents. Tell Mrs. Atheling and Kate that I called, will you, Squire?"

"To be sure! To be sure, Miss Vyner," he answered; but his eyes were on the papers Dobson was unfolding, and his mind was vaguely wandering to the ring he had seen on her finger. When he had satisfied his curiosity concerning the papers, his thoughts returned with persistent wonder to it. "I'll wager my best hunter, yes, I'll wager _Flying Selma_ that was the ring I bought in Venice and gave to Maude. How did that girl get it? Maude would never sell it or give it away. Never! _Dal it!_ there is something queer in her having it. I must find out how it comes to pa.s.s."

When he arrived at this decision Mrs. Atheling came into the room. She was rosy and smiling, and put aside with sweet good nature the Squire's complaints about both her and Kitty being out of the house when he was in it. "Not a soul to say a word to me, or to see that I had a bit of comfortable eating," he said in a tone of injury.

"Never mind, John!"

"Oh, but I do mind! I mind a great deal, Maude."

"You see, it was Kitty wanted me. She had to have a new clasp to the pearl necklace your mother left her; and she was sure you would like me to choose it, so I went with her. I thought we should certainly be home before you got back."

"Well, never mind, then. Nothing suits me so much as to see Kitty suited. I hope you bought a clasp good enough for the necklace."

"I did not forget that she was going with you to-morrow night."

"But you are going too, Maude?"

"Nay, I am not. When I can shut my ears as easy as my eyes, I can afford to be less particular about the company I keep. I know beforehand what the women in that crowd will say about their own danger, and about the murmuring poor who won't starve in peace, and I know that I would be sure to answer them with a little bit of plain truth."

"And the truth is not always pleasant, eh, Maude?"

"In this case I'm sure it wouldn't be pleasant. So, then, the outside of Richmoor House is the best side for me."

"I must say I'm getting a bit tired myself of the Duke's masterful way, and of his everlasting talk about the 'n.o.ble memories of the past.'"

"Then tell him, John, that the n.o.ble hopes of the future are something better than the n.o.ble memories of the past. The country is in a bad condition as ever was. Something must be done, and done quickly."

"I'm saying nothing to the contrary, Maude. But even if Reform was right, it cannot be carried. We must drive the nail that will go. That is only good common-sense, Maude."

"Mark my words, John. Reform will _have_ to come, and better now than later. That which fools do in the end, wise men do in the beginning. I know, I know."

"On this subject thou knowest nothing whatever, Maude. Now, then, I am going to have a bit of sleep. But I will say thus far--as soon as ever I am sure that I am on a wrong road I won't go a step further.

John Atheling is not the man to carry a candle for the devil."

With these words he threw his bandana handkerchief over his head, adding, "He hoped now he had a 'right' to a bit of sleep." Then Mrs.

Atheling went softly out of the room. There was a tolerant smile on her face, for she was not deceived by the Squire's habit of dignifying his self-a.s.sertions and his self-indulgences with the name of "rights."

CHAPTER TENTH

TROUBLE COMES UNSUMMONED

Never had the ducal palace of Richmoor been more splendidly prepared for festivity than on the night of the first of March, 1831. And yet every guest present knew that it was not a festival, but a gathering of men and women moved by the gravest fears for the future. The long suites of parlours, brilliantly lighted, were crowded with peers and n.o.ble ladies, wearing, indeed, the smiles of conventional pleasure; but all of them eager to discuss the portentous circ.u.mstances by which they were environed.

Annabel stood at the right hand of the d.u.c.h.ess, but was strangely distrait and silent. Everything had gone wrong with her. It had been a day of calamity. She began it with a fret and a scold, and her maid Justine had been from that moment in a temper calculated to provoke to extremities her impatient mistress. Then her costume did not arrive till some hours after it was due; and when examined, it was found to be very unbecoming. She had been persuaded to select a pale blue satin, simply because she had tired of every other colour; and she was disgusted with the effect of its cold beauty against her olive-tinted skin. She wore out Justine's temper with the variety of her suggestions, and her angry impatience with every effort. The girl became sulkily silent, then defiantly silent, then, after a most unreasonable burst of anger, actively impertinent, so much so that she left Annabel only one way of retaliation--an instant dismissal. She lifted her purse pa.s.sionately, counted out the money due, and, pushing it contemptuously towards the girl, told her "to leave the house instantly."

To her utter amazement, Justine pushed back the money. "I will not take it," she said. "I have no intention of leaving the house until I see the ring in your possession--the ring in your purse, Miss--returned to the owner of it."

If Annabel had been struck to the ground, she could not have been more confounded and bewildered; and Justine saw and pushed her advantage.

"Miss knows," she continued, "that police detectives are watching night and day the innocent men whose duties are on this corridor.

Any hour some little thing may cause one of them to be suspected and arrested; and then who but I could save him from the gallows? No, Miss, I shall not leave till you give up the ring--till the real th--the real taker of it is known."

These words terrified Annabel. She felt her heart stop beating; a strange sickness overwhelmed her; she sunk speechless into a chair, and closed her eyes. With an attention utterly devoid of sympathy, Justine put between her lips a tea-spoonful of aniseed cordial which she brought from her own apartment.

In a few minutes Annabel recovered herself physically; but her prostration, and the hysterical mood which followed it, were admissions she could not by any future word, or act, contradict. She had been taken by surprise, and surrendered. If she had had but ten minutes to survey the situation, she would have defied it; but such an emergency had never occurred to her. Over and over again she had supposed every other likelihood of discovery; this one, never! She was at the mercy of her maid; but for the time being the maid was not inclined to extremities.

She only insisted that Annabel should use her influence to place the men under suspicion out of the danger of arrest; and when Annabel had explained, with a wretched little laugh, that the ring had been taken "as a means of forwarding her love-affair with Lord Exham,"

the maid a.s.sured her "she was on her side in that matter." Then she pocketed the sovereigns Annabel offered as a peace gift, and "hoped Miss would think no more of what she had said."

But Annabel could not dismiss the subject. Under her magnificent but singularly unbecoming gown, she carried a heart heavy with apprehension.

The shadow of the gallows, which Justine had evoked for the suspected culprit, fell upon her own consciousness. In those days, the most trifling theft was punished with death; and Annabel had a terror of that mysterious Law of which she was so profoundly ignorant. How it would regard her position, she could not imagine. Would even her confession and restoration exonerate her? In this respect, she suffered from fright, as an ignorant child suffers. Besides which, when the subject of "confession" came close to her, she felt that it was impossible.

Constantly she had flattered her conscience with this promise; but if it was to come to actuality, she thought she would rather die.

So it was with a wretched heart she took the place the d.u.c.h.ess had a.s.signed her at her own right hand. This position a.s.sociated her intimately with Lord Exham, and it was for this very reason the d.u.c.h.ess had decided upon it. She knew the value of the popular voice; she wished the popular voice to unite Lord Exham and her rich and beautiful ward; and she felt sure that their a.s.sociation at her right hand would give all the certainty necessary to such a belief. Heart-sick with her strange, new terror, Annabel stood in that brilliant throng. Just before the dinner hour, she saw Squire Atheling and Kate approaching to pay their respects to the d.u.c.h.ess. She saw also the quick, joyful lifting of Exham's eyelids, the bright flush of pleasure that gave sudden life to his pale cheeks, and the irrepressible gladness that made his voice musical, as he said softly, "How beautiful she is!"