She had enlarged on the enchanting spectacle, and the Squire had listened to her tale, not so much because he "cared about that sort of thing," but so as to a.s.sure himself that it was undoubtedly a true one, on both sides, and that Joan, especially, would not be likely to rebel a second time.

How providentially things worked out! Young Inverell was a _parti_ beside whom the eligibility of Bobby Trench paled perceptibly. Bobby Trench, socially and financially, would have been a good match. This would be a great one. If it would not "lift" the Clintons of Kencote, which the Squire was persuaded no marriage whatever could do, it would at least point their retiring worth. It would bring them into that prominence in which, to speak truth, they had always been somewhat lacking.

And he was a nice young fellow too, so the Squire had always heard; already beginning modestly to play the part in public affairs which was expected of the head of his house; untouched as yet by the staleness of the world, which had touched Bobby Trench so much to the Squire's disgust, until he had closed his senses to it; and a fitting mate in point of youth and good looks for a beautiful young girl like Joan, which Bobby Trench could hardly have been said to be, in spite of his ever youthful behaviour.

Really, it was highly gratifying. It just showed that there was no need to hurry these things. If Joan had taken the first person that came along--a young fellow he had never thought much of himself, but had allowed to take his chances out of old friendship to his father--she would have missed this. The child was a good child. She would do credit to any station. Countess of Inverell! Nothing in that, of course, but--well, really the whole thing was highly gratifying.

Why hadn't his wife written about it?

There was nothing in that. She always left out of her letters the things she might have known he would like to hear. Virginia was quite certain; and she could be trusted on such a subject, or indeed on any.

Well, one got through one's troubles. It was extraordinary how sunshine came after rain, or would be if one didn't believe in a wise Providence overruling everything for our good. A few months ago there had been that terrible affair, now buried and forgotten----

The brightness left his face as his thoughts touched on that subject.

It was buried, sadly, though perhaps mercifully, enough; but it was not forgotten. It was thought of as little as possible, but the debt still rankled--the debt that could not be paid. It came up at nights, when sleep tarried, which fortunately happened seldom. But time was adjusting the burden. It would not be felt much longer.

The thought of it now came only as a pa.s.sing shadow to heighten the sunshine of the present. In fact this gleam of sunshine seemed to remove the shadow finally. He had done, all that he could do, had kept back nothing, had satisfied his honour. An obligation to so old a friend as Sedbergh need not weigh on any man.

It would be ungrateful not to recognise how plainly things had been "ordered." Apart from the curious accidents of the problem--the fact that "the woman" had not been condemned for _that_ crime; that she had already paid her penalty; that the other woman had been connected in such a way that it had been possible to silence her by a perfectly innocent transaction, carried out by perfectly innocent people--facts surely beyond coincidence, and of themselves demanding belief in an overruling Providence--apart from all this there had been poor Susan's death, no longer demanding the least pretence of lamentation, but to be regarded as a clear sign that the account had been squared and no further penalty would be exacted.

And now there was this new satisfaction, as a further most bountiful token of favour. How was it possible that there could be those who did not believe in a G.o.d above, when signs were so plain to those who could read them? It would be churlish now not to throw off all disagreeable thoughts of the past, and not to take full pleasure in the brightness of present and future.

As the Squire came round a group of shrubs that masked the lawn from the carriage drive he saw a woman approaching the house. As he caught sight of her she caught sight of him, changed her course, and came towards him.

He stopped short with a gasp of dismay. It was Mrs. Amberley.

"Mr. Clinton," she said, "I have never had the pleasure of meeting you, but I expect you know who I am. I have come down from London on purpose to have a little talk with you."

She had altered in no way that he could have described. She was fashionably dressed, in a manner suitable for the country, her wonderful hair had not lost its l.u.s.tre, her face was still the beautiful mask of whatever lurked in secret behind it. Yet she seemed to him a thing of horror, degraded and stained for all the world to see. And even the world might have been aware of some subtle change.

Whether it was that her neat boots were slightly filmed with dust, or that her clothes, smart as they were, were not of the very latest; or that it was no outward sign, but the consciousness of disgrace affecting her bearing, however she might try to conceal it--whatever it was, it was there. This was a woman who had come down very low, knew that the world was against her, and would fight the world with no shame for what it could still withhold from her.

He stared at her open-mouthed, unable for the moment either to speak or think.

She laughed at him elaborately. "You don't seem very pleased to see me," she said. "May we go into the house and sit down? I have walked from the station, and am rather tired."

"No," he said quickly, reacting to his immediate impulse. "You will not enter my house."

She looked at him with careful insolence. "Shall we go into the churchyard?" she said, "and talk over Susan Clinton's grave?"

The infamous taunt brought him to himself. "Come this way," he said, and turned his back on her to stride off along a path between the shrubs.

She followed him for a few steps, and then, feeling probably that this rapid progress in his wake did not accord with her dignity, stopped and said, "Where are you taking me to, please? I haven't come here to look at your garden."

He turned sharply and faced her. "I am taking you to where we can be neither seen nor heard," he said, and waited for her to speak.

"Very well," she said. "That will suit me very well--for a _first_ conversation--as long as it is not too far, and I am not expected to race there."

He turned his back on her and went on again, but at a slower pace.

They went through a thick shrubbery and out on to a little sloping lawn at the edge of the lake, which was entirely surrounded by great rhododendrons. There was a boat-house here, and a garden seat, to which he motioned her.

She sat down, and looked up at him. "I am not going to talk to you standing over me like that," she said. "It will be giving you an unfair advantage."

He sat down on the same seat, as far away from her as possible.

"Well, what have you got to say for yourself?" she asked him, in much the same tone as a schoolmaster might have asked the question of an errant schoolboy.

He said nothing. He had nothing to say. His thoughts were still in a turmoil.

Perhaps silence was the best retort to her air of insolence. She had to find another opening.

"You call yourself a man of honour!" she said in a slow contemptuous voice. "You pay hush-money, so that the innocent may suffer, and the guilty go free."

"It's a lie," he said. "I paid no money. I refused to pay money."

"Ah, then you did know everything. It was what I could not be quite certain about. The story was confused. Thank you for clearing it up."

He felt himself trapped at the first opening of his mouth. He would need all his wits to cope with this shameless, cunning woman. He tried to break through her deliberate artifices. "What do you want?" he asked. "What have you come here for?"

"You didn't pay the money yourself?" she went on. "That would hardly have done, would it? You let somebody else pay it, and washed your hands of it, I suppose."

It had been his own phrase. Her chance lighting on it seemed to make her uncannily aware of everything that had pa.s.sed. How had she got hold of her information? He had not had time to think about that yet.

"I refused to pay anything," he repeated. "Nothing was paid to anybody who had anything to do with you. I refuse to discuss these affairs with you."

"Oh, do you?" she taunted him. "Will you refuse to discuss them when you are brought up on a charge of conspiracy? You will be allowed to do it through Counsel, of course. They allowed me Counsel, when I was brought up on a charge of stealing something that a member of your family stole. I wish I could have done without him. I should have liked to defend myself. But it will suit _you_. You can shelter behind him. You seem rather good at that."

"What do you want?" he asked her again. "What have you come here for?"

"To talk it over quietly," she said, with the same mocking intonation.

"Do you want to know how I found out about it all? You seem to have forgotten entirely that I _knew_ that somebody staying in the house at the same time that I was must have stolen the things. It wasn't very difficult, afterwards, to decide on the thief. I have a few friends still, Mr. Clinton, and I heard that your precious Susan, whom every one knew to have been head over ears in debt, had suddenly and miraculously become out of debt, and had money to throw about. I had enquiries made, and heard that the woman whom you bought--I beg your pardon, whom you made somebody else a cat's-paw to buy, so as to save your own skin, had been sent over to the other side of the water, to get her out of the way. It was the finger of Providence, I think, that led me to follow her up. I expect you have been thinking that Providence had been specially engaged in your interests; and it certainly did look like it--for a time."

Again the uncanny cognisance of his very thoughts! But this was only a very clever woman, who knew her man, and his type.

"I went over myself, and found her," she went on. "She was going West to make a start on the money that her poor fool of a husband thought had been given him for his own sweet sake. She didn't intend to undeceive him. At one time I had had an idea of going 'West' myself.

You see I had been hounded out of London for the crime that one of you Clintons had committed, and as you had so chivalrously left me to bear the burden of it, and hushed up the truth, instead of clearing my name, I didn't know then that I should be able to come back again. I wanted to get away as far as possible."

He was unendurably taunted. "Your name couldn't have been cleared," he said. "You were not condemned for that; it was for stealing the other thing; and that will stick to you still."

She affected bewilderment, and then enlightenment seemed to come to her, and she laughed. "Oh, that's it, is it?" she said. "Your mind seems to run so much in twists and curves that anyone who expects a straight sense of right and wrong in honourable men must be pardoned for being a little slow in following them. But I didn't steal that either, you know. The sainted Susan stole it as well as the necklace--she was an expert in such things--and this woman Clark told _my_ woman about it--the one who committed perjury at my trial, and is now going to suffer for it, if I can find her."

The sneer at the dead girl pierced something in him which set his brain clear. This was a wicked woman, and she was lying to him. "That's a likely story!" he said with rough contempt, and she winced for the first time, although, with his eyes on the ground, he did not mark it.

"It is one that will keep for the present," she said, instantly recovering her coolness. "Well, fortunately I was able to make friends with Susan's maid. It is a way I have with that sort of person, although it is true that my own brute of a woman gave me away."

"Yes, she gave you away," said the Squire, more quick-witted than ordinarily.

"Lied about me, I ought to have said," she corrected herself, with a blink of the eyelids. "I see I must be careful to choose my words.

Words mean so much with you, don't they? Acts so little. If you can say you haven't paid a bribe, it doesn't in the least matter that you have let it be done and taken advantage of it. Well, I made friends with her to begin with. She had just heard of Susan's death and wanted to talk about it. She couldn't keep her foolish mind off the connection between me and Susan, and spoke in such a way that I soon knew I had been right to follow her up. I drew her on--I have always been considered rather clever, you know--and before she knew she had done it she had let out her story. You may be sure I frightened her, when I could safely do so, into telling me the whole of it. I heard what a fright dear Humphrey was in--a nice young man that--came to my trial, I believe, jingling the stolen money in his pocket."