In silence husband and wife stared at each other – she as furious with anger at discovery as with the knowledge that therewith all chance of her retaining wealth and position was at an end; he, astonished at the utter want of scruple, at the horrid immorality in the nature of the woman whom he had chosen to bear his name. It was as much as he could do to contain himself. Every instinct within him revolted at the cowardly criminality at which he had caught her red-handed. He wondered she had not been afraid, if only of her own skin.

"Do you realise what I have saved you from?" he asked sternly; "that but for the innocent betrayal of you by that little boy downstairs, you would now be a common felon and answerable to the law —you, my wife, the mistress of Thorpe Manor! Hilda, speak – for God's sake speak."

For some moments she did not answer. One feeling now had come uppermost in her – the feeling of hate and loathing for Miriam, intensified by the knowledge of her husband's admiration for her, while she, his wife, stood debased utterly in his eyes. The whole fury of her puny vindictive nature was striving to be let loose. At last she answered him.

"I have nothing to say," she said, "beyond this – that I am glad at last you know your friend for what she is – that even if your wife, as you say, was in danger of jeopardising her liberty, the pure, beautiful, saintly creature whom you so admire has done so long ago, since she is nothing but a common thief!"

"Hilda, how dare you! Upon my word, I begin to think you've lost your senses."

"Indeed; you'll find that whatever I may have lost, I still have them. You must allow me to repeat that your friend is a common thief, and therefore a criminal. She stole this will."

"She stole that will?– why, woman, how can you say such a thing. Mrs. Arkel is the soul of honour."

"I thought you'd be surprised. Evidently Dicky didn't tell you everything. As it happens, I myself saw it abstracted by him quite accidentally this afternoon from some false bottom, or rather, top, of her work-box, which no doubt has proved eminently useful to her before this, during her career."

"Hilda, for God's sake don't be so spiteful – if you have any decent womanhood in you don't crush it. Miriam Arkel is no thief. You may have found this will in her box, as you say. But she did not steal it. It was taken from Barton's table on Christmas night by – by Julia Darrow!"

"Julia Darrow? Impossible! Who told you that tale?"

"The person who saw her take it."

"I don't believe it – what motive had she? – none; besides, if that is so, how came it in the saintly Miriam's keeping – such very secure keeping too – at least she thought so."

The Major listened to her no longer. He became intent upon the contents of the will, and motioned to his wife to sit down. She continued her verbal fusillade none the less scathingly for lack of reply. At last she seemed to be approaching finality.

"You may talk as you like," she said (perhaps because he was not talking at all), "nothing will convince me that the woman is innocent. She stole that will out of sheer spite at me – to prevent my marrying Gerald."

"Oh, indeed!" This had roused the Major. "Would not the fact of your having elected to marry me have been a little inconvenient?"

"Not in the least – I should never have elected to marry you in those circumstances."

"Oh!" He looked at her in amazement. He was learning about women at a rate which threatened speedy disaster to his appreciation of them. He began firmly to hope that his education might become a trifle less rapid if less complete.

"You can look, and look, and look," she continued, "I don't care; you may as well know the truth, though goodness knows you might have guessed it long ago – I detest you!"

"Why – may I ask?"

"Why? – for lots of reasons. Chiefly I suppose because I love Gerald."

"Then in Heaven's name why didn't you marry him?"

"Because this wretched creature by her thievish trickery ruined him. I couldn't marry a man who had not the means of keeping me, could I?"

"That depends – on the man, and on yourself. In any case you and Gerald Arkel – you won't mind the frankness being mutual, will you? – no matter how situated, would in my opinion have made an easy and expeditious descent into – well, shall we say oblivion? – that is, of course, unless you had chosen to achieve notoriety of a wholly undesirable order. You, Gerald Arkel, and ample means! – nothing could have saved you. So perhaps, even as it is, you are better off. What think you, Hilda?"

"I don't know what to think – I don't understand you. I don't understand this universal outcry against Gerald, that simply because he is possessed of a few pounds he must go to the dogs altogether."

"Then you evidently don't understand the young gentleman himself. No self-respecting kennels would tolerate him, I assure you, for all the relegating to them we humans might choose to indulge in. You probably know nothing about dogs. They are plucky, honourable animals, with a maximum of virtue and a minimum of vice; and they resent pretty hotly, I can tell you, the arrival amongst themselves of a lot of our refuse. Now the young man whom you have chosen to honour with your 'love' must unfortunately be so described."

"It is cowardly of you to abuse him when he is not here to defend himself."

"He would not attempt to defend himself to me. Now come, Hilda – you are little more than a child after all. Let my attitude be parental, if you won't have it marital. Believe me, if it had not been for that very noble woman whom you have been slandering for the last quarter of an hour, Gerald Arkel, as it is, would have already reached his disastrous end."

"That's right; praise her – you have nothing but blame for me! – I believe you're in love with the woman still."

"Do you? Well, I suppose it's logical you should, from your point of view. Yet, if I were to admit it, I believe you'd have the audacity to be angry – or pretend to be! We've started well, Hilda – that is, you did – why not let us be wholly frank. You married me for my money and for the position you would acquire as my wife. That you admit."

"Yes – I was forced to."

"Never mind the force – you admit the desire. Very well, I married you, why? 'Pon my soul I couldn't tell you – that's the truth. Because I wanted a wife, I imagine, or thought I did, in the new circumstances in which I found myself. Grant then that our motives tie – they are equally unworthy of each of us – I have been a good husband to you. Have you been anything of a wife to me – I ask you, Hilda, from the day we married, have you given me a thought?"

"I'm not good at sentiment – I don't understand it. I never did."

"I am well aware of that. I begin to think you understand nothing but the promptings of your own badly drilled – excuse my swearing – your damned badly drilled mind."

"I had rather you swore than sat there preaching at me. For goodness sake say what you've got to say, and have done with it."

"As you will. Then I have this to say. You are my wife – that's a deplorable, unalterable fact. You will respect my name by keeping your own out of the mud; therefore in future you will be careful to refrain from these little amateur felonies of yours, as well as from risking prosecution for slander, which you certainly will do if you allow your tongue free rein. For the rest, if you are sensible, you'll keep up appearances before the world."

"It's difficult to keep up appearances when one is thrown into contact with adventuresses of that woman's class. God knows where she came from – the slums I believe. Ask Julia about her – ask her to tell you what she told me."

"Surely you can tell me yourself, without my further imperilling Julia's lot in the next world."

She stamped her foot with impatience. She had never known him quite in this mood before. She wished he would get thoroughly angry, like he had been when he came in.

"You will be shocked at the downfall of your immaculate angel. However, if you want to know I will tell you. She was in the habit of making assignations with some low man who came down from London and used to meet her about Thorpe – once they were caught actually in the churchyard late at night – some man named Jabez! What do you think of that?"

"Very natural under the circumstances!"

"Very – " She looked at him utterly perplexed. "Under what circumstances?"

"Under the circumstances that he is her brother, and that she lived with a cat."

"Her brother! Her br-o-th-er! – as much her brother as you are, or would like to be! It's just like you to believe a tale like that."

"Not only do I believe it, but it is true. It is also true that Julia stole this will. The creature Shorty – Mrs. Parsley's protégé that is – was prowling about the house the night we were all dining there – Christmas Eve, when the poor old man was killed – and swears he saw her enter the library during Barton's absence for a moment. She picked up the will, read it, and pocketed it."

"And how much, pray, did you pay this ruffian for this information?"

"That's my business. You may be quite sure it's worth double what I paid for it."

"How then do you explain it's being in Mrs. Gerald Arkel's work-box?"

"Malice – pure malice on the part of that most malicious of women, Julia Darrow."

"But she could know nothing of there being a false top to the work-box."

"She could know anything – everything. Ask Dicky, and he'll tell you that he showed his mother how the thing worked."

"Well, I'm sick to death of the subject," she retorted impatiently. "The question is, what do you intend to do with the will now you've got it?"

"Why, what do you think I'd do with it? There is only one thing that I or anyone else with a spark of honour," he looked at her very searchingly, "could do with it – take it to Rosary Mansions this evening, and lay it before both of them."

"John! – you are not serious? I implore you don't do that. Consider what it means. Consider me. It is not fair to me. I was not meant to be a poor man's wife."

"You are not fit to be any decent man's wife; but as you are, and I can't descend to your moral level, you must rise to mine, that's all."

"If you do this you shall pay for it," she said. She was losing all self-control and becoming perfectly reckless in the face of what threatened her. "I am your wife now. I married you for this money – the day you lose it, you lose me – understand."

He seized her arm somewhat roughly and looked at her hard.

"And you understand this, young woman, I will be a party to no crime at your bidding. I will be no partner with you in iniquity. To restore this money is the honest course, the only course, and the course that I shall take without any delay. As for you, while you are my wife, poor or rich, you will respect my name!"

"While I am your wife – if you go on the way you are going I warn you that will not be for long."

"What do you mean?"

"That you'll know quick enough once it's done. For the last time I ask you to pause, consider, compromise! – I don't ask you to do anything dishonourable, but make some arrangement, don't give up everything. By your own showing it will ruin Gerald; think of him, think of her – of Miriam. Think of the awful unhappiness it means for her. John! I will try and be different to you if you will only wait."

"Stop it," he thundered, "she-devil that you are, consumed by your disgusting lust for gold. Once for all I refuse to be coerced by you. Do I not know right from wrong? This property is Gerald's, and whatever the consequences, to him it goes."

"Very well; I have warned you. Now I know what to do."

She entered the dressing-room and banged the door behind her. For some minutes he stood staring blankly at it. Then he quietly went downstairs.

He saw no more of her that night. She had her dinner sent up to her room, and refused to see him. He dined, therefore, at the restaurant instead of in their private room. In spite of his self-control he could not eat. He realised full well what this loss meant, not so much to himself – five hundred a year and his pay was all-sufficient for him – but to Miriam, and to Gerald, yes, and to the paltry little woman who, after all, was his wife. Yet the more he pondered over it, the more convinced he became that there was but one course open to him. There need be no scandal about Julia; that must be hushed up somehow; but Gerald must have his own.

He lit a cigar at the table, and turned the thing over in his mind for another quarter of an hour. Then he called a cab, and drove straight to Rosary Mansions.

It was nearly ten o'clock when he arrived, yet strange to say Gerald was at home – thanks to Hilda. But the Major of course did not know to what he might attribute this return to the domestic hearth on the part of Master Gerald, and gave him all credit for it. He was sorely grieved to think that his news more than anything else, was calculated to bring about a speedy return to the old order of things.

As for Miriam, she had been in nowise deceived by her husband's action. She had made a pretty shrewd guess at the sort of thing that had passed between him and his former lady-love. His expression had been quite enough to show her he had been dismissed, and she valued his presence accordingly.

The Major's ring roused them both. It was one of the "cook-general's" three nights out – she having with great resignation remained in the previous evening, "though it was Sunday and all" – so Gerald himself went to the door.

"Hullo, Dundas, is it you? – why, what brings you out here at this time? – nothing wrong I hope?"

"No; I've no doubt you'll think it's very right, so far as you're concerned; but it's important, or I need hardly say I wouldn't be here. The fact is, the will's found."

"The will! What – the – the last will? – and the money's mine?"

"Indisputably."

Miriam was on her feet in an instant. Every vestige of colour had left her face. She looked at the Major and then at her husband, who, half-laughing and half-weeping, was scarce able to articulate. He called for air, and she ran to the window and opened it. Then he turned on Dundas almost savagely.

"Where – where did you find this?"

"I did not find it – Dicky did."

"Where?"

"Here, in your flat." He looked at Miriam as he said it, knowing well she could defend herself.

"Yes," she said, confronting her husband, "here in our flat. It was I who took the will!"

CHAPTER VII.
MRS. DARROW SYMPATHISES

"I said it, I said it – I always said it. How well I knew what that woman was!"

A veritable feu-de-joie this on the part of the triumphant Mrs. Darrow, for needless to say "that woman" referred particularly in this instance to Miriam, though as a rule with her the term was generic, to be applied alike to anyone of the numerous and unfortunate females who happened to be in her black books. And her triumph at this moment was the more sweet in that her audience consisted of no less a person than the husband of the delinquent herself.

There he sat, Gerald Arkel, no longer clothed in the humble sartorial products of the Strand, such as in truth had befitted a young man whose daily walk of life lay between Leadenhall Street and Water Lane; but in riding-breeches and gaiters, both of cunning and of wondrous design, and bearing on the face of them the unmistakable hall-mark of the West, for which so much is paid (or is promised to be paid) by certain young gentlemen of means ample or otherwise. From his "Quorn" scarf to his Russia leather boots, Gerald was immaculate. He was lord of the manor now, and monarch of all he surveyed – that is to say outside of Pine Cottage where for the moment he was.

Three weeks had passed since that eventful night when Miriam had confessed to having taken Barton's will – three weeks passed by her in misery and alone, for on that night her husband had left her. In vain had she pleaded the innocence of her act – in vain she had tried to show him that what she had done, she had done for love of him, by sacrifice of self, in charity, and not in depredation – a pure great act of love, wholly for him, and counting not the cost to herself. Evil that good might come if you will, but evil only so. But all explanation had been futile; he had been deaf to all her pleading, and to her entreaty too. And not that alone, but worse. Without the strong arm of John Dundas to defend her, assuredly he would have struck her. For his puny brain could picture only the material deprivations of the past two years, and the thought of what his body had been denied roused all the brute in him. He refused altogether to believe what she, amid her tears, tried so earnestly to explain – his uncle's mad scheme of revenge. He had railed at her, and stormed, had stamped his feet and sworn, and finally, having exhausted his pitiable rage, had left the house with the coarsest insult on his lips. Since then she had not seen him.

Upon John Dundas it had all come with overwhelming force. When the confession fell from her lips he could hardly believe his ears. Was it really she who stood there speaking, out of her own lips condemned – in the words of his wife, a common thief? It could not be. He would have staked his life that if ever honour breathed, it breathed in her. And as he listened there that night to what she had to say his faith in her was justified, nay, intensified a thousand-fold. More than ever – a thousand times more – did she call for admiration in his eyes, for love, aye, and for reverence. She had sacrificed all for her love – for the welfare of the soul of him with whom some strange fate had ordained she should be joined. Strange! more than strange, incomprehensible that such a man should have touched the spring of love in such a woman! With her, love signified self-sacrifice. For it, for him she loved, she must immolate herself – for him, a worthless reprobate, whose only claim to leniency was through pity; while he who would have lived for her and her alone, could only serve her now by leaving her.

It was all very terrible to the Major, and taxed sorely his unpretentious little stock of philosophy. For he had a big heart and a single mind, and his life had to be spent beside a woman who had neither. He felt he had a right to growl at fate, and for the past three weeks he had been taking full advantage of that right.

For himself he wished fervently that Miriam had chosen any manner of self-immolation rather than this. He wished it had been as Shorty had said, that Mrs. Darrow had been the guilty party. With her it would have been sheer sinfulness inspired no doubt by cupidity equally as sheer. But one black mark more or less was insignificant in the dim total of Julia Darrow's score. As it was, Shorty must have been mistaken, or have lied to him. Altogether this, the more practical part of the affair, puzzled the Major greatly. In nowise could he make the boy's story coincide with Miriam's. She had related straightforwardly and simply how it had all come about. She had gone in search of Dicky, and had found him lying insensible on the floor – insensible she concluded from shock at seeing Mr. Barton dead, for she had realised in an instant that the old man had been murdered. In the desk beside him lay the will. At once she had recognised it, and with it her chance of saving Gerald. She had not stopped to think. Her instinct had impelled her. At all costs, to him, to her, to any one, she must save him. The whole thing had been a matter of two minutes – the result was one spreading alas, not merely over two years, but over a lifetime. He was obliged to confess that strictly speaking she had been, or, as he preferred to put it, her judgment had been wrong – very wrong.

True to his word, he had lost no time in placing Gerald formally in possession of the Manor House, and Miriam of her income under the will. Then he had betaken himself and his wife back to Brampton where his regiment was stationed, and tried to throw himself with renewed energy into his profession.

On his part Gerald's first visit had been to the tailor's, with the wondrous result already described. His presence now at the abode of Mrs. Darrow was due solely to that lady's very considerable proficiency in the arts of flattery, and to the young man's even more considerable susceptibility to them. For, as we know, he was supposed to hold no love for Mrs. Darrow. But she had seen her chance and had taken it.

Immediately on hearing the momentous news, she had hurried back from Bournemouth, where she was staying, and had succeeded in being the first, not only to congratulate the new lord of the manor on his succession to his own, but to condole with him over his maltreatment in the past. And this had gone straight home with that young gentleman, who, truth to tell, was beginning to feel the need of a little moral support so far as his action in having left his wife was concerned. So seeing that from Mrs. Darrow he would be sure to get it, he had accepted with avidity her invitation to partake of tea at Pine Cottage. There he poured out to her his weak story while she poured out for him tea even weaker, with the result that both were comforted for the time, he being content to put up with the tea in return for the quieting of his already uneasy conscience.

"Well, if you had taken my advice, you would never have married the creature," she said, handing him his third cup. "You'll never be far out if you trust to me. I saw what she was the moment Uncle Barton brought her here."

"Then why did you take her as governess to Dicky?"

"What could I do?" Here Julia's handkerchief went to her eyes. "You know I was absolutely dependent on Uncle Barton; but you don't know how brutally he treated me. But for my spirit I should have died. He threatened to deprive me of every penny if I didn't keep her. I protested and protested, but it was no use."

"Yes, yes, I can quite imagine all you had to go through," said Gerald, getting restive. He had no fancy for a scene.

The widow resenting thus being cut short became more than ever spiteful.

"Perhaps you can imagine, too, the pretty little meetings that used to take place down here between your wife and her lover!"

"Lover! – what lover?"

"A man rejoicing in the very unromantic name of Jabez! – the name's as ugly as himself."

"Jabez? – why, he was her brother. Hilda told me so."

"I gave Hilda credit for more sense – and who told her, pray?"

"Her husband. He had it from Miriam herself. Funny part of it is she never told me."

"Bah – lies, lies – all lies. The woman's a thorough bad lot, Gerald, and you did the wisest day's work you ever did when you left her. The man was her lover I tell you – a part of her former slum life. Don't you tell me. Left her? I should think you did leave her!"

"Well, then, Julia, let's be content with that. You've thoroughly upheld my action – very thoroughly I must say, which is of course quite right."

"Oh, you men, what fools you are! At all events I did give you credit for some taste – "

"Yes, I'm generally considered a man of taste. Hitherto I've not had much money to indulge it; but that's not my fault."

"Carroty hair and freckles, and a figure bobbing out where it should go in, and sinking into a great hole where it should bob out, and feet! Well – "

"Oh, come, that'll do, Julia – that'll do. I ought to be well posted in my wife's points by this time. I've left her I tell you for good and all, and she's got her own income, and – "

"Got – her – own – income! What in the name of common-sense do you mean, boy?"

It was so naïve of Julia to invoke common-sense.

"Exactly what I say. She has three hundred a year under this will."

"Three hundred – !" she gasped.

For the moment it was all she could do. A whiff at her ammonia brought her round.

"You mean to tell me that Uncle Barton left this woman an income equal to mine – equal – to – mine?"

"Certainly."

It is difficult to say what would eventually have happened to Mrs. Darrow if a knock at the front door had not then brought her face to face with another and even more stern reality. She gave a hasty peep through the window. What she saw had an effect homœopathic in principle, though it certainly was not so in dose. It was surprise upon surprise – like curing like. What she had seen was the figure of Mrs. Parsley, and with the sight had come a great calm over her. For she hated Mrs. Parsley more than she hated anyone at the present moment.

"Oh, my dear," she said, as the vicar's wife entered the room, "I am so delighted – this is a surprise. How are you?"

"It's easy to see there's not much the matter with you," returned her visitor, in her most aggressive manner.

"Indeed I am very ill," said Mrs. Darrow, in the faintest of faint voices, "if you only felt my pulse. I can hardly speak, it is so weak."

"Rubbish —that day'll never dawn. It's liver that's the matter with you. Liver, my dear – torpid liver. Too much to eat and too little to do!"

Mrs. Darrow felt that something within her must give if this kind of thing went on.

"I don't know how you can speak like that," she said. "I don't know I have a liver."

"Of course you don't – if you did you'd be more careful of it. But here, you– " She placed both of her sinewy hands upon her enormous green umbrella, and brought it down with a thud in front of Gerald. "It's you I really came to see. I heard that you were here. Nothing escapes me in this village. Where is your wife?"

"She appears to have escaped you, Mrs. Parsley – she is in town!"

"Then she oughtn't to be. Why haven't you brought her down here to share your good fortune? She should be at the Manor House beside you."

"I am shutting up the Manor House. I'm going abroad in a week."

"Is that her doing or yours?"

"Mine. Perhaps I had better tell you at once that my wife and I have agreed to differ. We are not living together for the present."

"That means you've been doing something – what is it?"

"I assure you he has been doing nothing," put in Mrs. Darrow, "except what is right. He has been very badly treated. Don't you know that – "

"Mrs. Parsley knows nothing, nor is it necessary she should," said Gerald rising. "What has occurred between my wife and myself concerns us only."

"Humph!" grunted Mrs. Parsley. "And where is Hilda, may I ask?"

Gerald flushed. He knew what she meant to insinuate.

"Mrs. Dundas is with her husband at Brampton, I believe," he replied.

"And you're going abroad? – well, that's as it should be."

"I'm glad you think so," said Gerald. He felt he was on rather rocky ground, and didn't altogether like it. He turned to Julia. "I must be going now," he said. "I'll see you again in a month or two. If I come across anything pretty in Paris I'll send it over. Good-bye."

"Humph!" grunted Mrs. Parsley again. "Good-bye. Just a word with you, Julia. I must be off too."

"Julia!"

"Well, I've known you for thirty-five years. I suppose I can call you by your name."

In earnest whereof Mrs. Parsley again thumped the floor with her "gamp."

Gerald hurried away, Mrs. Darrow following him to the door.

"Not a word to anyone about Miriam," he whispered. "And see that Dicky holds his tongue. Mind, you know what depends on it!"

"I believe he's got a sneaking kind of feeling for her still," thought the widow, as she returned to the little drawing-room. Mrs. Parsley was seated in an attitude quite characteristic of her – her chin resting on her hands, and her hands clutching the handle of her huge umbrella. She came to business at once.

"I want you to take the Sunday School for a fortnight, Julia – I'm going up to town."

"Oh, the Sunday School gives me a headache," protested Mrs. Darrow, who had no notion of obliging her enemy. "I haven't taught for years."

"Time you began then. Lady Dane has promised to take a class."

"Lady Dane!" Mrs. Darrow, like Tommy Moore, dearly loved a lord, and the prospect of teaching in the same room as an earl's daughter was irresistibly attractive. "Well, I'll do what you wish, Mrs. Parsley. I'm sure I'm the most unselfish woman in the world."

"Then that's all right," sniffed the vicar's wife. "I thought Lady Dane would fix it. If she isn't above it, I don't think you should be."

"I'm always ready to take my share of the parish work," said Julia. Then her curiosity began to assert itself. "What are you going up to town for?"

Mrs. Parsley waxed more amiable, and rubbed the tip of her nose.

"Well, my dear, I don't mind telling you I'm worried a good deal. I'm sorry to say Gideon Anab hasn't turned out quite what I expected. The scamp's been spending the money I gave him for his heathen companions on himself, so I'm just going up to see about it."

"You shouldn't trust such creatures. He was a vile boy that."

"He'll be a sore boy when I get hold of him. I hear he lives at Lambeth, in a horrid slum, with his grandmother. She's called Mother Mandarin. Odd name, isn't it?"

Julia pricked up her ears. She had heard the name before. She remembered distinctly hearing it mentioned by Jabez to Miriam. Even after that space of time her memory wasn't likely to fail her regarding anything detrimental to Mrs. Arkel.

"I think you'll find Miriam can tell you something about that old lady."

"Miriam? What does she know about her?" asked Mrs. Parsley sharply.

"That's more than I can tell you," replied Mrs. Darrow. "I know I heard her mention the name, because it struck me as such a curious one."

"Humph!" said Mrs. Parsley to herself. To Julia she said no more on the subject. She knew how she hated Miriam, and was not therefore reliable in anything she had to say about her. She determined to find out for herself, nevertheless, how much Miriam knew concerning the grandmother of the wicked Gideon Anab.

"What has Gerald Arkel quarrelled with his wife about?" she asked.

"That I can't tell you either," replied Mrs. Darrow, "except that it was something pretty bad."

"Anything to do with Hilda Dundas?"

"Certainly not."

"Well, don't be violent, my dear, don't be violent. I thought there might be something of that sort. Hilda's not the kind of young lady to take a loss of this sort lightly. Gerald was in love with her remember before he married. He has quarrelled with his wife now, and Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do."