The gay London crowd that was accustomed to pa.s.s continuously within a stone's throw of its walls, without giving a thought to those dubious stories of the underworld which were daily elucidated there, had made of it the centre of their interest this morning. Many more than could be accommodated had sought for admission, in order to witness a scene in which the parts would be taken, not by the squalid professionals of crime, but by amateurs of their own high standing. The seedy loafers who were accustomed to congregate there had been shouldered out by a fashionable crowd, amongst which the actors who were to take part in the play found themselves the objects of attentions which some of them could well have dispensed with.

Joan sat between her father and mother, outwardly subdued, inwardly deeply interested. Behind the natural shrinking of a young girl, compelled to stand up and be questioned in public, there was the pluck of her race to support her. It would not be worse than having a tooth stopped, and that prospect had never deterred her from appreciation of the ill.u.s.trated papers in the dentist's waiting-room. So now she sat absorbed by the expectation of what was about to happen, and felt exactly as if she were waiting for the curtain to go up on the first scene of a play she eagerly wanted to see.

She had almost come to feel as if she had been brought up to London to be accused of a crime herself. Her father had been very trying, continually harping back upon that old grievance of her having gone to Brummels in the first instance, and adding to it irritable censure of her fault in unburdening herself to Bobby Trench without consulting him beforehand. She held herself free of offence on either count, but had diplomatically refrained from a.s.serting her innocence, to avoid still further arraignment. She had been inundated with instructions, often contradictory, as to how she should act and speak in the ordeal that lay before her; and if she had been of a nervous temperament might well have been driven into a panic long before she had come within measurable distance of undergoing it, and thus have acquitted herself in such a way as to draw an entirely new range of rebukes upon her head. Her mother had simply told her that she must think before she said anything, and not say more than was necessary; and her uncle, the Judge, at whose house they were staying, had repeated much the same advice, and had made light of what she would have to undergo. So, with her mind not greatly disturbed on that score, she felt a sense of relief at being now beyond her father's fussy attempts to blame and direct her at the same time, and able to turn her mind to the interests at hand.

The Squire would probably, even now, have been at her ear with repet.i.tions of oft-given advice had not his own ear been engaged by Lord Sedbergh, who sat on the other side of him.

Lord Sedbergh was an amiable, easy-going n.o.bleman, not without some force of character, but too well off and indolent to care to exercise it in opposition to the society in which circ.u.mstances compelled him to move. He and the Squire had been friends at Eton, and also at Cambridge, after which Lord Sedbergh had embraced a diplomatic career, until such time as he had succeeded to the family honours, while Edward Clinton, after a brief period of metropolitan glory as a cornet in the Royal Horse Guards, had married early and settled down to a life of undiluted squiredom. The two had actually never met for over thirty years, and were now discovering that their youthful intimacy had not entirely evaporated during that period. At a moment more free from preoccupation they would have embarked on reminiscences which would have shed considerable warmth on this late meeting; and even as it was the Squire felt that his old friend was still a friend, and that it was not such a bad thing after all to be in a position to lend strength to his just cause.

"That's a very charming girl of yours, Edward," Lord Sedbergh was saying. "Bright and clever and pretty without being spoilt, as young women so quickly are now-a-days. We made great friends, she and I, when she stayed with us. I wish we could have spared her this, but I don't think she will be much bothered. They are bound to send the case for trial, and I should think the lady would reserve any defence she may have thought of putting up. Still, I don't like to see young girls brought into a business of this sort, and if we could have done without little Joan's evidence I should have been pleased."

The Squire was soothed by the expression of this very proper spirit, and after a little further conversation was even inclined to think with less annoyance of Joan's disastrous visit to Brummels, since the owner of that house was apparently sane and right-minded, whatever might be said of his family and their a.s.sociates.

"My boy Bobby," said Lord Sedbergh, "has thrown himself into clearing this up heart and soul. He has a head on his shoulders, and I doubt if we should have been in the position we are if it hadn't been for him."

But the Squire was still incensed against Bobby Trench, and was not prepared to give him credit for being anything but the shallow-pated young fool with the over-free manners who had figured so frequently of late in his diatribes. He might have given some expression to this view of his friend's son, for he had not been accustomed in those early years of comradeship to hold back his opinions, and he was getting to feel more than ever that time and absence had wrought little change between them. But at this moment the curtain rang up for the play, and his attention was diverted.

There was something of a sensation when Mrs. Amberley stood up before the Court ready to meet her accusers. The Squire's face, as he set eyes upon her for the first time, expressed surprise, condemnation, and disgust. The surprise was at the appearance of a woman of striking if somewhat strange and to him repellent beauty, whose eyes and cheeks flamed indignant protest against her situation, when he had expected to see some sort of haggard siren in an att.i.tude combined of shame and impudence. The condemnation was directed against her air of arrogant scorn, and the bold way in which she looked round upon the a.s.sembled throng, allowing her gaze to rest upon those who had brought her there in such a way that she seemed to be the accuser and they the accused, and Lady Sedbergh for one dropped her eyes, unable to meet it. The disgust was at her appearance and attire, which seemed to the Squire a bold flaunting of impudent wickedness in face of highly-placed respectability, as represented by the wives of people like himself, who were not ashamed to show the years which the Almighty had caused to pa.s.s over their heads, and wore clothes which might indicate their rank, but were not intended to exhibit the unholy seductions of s.e.x.

Joan, with the merciless arrogance of youth, had said that Mrs.

Amberley had struck her as being old. She would not have said so if she had seen her now for the first time. Whether it was owing to art, or to the stimulating flame of her indignation, her face showed none of the ravages of years. If that was owing to art alone, it was supreme art, for on a skin that was almost ivory in its pallor the flush stood, not crudely contrasted, but as if a rare variant of that strange whiteness. The great ma.s.ses of her dull red hair even Lady Sedbergh, now violently antagonistic to her, must have acknowledged herself familiar with from before a time when art would have been brought to their production, whatever share it may have had now in preserving their arresting effect. Her figure, in a gown of clear green, had all the slim suppleness of youth; her great black hat with its heavy plumes, might have been worn by Joan herself. And yet, if she did not look old, or even middle-aged, still less did she look young. Her eager l.u.s.trous eyes had seen the weariness of life as well as its consuming pleasures, and could not hide their knowledge; the lines of her face, delicate enough, were not those of youth.

When the preliminaries had been gone through, Lady Sedbergh had to tell her story, which she did with a jumpy loquacity that seemed to indicate that whatever benefit she had obtained from her late rest-cure had by this time evaporated.

The gist of it was that she and Mrs. Amberley had been discussing jewel robberies, and Mrs. Amberley had said that no place was safe for jewels if a clever thief was determined to get hold of them. They had been sitting by the morning-room fire, and the hiding-place in which she had always kept her own more valuable jewels was just at her side. She had not been able to refrain from mentioning it, and showing, under a promise of secrecy, where it was. You pressed a spring in the panelling, and found a recess in the stone of the thick wall behind.

That might well have been discovered by chance; but what no one who did not know of the secret would expect was that, by turning one of the solid-looking stones on a pivot, a further receptacle was disclosed.

No one had known of this but herself and husband, until she had told Mrs. Amberley.

She was accustomed to carry her more valuable jewels with her wherever she went, especially the pearl necklace, and the diamond star, which had also been stolen. This she valued for sentimental reasons, which she did not disclose to the Court. They were both in the secret receptacle when she showed it to Mrs. Amberley, as well as a few other cases containing more or less valuable jewels, none of which had been taken.

It was on the day before her party was to break up that she had showed Mrs. Amberley her hiding-place. She had not worn any of the jewels she had put there that evening, nor visited it again until a month later, when she was about to return to London. Then she had missed the necklace and the star. She had sent a telegram to her husband, who had come down at once, and after hearing her story had gone to see Mrs.

Amberley with her. Neither of them had any doubt that she was the only person who could possibly have taken the jewels, as she was the only person who knew where they were kept.

"Have you any questions to ask of the witness?"

"Yes."

Mrs. Amberley spoke in a low-pitched vibrating voice. She was completely at her ease, and the contemptuous tone in which she asked her questions, and the significant pauses which she made after each confused voluble reply, not commenting upon it, but pa.s.sing on to the next question, would have been effective if she had been a skilled criminal lawyer, and was much more so considering what she was and what she had at stake.

"We have been intimate friends all our lives, you and I, haven't we?"

Lady Sedbergh admitted it, but explained that she would never have made an intimate friend of anyone who would behave in that way, if she had known what she was really like.

She was permitted to have her say out, with those scornful eyes fixed on her, until she trailed off into ineffective silence, when the next question came.

"What was the first thing that I said to you when you had shown me the cupboard, and shut it up again?"

It needed more than one intervention on the part of the magistrate before it was elicited that Mrs. Amberley had said, "Well, now, if anything happens you can't accuse me. You would know I should be the last person." Lady Sedbergh volunteered the additional information that she had remembered those words, and even repeated them to her husband, but added that she put them down to Mrs. Amberley's cunning.

"But isn't it true that if I had stolen your necklace I should have known positively that you would have suspected me at once?"

No volubility would disguise the truth of that, and it had what weight it deserved.

Mrs. Amberley asked no more questions, but her solicitor cross-examined Lady Sedbergh as to the means she had taken to preserve the knowledge of the hiding-place from her own maid, for instance, or from the other servants of the house. He made it appear rather absurd that in a great house, overrun with servants, like Brummels, she could always have carried cases of jewels to and fro without being observed, or that her own maid would have had no curiosity as to where she kept them. The poor lady explained eagerly that she seldom wore the things she kept in her hiding-place when she was in the country, and that there was a safe in her husband's room in which she was supposed to keep what valuables she did not keep upstairs; but she explained so much and so incoherently that it had small effect in view of his persistence. It did seem rather absurd to everybody when her cross-examination was over, that anyone so foolish as she should have been able for so long to keep such a secret from everybody about her, especially in view of the irresponsible and causeless way in which she was shown finally to have let it out. If the case had rested on her testimony alone, Mrs.

Amberley would have been acquitted, with hardly an additional stain on her character.

Joan, standing up bravely in her fresh girlhood to tell her story, was far more damaging. Between Mrs. Amberley, completely self-possessed, and showing indignation only by the vibrations of her low voice, and Lady Sedbergh, with her flurried, rather pathetic efforts to put herself everywhere in the right, the advantage was on the side of the accused. She had no such foil in the frank bearing of the young girl, whose delicate bloom contrasted with her own exotic beauty only to show that whatever quality it may have had was not that of innocence. Joan repeated what she had told Bobby Trench, in much the same words, and the only discount that could be taken off her evidence was the admission that she had thought nothing of it at all until after she had been told of what Mrs. Amberley was suspected.

It was when she was just about to leave the witness-stand, and the Squire, who had been following the process of question and answer with spasms of nervousness at each fresh speech, was beginning to breathe freely once more, that Mrs. Amberley looked at her with a glance from which, with all her care to avoid the expression of feeling, she could not banish the malice, and asked her, "Would you have said what you did if it had been anybody but Mr. Trench who asked you?"

The insinuation was plain enough, and Joan met it with a warm blush which she would have given worlds to have been able to hold back. She felt the blood warming and reddening her cheeks and her neck, but she answered immediately in spite of it, "It was my sister who asked me what I had seen, when Mr. Trench told us both of what you were suspected"; and Mrs. Amberley let the answer pa.s.s, with an air of not finding it worth while to take further notice of such a childish person.

Joan made her way back to her seat between her father and mother, the blush slowly fading from her cheeks. She felt outraged at having had such a question put to her, and in such a tone, before all these knowing, sn.i.g.g.e.ring people; and her distress was not lightened by her father saying to her in an angry whisper, "There now, you see what comes of making yourself free in that sort of company." He added, "Confound the woman's impudence!" in a tone still more angry, which took off a little of the edge of his previous speech; and Mrs. Clinton took Joan's hand in hers and pressed it. So presently she recovered her equanimity, and only blushed intermittently when she remembered what had been said to her.

A French jeweller gave evidence of Mrs. Amberley having sold pearls to him in Paris. She had been veiled and hooded, but he was sure it was the same lady. He should have recognised her by her voice alone. He gave the dates of the transactions, three in number; and other evidence was duly brought forward to show that Mrs. Amberley had been in Paris on each of those dates.

A London p.a.w.nbroker's a.s.sistant gave evidence of her having p.a.w.ned a single pearl, which he produced. She had done it in her own name. He proved to be an indecisive witness under the pressure of Mrs.

Amberley's lawyer, and said he was not sure now that it was the same lady, although he was nearly sure. But there was the transaction duly recorded, and Mrs. Amberley's name and London address entered in his books at the time. Asked whether he thought it likely that a lady who was p.a.w.ning stolen property, obviously with no idea of redeeming it, would give her own well-known name and address, he recovered himself sufficiently to answer very properly that he had nothing to do with what was likely or unlikely; there was his book.

When all the witnesses had been examined, Mrs. Amberley's lawyer said that he should not oppose the case going for trial. He had advised his client to reserve her defence, but he might say that she had a full and convincing answer to the charge.

When Mrs. Amberley had been duly committed for trial, there was a wrangle as to her being admitted to bail. It was stated in opposition that she was known to have contemplated leaving the country; she had in no way met the convincing evidence that had been brought against her, and in view of the gravity of the offence, &c., &c. Finally, she was admitted to bail on heavy securities, which were immediately forthcoming. One of them was offered by Sir Roger Amberley, her late husband's father, an old man who looked bowed down by shame; the other by Lord Colne, an elderly roue, who, so far from showing shame, appeared proud of his position as friend and supporter of the accused lady. Mrs. Amberley left the court with her father-in-law, and some who were within hearing when she thanked her other sponsor remarked that he did not seem likely to get much change out of his liability of two thousand pounds.

The Squire, with his wife and daughter, lunched at the extremely private hotel which he had patronised all his life, and left London for Kencote by an early afternoon train. They were accompanied by Humphrey and Lady Susan Clinton, who had paid no visit to Kencote since they had committed the fault of taking Joan to Brummels; and would not have paid the visit now if they could have got out of it.

But the Squire had insisted. He had sent Mrs. Clinton and Joan on to his brother-in-law's house on their arrival in London the afternoon before, and had gone himself to his son's flat, with the object of unburdening his mind both to Humphrey and his wife. But Humphrey and Susan had been out. He had waited for an hour, getting more and more angry, and convinced that they were seeking to evade him. He had then written a peremptory note, ordering them to join him at the station on the following afternoon, ready to go down to Kencote, with instructions to wire acquiescence immediately on receipt of the order.

The wire had arrived at his brother-in-law's house before he had reached it. "Exceedingly sorry to have missed you. Both delighted come Kencote to-morrow. Humphrey."

The uncalled for expression of delight had not in the least softened his mood of anger, but he had gained a grim satisfaction from feeling that his word was law if he chose to make it so. This was added to by the determination to make the visit anything but an occasion of delight, and the antic.i.p.ation of having somebody fresh on whom to wreak his anger; the satisfaction of relieving his feelings by censure of Joan having now begun to wear rather thin.

If Humphrey was bent on smoothing out the situation, as was probably the case, it was impolitic of him to bring his own man to Kencote as well as his wife's maid. The Squire himself never took a man away with him, except on the rare occasions on which he went anywhere to shoot, and Humphrey's servant was an additional offence. The Squire's temper was not improved when Humphrey, relieved of all anxieties about luggage and tickets and the rest of it, strolled up to him on the platform, dressed in the latest variety of summer country clothes, with the correct thing in spats, and the most modern shade in soft felt hats, and found him fussing over details that he might safely have left to Mrs. Clinton's capable maid.

"Oh, here you are," he said ungraciously. "If you're quite sure that your fellow has done everything for your own comfort, you might tell him to help Parker with those things. I've engaged a carriage, but if I had thought you couldn't travel without your whole establishment I'd have told 'em to put on a saloon."

"We've left the cook and the housemaid behind," said Humphrey, outwardly undisturbed. "Here, Grant, take these things into your carriage."

The Squire turned his back and went up to the compartment at which his wife was standing with her daughter-in-law and Joan. "Better get in.

Better get in," he said. "We don't want to be left behind. How are you, Susan? We've just had a pleasant result from your taking Joan into the company of people like your precious Mrs. Amberley."

Lady Susan made no attempt to avert his displeasure, which had evidently worked itself up to a point at which it must have immediate vent. She shook hands with him, and got into the carriage after Mrs.

Clinton. She was a tall, fashionably-dressed woman, with a young, rather foolish face, not remarkably good-looking, but making the most of such points as she possessed. The Squire rather liked her, in spite of his disapproval of many of her ways, partly because she had always treated him with deference, partly--although he would indignantly and conscientiously have denied it--because her t.i.tle was a suitable ornament to the name she bore. He himself was the head of the family of which hers was a junior branch, but that branch had been enn.o.bled at a date of quite respectable antiquity, and an Earl's daughter is an Earl's daughter wherever she may be found. The mild degree of satisfaction, however, that he felt on this head was quite sub-conscious, and did not lead him to pay any more deference to Lady Susan than he was accustomed to pay to the rest of the women of his family. The only lady in that position whom he treated with marked deference was the wife of his eldest son, who was an American, of no ancestry that he would have recognised as significant, who had once for a short period lowered even the ancestry she could claim by dancing on the stage. That story has been told elsewhere, and if the reader is inclined to cry sn.o.b, because the Squire is admitted to have been pleased that one of his daughters-in-law bore a t.i.tle, let it be considered that Virginia, d.i.c.k's wife, had made a complete conquest of him, and that he valued her little finger above Lady Susan's body.

He began directly the train had started. "Now look here, I've got a word to say to you two, and I may as well say it at once and get it over."

Humphrey, knowing that it was bound to come, was quite ready, but was also aware that to get it over was really the last thing his father wanted. Whatever att.i.tude he might take upon the subject, it would be returned to again and again as long as his visit to the paternal mansion should last. The best he could do was to get it over for the time being, and gain a respite in which to read the "Field" and the other papers with which he had provided himself. To this end he put up no opposition, but admitted with grave face that he and his wife had done wrong, and agreed that subsequent events proved that they had done very wrong indeed.

The Squire would perhaps have preferred to have his annoyance warmed up by a difference of opinion, and was obliged to express it with all the more force, so that it might spontaneously acquire the requisite amount of heat.