His arms dropped listlessly to his side again, and he sank upon the boulder where he had been sitting, silent and thoughtful, wondering whether freedom would ever again be his.

"Hulloa," exclaimed a voice in French. "Why, what's the matter? Any one watching you from a distance, as I've been doing, would think you'd taken leave of your senses."

Glancing up quickly, he saw it was a bearded, unkempt prisoner who, condemned to a sentence _a perpetuite_, worked in the mine in the same labour gang as himself.

"I hope you've enjoyed the entertainment," he said, in annoyance.

"Entertainment," echoed the other. "There is scarcely entertainment in the _mauvais quart-d'heure_, is there? Bah! we all of us in this malarial death-trap have periods of melancholy, more or less. For myself, I'm never troubled with them. When you've been here a few years you'll see the folly of giving way to gloomy thoughts, and the utter uselessness of entertaining any antic.i.p.ation of either escape or release."

"But we may still hope."

"Hope! What's the use? What can we hope for--except death?" he asked bitterly. Then, without waiting for a reply, he said, "Let's forget it all; we shall die some day, and then we shall obtain rest and peace, perhaps."

"We cannot all forget so easily."

"There, don't talk so dismally. Come, we must be going."

"Where?"

"To the cage," he replied, indicating the prison by the sobriquet bestowed upon it by the convicts. "The gun has sounded. Did you not hear it? Come, we must hasten, or you know the penalty."

Hugh sighed again, rose to his feet, took up his pickaxe, and, placing it upon his shoulder, walked with heavy wearied steps beside his companion in misfortune. Both trudged on in dogged silence, broken only by the clanking of their leg-irons, for nearly a quarter of a mile along the rough beach path, until they came to a broader path leading inland, with dense forests on either side.

Here they were met by two armed warders, who roundly abused them for their tardy appearance, and who escorted them within the grim portals of the long, low stone building which stood upon the side of the bare, rugged mountain overlooking Noumea.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.

GILDED SORROW.

"Good heavens! Why, it can't be true."

The exclamation escaped Jack Egerton's lips as he sat in his studio enjoying his matutinal pipe, and glancing through the _Daily News_ prior to commencing work.

The paragraph he had read contained nothing startling to the ordinary newspaper reader. It was merely an announcement that the will had been proved of the late Mr. Hugh Trethowen, of Coombe Hall, Cornwall, who died suddenly at the Hotel du Nord, Antwerp, and that the whole of the estate, valued at 112,000 pounds, had been left to his wife Valerie.

"Dead! Dead! And I knew nothing of it, poor fellow!" he cried, starting up, and, after re-reading the words, standing motionless.

"Died suddenly," he reflected bitterly. "An ominous expression where Valerie Dedieu is concerned. More than one person who has enjoyed her acquaintance has _died suddenly_. If I thought he had met with foul play, and could prove it, by Heaven! I'd do so--even at the risk of my own liberty. Poor Hugh," he added in a low, broken voice. "We have been almost brothers. G.o.d! shall I ever forgive myself for not warning him of his danger? Yet I did tell him she was not fit to be his wife, but he took no heed. No; he was infatuated by her fatally seductive smiles and accursed beauty."

Pushing the hair from his forehead he flung the paper from him with a gesture of despair.

"Dead," he murmured. "How much I owe to him. In the days when I scarcely earned enough to keep body and soul together, we shared one another's luck, Bohemians that we were, often living from hand to mouth, and not knowing whence the next half-crown was to come. Always my warmest friend from that time until his marriage: he was an irrepressible, genial, good fellow, whom everybody held in high esteem.

Always merry, always light-hearted; in many a dark hour, when I've been on the verge of despair, it has been his perfect indifference to melancholy that has cheered and given me heart; nay, it was by his advice and encouragement that, instead of going out to the Transvaal as I intended, I remained here to work and win fame."

He sighed deeply, and tears welled in his eyes.

"I have no brother; he was one--and--and I've lost him. I should have liked to have been at the funeral to have paid a last tribute to his memory. Had I placed a wreath upon the grave, it would have been with hands more tender than any of those persons who showed outward bereavement. Where was the widow, I wonder?"

As he paused, his face grew stern and he clenched his hands.

"Bah! The widow who, by his death, has gained one hundred and twelve thousand pounds--the woman who, staking life for gold, held him in her fatal toils until death severed the bond. I wonder--I wonder, if I went to Antwerp, whether I could discover evidence of foul play? Is it not my duty to try? If he has met the same terrible fate as--"

"Good-morning, Jack!" exclaimed Dolly Vivian brightly, tripping into the room.

"Good-morning," he a.s.sented sullenly, without looking up at her.

"How disagreeable you are to-day," she observed, as she commenced unb.u.t.toning her glove. "Anything wrong?"

"Yes, a good deal. I shan't want you; I can't work to-day," he replied sadly.

"What's the matter?" she asked in alarm, advancing towards him and placing her hand upon his arm.

Turning with a sigh, he looked into her face and said, in a low, earnest tone--

"Dolly, I've received bad news."

"What is it--tell me? Don't keep me in suspense."

"It is about some one you know."

"News of Hugh?" she cried, her thoughts at once reverting to the man she loved.

He nodded, but did not reply.

"What of him? Where is he?"

"Dolly," he said hesitatingly,--"he is dead."

"Dead!" she gasped, clutching at a chair for support.

She would have fallen had he not rushed to her and placed his arm around her waist. In a few moments, however, she recovered herself.

"You--you tell me he is dead. How do you know?"

"By the newspaper."

"Dead! Hugh dead! I can't--no, I won't believe it," she cried wildly.

"There must be some mistake."

"He died suddenly at Antwerp," Jack said mechanically.

"You mean he has been killed--that his wife is a murderess."

"Hush, Dolly," he exclaimed quickly; "you cannot prove that, remember."

"Oh, can't I? If he has been murdered, I will discover the truth. Her past is better known to me than she imagines. I'll denounce Valerie Duvauchel as the woman who--"

"Why, how did you know that was her name?" he asked in amazement and undisguised alarm.

"What was I saying? Forgive me if I made any unjust remark, but I could not help it," she urged. "It is all so sudden--and--and he is dead."