"Like the country best in May!" Lady Thurwell gasped. "My dear child, have you taken leave of your senses?"

"Not quite, aunt," Helen answered, smiling. "Only it is as I say. I like the country best, and I would really rather go home."

Lady Thurwell considered for a full minute. Being a very juvenile matron, she had by no means enjoyed her _role_ as chaperon to an acknowledged beauty. She had offered it purely out of good nature, and because, although only related by marriage--Lord Thurwell was the elder brother of Mr. Thurwell, of Thurwell Court, and the head of the family--still there was no one else to perform such a service for Helen.

But if Helen did really not care for it, and wished to return to her country life, why there was no necessity for her to make a martyr of herself any longer.

"You really mean this, Helen?"

"I do indeed, aunt."

"Then it is settled. Make your own arrangements. I have liked having you, child, and whenever you choose to come to me again you will be welcome. But of course, it is not everyone who cares for town life, and if you do not, you are quite right to detach yourself from it. I'm afraid I know several young men who'll take your sudden flight very much to heart; and one who isn't particularly young."

"Nonsense!" laughed her niece. "There'll be no mourning on my account."

"We shall see," remarked Lady Thurwell, sententiously. "If one person does not find his way down to Thurwell Court after you before long, I shall be surprised."

"Please don't let anyone do anything so stupid, aunt," pleaded Helen with sudden warmth. "It would be--no good."

Lady Thurwell lifted her eyebrows, and looked at her niece with a curious little smile.

"Who is it?" she asked quietly.

But Helen only laughed. Her secret was too precious to part with--yet.

CHAPTER XXVII

MR. THURWELL MAKES SOME INQUIRIES

And so Helen had her own way, and went back to her home on the moors, where Mr. Thurwell, who had just finished his hunting season, was very glad to see her, although not a little surprised. But she told him no more than she had told her aunt, that she had no taste for London life.

The time would soon come when he would know the whole truth, but until her lover's return the secret was her own.

She had one hasty note from him, posted in Paris on his way to Italy, and though there were only a few lines in it, she treasured up the little sc.r.a.p of paper very tenderly, for, such as it was, it was her first love letter. He had given her an address in the small town to which he was bound, and she noticed, with a slight wonder at the coincidence, that it was the same place where he had first seen her. She had written to him, and now there had come a pause. She had nothing to do but to wait.

But though such waiting is at best but a tedious matter, those few days brought their own peculiar happiness to her. She would have found it impossible to have confided her secret to any human being; she had no bosom friend to whom she could go for sympathy. But her healthy, open-air life, her long solitary walks, and a certain vein of poetry which she undoubtedly possessed, had given her some of that pa.s.sionate, almost personal, love of nature which is sweeter by far than any human friendship. For her those long stretches of wild moorland, with the dark silent tarns and far-distant line of blue hills, the high cliffs where the sea wind roared with all the bl.u.s.ter and fury of a late March, the sea itself with its ever-changing face, the faint streaks of brilliant color in the evening sky, or the wan glare of a stormy morning--all these things had their own peculiar meaning to her, and awoke always some echo of response in her heart. And it chanced that at that time all the sweet breezy freshness of a late spring was making glad the country which she loved, and the perfect sympathy of the season with her own happiness seemed to her very sweet, for it was springtime too in her heart. A new life glowed in her veins, and sometimes it seemed to her that she could see the vista of her whole future bathed in the warm sunlight of a new-born happiness. The murmuring pine groves, the gay reveling of the birds, the budding flowers and heath--all these things appealed to her with a strange sympathetic force. So she took long walks, and came home with sparkling eyes, and her cheeks full of a rich color, till her father wondered what had come to his proud silent daughter to give this new buoyancy to her frame, and added physical beauty to her face, which had once seemed to him a little too _spirituelle_ and ethereal.

Once more Helen and her father sat at breakfast out on the sheltered balcony of Thurwell Court. Below them the gardens, still slightly coated with the early morning dew, were bathed in the glittering sunshine, and in the distance, and over the tops of the trees in the park, a slight feathery mist was curling upward. The sweet, fresh air, still a little keen, was buoyant with all the joyous exhilaration of spring, and nature, free at last from the saddened grip of winter, was rea.s.serting itself in one glad triumphant chorus. Down in the park the slumberous cawing of the rooks triumphed over the lighter-voiced caroling of innumerable thrushes and blackbirds, and mingled with the faint humming of a few early bees, seemed to fill the air with a sweetly blended strain of glad music. It was one of those mornings typical of its own season, in which the whole atmosphere seems charged with quickening life. Summer with its warm luscious glow, and autumn with its clear calm repose, have their own special charms. But a spring morning, coming after the deep sadness of a hard winter, gains much by the contrast.

There is overflowing energy and pa.s.sionate joy in its newly beating pulses, the warm delight of reawakening life, happy to find the earth so fair a place, which the staider charms of a more developed season altogether lack.

It was in some measure owing to this influence, and also to the fact that she held in her hand a letter from her lover, which her father had handed her without remark, but with a somewhat curious glance, that Helen was feeling very happy that morning. The last year had dealt strangely with her. Tragedy had thrown its startling, gloomy shadow across her life, and had left traces which could never be altogether wiped out. Anxieties of another sort had come, perplexities and strange unhappy doubts, although these last had burned with a fitful, uncertain flame and now seemed stilled for ever. But triumphing over all these was this new-born love, the great deep joy of a woman's life, so vast, so sweet and beautiful, that it transfuses her whole being, and seems to lift her into another world.

And so Helen, leaning back in her chair, with her eyes wandering idly over the pleasant gardens and park below, to where, through a deep gap in the trees, was just visible a faint blue line of sea, was wrapped up very much in her own thoughts, and scarcely doing her duty toward entertaining her father. Indeed, she seemed almost unconscious of his presence until he looked up suddenly from a letter he was reading and asked her a question.

"By the bye, Helen," he said, "I've meant to ask you something every day since you've been home, but I have always forgotten it. Who was that young man who came down here to help Johnson with the auditing, and who went away so suddenly? A _protege_ of yours, I suppose, as he came here on your recommendation?"

"Yes, I was interested in him," she answered, looking steadily away, and with a faint color in her cheeks. "Why do you ask? Did he not do his work properly?"

"Oh, yes, he did his work very well, I believe," Mr. Thurwell said impatiently. "It was what he did after working hours, and which has just come to my notice, which makes me ask you. It seems he spent the whole of his spare time making covert, but I must say ingenious, inquiries respecting Sir Geoffrey's murder, and I am also given to understand that he paid Falcon's Nest an uninvited visit in the middle of the night.

What does it all mean? Was it merely curiosity, or had he any object in it?"

"I think--he had an object," she answered slowly.

"Indeed!" Mr. Thurwell raised his eyebrows and waited for an explanation.

"You remember, papa, that awful scene here when Rachel Kynaston died, and what her last words to me were?"

"Yes, I remember perfectly," Mr. Thurwell answered gravely.

"Well, at that time I could not help having just a suspicion that Mr.

Brown must be mixed up in it in some way, and it seemed to me that I should not be quite at ease if I let matters go on without doing anything, so I--well, this young man came down here to see whether he could find out anything."

Mr. Thurwell seldom frowned at his daughter, of whom he was secretly a little afraid, but he did so now. He was seriously angry.

"It was not a matter for you to have concerned yourself in at all," he said, rising from his seat. "At least, I should have been consulted."

"It was all very foolish, I know," she admitted humbly.

"It was worse than foolish; it was wrong and undutiful," he declared. "I am astonished that my daughter should have mixed herself up with such underhand work. And may I ask why I was kept in ignorance?"

"Because you would not have allowed me to do what I did," she said quietly, with downcast eyes. "I thought it was my duty. I have been punished--punished severely."

He softened a little, and resumed his seat. She was certainly very contrite. He was silent for a moment or two, and then asked her a question.

"Did this young man--detective, I suppose he was--find out anything about Mr. Brown?"

She looked up, a little surprised at the curiosity in his tone.

"Why, papa, it was I who found out how stupid I had been," she said.

"When I discovered that our mysterious tenant was Bernard Maddison, of course I saw the absurdity of suspecting him at once."

Mr. Thurwell moved a little uneasily in his chair.

"He did not find out anything, then?" he asked.

She was silent. She had not expected this, and she scarcely knew how to answer.

"He found out what Mr. Brown--I mean Mr. Maddison--himself told me, that he had known Sir Geoffrey abroad."

"Nothing more?"

"I did not ask. To tell the truth, I was not interested. The idea of Mr.

Maddison being connected with such a crime is simply ridiculous. I was heartily sorry that I had ever taken any steps at all."

Mr. Thurwell lit a cigarette, and drew his remaining letters toward him.

"I must confess," he said slowly, "that when his house was searched in my presence, and all that we discovered was that Mr. Brown was really Bernard Maddison, I felt very much as you feel; and, as you no doubt remember, I went out of my way to be civil to the man, and brought him up here to dine. But since then things have cropped up, and I'm bound to say that it looks a little queer. I hear that young man of yours told several people that he had in his pocket what would bring Mr. Brown to the scaffold any day."