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 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 MEW LIBRARY HOVELS, 
 
 UNDER SEALED ORDERS, By Grant Allen. 3 vols. 
 A LONDON LEGEND. By Justin H. McCarthy. 3 vols. 
 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS. By Alan St. Aubyn. 2 vols. 
 BEYOND THE DREAMS OF AVARICE. By Walter 
 
 Besant. I vol. 
 THE MINOR CHORD. By J. Mitchell Chapple. i vol. 
 HIS VANISHED STAR. By C. Egbert Craddock. i vol. 
 ROMANCES OF THE OLD SERAGLIO. By H. N. Crelli.v. 
 
 I vol. 
 VILLAGE TALES AND JUNGLE TRAGEDIES. By B. M. 
 
 Crokek. I vol. 
 MADAME SANS-GENE. By E. Lepelletier. i vol. 
 MOUNT DESPAIR. By D. Christie Murray, i vol. 
 THE PHANTOM DEATH. By W. Clark Russell, i vol. 
 THE PRINCE OF BALKISTAN. By Allen Upward. 1 vol. 
 London : CHATTO .^ WINDUS, Piccadilly.
 
 Clc"—-^ 
 
 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 BY 
 
 ALAN ST. AUBYN 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 A FELLOW OF TRIXITV,' ' THE JUNIOR DEAN,' 'THE OLD MAId's 
 
 SWEETHEART,' tTC. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 VOL. L 
 
 U n tJ II 
 
 CHATTO & WINDUS. PICCADILLY 
 
 1895
 
 f 13 
 
 a)' I 
 
 "O 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 CONTEXTS OF VOL. I, 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. THE GIFT OF THE BRIDEGROOM - - 1 
 
 II. GOTHAM - - - - - 19 
 
 III. blue-eye's aunt - - - - 38 
 
 IV. THE BOW-ROOM - - - - 56 
 V. EDITH DARCY's DREAM - - - - 66 
 
 VI, THE GUNNING DIAMONDS - - - 84 
 
 VII. AT THE STORES . _ - - 101 
 
 VIII. A TIRESOME VISITOR - - - - 116 
 
 » IX. A PRIVATE DETECTIVE - - - - 134 
 
 X. AN OLD WORCESTER BOWL - - - 152 
 
 XI. DORA's HONEYMOON . . , - 163 
 
 XIL A STRANGE TASK . . _ - 182 
 
 XIII. WHAT WAS HE DRIVING AT? - - - 200
 
 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE GIFT or THE BRIDEGROOM. 
 
 It had been a very busy day : it was the eve 
 of Dora Bellew's wedding. There had been so 
 much to do. There is always so much left to 
 do on the last day. There were the trunks to 
 pack — the trunks that the bride was to take 
 away with her on her wedding journey — the 
 wedding presents to arrange, and the prepara- 
 tions for the morrow to complete. 
 
 Dora Belle w set out the wedding presents 
 herself; she was very particular in arranging 
 them. There were a good many to arrange. 
 
 VOL. I. 1
 
 2 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 They had been pouring in for a week past ; 
 some had only arrived that day. One, the 
 very last, arrived on the eve of the wedding, 
 just as she was giving a finishing touch to 
 them — putting the last pair of salt-cellars in 
 their place. ' It is very tiresome,' she re- 
 marked plaintively, ' so many people sending 
 duplicates.' She had had at least a dozen 
 pairs of silver salt-cellars and six sets of tea- 
 spoons, and every variety of afternoon - tea 
 table. 
 
 The last present that arrived was from the 
 bridegroom. It was not a salt-cellar, or a set 
 of teaspoons, or an afternoon-tea table. Dora's 
 fingers trembled as she opened it : the parcel 
 had been brought into the room where she w^as 
 arranging the wedding presents, ready for the 
 guests to admire them on the morrow. They 
 could not help admiring them ; it was a lovely 
 lot of presents for one girl to receive. Edith 
 Darcy, one of the bridesmaids — the principal 
 bridesmaid — who was helping to arrange them,
 
 THE GIFT OF THE BRIDEGROOM 3 
 
 thought she had never seen anything so lovely 
 in her life. 
 
 There was only Edith in the room when 
 Dora Bellew opened the parcel from her lover. 
 She opened it slowly, with trembling fingers 
 — she did not know why they trembled ; they 
 had not trembled when she opened the other 
 parcels — and Edith watched her with sparkling 
 eyes. 
 
 ' It's — it's — what is it ? Guess, Dora, before 
 you open it !' she cried gaily, as Dora came to 
 the last wrapping. 
 
 ' It's another case of spoons,' Dora said, with 
 a laugh — rather a nervous laugh. 
 
 ' Oh, it can't be spoons ; it's too long.' 
 
 ' That's the case. It's something in a case. 
 I'm so glad it's in a case ! I love things in cases !' 
 
 Still she did not attempt to open it. 
 
 ' It's a very long case,' Edith said reflectively ; 
 * it might be ' 
 
 * Fish - carvers !' the bride-elect suggested 
 solemnly.
 
 4 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 ' Nonsense ! He wouldn't send that sort of 
 thing ; it's something to wear.' 
 
 Edith was quite right— it was something to 
 wear. It was a lovely diamond necklace. 
 When the case was opened it seemed to fill 
 the room with light. Dora gave a little scream 
 of delight, and Edith held her breath. It 
 quite took away her breath to look at it ; 
 it was something like a necklace ! Not a 
 row of sinofle stones, but a beautiful necklace 
 with pendants, and loops of diamonds, and 
 a lovely centre ornament in the form of a 
 thistle. 
 
 Captain Tremlett had had the old family 
 diamonds reset for his bride, and the setting 
 of the necklace had been his own design. The 
 thistle had something to do with the arms of 
 the family. 
 
 * You never will be able to wear this, Dora,* 
 Edith said presently, as she held the necklace 
 up to the light. 
 
 ' Why not ? Why shouldn't I wear it V Dora
 
 THE GIFT OF THE BRIDEGROOM 5 
 
 asked, pouting. She couldn't understand Edith's 
 objection. 
 
 ' Oh, there's so much of it ! You ^vould look 
 like an idol.' 
 
 She was angry with herself the moment after 
 she had spoken. She couldn't think why she 
 had said such an unkind thing about Captain 
 Tremlett's present to his bride. 
 
 ' Why should I look like an idol V asked Dora 
 in an injured voice, putting the beautiful shining 
 thing back into its velvet case. 
 
 ' It was only fun, dear. I don't know why I 
 said it. You would look lovely in it. Try it 
 on — you must try it on.' 
 
 Dora took it out of the case rather 
 unwillingly, and Edith clasped it round 
 her white throat. It was a beautiful slender 
 white throat, and a plump, soft, creamy 
 neck. Dora Bellew had the loveliest white 
 skin in the world, and the beautiful necklace 
 gleamed upon it as it had gleamed and 
 glistened in its white velvet case ; it did not
 
 6 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 lose any brilliancy by its change of surround- 
 ings. 
 
 This is saying a great deal. It is not every 
 woman's throat that sets off a diamond neck- 
 lace. 
 
 * It looks lovely, dear !' Edith said, kissing 
 her. * How proud he will be to see you wear- 
 ing it !' 
 
 ' I don't know,' Dora said with a sigh, look- 
 ing at her reflection in the glass critically. * I 
 think there is too much of it. I shall always 
 feel like an idol when I wear it — like that 
 image of Buddha, the fat, grinning bronze 
 thing in the hall.' 
 
 She took the necklace off, and put it back 
 into its case and closed it. It shut with a 
 spring, rather a hard spring to close. 
 
 * Why don't you leave the case open like the 
 rest ?' Edith asked. 
 
 'Oil, I hate to see it open ! It reminds me 
 of Buddha. Perhaps, if I don't see it, I shall 
 forofet all about it when I wear it.'
 
 THE GIFT OF THE BRIDEGROOM 7 
 
 Everybody admired Captain Tremlett's beau- 
 tiful present. If anyone thought it was too 
 elaborate for so youthful and petite a bride, he 
 held his peace. 
 
 There was a houseful of wedding guests, 
 uncles and aunts and cousins, and they all 
 agreed that it was a most beautiful gift — a 
 quite magnificent wedding gift. 
 
 The diamond ornaments and the more valu- 
 able articles of jewellery among the presents 
 were carried upstairs at night, and locked away 
 in Mrs. Bellew's fire-proof safe. There was a 
 fire -proof safe, almost as large as a room, built 
 in the wall of her dressing-room, where she 
 kept her valuables, and where the silver things 
 belonging to the house were locked up at 
 night. 
 
 Dora's wedding presents had a separate 
 locked cupboard to themselves. Edith helped 
 her carry them upstairs, and stayed behind to 
 lock the door of the safe, while Dora went in 
 to say * Good-night ' to her mother.
 
 8 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 It was a long ' good-night ' — her last at home ; 
 she did not know how hard it would be until 
 she came to say it. She was going away on 
 the morrow ; the old home-life was at an end. 
 A new life was opening before her — a new life 
 with new ties. She was going out from the old 
 tried love and shelter to the new and the un- 
 tried. No wonder that she could not tear 
 herself away. 
 
 It was quite late before Dora fell asleep that 
 night ; she had so much to talk about to Edith, 
 who slept with her. Edith was to be her 
 bridesmaid on the morrow, and she was staying 
 with the other wedding guests in the house. 
 
 When she grew tired of her own concerns, 
 she talked about Edith's, or, rather, yawned 
 over them : they were not so interesting as her 
 own. 
 
 ' I suppose you will be married before we 
 come back, Edie V she said sleepily. 
 
 * I don't know, I'm sure. Derek wants it to 
 be in October, when he gets his leave. We
 
 THE GIFT OF THE BRIDEGROOM 9 
 
 could go abroad for the winter ; but I don't see 
 what we could do when we come back. We 
 couldn't always live abroad, and we have not 
 enough money between us to begin housekeep- 
 ing with. We should have to take a flat, if we 
 began in the very smallest way, and it would 
 have to be furnished. Sometimes I think I 
 will give it all up. It isn't fair to Derek, such 
 a boy as he is — he is live years younger than 
 I am — to let him in for the care and worry 
 of it. When he ought to be enjoying himself 
 like other men, taking life easily, he'll be tied 
 up to an old woman — I feel quite an old woman 
 sometimes — and have the cares of a house and 
 family. Poor Derek ! If I loved him as he 
 deserves to be loved, I should let him go.' 
 
 There were tears in Edith Darcy's voice and 
 on her pillow as she spoke of her lover and the 
 sacrifice he was making for her sake, but she 
 was speaking to unheeding ears. Dora had 
 fallen asleep. 
 
 Dora Bellew was married the next day. It
 
 lo THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 was rather a gloomy wedding, in spite of all the 
 gay preparations that had been made for it. 
 The guests had to drive from a distance. 
 Nun well was five miles from the nearest town 
 — the nearest town was Hereford — and those 
 who drove over in open carriages got wet 
 through before they reached the church. It 
 rained without a break the whole day, a gray, 
 dreary autumn day, with the wet west wind 
 beating against the church window-panes, and 
 the rain coming down on the roof all through 
 the service. 
 
 Dora could hear the monotonous drumming 
 of the rain on the roof of the chancel, and the 
 patter of the rain-drops on the leaves of the 
 trees in the churchyard outside, all the time 
 she was kneeling before the altar. She heard 
 the mournful drop, drop, drop, above the solemn 
 words of the service and the responses of the 
 bridegroom, like a dreary refrain. The church 
 was damp and cold, and she shivered in her 
 white, as she stood before the altar with the
 
 THE GIFT OF THE BRIDEGROOM ii 
 
 bridegroom's hand clasping hers. He was a 
 big, heavy, dark-browed man, and he did not 
 smile upon her once all through the service, as 
 a bridegroom should have done. Everyone 
 remarked that he was looking distinctly un- 
 amiable. Somethino^ had crone wrono^, and he 
 was letting off his sulks and his ill temper upon 
 the poor little white-faced bride. Everybody 
 agreed that it was a very great match for 
 little Dora Bellew ; there was not a girl in the 
 county that would not have jumped at Lionel 
 Tremlett, and yet very few envious glances were 
 cast at the bride as she walked in her lace and 
 orange-blossom down the aisle by his side. 
 
 He let someone else put her in the carriage, 
 and he got moodily in beside her, and drove 
 back to the house with the window down all 
 the way — he would not have it up— and his 
 white-gloved hand on the sill, with the rain 
 drifting in. He did not speak a word to the 
 little trembling bride on the way back from the 
 church, and she sat shiverino^ in her wedding
 
 12 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 finery, with great splashes of rain drifting in on 
 her satin gown, and the tears, which she could 
 not keep back, dropping silently on the bouquet 
 of orange-flowers in her lap. Everybody agreed 
 that the bridegroom was behaving like a bear. 
 There was a reason for his behaving badly. Dora 
 had disappointed him — she had slighted his 
 wedding gift. 
 
 He had expected her to wear the diamond 
 necklace which he had had mounted to his own 
 special design as a wedding ornament, and she 
 had left it at home. She hadn't even taken it 
 out of the case : she had brought it downstairs 
 on the morning of the wedding-day, and put it 
 among the rest of the presents, but she had not 
 opened the case. No one but Edith had noticed 
 that the case was not opened ; she remembered 
 that unfortunate allusion to Buddha when she 
 noticed it, and held her peace. 
 
 No one had suggested that Dora should wear 
 the necklace at her wedding : it would have 
 looked dreadful on that chilly, depressing
 
 THE GIFT OF THE BRIDEGROOM 13 
 
 morning to have gone to church blazing in 
 diamonds. The brideoTOom had noted its 
 absence, and he took it into his head to be 
 sulky about it. He had often been known to 
 be sulky with other people, but he had never 
 been sulky with Dora before, and his sulkiness 
 on this particular occasion did not seem to bode 
 well for her future happiness. 
 
 It was really a great match for her. She 
 could not expect to have everything ; there 
 are drawbacks to everv lot — drawbacks, and 
 compensations. Captain Tremlett was the 
 head of the family. It was an old county 
 family : the Tremletts had come over w^ith the 
 Conqueror. There were branches of the family 
 all over the county — Mrs. Bellew had been a 
 Tremlett ; but the head, the acknowledged 
 head, old Sir Bourchier, lived in great state at 
 Castle Hill in the northern division of the 
 county, and Captain Tremlett was his only 
 son. Dora Bellew would be Lady Tremlett one 
 day, and she w^ould be the head of the family.
 
 14 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 Everybody agreed she was a lucky girl — an 
 awfully lucky girl. 
 
 Sir Bourchier was at the wedding, and the 
 Miss Tremletts, the Captain's sisters. They 
 took no part in the ceremony ; they were not 
 among the bridesmaids; they merely looked on. 
 They could not think what their brother could 
 see in such an insignificant little creature as 
 Dora Bellew — a dowdy, plump little thing, 
 with only a soft white skin, and soft brown 
 eyes, and a soft purring voice, to recommend 
 her. There was something so soft about Dora, 
 soft and still, that they used to call her ' Mousey ' 
 — ' Little Mousey.' The very last person in the 
 world that Sir Bourchier would have expected 
 his son to choose for a wife was Little 
 Mousey Bellew. Of course there was the con- 
 nection — she was about a sixteenth cousin — all 
 the Bellews in the county were connections ; 
 there was nothing to find fault with in her 
 birth. The Bellews, if they hadn't got a penny, 
 were good enough to marry anybody.
 
 THE GIFT OF THE BRIDEGROOxM 15 
 
 Sir Bourchier had no fault to find, so far as 
 family went, with his son's choice, but Mousey 
 — he had always known her from a child as 
 ' Mousey' — was not exactly the sort of girl that 
 he would have chosen to sit at the head of his 
 son's table, to bear the weight of the family 
 honours when he was gone. He had had a 
 dreadful haunting fear — it almost amounted to 
 a conviction — that his son would never marry, 
 that there would be no descendants to carry on 
 the race in the old line, that the title would go 
 to a distant branch. 
 
 He was glad, therefore, to welcome any 
 daughter-in-law, and whatever his private 
 opinion might be, he welcomed Dora into the 
 bosom of his august family with stately, old- 
 fashioned courtesy. He unbent so far, when 
 the party came back from church, as to kiss her 
 soft white forehead, and express a hope that 
 she would be very happy, and that he should 
 see a great deal of her at Castle Hill. The 
 two Miss Tremletts followed their father's lead
 
 j6 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 and kissed her damp cheek — at least, they made 
 a peck at it. They were elderly young ladies > 
 and were not effusive. 
 
 Poor little Dora cried all through the break- 
 fast : she couldn't keep her tears back. She was 
 crying at one end of the table, and her mother 
 crying at the other, while the new son-in-law 
 sat staring at everybody in gloomy silence. He 
 got up from the table as soon as he could ; he 
 didn't wait till the speeches were over; he was 
 in a great hurry to get away. He flurried poor 
 little Dora out of her wits ; he didn't give her 
 time to say all her ' good-byes,' and drove off to 
 the station an hour before the train was due. 
 
 He upset everything with his unnecessary 
 haste. The bride's travelling - boxes were 
 fastened down hurriedly, and a lot of things 
 that she wanted were left out, and a lot of 
 things that she didn't want were put in. Some 
 of the jewellery — the bracelets and ornaments, 
 that were among the wedding presents — was. 
 put in in a hurry at the last moment. No one
 
 THE GIFT OF THE BRIDEGROOM 17 
 
 knew exactly what was put in, it was all done 
 in such a scramble. 
 
 When the tearful bride had driven away, the 
 guests began to disperse. Sir Bourchier and his 
 daughters were among the first to go. The big 
 lumbering family chariot was brought round, and 
 the head of the family departed in gloomy state. 
 Dora's new sisters-in-law had not taken the 
 trouble to look at the wedding presents she had 
 spread out with so much delight before they 
 went away. They did not even glance at the 
 silver salt-cellars or the afternoon-tea tables. 
 There was a ton of old silver plate, it was 
 rumoured, at Castle Hill, and they turned up 
 their high-bred noses at little Dora's silver 
 spoons. 
 
 They did not stop to see the present that 
 Captain Tremlett had sent his bride, the old 
 family diamonds that he had had set in that 
 elaborate necklace. Everybody in the con- 
 fusion seemed to have forgotten that unlucky 
 necklace. 
 7 VOL. I. 2
 
 i8 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 What with the rain, and the bridegroom 
 jumping up in that ridiculous way in the middle 
 of the marriage feast, and the scramble to get 
 away, not many of the guests had seen the 
 wedding presents. 
 
 It was quite late in the day, when nearly 
 everyone was gone, that somebody remarked 
 that closed morocco case among the presents. 
 
 ' Oh, haven't you seen it V Edith said ; she 
 was generally showman — there was no one else 
 to go round with the people ; ' it is the gift of 
 the bridegroom. It is quite the — the — most 
 macrnificent ' 
 
 She had been trying to open the case — it was 
 rather a hard spring to unfasten — and she 
 stopped suddenly, and the guests who had 
 crowded round, and who were watching her 
 unfasten it, saw her face fall — saw the colour 
 drop quite out of it. 
 
 11 I e case was empty !
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 GOTHAM. 
 
 No one knew what had become of the diamond 
 necklace. Had Dora taken it with her ? She 
 had gathered up a few things in a hurry — some 
 gold bangles and a bracelet — and she had left 
 their cases behind her, empty. There was no 
 room in her travelling-trunks for cases. She 
 might have taken the necklace, too, as the 
 bridegroom made such a fuss about it. She 
 might have taken it with her to please him, to 
 wear at dinner for his especial benefit. 
 
 It was ridiculous to think that it was lost oi 
 stolen ; there was no one at Nunwell to steal 
 it. The door of the room in which the presents
 
 20 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 were set out had been locked while the wedding 
 party were away at church, and the house- 
 keeper had kept the key in her pocket. It was 
 absurd to make a fuss about it — enough fuss 
 had been made about it already. Most likely 
 the bride had taken it away with her ; and she 
 would come down to dinner in it by-and-by. 
 She was such a sweet- natured little thing, that 
 she would wear it day and night if she thought 
 the wearing of it would give her lord and 
 master pleasure. 
 
 Mrs. Bellew made so little of the loss, or 
 rather the disappearance, of the necklace, that 
 she only mentioned it in her letter to Dora in a 
 postscript. When everybody was gone, she 
 comforted herself by sitting down and writing 
 to Dora. There were so many instructions she 
 had intended to give her, so much to say that 
 had been left unsaid, that she forgot all about 
 the bridegroom's present until she had finished 
 her letter ; and then she added the postscript : 
 
 * Pray let me hear,' she wrote, ' if you have
 
 GOTHAM 21 
 
 taken Lionel's beautiful necklace away with 
 you ; we are wondering what has become 
 of it.' 
 
 Edith Darcy went away the next day. There 
 was nothing for her to wait for. She had seen 
 Dora safely married, and she had cut up the 
 cake ; she had spent the remainder of the 
 wedding-day in squeezing bits of cake into 
 little oblong boxes and writing people's names 
 upon them. She was quite sick of the sight of 
 wedding-cake when she had finished. She had 
 made up her mind that if her wedding did 
 come off, she would do without a cake. It 
 would be a distinct economy, to begin with. 
 She would put a notice in the papers, as 
 people do after deaths, only with a variation, 
 * No cah\' 
 
 Mrs. Bellew smiled when Edith told her of the 
 economy she was planning ; it was the first time 
 she had seen her smile since Dora drove away. 
 
 * You will have to do without a great many 
 things besides cake, dear,' she said, ' if Captain
 
 22 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 Stanhope has only got his pay. I don't see 
 how you are going to live upon it.' 
 
 Edith sighed. 
 
 * It will not be quite all,' she said, hanging 
 her head, and reddening at the mention of her 
 marriage, like a girl in her teens ; ' I have a little 
 of my own, you know.' 
 
 ' That will only keep you in clothes, dear,' 
 Mrs. Bellew said kindly. ' You will be expected 
 to dress ; you can't economize in dress, what- 
 ever else you do. Derek — Captain Stanhope — 
 has to keep up his position in the regiment, and 
 he could not afford to let his wife look dowdy ; 
 besides ' 
 
 She stopped herself and coloured ; she had 
 almost thought aloud. 
 
 ' Besides, I am not so young, so attractive, 
 that I can afford to be dowdy V the girl said 
 quickly, with a thrill of impatience in her tone, 
 her face flushing and her mouth quivering. 
 
 She had a beautiful tender mouth, rather 
 wide, and thin, sensitive, scarlet lips ; she could
 
 GOTHAM 
 
 23 
 
 not keep her mouth from quivering if anything 
 moved her. 
 
 ' I didn't mean that, dear. You are more 
 attractive than most women. When you have 
 got a colour, when you are excited, you 
 are always the loveliest woman in the room. 
 You were handsomer than any of Dora's 
 bridesmaids — everybody remarked it ; but you 
 want to be well dressed. I never knew a 
 woman who paid for dressing more than you 
 do.' 
 
 This was kindly meant. Mrs. Bellew would 
 not have said anything to hurt the feelings of 
 Dora's friend for the world. Edith had been 
 a constant visitor at Nun well for the last ten 
 years. Mrs. Bellew almost loved her as a 
 dauofhter of her own. 
 
 ' It is very dear of you to say so,' Edith said, 
 with something like a sob. ' If you knew how 
 little I have to dress upon, you would only 
 wonder that I can dress at all — that I am ever 
 fit to be seen. You would cease to be surprised
 
 24 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 that I look shabby — that I am a disgrace to 
 you all.' 
 
 Her voice was unsteady, and there was a 
 thrill in it that touched the elder woman and 
 brought the tears to her eyes. 
 
 ' You have never, never disgraced us, darling ; 
 you have always looked lovely ! No one could 
 tell, to see you, that you had not as much to 
 spend upon dress as other girls. You always 
 looked better than Dora. Poor Dora ! she 
 hasn't the figure to show off anything, as 
 you have. If you put the richest things on 
 her, it does not seem to make any differ- 
 ence.' 
 
 ' Dora has made a very good match, in spite 
 of it ; and I — I am going to marry a poor man 
 with nothing but his pay,' Edith said, with a 
 laugh — a rather tremulous laugh. 
 
 She went away the next day. She went 
 quite early, before the letters were in. She 
 had to go to the other end of England, and she 
 started by an early train.
 
 GOTHAM 25 
 
 She had said good-bye to Mrs. Bellew the 
 night before, and Gracie — Grace was Dora's 
 younger sister — was asleep when she came into 
 her room in the morning, to kiss her before she 
 went away. She did not awake her ; she left 
 the room on tiptoe, and went softly down the 
 stairs, lest she should wake any of the sleeping 
 inmates. 
 
 It seemed to her, when the hall door had 
 closed noiselessly upon her, and the carriage 
 that bore her to the station drove away, that 
 she had stolen out of the house like a thief. 
 
 Edith had intended, when she decided to start 
 by that early train from Hereford, to stop in 
 town by the way and do some shopping. Her 
 destination was some forty miles the other side 
 of London. She would have to cross from west 
 to east ; she would have to drive through 
 London. It would not have delayed her to 
 have done an hour or two's shopping in town, 
 by the way. She had a great deal to do, if 
 she were to be married in October. There were
 
 26 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 frequent trains from the Great Eastern rail- 
 way-station to St. Oswald's, and she had plenty 
 of time on her hands. 
 
 When she reached town she changed her 
 mind. She had consulted her purse on the 
 journey, and a review of its contents had made 
 her alter her mind. 
 
 ' It was not worth while,' she reminded her- 
 self, with a sigh, ' to go and look over a lot of 
 things — a lot of expensive things — and find out, 
 after all, that she had not money enough to 
 pay for them.' She had been thinking of what 
 Mrs. Bellew had said overnight, when they 
 were talking about her plans for the future, 
 of the necessity there would be, when she was 
 married, to be well dressed — not to disgrace 
 her husband by her shabby clothes. 
 
 It had been running in her mind all the way — 
 that, and what Mrs. Bellew had said about her 
 looks — and the two tos:ether had made her alter 
 her mind, and put off the shopping that she 
 had planned.
 
 GOTHAM 2^ 
 
 * It will never do to buy common things, 
 cheap things,' she reasoned, with Mrs. Bellew's 
 words in her ears ; 'they would soon get shabby, 
 the gloss would soon wear off them, and they 
 would look dowdy. Whatever else I do, I can 
 never, never wear cheap vulgar finery ! I must 
 wait until I can afford something better.' 
 
 There was some reason in what Mrs. Bellew 
 had said. Edith Darcy was not a girl — a 
 woman, rather ; she was twenty-nine, if she 
 was a day — to wear common things. Her style 
 of beauty — she had a distinct style in her way, 
 and a certain sort of beauty — wanted careful 
 dressing to set it off : it wanted costly stuffs, 
 and rich dark colours, and unusual effects. 
 There was nothing namby-]3amby about it. 
 
 She was a pale brunette — not a brown or olive 
 complexioned brunette of the regular type, but 
 one with the clear white, rather thick white, com- 
 plexion, that a sudden scarlet colour sets off to 
 perfection. Her face was quite colourless to- 
 day, as she leaned back against the dark
 
 28 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 cushions of that first-class carriage. Edith 
 always travelled first-class ; it was one of her 
 whims. She economized in a hundred other 
 ways, but she always travelled luxuriously. 
 She had never been in a third-class carriage in 
 her life. 
 
 Her hair was black — as a brunette's hair 
 should be — rather a rusty black, with red-brown 
 shades in it, like the inner lining of a chest- 
 nut's skin, and her eyebrows were thin and 
 dark and well defined, and she had long dark 
 lashes, that veiled the softness, sometimes the 
 hardness, of her eyes. Her eyes were dark — 
 very dark — with a light in them that always 
 seemed ready to flame up if occasion required. 
 They were still, steady, reflective eyes — cold 
 rather than warm — and they were set rather 
 far back, which made her look older than she 
 really was. 
 
 It was only when she was animated, when she 
 woke up, that she was beautiful. To the world 
 she was a cold, silent, reserved woman ; she never
 
 GOTHAM 29 
 
 laid herself out for strangers ; her chill}^ smiles 
 were few and rare, and she never wasted them 
 on chance acquaintances ; but to her friends, to 
 those who loved her, she was a woman to rave 
 about. 
 
 She was not the sort of woman to be ill 
 dressed ; she was made on noble lines — shabby 
 gloves or a dowdy hat would have ill become 
 her ; it would have dispelled all the illusion. 
 
 There was no one to meet her at the railway- 
 station at St. Oswald's when she reached there, 
 but, fortunately, there was a fly waiting outside 
 the station, which an officious porter secured for 
 her. Everybody waited upon Edith. It was 
 another of her whims to pay liberally all the 
 people about her who rendered her any service. 
 She never came away from a visit at a country 
 house without feeing all the servants in the 
 most princely manner. 
 
 The hired fly from the station stopped at the 
 door of one of the houses in the High Street 
 — an old-fashioned red-brick house, standing in
 
 30 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 an olcl-fashioned garden, surrounded by high 
 brick walls. The iron gates in front were 
 closed, and the fly had to wait outside while 
 someone answered the bell to open them. 
 Edith could hear the bell clanging in the hall, 
 as she sat waiting in the fly ; it had an old, 
 cracked sound in it, as if it had grown tired of 
 ringing. Everything about the place was old 
 and worn out like the bell. Grass was growing 
 in the gravelled path through which the 
 carriage drove to the front-door ; it did not 
 look as if it had had any fresh gravel upon it 
 for years ; the flower-beds were neglected, and 
 the shrubs on the lawn had grown into trees : 
 they did not seem as if they had ever been 
 pruned. There was a musty, shut-up smell 
 about the place when the front-door was opened 
 that did not speak well for the ventilation. 
 
 ' We didn't expect you back so soon, Miss 
 Edith,' the woman who opened the door said. 
 She was rather an elderly woman ; she did not 
 look at all like a smart, modern housemaid.
 
 GOTHAM 31 
 
 ' No ; I forgot to write. I didn't think it 
 mattered ; my room is always ready. How is 
 she?' 
 
 . ' She is better to-day : it is one of her good 
 days. I dare say she will know you. She was 
 full of the wedding yesterday. She has been 
 talking about it all night, and this morning she 
 woke up clearer. I hope you've brought her 
 some weddino^-cake.' 
 
 Edith's brow clouded. 
 
 ' No,' she said ; ' I forgot the cake. I did 
 not think she would remember.' 
 
 * She remembers everything. She is quite 
 counting upon the cake. You must tell her it 
 is comincr.' 
 
 o 
 
 Edith sighed. It was a very sad home- 
 coming. There was no one to welcome her but 
 a servant — an old servant who was not very 
 glad to see her — and an elderly relative who 
 was, as the people of St. Oswald's put it, ' off 
 her head.' 
 
 The elderly relative was her great-aunt, her
 
 32. THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 father's aunt. Her father had been dead for 
 years — he had died when she was a child — and 
 her mother had died ten years ago. This old 
 maiden aunt of her father's had offered her a 
 home after the death of her parents ; she had 
 not offered her any care or protection — she had 
 only offered her a home, food and shelter, and 
 Edith had accepted her offer gladly. When 
 she had nowhere else to go, she went to St. 
 Oswald's. 
 
 She did not go there very often ; she was 
 generally away visiting. Everybody was so 
 glad to have her ; she could have gone on 
 visiting at different country houses, and spent 
 a season in town and a month in Scotland, and 
 never come back to that dreary, shut-up old 
 house from year's end to year's end, if she had 
 wished. 
 
 She had an income of her own, not a very 
 large income, and it found her in clothes and 
 pin-money and paid her travelling expenses ; 
 and for the rest, her friends were very glad to
 
 GOTHAM 33 
 
 offer her a home. She had come back to St. 
 Oswald's now to get her thmgs ready — her 
 wedding things ; she would not be likely to 
 go away again until she went away for good. 
 
 * Is she up to-day — is she in the sitting- 
 room ?' Edich asked wearily, as she went slowly 
 up the stairs. She was not tired with her 
 journey, not very, very tired — one doesn't soon 
 get tired of travelling at thirty, and Edith was 
 not yet thirty — but there seemed to be lead 
 weights to her feet as she dragged them up the 
 stairs. 
 
 The staircase was dark and gloomy, like the 
 hall ; the blinds were all drawn down over the 
 windows ; only a dim, chastened light came 
 through them. It was a wide, old-fashioned 
 staircase, with broad landings and carved 
 balusters, and on the walls were hung quite 
 a number of portraits — old family portraits of 
 the Darcys and Gunnings. 
 
 Old Miss Gunning, Maria Gunning, was the 
 present owner of the house. She never came 
 
 VOL. I. 3
 
 34 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 down the stairs — she had not been down them 
 for years — but she walked on the landing, the 
 broad passage at the top of the stairs. It was 
 almost a gallery, a wide carpeted gallery, with 
 old-fashioned inlaid cabinets standing between 
 the tall narrow windows, and quaint carved 
 Chippendale chairs, with ball feet and wide 
 straddling arms and legs, standing against the 
 wall, and the portraits of their former owners, 
 those who had once sat in them, looking down 
 from above. 
 
 Edith Darcy paused when she reached the 
 top stair, as if she expected to see her aunt 
 coming down the gallery. The blinds were 
 closely drawn over all the tall windows. Miss 
 Gunning objected to light ; it was one of her 
 whims. Edith would hardly have seen her if 
 she had been there — not until her eyes had got 
 accustomed to the gloom. 
 
 ' She is in the bow-room to-day,' the servant 
 called up after her, in answer to her question ; 
 and then Edith heard a door in the hall
 
 GOTHAM 35 
 
 below fall-to behind her, and the sound of 
 the woman's footsteps echoing down a stone 
 passage. 
 
 The bow-room was at the end of the gallery ; 
 she had to go past the closed windows and the 
 tall cabinets ao^ainst the wall to reach it. There 
 was an old smell about the place, a faint 
 aromatic odour ; she always associated that 
 smell with Gotham — Gotham House, as it was 
 called. Something brushed by her as she went 
 slowly down the gallery, something white and 
 indistinct in the gloom, and it rubbed against 
 her and purred. It was a white cat. 
 
 Edith opened the door at the end of the 
 gallery ; she did not knock — she opened the 
 door and w^ent in. There was a screen before 
 the door, a high screen, and it shut out the 
 light. There was very little light in the room 
 to shut out. The gloom inside was deeper than 
 the gloom without. If there had not been a 
 small fire burning in the grate, Edith could not 
 have seen the occupant of the room. By the
 
 36 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 dim light she saw a figure in an armchair on 
 one side of the hearth, a bent drooping figure, 
 bending over the fire. She could not approach 
 very near the fire ; there was a high wire guard 
 surrounding the hearth, and the bent figure in 
 the chair was leaning her forehead against the 
 guard. 
 
 ' It is I, Aunt Maria,' Edith said, coming 
 forward into the firelight. ' I have come 
 back.' 
 
 ' Edith,' the old woman said, as if talking to 
 herself — ' Edith Gunning ? What has brought 
 her back ? Why does she not stay with her 
 husband ? Has he sent her away ? Is it the 
 old story again — the old history repeating 
 itself?' 
 
 ' No, Aunt Maria, he has not sent her back. 
 It is not Edith Gunning — it is Edith Darcy : 
 and — and I don't think her husband will ever 
 send her back.' 
 
 Edith spoke gaily, l^ut there was a little 
 break in her voice. It was a sad home-coming.
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
 GOTHAM 37 • 
 
 No one was glad to see her. There was no one 
 to welcome her but a white cat, which had 
 followed her into the room, and was rubbing 
 itself against her skirts.
 
 CHAPTEH III. 
 
 BLUE-EYE S AUNT. 
 
 The old woman sitting by the fireplace lifted 
 her head wearily and looked at Edith ; she 
 shaded her eyes with her hand that she might 
 see her more clearly. They were dark, bright 
 eyes, and they were set far back in her head, 
 like Edith's. Her face was pale, too, like hers, 
 only it was a chalky, waxen paleness, like one 
 who had been long shut out from the light and 
 air, who had been shut up for years in a living 
 tomb. It was the paleness of age and decay, 
 and Edith's was the fine white, warm pale- 
 ness of youth. It was the same, with a 
 difference.
 
 BLUE-EYE'S AUNT 39^ 
 
 ' Edith Darcy !' the old woman repeated slowly, 
 looking at Edith standing there in the firelight 
 with her keen, searching eyes. ' Why should 
 Edith Darcy come here ? She has a home of 
 her own — a home that ought to have been 
 another's. Why does she come here like a 
 beggar, and eat the bread of dependence V 
 
 ' I thought she was clearer to-day,' Edith 
 said to an attendant, an elderly woman, who 
 stood near ; ' Martha told me it was one of her 
 good days.' 
 
 ' She has been dozing,' the woman said, ' and 
 she has just woke up ; she will remember you 
 presently. — It is Miss Edith, ma'am ; she has 
 just come back from the wedding, and she has 
 brought you some cake.' 
 
 ' Cake !' the old woman said eagerly — * wed- 
 ding-cake ? Has she brought it with her ? Is 
 it here ? Are they bringing it upstairs ? Tell 
 the men to carry it carefully, Penfold — not to 
 shake the ornaments. There ought to be a 
 temple upon it, the temple of Hymen, and
 
 40 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 orange blossoms and garlands. There was a 
 temple upon my wedding-cake, but something 
 happened to it. It was an unlucky omen, people 
 said. You must be very particular, Penfold, 
 that nothing happens to it.' 
 
 * Nothing is likely to happen to it,' Penfold 
 said in her prosaic, matter-of-fact way ; she did 
 not even take the trouble to humour the old 
 woman's whim. ' Miss Edith has only brought 
 you a slice — a slice of somebody else's cake. 
 People would have enough to do if they sent a 
 whole cake to each of their friends ; there'd be 
 less weddings, maybe.' 
 
 * Perhaps she'll remember me better presently, 
 when she is quite awake,' Edith said. ' I am 
 tired, and want some tea ; I will come in again 
 by-and-by.' 
 
 She had crossed the room, and was putting 
 aside the screen before the door, when her aunt's 
 voice arrested her, a high-pitched, quavering 
 treble : 
 
 ' Don't take Blue-Eye away ! I can't give up
 
 BLUE-EYE'S AUNT 4L 
 
 Blue-Eye ! I have given up everything else, 
 but I can't give up Blue-Eye !' 
 
 * Blue-Eye was in the gallery when I came 
 in,' Edith said wearily ; ' she came to meet 
 me.' 
 
 ' She was here just now — on my chair ; it 
 must have been Blue-Eye's aunt you saw in 
 the gallery,' she said querulously. ' Will you 
 find her, Penfold ? You must find her.' 
 
 Edith went out of the room, and left the old 
 woman searching for the cat. It was the chief 
 occupation of her life to look for the cats. 
 
 Miss Gunning had not always been ' off her 
 head,' as people described it. She had only 
 shown symptoms of weakness of intellect for 
 ten years past. She had lived a selfish, narrow, 
 secluded life for years, but her mind had not 
 given way until ten years ago. Perhaps it was 
 the narrowness and the selfishness that made it 
 give way. 
 
 She was quite herself, even now, at times — ■ 
 her old narrow self — but she w^as subject to de-
 
 42 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 luslons. She was always fancying that the 
 friends of her youth were about her, that her 
 lover — she had had a lover once — was coming 
 back. She had forgotten all about the inter- 
 vening years : they seemed to have dropped 
 out of her mind, and she had gone back in 
 memory to the old early days, to sixty years 
 ago It was not often that she knew Edith. 
 She persisted in calling her Edith Gunning. 
 There had been an Edith Gunnino- once — her 
 younger sister, Edith's grandmother. It was 
 said she had supplanted her — that her lover 
 had forsaken her for her sister, and that he 
 had deserted her, too, after a time, and she had 
 come back to Gotham — she and her children. 
 It was so long ago that no one knew if there 
 were any truth in the story. 
 
 Edith Darcy had died more than fifty years 
 ago. There was a marble monument to her in 
 the parish church of St. Oswald's — a marble 
 urn with a female figure weeping over it. She 
 had been weeping there for over^s^alf a century,
 
 BLUE-EYE'S AUNT 43 
 
 and she was weeping still. Xo one knew who 
 had put up that monument in the church ; it 
 was certainly not her sister Maria. She had 
 left two children behind her — two boys. The 
 elder, Edith's father, had died years ago, when 
 she was a child, and left her with a slender 
 provision ; the younger brother was still living, 
 a rich man, with a second wife and a houseful 
 of children. Edith could have gone to him 
 when her mother died, but she preferred to 
 accept the home offered her by her great- 
 aunt. She would not be in anybody's way 
 at Gotham, and she would be more her own 
 mistress ; she would be free to come and go 
 unquestioned. 
 
 She had come and gone during these lonely 
 years, never remaining long, and always return- 
 ing with regret and reluctance. The dull life, 
 and the whims and delusions of the old woman, 
 wearied her ; she had no sympathy with them. 
 She was always glad to go away. She com- 
 forted herself \ty thinking how soon she would
 
 44 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 be going away again, and that she would never 
 come back. She would not be like that other 
 Edith Darcy, her unhappy namesake, who had 
 come back after three years, a deserted wife, 
 bringing her children with her. Whatever 
 happened, she told herself, with a shiver, she 
 would never come back. 
 
 Nothing was likely to happen. The man she 
 was going to marry worshipped her ; in the 
 foolish old phrase, he loved the very ground 
 she walked upon. Her only care just now w^as 
 money ; they would have so little to begin with. 
 He would have his pay, and her allowance — her 
 slender allowance — which would only just find 
 her in clothes — decent clothes. If anything 
 drove her back to Gotham it would be her 
 poverty. 
 
 Miss Gunning was ' clearer,' as Penfold had 
 predicted, when Edith came into the bow-room 
 later, after she had had some tea. She was sitting 
 upright in her chair, watching for the screen 
 by the door to be pushed aside, and her niece
 
 BLUE-EYE'S AUNT 45 
 
 to enter ; and the two white cats she had 
 been in trouble about were asleep on the 
 hearthrug. 
 
 There was a shaded lamp on the table near 
 the door, which gave a circumscribed light in 
 its own immediate neighbourhood, and left the 
 rest of the room in shadow. 
 
 It was a spacious room, with a wide bow- 
 window% from w^hich it took its name. It was 
 full of old-fashioned furniture — high-backed 
 chairs, and wide couches, and tall cabinets 
 ranged against the wall. 
 
 The same faint aromatic smell pervaded the 
 room that pervaded the gallery outside, an old 
 musty smell of pot-pourri that had been kept 
 for years in a jar and had never been changed. 
 There were big Oriental jars on the tall cabinets 
 against the wall that might have been full of 
 pot-pourri for half a century. But there were 
 other things besides old china jars on the top of 
 the cabinets ; there were glass cases of cats — 
 stuffed cats. In the dim light they could be
 
 46 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 seen with their green shining eyes looking down 
 from their high place. 
 
 They were all white cats, ancestors of the 
 pair sleeping on the hearth. They had been 
 Miss Gunning's companions for years ; she 
 had nothing else to love ; she had neither 
 husband nor children like other women, and her 
 affections had centred in her cats. They were 
 her companions when they were living, and 
 when they died — they were rather a delicate 
 race, or too much petting was not good for 
 them — she could not consent to be separated 
 from them : she still kept them about her, in 
 glass cases round the walls. 
 
 In the dim light, with all those green eyes- 
 looking down upon her, Edith thought, with 
 a shudder, it looked like a mausoleum — a 
 mausoleum of cats. She had seen them all 
 before — all but one. One had been added to the 
 number since she had been away. Blue-Eye, 
 the reigning favourite, had lost a sister, and she 
 had been added to the company against the walL
 
 BLUE-EYE'S AUNT 47 
 
 Edith had to Hsten to a long detailed account 
 of the sufferings and death of the deceased 
 member of her aunt's family. The story took 
 a long time telling, and put the old lady in a 
 good humour. It was astonishing how clear 
 and exact she was ; she did not leave out the 
 smallest detail connected with her favourite's 
 lamented demise. She had certainly not lost 
 her memory ; she was quite clear and sane 
 about some things — she was always clear about 
 the cats. She made Edith go round the room 
 and look at the white, soft, fluffy creature she 
 had known in the flesh ; and Penfold held the 
 light. 
 
 ' It is very nice,' Edith said, not very ecstati- 
 cally — she had no patience with her aunt's 
 mania ; ' but I shouldn't have known it : they 
 are all so much alike.' 
 
 ' You are not looking at the right one ; that 
 is not Blue-Eye's sister, it is her aunt !' the old 
 woman said in an injured voice. 
 
 ' Oh, I see ; that is much nicer.' And
 
 4.8 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 without bestowing a look on the dead favourite, 
 Edith came back and sat down. She took a 
 seat on the other side of the fireplace, opposite 
 the bent figure in the chair, and like her she 
 leant forward and rested her head against the 
 brass guard that went round the hearth. 
 
 There was something in the action that made 
 the resemblance between them more marked — • 
 the weary stoop of the shoulders, and the 
 drooping head. Some day, if she lived to 
 grow old — so old, over fourscore — if she out- 
 lived all her ties, Edith Darcy would shut 
 herself up within four walls, and would set her 
 affections, if she happened to have any left, 
 upon cats. 
 
 Perhaps Edith thought of this as she leaned 
 her head against the fire - guard. It was 
 better, she told herself, to make a mistake, 
 to marry upon nothing at all ; to spend her 
 life in pinching and scraping ; to be exposed to 
 daily humiliation and defeat ; to have a thou- 
 sand cares and anxieties : to endure sorrow
 
 BLUE-EYE'S AUNT 49 
 
 and loss — but to have the love of husband 
 and children — It was better to suffer all this 
 than to be a lonely, selfish old woman. 
 
 'You haven't told me about the wedding:, 
 the old woman said presently, interrupting her 
 thoughts. ' I knew the Tremletts when I was 
 a girl ; they were connections, distant connec- 
 tions, of the Gunnings.' 
 
 ' It was not a nice wedding,' Edith said, with 
 a shiver ; ' it rained all the time. The bride's 
 dress was quite wet when she came back from 
 church ; she could shake the rain-drops off it.' 
 
 ' Tears, tears ! it is a sure sign,' Miss Gunning 
 said, shaking her head. ' It rained the day that 
 Edith Darcy was married. She went away in 
 a storm ; there was a tree blown down on the 
 lawn ; it lay across the path. What else could 
 she expect V 
 
 * It is a very good match for Dora,' Edith 
 went on, not heeding the old woman's inter- 
 ruption, speaking more to herself than to a 
 listener — she had a habit of speaking to her- 
 
 VOL. I. 4
 
 50 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 self, of thinking aloud. ' She will be the head 
 of the family. Sir Bourchier is very infirm. 
 She will be Lady Tremlett soon, and live 
 at Castle Hill ; it is the show-place of the 
 county.' 
 
 ' Sir Bourchier V said the old woman with 
 animation. ' I remember Sir Bourchier quite 
 well ; he was a young man when I knew him. 
 Lady Tremlett had splendid diamonds. The 
 Tremlett diamonds were noted ; she used to 
 wear them at the county balls.' 
 
 Then Edith remembered the diamond neck- 
 lace that had so suddenly disappeared, that had 
 been lost sight of 
 
 ' Captain Tremlett had them reset for Dora,* 
 she said with a sigh. She was thinking of the 
 value, of the ridiculous value, of those glitter- 
 ing stones that Dora despised — someone had 
 said they were worth five thousand pounds. 
 - He had them set as a necklace.' 
 
 ' Not all of them ? There were so many. I 
 remember quite well seeing Sir Bourchier's wife
 
 BLUE-EYE'S AUNT 51 
 
 wearing them — sprays, and tiara, and brooches. 
 They could not be all put into a necklace.' 
 
 * There were a good many. I never saw so 
 many diamonds crowded together before. It 
 was a much too elaborate thing to wear. He 
 had better have given them to her in their old 
 setting.' 
 
 * The Gunning diamonds have never been 
 reset,' the old woman said presently ; * they 
 will never be reset in my time. Those that 
 come after will do what they like with them. 
 They used to be considered fine — none finer ; 
 perhaps they have lost their brilliance ; they 
 have not seen light for sixty years.' 
 
 This was the first mention that Edith had 
 ever heard~ of the Gunning diamonds. She 
 would not have heard it now if it had not been 
 for Dora Tremlett's necklace. 
 
 She did not exactly gasp — she was not the 
 girl to gasp — but she lifted her head from the 
 fire-guard and listened. She listened breath- 
 lessly. 
 
 LIBRARY „.,^rtK 
 
 UNlVERSm OF auNO»s
 
 52 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 ' The Gunning diamonds V she said, with a 
 Httle catch in her voice. 
 
 ' Yes,' the old woman said slowly, as if trying 
 to recall the past ; ' I wore them last. They 
 have always been mine. I wore them at — 
 at ' 
 
 She could not recall where she had last 
 worn them, and the wretched little white 
 cat stirring at her feet took off her atten- 
 tion. 
 
 ' I am sure Blue-Eye has not had her supper, 
 Penfold,' she said. ' She always goes to sleep 
 after her supper, and she is very restless to- 
 night ; she can't settle.' 
 
 ' She had her supper at the usual time, 
 Penfold said shortly. ' She'll settle when she's 
 minded to.' 
 
 The white cat did not seem inclined to 
 'settle.' She walked about the room in a 
 provoking manner, uttering every now and then 
 ridiculous little plaintive ' mews,' like a spoilt 
 child ; and all the while Edith was on tenter-
 
 BLUE-EYE'S AUNT 53 
 
 hooks to hear more about the Gunning dia- 
 monds — the diamonds that might be hers some 
 day. If they were heirlooms, if the law of 
 entail applied to them, they ought to be hers 
 now. 
 
 ' Oh, Blue-Eye is all right !' she said im- 
 patiently. ' I dare say she hears a mouse some- 
 where ; there must be a lot of mice in this 
 old house. You were telling me about the 
 diamonds ' 
 
 The old lady sat up in her chair. She was 
 trembling all over. 
 
 ' A mouse I' she repeated. ' Did you say a 
 mouse ? It was a mouse that killed her sister ; 
 it disagreed with her. Will you look, Penfold, 
 if there is a mouse ' 
 
 Edith devoutly wished that Blue-Eye might 
 share the fate of her sister, but she dissembled 
 her feelings, and waited, with what patience she 
 could, while Penfold searched under all the 
 chairs and tables for an imaginary mouse. She 
 waited in vain. Miss Gunning could not be
 
 54 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 brought round to the subject of the diamonds 
 again that night. 
 
 In her concern for that miserable white cat 
 the recollection of the family diamonds went 
 out of her mind — went out as suddenly as it 
 had come in. They had been put away and 
 forgotten for sixty years : nobody had ever 
 heard of them ; perhaps no one would ever hear 
 of them again. They might be only creations 
 of her disordered brain. 
 
 The following morning Edith received a letter 
 from Mrs. Bellew. The diamond necklace had 
 not been found. Dora had not taken it away. 
 She was in great distress about it, and begged 
 Edith to try to remember the last occasion 
 on which it was seen — in whose possession she 
 last saw it, and when. 
 
 Later in the day she had a telegram from 
 Dora herself 
 
 ' I am in dreadful trouble,' Dora telegraphed, 
 * about the necklace. Can you think what has 
 become of it ?'
 
 BLUE-EYE'S AUNT 55 
 
 Edith was thinking about the necklace all 
 the day. She could not get it out of her mind. 
 She could not remember for certain where she 
 had last seen it — if she had seen it on the 
 morning of the wedding, when the case was 
 brought downstairs to be put among the other 
 presents, or if she had seen it last the night 
 before, when she carried it upstairs. She had 
 carried it up and brought it down herself, and 
 she had stayed behind to lock the door of the 
 iron safe upon it. 
 
 She sat down and wrote a lono- letter to Mrs. 
 Bellew, and another to Dora, and she told them 
 each what she remembered about the missing 
 necklace. She could not believe that it was 
 lost.
 
 CHAPTER lY. 
 
 THE BOW-ROOM. 
 
 Edith Dakcy was still full of the missing 
 necklace when she went into Miss Gunnings 
 room in the evening. The old lady had not 
 been so well to-day, and she had been full of 
 fancies. When she was full of fancies, the 
 doctor prescribed perfect quiet ; the presence 
 of a stranger only excited her. Edith would 
 not have gone to her then, but she sent for 
 her ; she had been inquiring for her all the 
 day. 
 
 She was sitting in the same place where 
 Edith had left her the night before, with her 
 head against the wire guard, and the cats
 
 THE BOW-ROOM 57 
 
 sleeping on the rug at her feet. Nothing in 
 the aspect of the room was changed. 
 
 She did not hft up her head when Edith 
 came into the room, but went on talking to 
 herself in a low tone. 
 
 * She is not so clear to-day,' Penfold whispered 
 to Edith, as she took her seat, her old seat, on 
 the opposite side of the fireplace. ' She has 
 been talking of her diamonds all night ; she 
 wants to put them on. I am sure I don't know 
 where she keeps 'em. I've never seen any 
 diamonds, and I've lived with her thirty 
 years.' 
 
 * Perhaps she is only wandering,' Edith said, 
 with a sigh. 
 
 ' If she'd had any, the trustees would have 
 taken charge of 'em. They have locked up 
 most things, and taken away the keys — every- 
 thing that is of value.' 
 
 ' Yes,' she said absently, ' I suppose they 
 would know.' 
 
 She was wondering whether it would be
 
 58 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 worth while to apply to the trustees and ask 
 about the diamonds, the family diamonds, 
 which ought of rights to be hers. If they were 
 heirlooms, they would descend to her through 
 her father, who was the eldest male descendant 
 of the Gunnings. They could not possibly go 
 to the younger son. If they were hers, and 
 she could claim them, what a windfall it would 
 be ! They could not have come to her at a 
 better time. 
 
 She thought of all this as she sat leaning her 
 head against the fire-guard, listening to the old 
 woman's disjointed talk. She would not have 
 listened to it at any other time, but she listened 
 to-day. In spite of her preoccupation, she did 
 not lose a word that the old woman was saying. 
 Who could tell what clue she might let drop, 
 now that her mind was running on the subject? 
 It had been a sealed subject for sixty years, 
 and now it had come to light. No one living 
 had ever heard of the Gunning diamonds. It 
 was like discovering a buried treasure.
 
 THE BOW-ROOM : 59 
 
 Edith could not glean anything from her 
 wandering talk, though she listened intently. 
 It was about places and people she had never 
 heard of, who were dead before she was born ; 
 but the name of Edward Darcy dropped from 
 her lips more than once. She was so full of the 
 past, the old days, that she did not pay any 
 attention to her favourites to-night ; she let 
 them prowl about the room unnoticed. 
 
 The candles burnt low — there had only been 
 candles lit to-night, two wax candles at the 
 farther end of the room — and Pen fold sat 
 yawning behind her mistress. Edith could see 
 her yawning whenever she looked up. 
 
 ' You are tired to-night, Penfold,' she said 
 kindly — she was always considerate to servants ; 
 ^ you will be glad to go to bed.' 
 
 ' Yes,' the woman said, suppressing a yawn, 
 * I shan't be sorry. I have hardly left the room 
 a moment to-day. When the candles are burnt 
 out she will go to bed.' 
 
 The candles were Penfold's clock. They were
 
 6o THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 cut a certain length, and when they were burnt 
 out it was time to go to bed. There were 
 several clocks in the room, a bracket clock in an 
 inlaid tortoiseshell buhl case against the wall, 
 and a variety of timepieces on the cabinets, 
 and one over the mantelpiece ; but none of them 
 were going : they had not gone for years. It 
 was one of Miss Gunning's whims not to have 
 them wound up. They all pointed to different 
 hours, the hours they had stopped at. The 
 bracket clock had stopped at five minutes to 
 twelve. It had never pointed to any other 
 hour since Edith could remember. 
 
 * They will not have burnt out yet,' Edith 
 said, looking at the slowly wasting candles ; ' if 
 you like to go downstairs for half an hour, I 
 will stay here till you come back.' 
 
 ' If you are sure you don't mind waiting, 
 miss — and you won't leave her a minute — and 
 you'll touch the bell if I'm wanted, I should 
 like to have a breath of air,' Penfold said, 
 getting up. ' She's quiet now ; she'll go on
 
 THE BOW-ROOM 6i 
 
 talking to herself till I come back. She's not 
 likely to want anything ; if she does, you'll be 
 sure to ring, miss.' 
 
 ' I'll be sure to ring,' Edith said reassuringly. 
 * I don't think there will be any necessity, but 
 if she is restless I will ring.' 
 
 When Miss Gunnincr's maid had left the 
 
 o 
 
 room, and closed the door behind her, Edith 
 tried an experiment. 
 
 * It is very sad about Dora Tremlett's 
 necklace,' she said abruptly ; ' I have heard 
 to-day that it is lost.' 
 
 * Necklace ? what necklace ?' Miss Gunning- 
 asked, stopping in the midst of her disjointed 
 talk. 
 
 * The diamond necklace that Captain Tremlett 
 gave his bride for a wedding present. It has 
 disappeared most mysteriously. The bride was 
 wearing it the night before the wedding, and 
 the next day it was gone.' 
 
 * Gone V the old woman repeated ; ' where 
 did it go V
 
 62 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 She had quite woke up now ; Edith had 
 succeeded in arousing her attention. 
 
 ' No one knows. It disappeared. I — I 
 wonder whether the Gunning diamonds are 
 gone too ? It is years since you saw them ; 
 perhaps they, too, have disappeared.' 
 
 She could hardly keep her voice steady ; it 
 seemed her only chance. 
 
 ' I have not seen them for — for sixty years !' 
 said Miss Gunning, sitting up, and striking 
 her stick upon the floor ; she always kept her 
 stick beside her chair ; she could not walk an 
 inch without it. 
 
 * They may be gone now,' Edith said des- 
 perately. ' No one can tell what has happened 
 to them during these sixty years. Dora only 
 lost sight of her diamonds a single night, and 
 the next day they were gone.' 
 
 * Gone !' the old woman repeated — ' gone ! 
 gone ! There has been no one to take them ; 
 they would not have known where to find 
 them.'
 
 THE BOW-ROOM 63 
 
 ' There was no one to take Dora's necklace — 
 it was locked up in a safe ; but it was gone the 
 next day.' 
 
 The old woman struck her stick on the floor 
 impatiently, and began fumbling among the 
 folds of her dress, as if she were searching for 
 something. 
 
 ' You want your keys ?' Edith said eagerly, 
 interpreting the motion; 'you are looking for 
 your keys ?' 
 
 Miss Gunning nodded her head. 
 
 ' They were here just now/ she said weakly ; 
 ' I always keep them here.' 
 
 She was fumbling about her waist and the 
 folds of her dress, as if feeling for something. 
 Edith remembered all at once, as she sat watch- 
 ing her, a portrait she had seen of her aunt, 
 that hung still in one of the rooms below. It 
 had been taken in the days of her youth — a 
 half-length portrait of a lady in a yellow dress, 
 with a chatelaine by her side. One of the long^ 
 white hands in the portrait was toying with the
 
 64 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 chatelaine. Edith knew in a moment what her 
 aunt was feeling for ; the association with the 
 hidden gems had taken her back to the days of 
 her youth, to the old chatelaine that she used 
 to wear, which had been laid aside for fifty 
 years. 
 
 ' Do you think you could find them if you 
 had the key V she said eagerly. 
 
 The old woman was still fumbling at her 
 side ; she was not feeling for a pocket — it was 
 worn more forward in her days. She would 
 not have had to go far to find it ; it would 
 not have taken the hour's searching for that 
 jin-de-siecle pockets take ; besides, it was not 
 the movement that one makes to find a 
 pocket. 
 
 . * It used to be here,' she said meditatively ; 
 * it was always here ; it has never been off the 
 chain.' 
 
 ' The key — the key of the cabinet where 
 the diamonds are V Edith asked breathlessly. 
 
 The old woman nodded her head.
 
 THE BOW-ROOM 65 
 
 'It was on the chain,' she said; 'it never 
 left my side.' 
 
 She was still feeling for it when Penfold 
 came into the room. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 EDITH DARCY's DREAM. 
 
 Edith could not rest until she had seen the 
 portrait that she had in her mind. She wanted 
 to be sure about the chatelaine. 
 
 When the household had sunk into sleep — 
 they kept early hours at Gotham — Edith softly 
 descended the stairs with a taper in her hand. 
 They creaked beneath her soft footsteps, and 
 sent ghostly sounds travelling through the 
 silent house, while the old Gunnings on the 
 walls gloomed down upon her from their dingy 
 frames. The big cavernous drawing- room 
 looked as dark and chill as a vault by the 
 light of her single taper. She shivered as the
 
 EDITH DARCY'S DREAM 67 
 
 door fell-to behind her, and she stood in the 
 midst of the blackness, with a great company 
 of chairs and couches reachino^ out their white 
 ghostly arms to her. The furniture of the 
 room was white and gold, and the walls were 
 white, with some faded gilding upon it. The 
 room had been shut up so long that the gilding 
 on the walls and on the chairs and tables had 
 faded, and what had once been white was 
 now yellow with age. 
 
 The light of the taper that Edith carried 
 seemed only to make the gloom deej)er. The 
 white walls and the white arms of the furniture 
 seemed to come out of the gloom to meet her, 
 and the portraits in their tarnished frames 
 peered out of the darkness as she threw the 
 feeble flicker of her taper upon them one by 
 one. She found the one she wanted, and went 
 hurriedly over to it, holding her light aloft. 
 
 It was the newest portrait in the old room ; 
 it had not been painted more than sixty years. 
 A flat, colourless picture : the yellow dress
 
 68 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 looked colourless in the candlelight. A proud, 
 beautiful face, with dark eyes looking coldly 
 down, and thin scarlet lips tightly drawn. The 
 Gunnings were all of one type — white and cold, 
 with a hidden fire smouldering beneath their 
 stately calm. 
 
 Edith was quite right about the chatelaine. 
 She could not see it very well in that light— it 
 looked like a colourless daub of paint ; there 
 was something hanging beside the slim waist 
 of the woman in the picture — something with 
 pendent chains — though she could not make out 
 what was hanging to the chains. They were 
 indistinct blobs of paint. The artist, whoever 
 he was, had not been brought up in the school 
 of the pre-Raphaelite painters. 
 
 She was wondering all through the night — 
 she could not go to sleep for thinking of it — 
 what had become of her aunt's silver chatelaine. 
 Most likely the trustees had carried it away, or 
 locked it up with the other things. They had 
 removed everything of value, and put it in safe
 
 EDITH DARCY'S DREAM 69 
 
 keeping ; and they had set seals on the locks 
 of all the drawers and cabinets. They had left 
 nothing about ; they had taken possession of 
 everything. 
 
 Poor old Miss Gunning used to say sometimes, 
 in her sane moments — and she was as sane as 
 the yice-Chancellor himself at times — that she 
 had fallen asleep, and woke up to find herself 
 in the hands of lawyers and doctors. 
 
 She had no more authority over the disposal 
 of her own property than a stranger. Every- 
 thing had been taken from her and put away ; 
 if she were not exactly a prisoner in her own 
 house, she was a pensioner, living on the money 
 that was doled out month by month by her 
 lawyers, of the expenditure of which an account 
 had to be rendered. 
 
 Edith thought of all this as she lay awake, 
 wondering where that chatelaine might be. It 
 was not in her aunt's power to make a provision 
 for her, not the slenderest provision at her 
 approaching marriage — not even a wedding
 
 JO THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 present. She knew this quite well ; but if the 
 family jewels were not in the hands of the 
 trustees, she might give her the diamonds. 
 They were hers by right — at least, they were 
 her father's. 
 
 She fell asleep revolving the question of the 
 whereabouts of the chatelaine, and it was not, 
 perhaps, remarkable that she should dream 
 about it. Dreams, if we could trace them back, 
 are echoes of our waking thoughts, with this 
 strange difference — that they reach farther than 
 thought itself, and pierce the veil which we are 
 unable when awake to raise by a single inch. 
 
 Edith dreamed the exact locality of her aunt's 
 chatelaine. 
 
 If she had been a medium, she could not have 
 described its hiding-place more accurately. 
 
 ' It is in the oak chest in the gallery, at the 
 bottom of the chest, among the dresses,' she 
 found herself repeating, as if it had been a 
 lesson she had learnt, when she awoke. 
 
 She kept repeating it all the time she was
 
 EDITH DARCY'S DREAM 71 
 
 dressino' ; she was not at all sure that there 
 was anything in it, but she hurried over her 
 dressing, to see for herself if her dream were 
 true. 
 
 She knew the chest in the gallery quite well. 
 It was an old oak chest, with some carving over 
 the front, and a panelled lid. It had been 
 locked as lono- as she could remember, but she 
 recollected once, years ago, when a child, seeing 
 it open. It was when a party of young people 
 were staying in the house, and there were some 
 theatricals going on, and those who took part 
 in them were arrayed in some old-fashioned 
 gowns that were found in the chest. 
 
 She must have been quite a young child at 
 the time, for she could not remember the 
 theatricals ; she could only recollect seeing the 
 chest open, and the gowns taken out. 
 
 Most likely, she told herself, the trustees had 
 locked the chest and taken away the key, as 
 they had carried away all the other keys. 
 
 She asked Penfold about it after breakfast.
 
 72 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 when she met her coming out of Miss Gunning's 
 room. 
 
 Penfold shook her head ; she could not re- 
 member to have seen it for years. There was 
 nothing in the chest, she assured her, but old- 
 fashioned gowns — gowns that had belonged to 
 her great-grandmother. They had not seen 
 the light for over twenty years ; most likely 
 the moth had eaten them all up. 
 
 Then Edith had to dissemble. It was for the 
 sake of the old fashions that she wanted to see 
 the gowns, she told Penfold. She was going to 
 act in some charades, and she wanted an old- 
 fashioned dress. Nothing could be better than 
 one of the old moth-eaten gowns that had be- 
 longed to her great-grandmother. 
 
 Penfold put herself out of the way to look 
 for the key ; she had a * rummage ' for it, as 
 she termed it, after Miss Gunning was dressed 
 and she had got her into the bow-room. Edith 
 sat with her aunt while Penfold ' rummaged.' 
 
 It was not often that Miss Gunning's maid put
 
 EDITH DARCY'S DREAM 73 
 
 herself out of the way to oblige her mistress's 
 niece. She looked upon her as an interloper. 
 Whatever might come to her at her aunt's 
 death, she was only here on sufferance now. 
 Nothing in the place belonged to her ; she could 
 not take a book out of the house without the 
 permission of the trustees. 
 
 Penfold remembered quite well having seen 
 the key of the chest about, not very recently, 
 but since the action of the trustees. She re- 
 membered the chest being opened by them and 
 the contents examined, and the gentlemen 
 walking away and leaving it open. The con- 
 tents were part of an old woman's wardrobe ; 
 thev had nothino;' to do with the estate. When 
 the trustees had gone away, Penfold locked the 
 chest and put the key in a place of safety. 
 Wherever it was, it was where she had put it. 
 
 It took a good deal of looking for. While 
 Edith was about it, she mio^ht as well have 
 dreamed where the key of the chest was, as 
 well as the chatelaine.
 
 74 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 Penfold did not find the key until the after- 
 noon. It was not until near sunset that Edith 
 got an opportunity of looking over the things 
 in the chest. She did not care to go through it 
 — she would have to go quite to the bottom, 
 beneath all the dresses — while the maids were 
 about, and they were coming and going on 
 some errand or another to Miss Gunning's room 
 all the afternoon. They were out of the way at 
 last, safe out of the way for a good hour, gos- 
 siping over their tea in the servants' hall, and 
 Penfold was shut up with her mistress. 
 
 There was not much in the oak chest to lock up 
 so carefully — nothing but a lot of old-fashioned 
 gowns of a past age, fit only to use for dressing 
 ujD in charades. They were scarcely fit for that, 
 for the moth had got into them and riddled 
 them into holes ; if they remained there much 
 longer they would be quite eaten up. 
 
 Edith's hands trembled when she came near 
 the bottom of the box and had found nothing. 
 She threw all the things out in a heap upon the
 
 EDITH DARCY'S DREAM 75 
 
 floor — a heap of faded, discoloured rags. They 
 had no doubt been admh^ed in their time, and 
 had been put on with pride and joy, and laid 
 aside with regret. Who should say what high 
 hopes had beat beneath those ridiculous short- 
 waisted bodies, what joys and alarms had 
 fluttered the tender breasts under those faded 
 tags and laces ? 
 
 Edith did not trive a thouofht to this as she 
 went hurriedly through the contents of the oak 
 chest. She had come to the bottom, quite to 
 the bottom, when she came upon the yellow 
 gown that she knew so well — the yellow gown 
 in the picture. 
 
 She took it out with a trepidation she 
 could not account for. It had got crushed 
 and discoloured with lying by, and the pufls 
 and furbelows, that were almost grotesque in 
 their dimensions in the picture, were quite flat. 
 
 There was nothing beneath the yellow gown ; 
 it was the last thing in the chest ; it was quite 
 empty when she took it out.
 
 76 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 ' There was nothing in the dream after all,' 
 Edith told herself impatiently. 
 
 She shook the gown in her hand, as she was 
 accustomed to shake out her own dresses after 
 a journey, when they had got crushed with 
 being tightly packed in a trunk, and as she 
 was shaking it something fell out. 
 
 It was the chatelaine, which had been hidden 
 away in the folds of the yellow gown. When 
 Penfold came out of the room to see how she 
 was getting on, Edith was putting the things 
 back into the chest. 
 
 * There are no dresses here that are of any 
 use to me,' she said. ' You can put them all in 
 again, Penfold, and return the key to where you 
 found it.' 
 
 When Penfold had gone down to her supper 
 in the servants' hall, Edith showed Miss Gunning 
 the treasure she had discovered. 
 
 ' Do you remember this. Aunt Maria ?' she 
 said, laying the chatelaine in the old woman's 
 lap. ' Is this what you were looking for ?'
 
 EDITH DARCY'S DREAM ^^ 
 
 Miss Gunning was sitting in her usual atti- 
 tude, with her head leaning forward upon her 
 breast, and she was dozing. She dozed a good 
 deal during the day. She fell asleep in a 
 minute, in the midst of talking, and she woke 
 up just as suddenly. She woke up now when 
 Edith put the chatelaine in her lap. 
 
 ' Ye-es,' she said, fingering it with tremulous 
 eagerness. ' How should I forget it ? I always 
 wear it. I could not do without it. My keys 
 — where are my keys ? They were here yester- 
 day ' 
 
 Then Edith's heart sank. One of the chains 
 was broken ; whatever had once hung upon it 
 had been taken away. There were only a few 
 trinkets left hanging upon it — a gilt needle-case, 
 a pair of rusty scissors, and a little twisted 
 key. 
 
 ' Here is a key. Aunt Maria, a dear little 
 key ; what is it the key of?' she said with 
 breathless eagerness. 
 
 She couldn't understand dreaming about it>
 
 y^ THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 having been favoured with a distinct revela- 
 tion, and nothing coming of it. 
 
 * This V the old woman said, shading her eyes 
 with her hand, and looking at the little gilt 
 key against the light. ' I ought to know — I 
 use it every day ' 
 
 * Where do you use it V Edith asked, in a 
 voice she could not keep steady. ' Is it the 
 key — of — of the case where the diamonds are 
 kept — the Gunning diamonds V 
 
 The old woman nodded. 
 
 ' Is it in this room V 
 
 The old woman looked slowly round the 
 room, shading her eyes with her hand, though 
 the light was dim — only the light of the two 
 wax candles burning in the sconces at the 
 farther end of the room. Edith watched her. 
 For a moment her eyes seemed to linger in a 
 corner — a recessed corner — near the window, 
 upon one of the tall bureaus against the wall 
 — an old-fashioned marqueterie bureau with 
 fanciful designs inlaid in coloured woods. It
 
 EDITH DARCY'S DREAM 79 
 
 had a round sloping top and slender legs ; 
 Edith never remembered having seen it opened. 
 
 She jumped up from her seat suddenly, when 
 she saw where Miss Gunning's eyes were linger- 
 ing, and went over to it ; she was trembling all 
 over. 
 
 ' Is it here V she said in her low, eager voice, 
 * is it the key of this ?' 
 
 The old woman did not answer ; she sat 
 shading her eyes, and looking in a bewildered 
 way round the room. 
 
 * Will you try V 
 
 She never knew how it happened : it all 
 happened in a moment. The old woman had 
 risen from her seat, and was hobbling across 
 the room. She was leaning upon her stick, and 
 walking without help — she generally wanted a 
 good deal of supporting on each side. Edith 
 had not seen her walking alone for years — she 
 had always leaned for support on another — but 
 to-day she was walking alone. 
 
 Miss Gunning came over to the marqueterie
 
 8o THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 bureau where Edith was standing. It seemed 
 to her that the old woman was crossing the 
 room alone by some mysterious hypnotism in 
 answer to her call ; that she had compelled 
 her by force of will — that she had no alterna- 
 tive. 
 
 ' Here is the lock,' she said ; ' shall I open it 
 for you V 
 
 Miss Gunning had brought over the chate- 
 laine, and she fumbled helplessly for the key 
 — the key she had come to try. Edith found 
 it for her, and put it in the lock, which it fitted 
 perfectly. It was a very curious old twisted 
 key ; it could only have been made to fit one 
 lock. 
 
 * Will you turn it, or shall I V she asked in 
 a dry voice that sounded to her like another's. 
 
 The old woman essayed to turn the key with 
 her weak, shaking fingers ; but they had no 
 strength in them, and Edith turned it in the 
 lock, and the bureau fell open. 
 
 It was exactly like a thousand other old
 
 EDITH DARCY'S DREAM 8r 
 
 pieces of furniture of the same date ; there 
 were the usual number of pigeon-holes and 
 drawers, and the little locked cupboard in the 
 middle that always gives promise of some 
 hidden treasure. 
 
 There was no treasure hidden behind the 
 little inlaid door, for the lock was broken and 
 the door was off its hinges. There were a lot 
 of papers inside, dusty old papers tied up in 
 bundles, and some letters scattered about ; and 
 there was a faint, musty air of some pungent 
 odour that had years ago hung about those 
 yellow missives. It had been a perfume once, 
 but now it was like the musty odour of a newly 
 opened tomb. 
 
 Miss Gunning put aside the papers — she did 
 not even look at them, she tossed them aside 
 impatiently — and Edith saw that the space 
 within was empty, quite empty ; there was 
 nothing concealed there. She did not speak — 
 she would not have spoken for the world — but 
 she watched and waited. 
 
 VOL. I. 6
 
 82 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 And while she waited the lean, trembling 
 fingers were fumbling inside the empty space ; 
 they were feeling for something, but there was 
 nothing visible — nothing that Edith's straining 
 eyes could see. There was a sliding sound, the 
 faint creak of a shifting panel, and the floor of 
 the recess had slid aside, and revealed an aper- 
 ture beneath. 
 
 It was a hiding-place that no one would have 
 suspected. There were some loose packages 
 inside ; not a casket or case of any kind, but 
 some loose 23ackages. The groping fingers 
 dived into the aperture, and brought out a 
 package, and unwrapped it with feeble haste. 
 It was a miniature, Edith saw — the portrait of 
 a man — and it was set with diamonds. She 
 could see them flashing in that dim light, as 
 Miss Gunning took it out of the wrapper. 
 
 She started back with a feeble cry when she 
 had taken it out of the wrapper, and pushed it 
 away from her. 
 
 ^ I did not think to see it again,' she said, or
 
 EDITH DARCY'S DREAM 8s 
 
 rather moaned. ' Oh ! why did you make m.e 
 take it out ? It should have been Edith's, not 
 mine ; he was her husband, not mine.' 
 
 She pushed the papers hurriedly back, but 
 she did not close the sliding panel in her haste, 
 and hobbled painfully back to her chair. 
 
 She had got so infirm in those few moments 
 that Edith had to support her ; she could not 
 have reached her chair without help. There 
 was only time to hastily close the bureau, and 
 go to the old woman's help ; and she had scarcely 
 got her back to her chair, when Penfold came 
 up from her supper. 
 
 Miss Gunning was trembling all over when 
 Penfold came back, and she was muttering to 
 herself 
 
 ' Edith's husband, not mine,' she was saying 
 under her breath ; * mine, if Edith had not 
 come between us. She had her reward — she 
 had her reward.' 
 
 It was always a consolation to her that the 
 ill-fated Edith had had her reward.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE GUNNING DIAMONDS. 
 
 The marqueterie bureau containing the diamonds 
 — the diamonds that Edith was dying to see — 
 was unlocked, and the key was in her posses- 
 sion. She had sUpped the chatelaine out of 
 sight when Penfold came into the room ; she 
 had only just slipped it out of sight in time. 
 She could not lock the bureau until Miss Gun- 
 ning had gone to bed, and taken Penfold away 
 with her. 
 
 It seemed to Edith that her aunt would never 
 go to bed, that she would sit there muttering 
 to herself all night. 
 
 She went at last, and left Edith staring into
 
 THE GUNNING DIAMONDS 85 
 
 the fire, with one of the white cats on her lap. 
 Blue-Eye's aunt had conceived an affection for 
 her mistress's niece — an unrequited affection. 
 Edith was nursing her to-night ; it was some- 
 thing to do, to smooth her soft fur and pull 
 her ears ; it kept her nervous fingers from 
 betraying their impatience. 
 
 When Miss Gunning and her maid had gone 
 at last, Edith jumped up quickly and went over 
 to the bureau. She jumped up so quickly that 
 Blue-Eye's aunt was deposited in a most un- 
 feeling way on the floor. 
 
 The miniature in its sparkling frame was on 
 the top of the heap of papers, where Miss 
 Gunnino: had fluno- it down. Edith took it 
 up eagerly ; it was her grandfather's likeness, 
 the only likeness she had ever seen of him ; 
 but that did not account for her eagerness. 
 It was set in gold, as a miniature, and outside 
 the original gold setting was the brilliant frame. 
 The frame did not belong to it ; it was complete 
 without it. Edith remarked this as she stood
 
 S6. THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 examining it by the light of the wax candles, 
 which were already burning low in their 
 sockets. She could not see it very well, as 
 the candles were at the other end of the room, 
 and she closed the bureau and went over to 
 the light to see it better. While she was still 
 standing there, with the miniature in her hand, 
 she heard the handle of the door turn and 
 someone come in. She had only time to slip 
 the miniature in her pocket before Penfold 
 pushed aside the screen. She had come back 
 for something that her mistress had left behind, 
 and she looked suspiciously at Edith standing 
 blushing guiltily beneath the light. Edith felt 
 herself getting hot, and felt the unwonted 
 colour rushing to her face. She had nothing 
 to be ashamed of, she told herself, that she 
 should get crimson like a thief because a wait- 
 ing-maid had surprised her. 
 
 When Penfold had left the room, she was too 
 shaken to attempt any moi-e discoveries that 
 night. She pushed back the panel and heaped
 
 THE GUNNING DIAMONDS ^7 
 
 a bundle of letters above it, and locked the 
 bureau. She did not put back the miniature ; 
 she wanted to examine it at leisure in her own 
 room, and she took it away with her — the 
 miniature and the chatelaine. 
 
 As she crossed the room, she was conscious of 
 an uncomfortable feeling — something rubbed 
 against her and startled her. She w^as so 
 ridiculously nervous, that it was as much as she 
 could do to keep herself from crying out. It 
 was only Blue-Eye's aunt rubbing against her, 
 and all the white cats on the walls were looking 
 down ujDon her, and watching her with their 
 glassy eyes. 
 
 In the seclusion of her own room, Edith ex- 
 amined the miniature. 
 
 It was the likeness of a man of twenty- 
 five or thirty-five — of any age — a hlase man, 
 with a blonde moustache and fair, wav}^ hair, 
 which he wore long, and falling, in the fashion 
 of the day, over his forehead. Distinctly a hand- 
 some man, but not a face to trust — a selfish,
 
 88 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 sensual face, with not a line of self-denial 
 in it. 
 
 But it was not the face that Edith was so 
 deeply interested in ; she could not be expected 
 to care much for her grandfather who had died 
 thirty years before she was born. It was the 
 setting of the miniature that Edith was ex- 
 amining so eagerly. It was an old-fashioned 
 open setting of brilliants, and it was too big for 
 the portrait it enclosed. It was of much earlier 
 date than the plain gold setting of the minia- 
 ture, and had been rather clumsily adapted 
 to it. 
 
 Edith was unconsciously trying to make it 
 fit — the clumsy contrivance jarred upon her — 
 when the miniature slipped out of the frame 
 upon the floor, and left the glittering circle of 
 brilliants in her hand. There was something 
 else on the floor when she stooped to pick 
 it up — one of the brilliants had fallen out, 
 too, and lay glittering at her feet. The silver 
 setting had been bent to make it fit the
 
 THE GUNNING DIAMONDS 89 
 
 miniature, and the delicate filigree work had 
 given way, and several of the stones were 
 loose. 
 
 ' If these were real,' Edith told herself, as she 
 shook the loose stones out of the frame upon 
 her dressing-table, ' they would be worth a good 
 deal. If Dora Tremlett's necklace was worth 
 thousands of pounds, these would be worth 
 something — hundreds of pounds, perhaps ; who 
 could say V 
 
 She turned quite pale at the thought ; then 
 a dreadful fear came into her mind. Suppose 
 they were paste ? There was a great deal of 
 paste worn in the days of the First Empire. 
 People went to Court in paste buckles, and 
 great ladies were not above wearing paste — 
 real old French paste — on their persons. It 
 was quite possible that this likeness-frame was 
 only set with paste. 
 
 Edith set that dreadful doubt at rest the 
 following day. 
 
 She went up to town early in the morning ;
 
 90 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 she started before the post came in — before the 
 letters were delivered at Gotham House. If 
 she had waited for her letters, perhaps she 
 might have changed her plans. There was a 
 letter from Mrs. Bellew, Dora's mother, in the 
 bag, about the lost necklace. Captain Tremlett 
 was making a great fuss about it. He had 
 communicated with the police, and detectives 
 had been sent down from London to Hereford 
 to make inquiries. They had found out nothing 
 as yet, but they had made a great many in- 
 quiries. They had inquired, among other things, 
 about Miss Darcy, the young lady who locked 
 them up in the safe in Mrs. Bellew's dressing- 
 room, and who had brought them down in the 
 morning. Perhaps she could give some informa- 
 tion they lacked ; at any rate, they had asked 
 for her address, which Mrs. Bellew could not 
 very well withhold. She hoped her ^ dear 
 Edith ' w^ould not mind, and that they would 
 not trouble her very much ; something was said 
 about an interview. If the men called, she
 
 THE GUNNING DIAMONDS 91 
 
 hoped ' darling Edith ' would not mind telling 
 them all she knew. It was only a matter of 
 form ; the inquiries had to be made before the 
 men could do anything. For her own part, she 
 was sick of the necklace ; she had been almost 
 worried to death about it. 
 
 Edith was in ignorance of this letter, and of 
 the visit that was to be made to her, when she 
 started on that misty autumn morning for town. 
 She arrived in London quite early, and she had 
 the day before her. She had a good deal to do ; 
 she would not have a minute to spare. She had 
 a lot of shopping to do — the shopping she had 
 put off when she came up to town after the 
 wedding ; she could not put it off any longer. 
 There were all the things for her trousseau to 
 buy. If she were to be married in October, she 
 had no time to lose. 
 
 Before she bought her wedding things, she 
 wanted to arrange about the money. It would 
 be ridiculous to launch out into extravagant 
 purchases, and have only her allowance to meet
 
 ^2: THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 it with — to cripple herself for years to come at 
 a time when she would want the money most, 
 when she could not spare a penny of it. On 
 the other hand, she could not marry without a 
 trousseau. She could not go to the man she 
 loved with only the clothes she stood upright 
 in. It was indispensable, if there were to be a 
 wedding, that she should have proper clothes, 
 that she should not disgrace her husband by 
 her shabbiness. Besides, as has been already 
 hinted, she was no longer in her first youth ; 
 the attractions of girlhood had left her, 
 and she looked old for her years. It was 
 of the highest importance that she should be 
 well dressed ; it was an absolute necessity. 
 
 In the face of all this there was but one 
 thing to be done — to get money from some- 
 where. Get money ! It is so easy to say, 
 ' Get money ' — but how ? 
 
 Edith was asking herself the question all the 
 way up to town on that misty autumn morning. 
 She had the railway-carriage all to herself, and
 
 THE GUNNING DIAMONDS 93 
 
 she thought of nothing but that vexed ques- 
 tion of ways and means as the misty fields 
 and the hedges sHpped by her ; she was think- 
 ing what she should say in that interview 
 she had arranged with her trustee, and, in 
 the event of his being obdurate, what she 
 should do. 
 
 She drove straight from the station to 
 Lincoln's Inn. The interview was fixed for 
 ten o'clock, and she reached there before the 
 tiaie appointed. If there is one thing in the 
 world more disagreeable than being late at an 
 appointment — an unpleasant appointment — it is 
 being too early ; sitting amid painfully sug- 
 gestive surroundings, in a depressing atmo- 
 sphere, going over beforehand the impending 
 interview ; feeling one's spirit and courage and 
 independence slipping away, and all the fine 
 things one was going to say getting hopelessly 
 mixed. 
 
 Edith sat waiting in a dark ofiice for Mr, 
 Tulkington's appearance — Mr. Tulkington was
 
 94 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 her trustee under her father's will — until every- 
 thing she had come to say had slipped from her 
 memory, and she felt herself getting dazed and 
 bewildered, and her courage had oozed out at 
 her fingers' -ends. 
 
 She had to wait in that dreary office an hour, 
 staring at the empty grate, and the maps on 
 the wall— maps or charts — and the row of tin 
 boxes on the shelves, with names painted in 
 white letters upon them — the names of Mr. 
 Tulkington's clients. There was no tin box 
 with the name of ' Darcy ' upon it on the 
 shelves. Perhaps she was not a sufficiently 
 important client ; the papers relating to her 
 insisrnificant affairs could be stuffed into a 
 pigeon-hole. 
 
 Mr. Tulkington came in in a great bustle ; he 
 had two or three people waiting for him, and he 
 had not much time to spare for Edith. He was 
 not an old-fashioned gallant lawyer, who had 
 always nice courtly speeches ready to soften 
 the asperities of the law to his fair clients.
 
 THE GUNNING DIAMONDS 95 
 
 He was a grumpy old man, and he had an 
 unpleasant habit of looking at his watch 
 every few minutes if an interview wearied 
 him. 
 
 ' I was detained,' he said by way of apologv, 
 when he came in and found that Edith had 
 been waitinof there an hour for him. ' I was 
 called in a hurry to execute a document, and I 
 could not cret awav before. I had to wait 
 for a sicrnature ; the man died a moment 
 after he had signed it, while I was there. 
 It was important that I should have seen him 
 sign it.' 
 
 Edith shivered. She had the picture of 
 the dying man propped up to sign that docu- 
 ment, and the people — the hungry relatives — 
 crowding eagerly round the bed, waiting for 
 his signature, before her eyes all through the 
 interview. 
 
 ' It's a will I've come to see you about, Mr. 
 Tulkington,' she began with some hesitation — 
 * my father's will. I want you to read it over^
 
 96 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 and see — if — if it admits of any advance being 
 made to me — only a small advance — out of the 
 principal.' 
 
 The lawyer shook his head. 
 
 * I have no need to read it, Miss Edith ; I 
 remember the terms of the will quite well. It 
 is not often I accept a trust, a personal trust, 
 but I accepted it to oblige your father. I am 
 not likely to forget. The provisions of the will 
 put it out of my power to make an advance, 
 to advance one penny beyond the payment of 
 the interest. You have that regularly. Miss 
 Edith ' 
 
 * Yes, I have that, such as it is,' Edith inter- 
 rupted bitterly. ' It is not a fourth of what it 
 was at my mother's death, and it has been 
 growing less and less every year. If it goes on 
 dwindling as it has done, there will soon be 
 nothing left.' 
 
 ' You must blame the rupee, the depreciation 
 in the rupee, and the failure of the colonial 
 banks, my dear young lady — not me,' the
 
 THE GUNNING DIAMONDS 97 
 
 lawyer said, rubbing his hands together as if he 
 were washing them. 
 
 It was a little habit he had. He was mixed 
 up with so many people's concerns, and when 
 they were troublesome he washed his hands of 
 them. 
 
 ' I am not blaming anyone,' Edith said 
 meekly ; ' it is my luck. Everything slips 
 through my fingers. But just now I have an 
 — an urgent, a special need for money, for a 
 little advance — say a hundred pounds.' 
 
 ' If it were a hundred pence I could not go 
 beyond the terms of the will,' the lawyer said, 
 and then he took out his watch. 
 
 Edith knew exactly what that meant, and 
 she came to the point. 
 
 ' I am going to be married, Mr. Tulkington,' 
 she said, and a fine blush spread over her pale 
 face. ' I am going to be married in a few 
 weeks, and I want the money to buy my 
 wedding clothes.' 
 
 He ought to have been touched by the 
 
 VOL. I. 7
 
 gS THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 appeal ; he ought to have sat down and written 
 a cheque for a hundred pounds, for five hundred 
 pounds, immediately. He did nothing of the 
 kind. His heart was as hard as a flint, and as 
 rough as Esau's hand. 
 
 ' I am sorry I can't help you, Miss Edith,' he 
 said, washing his hands of the trousseau she 
 was pleading for — washing them with decided 
 relish ; ' I can't go beyond my client's instruc- 
 tions. There is no provision made in the will 
 for such an event ; the interest will continue to 
 be paid to you after your marriage the same as 
 before.' 
 
 ' But surely I can have the interest, twelve 
 months' interest, in advance ? There will be no 
 risk in that, and it will not be exceeding your 
 instructions.' 
 
 Edith pleaded desperately. 
 
 ' There would be great risk in anticipating 
 your income ; it would never do !' the old 
 lawyer said, shaking his head. ' You might die 
 meanwhile, and there would be no security ;
 
 THE GUNNING DIAMONDS 99 
 
 the jDrlncipal would go at once to Mr. Richard 
 Darcy's children. There are seven of them, 
 I believe — seven or ten ; they would not be 
 likely to recognise a liability — an unwarrantable 
 liability — on the estate. Why not apply to your 
 uncle, Mr. Richard, for assistance V 
 Edith shook her head. 
 
 ' We are not very good friends,' she said, 
 wath a thrill of nervous impatience in her voice. 
 ' I should not under any circumstances apply 
 for help to my uncle's family.' 
 
 She rose to go as she finished speaking ; it 
 was no use prolonging the interview : the old 
 man was evidently not going to help her. 
 
 ' I hope I may congratulate you upon its 
 being a desirable match ; that, this initial difti- 
 culty of the trousseau being overcome, there 
 will be no further cause for anxious thought on 
 the subject of ways and means V he said, as he 
 went to the door with her. 
 
 It was not very clearly put, but Edith under- 
 stood him.
 
 100 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 ' Then, I'm sure you may not congratulate 
 me,' she said brusquely; 'for there will be cause 
 for very anxious thought on the subject of ways 
 and means. I am marrying a man without a 
 penny.' 
 
 With this Parthian dart she took her leave, 
 and left the dried-up little lawyer on his door- 
 step washing his hands of his improvident 
 client.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 AT THE STORES. 
 
 After that interview with her trustee, Edith 
 Darcv could have sat down on the first door- 
 step she came to in Lincoln's Inn and wept. The 
 spectacle would have been an unusual one at 
 that hour of the morning : a high-bred, haughty 
 young lady — she looked distinctly haughty, 
 though her heart was in her boots — dressed in 
 the height of the prevailing fashion, wailing upon 
 the doorstep of her family solicitor, or of some- 
 body else's family solicitor. 
 
 Perhaps she was not the only woman who 
 had felt inclined to weep when she left 
 those doors — who had wanted to cree23 away
 
 102 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 Into some quiet corner and let her tears have 
 free course. There ought to be a wailing- 
 place near all the courts of law, and the 
 chambers of those who interj^ret the law, where 
 unhappy clients who have suffered wrong, and 
 can find no redress, might ease their over- 
 burdened hearts before they go their way 
 and get lost in the common crowd. The Jews 
 of old had wailing-places, where people, whose 
 feelings were not under control, could make 
 as much noise as they liked, without being 
 requested to 'move on.' 
 
 Edith did not wait to be requested to ' move 
 on '; she went on her way — on foot. She had 
 suddenly remembered a little business she had 
 in the City. If this interview with her trustee 
 had been propitious she might not have remem- 
 bered it. 
 
 The business took some time to transact, 
 and when it was over Edith did her shopping. 
 She bought most of the things she wanted for 
 her trousseau. She knew exactly what things
 
 AT THE STORES 103 
 
 she wanted, and she knew exactly where to get 
 them. 
 
 When she had bought her clothes she looked 
 at some furniture ; she did not buy it — she 
 looked at it. When she had finished her shop- 
 ping she kept another appointment— her ap- 
 pointment with her lover. She had crammed 
 a good deal into that busy day, and love was 
 reserved to the last, to crown it all. 
 
 She met him in the Army and Navy Stores. 
 Perhaps there is no j)lace in London where a 
 meeting, a meeting between lovers, can be more 
 conveniently arranged than at ' the Stores.' 
 It is private, but not too private, and there is 
 always an air of chance meeting, of mere acci- 
 dent, if one happens to come across a mutual 
 friend. It is not like meeting in the Park or 
 at a picture-gallery ; there is no design in it, 
 and the absence of a chaperon is not re- 
 marked. 
 
 Edith was sitting at one of the little tables 
 in the tea-room, consulting her tablets, when
 
 104 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 her lover came in. He knew exactly where to 
 find her ; he came straight to her. 
 
 He came to her with his eyes shining, and a 
 look on his face that no one could mistake. 
 Everyone must have seen that he was a lover. 
 There were a good many people in the tea- 
 room, and they all looked up when he entered, 
 and the girls watched him go over to that 
 corner by the window where Edith was sitting 
 looking at her tablets. They couldn't think 
 what he could see in that dowdy girl, with her 
 pale, proud face and her absent, preoccupied 
 air. But she was pale ;no longer, nor pre- 
 occupied ; a transformation had come over her, 
 one of her sudden transformations, and her 
 cheeks were glowing, and a new light had come 
 into her eyes. The sudden colour that came 
 into her cheeks was so bright that anyone who 
 had seen them a minute ago would have said 
 that she had painted them. The colour of her 
 eyes had changed, too ; they were such a vary- 
 ing shade of black, or brown, or hazel, that one
 
 AT THE STORES 105 
 
 could never tell their exact hue ; but her beauti- 
 ful black eyebrows and black lashes made them 
 look dark at all times. Her eyes did not 
 change their colour for everybody, and Nature 
 did not paint her cheeks with that rich carmine 
 for every comer — she was more sparing of her 
 colours — hence it was not remarkable that few 
 people could understand what Captain Stan- 
 hope could see in Miss Darcy. 
 
 Perhaj)s he saw something in the woman he 
 loved that nobody else saw — an ideal of his 
 own, a high ideal — or he wouldn't have fallen 
 down and worshipped it. He saw nothing in 
 Edith but perfection ; he had never met with 
 a woman so perfect in his eyes. She did not 
 come up to his standard of Avoman ; she 
 created it. 
 
 He was a big, bashful, slow-witted fellow 
 Avith a military bearing, standing over six feet 
 in his shoes, with the shoulders and limbs that 
 a man of six feet should have. 
 
 His closelv-cut hair was lio-ht brown, with a
 
 io6 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 distinct wave in it ; he wore a light moustache, 
 and his eyes were gray, a rather steely -blue 
 gray, and steady ; there was not a twinkle of 
 fun in them ; he took everything au seneux. 
 His face, which had been fair, was tanned with 
 foreign service ; his regiment had not long re- 
 turned from India. 
 
 He came towards Edith, sitting in her corner, 
 with his eyes shining, and his heart beating 
 high. 
 
 ' My darling !' he said under his breath, 
 when their hands met ; and then that drapcau 
 rouge had spread over her face. 
 
 He had to content himself with that hand- 
 clasp ; he could not very well take her in his 
 arms in the tea-room, before all the people. 
 The outraged British matrons present would 
 have objected, and there might have been a 
 scene. 
 
 If there was anything in the world that 
 Edith's lover desired to avoid, it was a scene. 
 He had, for a man, a ridiculous nervous shrink-
 
 AT THE STORES 107 
 
 ing from notoriety, a horrible dread of ridicule ; 
 but he could not keep that love-light out of 
 his eyes as he came towards her through the 
 crowded room. He dropped her hand as soon 
 as he could get his fingers to let it go ; he 
 would not have let people see him detaining it 
 for the world. 
 
 ' Well,' he said, when the greeting was over, 
 ' have you had a busy day ? Are you nearly 
 ready V 
 
 ' I shall be ready in October,' Edith answered, 
 with a tremulous quiver of her under lip, ' if — 
 if you think it must be so soon, Derek.' 
 
 ' There is nothing to wait for,' he said eagerly. 
 ' If we put it ofP now, we shall have to wait 
 for the spring. We shall be no richer in the 
 spring.' 
 
 Edith sighed. 
 
 * I don't think we ought to marry at all, 
 dear,' she said, with a weak attempt at a smile 
 — ' at any rate, not for years — not till ' 
 
 * Not till we have grown old and are gray-
 
 io8 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 headed !' he interrupted impatiently. ' Perhaps 
 you will have changed your mind if we wait 
 many years ; you won't be satisfied with a 
 captain of a line regiment who has nothing but 
 his pay ' 
 
 ' Hush !' she said, putting her hand softly on 
 his arm, ' hush ! I am not likely to change. I 
 was thinking of you. You will lose so much, 
 and you ought to do such great things. You 
 will disappoint all your friends.' 
 
 He didn't exactly laugh aloud, but he laughed 
 a low, pleasant, honest laugh. 
 
 ' I don't care whom I disappoint, as long as 
 I do not disappoint you,' he said tenderly. 
 
 His voice thrilled her, and her eyes grew 
 suddenly moist, and her lips were trembling. 
 There was nothing more said about putting it 
 off There was a look of beautiful, inexpressible 
 affection in her eyes as she smiled at her lover 
 through her tears across that little marble- 
 topped tea-table — a look he had never seen on 
 any woman's face before.
 
 AT THE STORES 109 
 
 * Give her up ! By Jove !' he told hhnself, 
 ' I would not give her up for the whole 
 world !' 
 
 He was not at all the sort of fellow that 
 anyone who knew Edith best would have 
 singled out as her choice. He was the last 
 person in the world they would have expected 
 her to choose. 
 
 But perhaps she hadn't chosen. Perhaps the 
 choice had been on his side : the love, the devo- 
 tion, the tenderness — call it what you will — 
 that women go down before. Edith had gone 
 down before the love she read in the blue eyes 
 of this big, slow-witted giant. She hadn't had 
 so much love in her life that she could afford to 
 slight it, and she knew the real thing when she 
 saw it. 
 
 She had not had many lovers in her time ; 
 she was not the girl to have lovers. She did 
 not lay herself out to please j)eople. For a 
 woman of — well, never mind her age — who had 
 arrived at years of discretion, she was singularly
 
 no THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 free from the wiles and little fascinating ways 
 that some girls practise from their cradles. Edith 
 had nothing to attract lovers. Men do not 
 care for grave faces, and a hard voice, and rare 
 smiles ; they like a caressing voice, or a charm- 
 ing treble with a reedy thrill in it, and an 
 April face radiant with smiles and blushes, and 
 eyes that say a good deal, and that mean a 
 great deal more. Edith had none of these 
 fascinating things ; but when she was moved 
 her beautiful dark eyes seemed to grow darker 
 and brighter, and she had a tender, tremulous 
 way with her mouth. 
 
 Whatever other men had seen in her, Derek 
 Stanhope saw in her what he had never seen in 
 any woman before. And Edith ? Well, Edith 
 never knew how it happened. Perhaps it was 
 the magic of the love that filled his heart that 
 won her. A man may not be very clever or 
 very capable ; there is no need whatever for 
 him to be handsome — some women have a posi- 
 tive dislike to physical beauty in a man ; but
 
 AT THE STORES in 
 
 he must have something they want. They 
 do not all want the same thing, thank 
 Heaven ! 
 
 Edith had somewhere deep down in her heart 
 an aching want she had never really admitted 
 to herself; she wanted the touch of a hand, 
 the sound of a voice, different from the hand- 
 clasps or the voices about her. She wanted the 
 sympathy of just one person whose presence to 
 her was different from the presence of every 
 other human being in the world. She found 
 what she wanted in the jjerson of a heavy, 
 slow-witted captain of a line regiment. 
 
 The big, awkward, gentle-natured soldier 
 had nothing to recommend him but his love ; 
 he hadn't a penny in the world besides his 
 commission. Edith micrht have been in her 
 
 o 
 
 teens for the improvidence she displayed in 
 marrying upon such a ridiculous prospect. 
 
 They went through the furniture galleries of 
 the Army and Navy Stores together, picking 
 out chairs and tables like a couple of children
 
 112 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 furnishing a doll's-house. There was a delight- 
 ful lounging chair that Edith had set her heart 
 upon, that she had quite made up her mind to 
 buy for Captain Stanhope's smoking-room — her 
 first purchase in housekeeping. She made her 
 lover ' try it on ' — she called it ' trying on ' — 
 and see how it suited him. 
 
 * It's an awfully comfortable chair, Edie,' he 
 said, when he got himself reluctantly out of it, 
 ' but it's beyond our figure. We shall have to 
 give up all thoughts of chairs of our own for the 
 present, and go into rooms, furnished rooms, for 
 a year or two.' 
 
 Then Edith unfolded her plans. 
 
 ^ I don't think we need do that, dear,' she 
 said, hanging her head. ' It will be cheaper to 
 take a flat, and — and furnish it. It will save a 
 great deal in the end.' 
 
 ' Furnish it !' he said ruefully. ' I don't see 
 how we are to manage the furnishing, unless we 
 give up our trip. If we stayed at home this 
 winter we might '
 
 AT THE STORES 113 
 
 ' We need not stay at home,' she said, inter- 
 rupting him. ' I think we can manage the 
 furniture very well.' 
 
 ' The deuce you do ! Have you come into a 
 fortune, Edie ?' 
 
 ' I — I have seen my trustee,' sVie said, 
 blushing. 
 
 There was a little catch in her voice, and the 
 words did not come easily. 
 
 ' And he has come down handsomely ? Why, 
 this is quite unexpected ; you did not think he 
 would do anything.' 
 
 ' I did not know the terms of mv father's 
 
 •J 
 
 will ; he — he did not lead me to expect that — 
 he — would — be — generous.' 
 
 Edith's voice was not quite steady ; she 
 could not keep it steady. There was a lump 
 in her throat that was keeping the words 
 back. 
 
 ' And he has come down handsomely after 
 all?' 
 
 ' I don't know — about — about being hand- 
 
 VOL. I. 8
 
 114 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 some, but we shall be able to manage the 
 furnishing.' 
 
 After this, Edith and her lover went through 
 a great many departments where tables, and 
 chairs, and sideboards, and couches are sold ; 
 and they Inspected some carpets It would take 
 a long time to decide upon carpets ; carpets and 
 curtains require such serious consideration, so 
 many things have to be taken into account, 
 that they cannot be dismissed hastily. Having 
 settled upon certain articles, the lovers put 
 off the curtains and carpets for another day. 
 
 ' I shall have to come up to town so many 
 times during the next few weeks,' Edith said ; 
 ' we shall have plenty of o23j)ortunities of 
 choosing the other things.' 
 
 She did not say it very heartily ; she couldn't 
 put any of the rapture a bride should have in 
 choosing the furniture for her future home into 
 that hurried selection. There was something 
 unreal about it, as if she were buying things in 
 a dream ; and all the time she was going up
 
 AT THE STORES 115 
 
 and down those everlasting stairs at the Stores 
 her heart was going pit-a-pat, as if she had 
 never climbed a flio^ht of stairs before in her 
 life. 
 
 Of course it was the stairs I
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A TIRESOME VISITOR. 
 
 Edith's lover saw her into the train for St. 
 Oswald's. He drove with her in a hansom from 
 the Army and Navy Stores to the Great Eastern 
 Station, and he waited with her on the platform 
 until the train started. 
 
 She had only taken a single ticket up to 
 town, and Captain Stanhope had to take her 
 ticket for the return journey. As she waited in 
 the booking-office while he got her ticket — he 
 had to take his turn at the end of a line of 
 people ; there were a good many people going 
 by the train — a gentleman in the crowd spoke 
 to her.
 
 A TIRESOME VISITOR 117 
 
 * Can I take your ticket for St. Oswald's V he 
 asked her. 
 
 He rather startled her, though nothing could 
 have been more civil than his offer and the way 
 he made it. 
 
 ' Thank you, someone has already taken it/ 
 she said stiffly. 
 
 And she turned away. 
 
 * Who was that man who spoke to you V her 
 lover asked, as he put her in her carriage. 
 
 ' I don't know — a stranger ; he offered to take 
 my ticket.' 
 
 When the train had steamed out of the 
 station, Edith asked herself who the man could 
 be who had spoken to her, and how he knew 
 that she was going to St. Oswald's. She could 
 not remember to have seen his face before ; he 
 was an entire stranger to her, and he knew her 
 destination. It was most probably somebody 
 belonging to St. Oswald's — a bank clerk, or a 
 tradesman, or someone engaged in business 
 in the town — who knew her, but whom she
 
 ii8 THK TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 would not be likely to remember. She could 
 not be expected to know everyone in St. 
 Oswald's. 
 
 She thought about the man all through the 
 journey, when she ought to have been thinking 
 of the events of the day. She had quite enough 
 in such a full day to occupy her thoughts. 
 There had been the interview with her trustee, 
 and another interview of a more satisfactory 
 character later on, at a place of business in the 
 City ; and then there had followed the shop- 
 ping, the purchase of her wedding clothes, 
 the meeting with her lover, the inspection 
 of the chairs and tables and couches for ' the 
 flat,' and the drive back in the dusk to the 
 station. 
 
 With all this to think of, Edith's mind, 
 whether she would or not, persisted in bringing 
 up the image of the man in the booking-office, 
 and his ridiculous question, ' Can I take your 
 ticket for St. Oswald's V 
 
 She reached home tired and dispirited. She
 
 A TIRESOME VISITOR 119 
 
 was more nervous and depressed than she cared 
 to acknowledge, and when she once reached her 
 own room she did not leave it ao-ahi that niofht. 
 Miss Gunning was just the same, she learned 
 from the maid who broucrht in her tea, and she 
 had been asking for her all the day. Somebody 
 had called to see her while she had been away. 
 It was a gentleman who had asked for her ; he 
 had called early in the day, and he had inquired 
 by what train she was expected back. He had 
 not given his name ; he had not even said that 
 he would call again. The maid was quite sure 
 that it was no one belonging to St. Osw^ald's, 
 no one asking for a subscription. It was a 
 stranger ; she was sure that she had never seen 
 him before. 
 
 Edith went to bed earlv, but she could not 
 rest. She tossed uneasily till daylight, and 
 then she fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamed, 
 not of her lover, and the trousseau she had been 
 buying, but of the man who had accosted her 
 at the railway station ; his voice was ringing in
 
 120 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 her ears when she awoke in the mornhig. He 
 was asking her the same question — if he should 
 take her ticket to St. Oswald's. 
 
 The servant by some oversight had not given 
 Edith her letter overnight — the letter that had 
 come from Mrs. Bellew during her absence. 
 She found it on the breakfast-table when she 
 went into her sitting-room the next morning. 
 This explained the visit of the stranger yester- 
 day : he had called about Dora Tremlett's 
 missing necklace. 
 
 He called again during the morning, while 
 Edith was looking over her tablets, and reckon- 
 ing up the things she had bought the day before. 
 They came to a great deal more than she had 
 imagined, than she had reckoned upon — to 
 more than double the amount. It is so easy to 
 lose count when one is buying things ; they 
 add up in a most unaccountable way. She 
 looked grave when the unpleasant total stared 
 her in the face. She was still looking grave 
 when she went downstairs to see the stran^rer
 
 A TIRESOME VISITOR 121 
 
 who had called ; she was thinking of the figures 
 that had stared her in the face, and how the 
 things had mounted up. 
 
 The servant who opened the door had shown 
 ' the gentleman ' into the dining-room. It was 
 not a room that was often used now, and it had 
 a dreary, forlorn look about it in the morning 
 light. The curtains were shrouded in holland 
 wrappers, and the old leather-covered chairs 
 were ranged against the wall, and there was a 
 vast expanse of dark shining mahogany. It 
 was a dreary place at the best of times. All 
 the furniture was old-fashioned, and of that 
 dark-hued mahogany which grows darker with 
 age. There was a massive sideboard — a big 
 ugly Georgian sideboard — at one end of the 
 room, with two funereal-looking urns upon it, 
 in dark-fluted mahogany, that might have held 
 the ashes of the black-browed Gunnings who 
 hung upon the walls. 
 
 The stranger was studying the portraits on 
 the walls when Edith came in. He turned round
 
 122 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 when the door opened, and bowed to her in an 
 old-fashioned courtly way. He was a man of 
 middle age, with a prematurely bald head, 
 rather stooping in his gait, and he wore gold- 
 rimmed spectacles — a commonplace sort of man 
 with rather superior manners. 
 
 ' I am sorry to disturb you so early,' he said, 
 as he placed a chair for Edith ; the chairs were 
 all set against the wall, and he brought one over 
 and set it for her beside the table in such a 
 way that the light from the window fell upon 
 her face. 
 
 He could not have helped remarking, if he were 
 a physiognomist, that she was looking pale and 
 harassed, that there were dark rims beneath 
 her eyes. This he saw, because every line of 
 her face was visible to him in that cold, search- 
 ing light. 
 
 • The stranger began the interview by apolo- 
 gizing for the errand that had brought him 
 there. 
 
 ' My name is Finch, ma'am,' he said, by way
 
 A TIRESOME VISITOR 123 
 
 of introducing himself. ' I did not send up a 
 card, as the name was not known to you. I 
 am here to make inquiries about the diamond 
 necklace that was lost at Nunwell on the 
 morning of Mrs. Tremlett's wedding ' 
 
 ' How do you know it was lost in the morn- 
 ing V Edith interrupted eagerly ; she had her 
 own idea about the loss. ' How can you tell at 
 what time in the day it disappeared V 
 
 The words had escaped her ; she did not 
 intend to show so much interest : the loss 
 of the diamonds had nothing to do with. 
 her. 
 
 The detective noted her eagerness. 
 
 ' We have no means of know^ing: at what time 
 the diamonds were really stolen ; w^e only know 
 at what time the loss was discovered,' he said 
 dryly. ' We want you to assist our investiga- 
 tion with any facts connected with the dis- 
 appearance of the necklace that you can 
 remember.' 
 
 ' There is very little to tell,' Edith said rather
 
 124 THE TRRMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 shortly ; she did not hke the tone the man had 
 taken, and she did not hke the way he stared 
 at her, while he was speaking, behind his gold- 
 rimmed glasses. ' I can tell you all I know 
 about it in a very few words.' 
 
 And then she gave him a short circumstantial 
 account of the discovery of the loss of the 
 necklace. She told him all she could re- 
 member. 
 
 ' You took the jewelry up to the safe on 
 the eve of the wedding ; do you remember 
 locking the safe after you ? Sometimes these 
 safes are difficult to shut.' 
 
 * Of course I shut it ; I stayed behind to lock 
 it. But I am not sure about carrying the neck- 
 lace upstairs ; I carried some of the wedding 
 presents, and Miss Bellew — she was Miss Belle w 
 then — carried the others. I cannot be sure 
 which of us carried the case with the dia- 
 monds. I rather think Miss Bellew carried it.' 
 
 * Exactly ; that point has to be ascer- 
 tained.'
 
 A TIRESOME VISITOR 125 
 
 Mr. Finch made a note in his pocket-book, 
 and then he asked Edith some more ques- 
 tions. 
 
 ' You are sure the necklace was in the case 
 when you carried it upstairs V 
 
 ' Of course it was in the case ; Miss Bellew 
 put it back in the case herself. She had been 
 trying it on to show her friends, and when she 
 took it off she put it back in the case.' 
 
 What an idiot the man must be to think 
 that anyone would drojD a diamond necklace 
 about the room ! 
 
 ' Did Miss Bellew fasten the case when she 
 put the necklace back T 
 
 ' I suppose so. It was a rather difficult spring 
 to open ; I don't know what it may have been 
 to close. I do not remember trying to close 
 it.' 
 
 ' You opened it, then ?' 
 
 ' Yes, of course I opened it !' 
 
 ' When did you first open it V 
 
 ' I — I am sure I don't remember ; on the
 
 126 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 evening of the wedding, most likely. But what 
 can that have to do with the loss of the neck- 
 lace V 
 
 Edith was getting impatient ; she could not 
 think what the man meant by asking these 
 idiotic questions. 
 
 We will come to that presently,' he said in 
 his dry way. ' I am sorry to detain you, but 
 I am not asking a single question that is un- 
 necessary. Am I to understand that on the 
 only occasion on which you opened the case you 
 did not close it again ?' 
 
 ' I have no recollection of closing it.' 
 
 'You assisted Mrs. Tremlett — Miss Bellew 
 that was — in carrying her presents upstairs on 
 the eve of the wedding, and the case containing 
 the necklace was among them V 
 
 ' The case containing the necklace was most 
 certainly among them,' Edith said rather 
 tartly. 
 
 She could not think what the man was 
 driving at.
 
 A TIRESOME VISITOR 127 
 
 ' And you locked them up in the safe ?' 
 
 * I locked them up m the safe.' 
 
 * Who assisted vou to lock the safe V 
 
 * No one assisted me ; I locked it without 
 assistance. Miss Bellew had gone to her 
 mother's room ; she had gone to wish her 
 good- night, and I stayed behind to lock the 
 safe.' 
 
 ' You stayed behind ? Did you stay behind 
 alone, or was anyone with you holding a 
 light ?' 
 
 * There was no need of a light ; there was 
 sufficient lio:ht from Mrs. Bellew 's dressinof- 
 room.' 
 
 * Then you were alone when you locked the 
 safe V 
 
 * I was alone when I locked the safe.' 
 
 ' And about the keys : what did you do with 
 the keys when you had locked it ?' 
 
 ' I took back the keys at once to Mrs. Bellew's 
 room. She was wishing Dora — Miss Bellew — 
 good-night, and she was rather overcome, and
 
 128 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 I did not go in. I gave them to her maid at 
 the door.' 
 
 ' You did not see the maid take them into 
 her mistress's room V 
 
 ' No ; she was waiting at the door, with the 
 handle in her hand, until Miss Bellew came 
 out. She must have taken the keys in directly, 
 or Mrs. Bellew would have asked for them. 
 They were under her pillow in the morn- 
 ing.' 
 
 ' And you do not remember having seen the 
 necklace again after you had locked it in the 
 safe overnight ?' 
 
 ' I do not remember having seen it after. It 
 was such a busy morning that I cannot be quite 
 sure. There was so much confusion that it 
 is impossible to remember distinctly what 
 happened.' 
 
 ' Miss Bellew unlocked the safe in the morn- 
 ing, if I understand aright, and brought the 
 jewelry, that had been taken up overnight, 
 down into the room where the wedding presents
 
 A TIRESOxME VISITOR 129 
 
 were arranged. Did you give her any assist- 
 ance V 
 
 * I may have carried some of the things 
 downstairs — I do not remember. Everything 
 was done in such a hurry ; we were going up 
 and down the stairs all the morning. The 
 things were not brought down until quite late, 
 just before the bride was dressed for the 
 wedding. They had been forgotten until then, 
 there was so much else to think of, and she 
 arranged them herself.' 
 
 * Did you see her arrange them V 
 
 ' I was going in and out of the room while 
 she was arranging them ; they were in a room 
 off the drawing-room — Mrs. Bellew's boudoir. 
 There were two doors to the room ; one opened 
 into the back drawing-room, and one on to 
 the landing : both the doors were open on the 
 morning of the wedding.' 
 
 * Did you particularly notice how she 
 arranged them V 
 
 ' Dear me, no ! I had other things to do. I 
 
 VOL. I. 9
 
 I30 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 only remember noticing, quite casually, that she 
 had not opened the case containing the neck- 
 lace.' 
 
 ' Did it occur to you to ask why it was not 
 opened like the rest V 
 
 ' I didn't think at all about it. I merely 
 noticed that it was not opened.' 
 
 Edith did not say the reason that had 
 occurred to her on that ill-fated morning for the 
 morocco case being closed. It was not likely 
 she would tell this stranger of the unfortunate 
 little joke she had made about Buddha. 
 
 ' The door of the room was locked, I su23pose, 
 while the wedding party were at church ?' 
 
 ' I know nothing about the door of the room 
 being locked ; it might have been wide open, for 
 all T know. It was not my concern ; I was one 
 of the bridesmaids.' 
 
 Edith was getting tired of the man's ques- 
 tions. If he wanted to ask about the rooms, 
 and the locking of the doors, he ought to go to 
 Nunwell ; it was ridiculous, his coming here.
 
 A TIRESOME VISITOR 131 
 
 * I will not detain you much longer/ he said, 
 noticing her impatience. 
 
 She did not attempt to conceal her impatience ; 
 she had so many things to do, and this tiresome 
 person was wasting all the morning. 
 
 ' Whom can you remember having last seen in 
 the room where the presents were displayed 
 before the diamonds were missed ? Think 
 before you answer ; this is rather an important 
 question.' 
 
 ' The last person V she repeated. ' Captain 
 Tremlett was the last person who was in the 
 room. He was there and on the landing all 
 the time Mrs. Tremlett was chanoino: her 
 wedding dress. I quite well remember see- 
 ing him there, walking up and down the 
 room.' 
 
 ' Why was he walking up and down the 
 room V 
 
 ' He was impatient, I suppose. He wanted 
 to be off ; he kept saying that they would be 
 late for the train. He was walking about all
 
 132 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 the time the bride was puttmg on her travelHng 
 things.' 
 
 * And the wedding presents were on view at 
 this time V 
 
 * They were not really on view ; the guests 
 were all downstairs at the breakfast, but 
 Captain Tremlett had come away from the 
 table before the rest. The presents were not 
 on view until the bride and bridegroom had 
 driven away.' 
 
 ' Who was with him while he was walking 
 up and down the room ?' 
 
 ' I'm sure I don't know. He was alone when 
 I saw him, standing at the door. I came 
 downstairs to tell him Mrs. Tremlett was just 
 ready. He kept on sending messages up to 
 the room where she was dressing, and I had to 
 go downstairs to satisfy him.' 
 
 ' And after he left the room, when the 
 wedding party had driven away, you found 
 out the diamonds were missing V 
 
 * When the guests came upstairs to look
 
 A TIRESOME VISITOR 133 
 
 at the presents, I fouiid the case was 
 empty.' 
 
 Edith got up from her seat ; she was in no 
 humour to answer any more questions, and Mr. 
 Finch did not seek to detain her. 
 
 ' I am much obliged to you, madam, for the 
 information you have given me,' he said in his 
 courteous way when he took his leave ; but 
 there was nothing in his words or manner to 
 indicate whether he had learned anything of 
 value or not.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A PRIVATE DETECTIVE. 
 
 Mrs. Bellew had not had one quiet hour since 
 the discovery of the loss of Dora's diamonds. 
 Captain Tremlett had put the matter into the 
 hands of an experienced detective at Scotland 
 Yard, and his emissaries had been coming and 
 going to and from Nunwell ever since. There 
 was not a day that Mrs. Bellew was not dis 
 turbed by someone prowling about the house 
 asking questions. 
 
 Every inmate of Nunwell had been separately 
 examined, and all the servants' boxes had been 
 searched. 
 
 No good had come of all this questioning ;
 
 A PRIVATE DETECTIVE 135 
 
 the missing diamonds were as far off being 
 found as ever. 
 
 But this was not the worst of it. The loss 
 of the diamond necklace would have been 
 nothing comj)ared to the complications it in- 
 volved — the quite cruel and inexplicable com- 
 plications. 
 
 A misunderstanding had arisen between Dora 
 and her husband. It had arisen on account of 
 the loss of the necklace, or, at least, it 
 dated from the time when the loss was dis- 
 covered. 
 
 Captain Tremlett had been moved to anger 
 on the day of his wedding at the slight — he 
 called it the slight - that the poor unconscious 
 little bride had shown him in not wearinof his 
 wedding gift. 
 
 He had chosen to take umbrage at it ; he 
 had been sulky all through the ceremony, 
 and he had behaved like a bear at the break- 
 fast. 
 
 He was behaving very badly now, according
 
 136 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 to all accounts ; he was treating that poor, 
 meek-spirited little ' Mousey ' abominably. 
 
 She had not complained to her mother — she 
 would not have complained for the world ; but 
 Parker, her mother's maid, who had accom- 
 panied her on her honeymoon, had written to 
 Mrs. Bellew about certain things. Parker had 
 been Mrs. Bellew 's confidential maid for years, 
 and she had given her up to Dora at her 
 marriage. 
 
 Parker had not liked the way her young 
 mistress was treated, and she had written home 
 to her mother, and told her certain things. If 
 what Parker told her w^as true, the man was 
 behaving like a brute — there was no name that 
 was bad enough for him. 
 
 Mrs. Bellew's position was rather difficult, 
 not to say delicate. It is an ungracious thing 
 for a mother-in-law to interfere between a man 
 and his wife — ungracious and unthankful. She 
 had no excuse for interfering. Dora had not 
 complained. Her letters had not been so effu-
 
 A PRIVATE DETECTIVE 137 
 
 sive as the letters of some brides of a week : 
 she had not dwelt very much on the happiness 
 — the supreme bliss — of her present lot ; but 
 she had not uttered one word of complaint. 
 
 What Parker had written to her former 
 mistress she had written in confidence= — in the 
 strictest confidence. If Mrs. Bellew betrayed 
 any knowledge of certain facts that she had 
 disclosed to her, Parker would very justly be 
 regarded as a spy, and no doubt she would be 
 summarily dismissed. What man in his senses 
 would keep a woman in his service who was 
 always writing detailed re23orts of his doings to 
 his mother- in-law ? 
 
 Whatever had happened in the sacred privacy 
 of that honeymoon tour, she had no right to 
 know anything about it. Above all things, she 
 had no right to interfere. Dora's mother told 
 herself this a dozen times a day, and yet, if 
 Parker's account were true, she did not know 
 how to remain passive. 
 
 The anxiety and worry preyed upon her
 
 (38 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 spirits ; her nearest friends could not under- 
 stand her unusual depression. Everyone agreed 
 that she was worrying herself to death about 
 the necklace that had been stolen from her 
 house. 
 
 Sir Bourchier had been much disturbed by 
 the loss of the diamonds. They were family 
 jewels ; they had belonged to his great-grand- 
 mother, who had worn them in a head dress at 
 the wedding of his most gracious Majesty 
 King George III. to Queen Charlotte. There 
 was a picture of her, with the dress she wore 
 on the occasion, and the jewels in her hair, 
 hanging in the long gallery at Castle Hill. 
 
 Sir Bourchier was not satisfied with his son's 
 action. He had written, or he had caused his 
 daughter Ermyntrude, who acted as his 
 amanuensis, to write, to a private detective in 
 London, who had once been employed about a 
 plate robbery at Castle Hill, and who had suc- 
 ceeded in tracing the delinquents and recover- 
 ing the stolen property. Sir Bourchier had
 
 A PRIVATE DETECTIVE 139 
 
 instructed this man to investigate the mystery 
 connected with the lost diamonds ; they were 
 family property, and he had a perfect right to 
 take independent action in the matter. The 
 man he instructed worked entirely on his own 
 individual responsibility ; he had no connection 
 whatever with Scotland Yard. 
 
 This person also came down to Nunwell, and 
 made inquiries about the necklace. He did not 
 hover about the place for days, as Captain 
 Tremlett's agents had done ; he drove up to 
 the house in the morning, and he drove back 
 to the station in the afternoon. He made a 
 few inquiries, and he inspected the position of 
 the safe, and the approaches to the room where 
 the necklace had been on view, or was sup- 
 posed to have been on view ; and he had an 
 interview with the housekeeper, who had the 
 key of the room in her pocket while the 
 wedding party were away at church. He did 
 not ask to see the servants' boxes ; he did not 
 give any trouble to anybody ; he asked the
 
 140 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 questions he had come to ask, and when he had 
 partaken of some lunch he drove away. 
 
 While he was eating his luncheon in the 
 dining-room — the room where the wedding 
 breakfast had been spread — he learnt some 
 particulars about the wedding. He kept the 
 man-servant who waited upon him in conversa- 
 tion about the events of the day while he was 
 eating his luncheon. 
 
 ' It was a wet day, then V he said casually. 
 
 ' It was pouring cats and dogs all the time 
 the party were away at church.' 
 
 ' That was unfortunate ; but it did not 
 matter, as they were in close carriages.' 
 
 ^ Close carriages are as bad as open ones 
 when people don't shut the windows. Miss 
 Dora — Mrs. Tremlett — was wet through when 
 she came back from church. I saw it myself 
 I was standing on the steps when the carriage 
 drove up, and I opened the door for her to 
 alight.' 
 
 ' Wet through ! The bride Avet through V
 
 A PRIVATE DETECTIVE 141 
 
 the detective said, pausing with his knife and 
 fork in his hand. ' I never heard such a 
 thing. There must be some mistake.' 
 
 'I opened the door of the carriage myself; 
 there couldn't be no mistake,' the footman said, 
 in an injured tone. * The front of her satin 
 dress was wet, and her veil, the side the rain 
 had drifted in, was that wet that you could 
 have wrung it.' 
 
 ' Why did she keep the window of the 
 carriage open in the rain V the detective 
 asked. 
 
 ' It wasn't her ; it was the Captain. They 
 had had a tiff on the way, an' he was sulky an' 
 wouldn't put up the window of the carriage.' 
 
 The detective smiled. He was a young man, 
 and he couldn't help smiling at the ridiculous 
 picture the man had drawn of the sulky bride- 
 groom keeping the carriage window open, and 
 the bride getting wet through. 
 
 * What was the tiff about ?' he asked. 
 
 ' About the necklace he had give her for
 
 142 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 a wedding present — the one that was stolen. 
 He thought she ought to have wore It at the 
 wedding, an' she didn't ; so he had a fit of the 
 sulks, an' wouldn't speak a civil word to her for 
 the rest of the day.' 
 
 ' He was angry because she didn't wear the 
 necklace, then ? Pity she hadn't worn it. If 
 it had been on her neck, it wouldn't have been 
 stolen.' 
 
 ' I never see a man so angry about a little 
 matter, an' show off so before the company. 
 There was Sir Bourchier a-sitting there, just 
 where you are sitting, an' the young ladies, 
 an' all the great people hereabouts ; an' the 
 Captain he gets up from the table, before the 
 healths have been drunk an' the breakfast 
 is half over, an' declares it is time to go 
 away.' 
 
 ' How about the bride ? Couldn't she keep 
 him in order ?' 
 
 ' Oh, poor little Miss Dora hadn't the spirit 
 of a mouse. They used to call her "Mousey,""
 
 A PRIVATE DETECTIVE 143 
 
 because she was so timid an' had no spirit. 
 She got up from the table directly he told her^ 
 an' hurried away to take her gown off and put 
 on her travelling things. He didn't give her no 
 rest all the time she was changing her things. 
 He went up to the drawing-room and walked 
 up and down muttering to hisself, an' coming to- 
 the foot of the stairs every now an' then to call 
 up an' ask if she were ready. Mrs. Roberts, 
 the housekeeper, came up while he was there 
 with the key of the room where the presents 
 were laid out, an' she unlocked the door, think- 
 ing that might keep him quiet. He was stand- 
 ing just inside the room, with his hands in his 
 pockets, a-calling up to her, when I came 
 upstairs to tell him the carriage had come 
 round.' 
 
 ' Was anyone with the — er — Captain when 
 you saw him standing just inside the room, 
 calling to the— er — bride to come down V 
 
 ' Not that I can remember. He was there^ 
 alone. Everyone was upstairs helping the:
 
 144 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 bride, an the guests hadn't come up from the 
 breakfast.' 
 
 The detective was so moved by the picture of 
 this modern Bluebeard standing at the foot of 
 the stairs, shouting to the bride to come down, 
 that he gave a low whistle. 
 
 He jumped up from the table a moment after, 
 and declared that he w^as ready to start. 
 
 While the dogcart that he had driven over 
 from Hereford was being brought round, he 
 went upstairs to have another look at the room 
 where the wedding presents had been laid 
 out. 
 
 It did not seem wortli while to go up and 
 look at the empty room where the jewels had 
 once been. If the walls could have given back 
 reflections of all that liad happened wathin 
 them, it would have been different. With the 
 phonograph mysteriously giving back the sound 
 of our voices, who shall say that the walls 
 a.bout us may not give back the shadows which 
 we cast upon them, that their silent witness
 
 A PRIVATE DETECTIVE 145 
 
 may not some day reveal the hidden secrets of 
 our Hves ? 
 
 The room, which was known as the boudoir, 
 adjoined the drawing-room, and the door ^^-as 
 very near the foot of the stairs that led to the 
 upper story. Anyone standing within the 
 
 door could be heard distinctlv on the floor 
 
 «/ 
 
 above. There was nothing to be learnt from 
 the position of the room — nothing to give a 
 clue to the recovery of the lost necklace. 
 
 While the detective was standing at the top 
 of the stairs, measuring with his eye the dis- 
 tance from the landing to the room above, 
 where the bride had been dressing, while her 
 husband was shouting to her from below, a 
 young woman came out of the back drawing- 
 room. 
 
 It was Mrs. Bellew's new maid — a smartly- 
 dressed young woman, w4th a fresh colour and 
 a fringe, and wearing a jaunty cap. She stepped 
 back when she saw a man standing at the top 
 of the stairs, and the colour dropped suddenly 
 
 VOL. I. 10
 
 146 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 out of her face. She was not a bad-looking 
 young woman, but there was an anxious, 
 worried look about her face that her fringe 
 could not hide, and the lines about her mouth 
 were hard. 
 
 ' Oh, it is all right,' the detective said, with 
 a smile ; ' I am only making a few observations.' 
 And then a thought seemed to strike him. 
 ' You are Mrs. Bellew's maid V he said. 
 
 ' Yes ; but I have only been in her service a 
 few weeks. Her old maid left her to go with 
 Mrs. Tremlett, when she was married.' 
 
 The woman had a nervous, constrained 
 manner, and she spoke rather hurriedly. 
 
 ' You were here at the time of the wed- 
 ding V 
 
 ' Yes, I was here at the wedding.' 
 
 ' You remember seeing the necklace that was 
 lost?' 
 
 ' No, I have never seen the necklace ; I have 
 never set eyes upon it !' 
 
 She answered sharply, almost rudely, and
 
 A PRIVATE DETECTIVE 147 
 
 turned her back on the detective, as if to go 
 upstairs. 
 
 ' One moment, Mary,' he said good- 
 humouredly. ' Your name is Mary, isnt it ? 
 Just tell me what you know about the loss of 
 the necklace.' 
 
 ' My name isn't Mary, and I don't know any- 
 thing about the necklace. I never set eyes on 
 the necklace.' 
 
 ' So you have said before ; but you haven't 
 told me your name — your right name, if it isn't 
 Mary.' 
 
 ' Yenner — at least, Simmons,' the woman said, 
 correcting herself 
 
 ' Christian and surname ?' he asked. 
 
 He made the inquiry in an offhand way ; 
 there was nothing in his manner to agitate her, 
 
 'No, surname,' she said shortly; ' my Christian 
 name is Patience.' 
 
 ' Patience Yenner or Patience Simmons ?' he 
 asked. 
 
 He put the question rather suddenly, as if he
 
 148 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 had tripped her up, and he looked her steadily 
 in the face for a moment while he waited for 
 her reply. 
 
 The woman blushed and stammered. 
 
 ' Patience — Simmons/ she said sullenly. 
 
 And again she turned to go up the stairs. 
 . ' I am sorry to detain you, Patience — to tres- 
 pass on the virtue that your name implies — but 
 I want you to answer one or two questions. 
 Did you assist in dressing Mrs. Tremlett on the 
 day of the wedding — in getting her ready for 
 her journey V 
 
 ' I was in the room helping, with the other 
 ladies. I strapped her boxes while they were 
 putting on her things.' 
 
 ' Did you pack her boxes ?' 
 , ' I helped pack them, and I strapped them 
 when they were packed.' 
 
 * What happened while you were packing 
 them V 
 
 ' Nothing that I can remember, except that 
 Captain Tremlett was calling to her at the foot
 
 A PRIVATE DETFXTIVE 149 
 
 of the stairs to come down, and everybody was 
 nervous and upset.' 
 
 * Did you leave the room while Mrs. Tremlett 
 was being dressed V 
 
 * I did not leave the room until she had 
 gone downstairs, and then I looked over the 
 banisters and watched them go away.' 
 
 * Were there any of the other servants 
 looking over the banisters, watching them go 
 away ?' he asked. 
 
 ' Not that I know of ; they were at the upper 
 windows. I don't remember anyone else being 
 there.' 
 
 ' You were there alone, I understand, and the 
 door of the room behind you, where the wedding 
 presents were laid out, was open at the time V 
 
 ' I am sure I don't know whether it was open 
 or shut ; I did not take notice. It might have 
 been open, for all I know.' 
 
 This was all the information the clever detec- 
 tive that Sir Bourchier had sent down could get 
 out of Miss Simmons. She was not exactly
 
 150 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 reticent, and he could not say that she had 
 kept anything back ; but she was not quite so 
 eager to volunteer information as the footman 
 had been, and he didn't like the way her colour 
 — she had rather a high colour — went and came. 
 
 He thought about Patience and her meagre 
 information, and the unwilling, not to say 
 defiant, way in which she gave it, all the way 
 back to Hereford. 
 
 ' Do you happen to know anyone of the name 
 of Yenner about here ?' he asked the groom 
 who had come over with him in the dog-cart, 
 as they were driving back. 
 
 * There are no Venners about here that I 
 know of,' the man answered. ' It's not a Here- 
 ford name.' 
 
 When they reached the inn the groom was 
 still turning the name over in his mind. 
 
 ' Do you know any Yenners about here T he 
 asked the men in the yard, as he was taking out 
 his horse. ' The gent I took over to Nun\>'ell 
 was asking about 'em.'
 
 A PRIVATE DETECTIVE 151 
 
 ' There's a chap called Tenner on a job at 
 Fryston — a painter fellow come down with 
 Grace's men,' one of the men who was rubbing- 
 down a horse stopped to remark. 
 
 The detective ascertained before he left Here- 
 ford that Fryston was the name of the place 
 that was getting ready for Captain Tremlett 
 and his bride. It was an estate belonging to 
 the Tremletts, and the house, which was a 
 good deal out of repair, was being done up. 
 There had been workmen down from London 
 doing it up for months past. The restoration 
 had been put in the hands of a great London 
 firm, and an army of workmen had been sent 
 down. Fryston was within a couple of miles of 
 Nunwell ; the dogcart had passed it on the way 
 back to Hereford. 
 
 The detective almost regretted, as he went 
 back to town by the night mail, that he had 
 not stopped on the way and had an interview 
 with Mr. Yenner.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 AN OLD WORCESTER BOWL. 
 
 An unexpected event occurred that brought 
 the bridegroom back to Nunwell before the 
 honeymoon was over. It was not an auspicious 
 event to recall him before the appointed time : 
 it was the death of a second cousin. The Rector 
 of Compton Florey had died suddenly, and his 
 kinsfolk had been summoned to the funeral. 
 
 Compton Florey was a family living in the 
 gift of Sir Bourchier, and the deceased Rector 
 was his cousin, and Captain Tremlett was 
 recalled from the scene of his wedded bliss to 
 represent the head of the family on the mourn- 
 ful occasion.
 
 AN OLD WORCESTER BOWL 153 
 
 Mrs. Bellew had hoped that Dora would 
 accompany her husband, but the Captain re- 
 turned alone. Fryston being in the hands of 
 the workpeople, he stayed at Nunwell during 
 his short visit to the neighbourhood. 
 
 Dora was quite well, he said, in reply to her 
 mother's anxious inquiries — ' quite well,' as far 
 as he knew, ' and in a deuce of a hurry to get 
 back. ' 
 
 He did not give any reason for her being in 
 * a deuce of a hurry.' Something in her son-in- 
 law's face, or his manner, told Mrs. Bellew that 
 everything was not quite right. Without those 
 letters from Parker, she would have known 
 that things had gone crooked. 
 
 She would have given the world to know 
 what was amiss, to have had her child back in 
 her arms for half an hour. She would have 
 found out, she told herself, in five minutes 
 what had gone wrong, if she had had Dora 
 alone for that five minutes. 
 
 She couldn't get a word about Dora from the
 
 154 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 black-browed man who sat silent at table, or 
 stood on the rug before the drawing-room 
 grate, with his back to the fire, chewing the 
 ends of his moustache. There was only one 
 subject he would talk freely upon — the loss of 
 the family diamonds. The subject seemed to 
 have taken such hold upon him that it almost 
 amounted to a mania. 
 
 Mrs. Belle w received a letter from Parker 
 two morninofs after her son-in-law's arrival. 
 
 ' Miss Dora,' the woman wrote — she often 
 made a slip in writing, and called her mistress 
 by her old name — ' is much better already for 
 the Captain's absence. She was almost cheerful 
 this morning. Keep him away from her as 
 long as you can ; make any excuse to detain 
 him. I quite dread his coming back.' 
 
 This before the honeymoon was over ! 
 
 Mrs. Belle w made an excuse to detain him 
 the day after the funeral at Compton Florey. 
 She expressed a desire to go over to Fryston 
 and see how the work was progressing.
 
 AN OLD WORCESTER BOWL 155 
 
 Her son-in-law drove her over after lunch : 
 he was in no hurry to get back to his deserted 
 bride. 
 
 The men who had been sent down from 
 London had been ^^'orking day and night to 
 get the place ready in time, but it was not 
 ready yet. It did not look as if it could be 
 ready for weeks. The rooms were all smelling 
 of new paint, and the walls had yet to be 
 decorated. Everything had been settled be- 
 fore the wedding, and Dora had chosen the 
 colouring for the rooms ; she had been very 
 particular about the colour — it had been chosen 
 to match the furniture. 
 
 Now all this was to be altered. Captain 
 Tremlett walked through the house and found 
 fault with everything. He was quite sure that 
 his orders had not been carried out, and he 
 went away in a rage, and telegraphed to town 
 for the head of the firm to come down to Fryston 
 to meet him. 
 
 Mr. Grace came down the next day. All
 
 156 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS . 
 
 the world was running after Mr. Grace at this 
 particular time ; he was the acknowledged 
 Apostle of the Art of Decoration. He came 
 down in response to Captain Tremlett's urgent 
 telegram. He came down by one express train, 
 and he returned to town by the next. He 
 stayed exactly sixty-five minutes at Fryston. 
 In the sixty-five minutes he walked through all 
 the rooms and listened to Captain Tremlett's 
 complaints, and he promised that everything 
 should be altered — quite altered ; that another 
 scheme of colour should be substituted ; and, 
 having promised this, he went back to town. 
 It didn't matter to him whether Fryston was a 
 poem in saffron or a poem in blue ; he would 
 get his money in either case ; it was not con- 
 tract work. The difference in colour — the 
 substituting orange for blue — would mean that 
 Fryston would not be ready for occupation for 
 a month later than the appointed time. 
 
 A man came over from Fryston the next day 
 with a book of patterns that had been sent
 
 AN OLD WORCESTER BOWL 157 
 
 from town for the Captain to choose from. 
 The man who brought the patterns waited in 
 the servants'-hall while he made his selection. 
 People who came on business to the house were 
 always hospitably entertained at Nunwell. 
 There were cakes and ale for all callers, or, if 
 more substantial refreshment were desired, 
 there was bread and cheese, and a cut off a 
 round of beef. 
 
 The man who had come over with the book 
 of patterns was regaling himself on a plate of 
 beef and a jug of home-brewed beer in the 
 servants' - hall, ^^'hen Mrs. Bellew's maid hap- 
 pened to pass through. She had a bowl of 
 flowers in her hand — a bowlful of late roses — 
 which she had brought down from the drawing- 
 room to chancre the water. A footman and one 
 of the maid-servants were in the hall talking 
 to Mr. Grace's workman when Patience came 
 in. She did not see him sitting at the table 
 until she was half-way across the hall, and 
 then, without any warning, the bowl she was
 
 T58 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 carrying slipped from her hands upon the stone 
 floor and was shivered into a thousand atoms. 
 
 It was an old Worcester china bowl that 
 Mrs. Bellew set great store by. It was one of 
 the treasures of Nunwell, and it was smashed 
 to atoms. It had been carefully preserved for 
 over a hundred years, descending from father 
 to son through half a dozen generations ; it had 
 been locked up in a cabinet at Nunwell as long 
 as anyone could remember, and had only been 
 taken out on the occasion of Dora's wedding ; 
 only reverent hands had ever been allowed to 
 touch it ; and now, in a moment, it was smashed 
 to atoms by a careless maid-servant. 
 
 It was all the work of a moment ; Patience 
 was on her knees on the floor picking up the 
 pieces, and the footman was helping her. 
 
 ' I shouldn't like to be in your place,' a house- 
 maid who was looking on unfeelingly remarked. 
 ' I wouldn't be in your place for anything !' 
 
 There was no need to add to the poor girl's 
 distress ; her fresh-coloured face was as white
 
 AN OLD WORCESTER BOWL 159 
 
 as a sheet, and all the colour had left her lips ; 
 her nerveless hands could scarcely hold the 
 sherds she strove to gather up ; and as the 
 man who was eating his lunch at the table 
 rose up, and came slowly over to her assistance, 
 she looked up and saw him coming over, and 
 fell forward with a little moan upon the floor. 
 
 The two men between them carried her to 
 the open window, and the housemaid sprinkled 
 some water upon her face. When she came to 
 herself, she opened her eyes and looked fearfully 
 round — ' for all the world,' as the maid re- 
 marked, ' as if she expected to see a ghost.' 
 The messenger from Fryston had gone ; he had 
 not waited to finish his lunch. 
 
 ' Who is it ? where is he ?' she asked wildly, 
 putting the girl aside. She was not quite her- 
 self ; she did not remember what had happened. 
 
 ' Well, he's on the floor, I guess,' said the 
 girl, with a feeble attempt at a joke, * and he's 
 broke in bits. A pretty kettle of fish you've 
 made of it !'
 
 i6o THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 Then Patience remembered the Worcester 
 bowl. She wasn't good for much for the re- 
 mainder of the day ; she was nervous and 
 hysterical, and she broke down in a fit of weep- 
 ing in the middle of dressing her mistress for 
 dinner, and had to leave off and go to bed. 
 
 ' The poor girl's nerves are quite unstrung,' 
 she told her son-in-law at dinner, speaking of 
 the accident. She had not been very angry — 
 it was no use being angry when the mischief 
 was done — and the girl's distress had touched 
 her. 
 
 ' No wonder,' he said grimly, ' when she's- 
 broken a bowl worth fifty guineas !' 
 
 He did not strive to make himself ao^reeable 
 to his mother-in-law, and she was not sorry, 
 except for Dora's sake, when he went away. 
 
 ' What an infernally unlucky house this is !^ 
 he had remarked in her hearing when the acci- 
 dent to the china bowl was being discussed ;, 
 * nothing seems safe in it.' 
 
 This remark, of course, applied to the neck-
 
 AN OLD WORCESTER BOWL i6i 
 
 lace, the loss of which had given everybody so 
 much trouble. 
 
 Mrs. Bellew could but sicrh an unwillino^ 
 assent. It had been a particularly unlucky 
 house since he had come into it. 
 
 She could not think why she had ever given 
 her consent to the marriage, or what she could 
 ever have seen in that big, black-browed bully, 
 to trust her daughter to his keeping. It was 
 late in the day to ask the question. She had 
 been blinded, dazzled by Dora's good fortune — 
 she had called it good fortune — it had been 
 such a great thing to be the head of the family ^ 
 Sir Bourchier could not last for ever ; he Avas 
 already breaking up, and when he was gone 
 she would be Lady Tremlett, with a rent-roll 
 of twelve thousand a year, and the finest place 
 in the county. 
 
 What could a mother desire more ? Mi's. 
 Bellew had not desired more than this for her 
 daughter. She had desired it so much that 
 she had not desired anything else ; she had 
 
 VOL. I. 11
 
 i62 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 not let any other consideration weigh in the 
 balance. Other mothers would have done the 
 same — she was no worse than the rest ; only 
 now she would have given — she would have 
 given years of her life to undo the mischief 
 she had done.
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 Dora's honeymoox. 
 
 Captain Tremlett did not return to his bride 
 until several days after he had bidden adieu to 
 her mother. He did not, when he left Nunwell, 
 fly back to her on the wings of love — or, rather, 
 by the express train, that would have brought 
 him to her side the same evening. He delayed 
 his happiness, and spent a week in town. 
 There were ' things ' that called him to town, 
 he wrote to her ; but he did not explain what 
 the ' things ' were. 
 
 Dora was quite satisfied that he should delay 
 his coming ; she would not have hastened his 
 return for the world.
 
 i64 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 When he came back at last, and she heard 
 the grating of the wheels of his carriage on 
 the gravel outside the house, the colour dropped 
 out of her face, and she trembled all over. She 
 would have run away from him if she could — 
 she would have given anything to run away — 
 but it would be only making things worse, and 
 she kept her ground — at least, she sank down 
 upon a couch, and sat there trembling till her 
 lord and master came in. 
 
 She had got to go through with it, she re- 
 minded herself; whatever happened, he was 
 her husband. She had no redress. It would 
 only make a scandal if she ran away. He came 
 in presently ; she heard his slow, heavy step on 
 the stairs outside, and she rose up from her 
 couch to meet him. 
 
 ' So you have come back at last, Lionel V she 
 said, with a weak attempt at a smile of wel- 
 come, putting up her white cheek for him to 
 kiss. 
 
 He did not kiss her for a minute ; he held
 
 DORA'S HONEYMOON 165 
 
 her in his strong arms and looked down at 
 her. 
 
 ' You are very glad to see me, I suppose V he 
 said, with a laugh — a coarse laugh that made 
 her tremble in his arms. 
 
 * Yes ; oh yes !' she said hurriedly, but she 
 could not put any warmth into it. 
 
 And then he bent down and kissed her cold 
 lips, and held her in a vice for a few minutes. 
 
 She felt she must scream if he did not release 
 her — that she must scream or die, that he was 
 pressing all the life out of her ; but she endured 
 it without a moan. It was one of the things 
 she had to endure — one of his pleasantries. 
 
 If she had been a coward she would have 
 screamed, she would have told him that he was 
 killing her, 
 
 ' It looks like it !' he said, with his dark face 
 bending over her. 
 
 She did not return his embrace ; she could 
 not if she would. She only shrank from him 
 and shivered in his arms.
 
 i66 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 ' Bah !' he said, putting her from hhn with a 
 gesture of disgust. ' I thought you were flesh 
 and blood, and you are only an icicle. What 
 an infernal fool I was to marry you !' 
 
 He had flung her back upon the couch, where 
 Parker found her weeping an hour later, and 
 took her up to bed. 
 
 ' I knew exactly what it would be, Miss 
 Dora,' she said, when she had got her poor 
 young mistress up in her own room and had 
 locked the door upon her. ' I knew it would 
 be as bad as ever. If you'd only let me write to 
 your mamma ' 
 
 * I wouldn't have you write to mamma for 
 the world !' Dora sobbed, with her face on the 
 bosom of her faithful serving- woman ; ' I would 
 bear anything rather than mamma should 
 know !' 
 
 ' Have you heard anything about the neck- 
 lace, Lionel V she asked him the next morning 
 at breakfast. 
 
 She did not really care whether he had
 
 DORA'S HONEYMOON 167 
 
 heard anything about it or not — she hated the 
 necklace, she never wanted to see it again 
 — but she was obhged to say something. She 
 could not sit opposite to him all through that 
 dreary meal without speaking, and there was 
 nothing else she could talk about. 
 
 He hated any reference to her old home ; 
 when she spoke about Nun well, he was always 
 reproaching her for wanting to go back, for 
 being unhappy, dissatisfied. 
 
 ' If the police have got hold of the right clue, 
 you know more about it than they do.' 
 
 ' I ?' she repeated — ' I ? What can 1 know 
 about it, Lionel V 
 
 ' That is more than I can say,' he answered 
 grimly. ' It was seen last in your possession ; 
 no one else seems to have had the handling of 
 it. You know best what reason you had for 
 hiding it. ' 
 
 * Reason for hiding it !' she repeated, looking 
 at him across the table with eyes widening with 
 astonishment. ' What do you mean, Lionel ?'
 
 i68 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 ' I only mean what I say,' he said, getting up 
 from the table with a heavy cloud on his dark 
 face, and a look in his eyes that she could not 
 understand, that made her tremble. ' Perhaps 
 you wanted it for a bribe : there have been 
 such things. Hang it 1 you can never trust 
 a woman ; the fairer she seems, the falser she 
 is at heart !' 
 
 She could not understand at all what he 
 meant ; she could only sit there trembling, with 
 her face scarlet and the tears smarting in her 
 eyes. It was one of his ridiculous unfounded 
 charges — one of the mean, cowardly barbs that 
 he was always aiming at her little tender 
 heart. 
 
 ' A bribe ! whom could I want to bribe V 
 
 She was not wise enough to let him alone, 
 not to be disturbed by his cruel taunting 
 words ; she was weak enough to reason with 
 him. She was well named ' Mousey ' ; she had 
 only the spirit of a mouse. 
 
 * You know best. An old lover, most likely,
 
 DORA'S HONEYMOON 169 
 
 someone whose silence you had to pay for — and 
 you paid for it at my expense.' 
 
 ' A lover ! Lionel ! how can you say such 
 things V 
 
 She had risen from the breakfast- table ; her 
 face and neck were scarlet, and her bosom was 
 heaving. It was a gratuitous insult ; she had 
 never had anything but kind things said to her 
 in all her life ; she had never been credited 
 with anything but pure motives and gentle 
 actions, and now for this monstrous charge to 
 be made against her ! It took away her breath ; 
 it came upon her like a blow. 
 
 ' Yes,' he said with a harsh laugh, ' a lover ; 
 is there anything so wonderful in a woman 
 having a lover ? Bah ! you don't deceive me 
 with your air of injured innocence !' 
 
 He flung himself out of the room, and left 
 her standing there flushed and indignant. She 
 could have borne anything but this. 
 
 How could she tell if he were in earnest, 
 or if it were only a cruel jest — a wicked.
 
 i;o THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 wanton jest — to make her unhappy ? She 
 knew so little of the man into whose keep- 
 ing she had committed her happiness ; she 
 never knew whether he were in jest or in 
 earnest. Perhaps the knowledge would not 
 have availed her ; his jest was often more cruel 
 than his earnest. 
 
 She had suddenly awoke to the miserable 
 knowledge that there had been some mistake in 
 her life. Someone had made a mistake. Fate, 
 Providence, Chance, Circumstance — there were 
 several nails to hang the fault upon — had made 
 a cruel blunder. It was a rude awakening. 
 
 She found out the mistake very soon after 
 she was married ; she found it out at once ; she 
 had not to wait a single day. There were 
 hundreds of men in the world — her world — 
 that she could have married, good men and 
 true, and she had chosen one that was neither 
 good nor true. At least, he had been chosen 
 for her, and she had accepted him. She had 
 accepted him without asking any questions —
 
 DORA'S HONEYMOON i/i 
 
 accepted him thankfully, gratefully, almost 
 overwhelmed by the honour he had done 
 her — telling herself, as everybody had told 
 her, that she was the luckiest girl in the 
 world ! 
 
 Nobody had asked any questions. Captain 
 Tremlett might have been the Sultan of Turkey, 
 for the submissive readiness with which Dora 
 Bellew had picked up the handkerchief he had 
 thrown down. He had but to throw the hand- 
 kerchief, and she was ready to flutter to his 
 side, ready to give her life, her pure little soul, 
 into his keeping. It was not her place, perhaps, 
 to ask questions : he was the head of the family ; 
 at no distant time he would be Sir Lionel. This 
 was enough, surely enough, for any girl ; it was 
 enough for Dora. 
 
 Mrs. Bellew had been willing enough for this 
 consideration to give up her daughter, her inno- 
 cent lamb, that she had shielded so carefully all 
 her life from the knowledge of evil, whose inno- 
 cent eyes had never looked on an unclean thing.
 
 172 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 whose ears had never been defiled by an impure 
 word. 
 
 It was a rude awakening. Dora Tremlett 
 did not awake all at once ; she could not realize 
 at first what had happened to her. Dazed, 
 bewildered, all but crushed, in the early days 
 of that miserable honeymoon, she could only 
 ask herself, day after day, if it were true, or 
 if it were some dreadful hideous nightmare that 
 she should awake from presently. 
 
 It was impossible to hide her misery from the 
 watchful eyes of Parker, but she would not 
 have had her mother know of it for the world. 
 Whatever happened, she told herself, her mother 
 must never, never know of it. 
 
 There would not have been much to tell her ; 
 only the old story : a nature, not too noble to 
 begin with, coarsened by self-indulgence, in- 
 flamed to the verge of madness by drink. 
 
 Dora's husband was not exactly a drunkard ; 
 but he drank deeper than most men, and when 
 he drank he was subject to delusions. The de-
 
 DORA'S HONEYMOON 173 
 
 lusions did not always pass off with the fumes 
 of the alcohol he had been drinking ; sometimes 
 in his sober moments they assumed the most 
 alarming proportions. 
 
 Captain Tremlett did not drink as vulgar 
 men drink. He did not make a beast of him- 
 self, and roll about the room, and require to be 
 carried to bed by the servants. He generally 
 began drinking early in the day, after break- 
 fast, and he would sit drinking till noon, and at 
 noon he would mount his horse, a big iron-gray 
 cob that was as strong as an elephant, and he 
 would ride across the country, as the grooms 
 expressed it when they talked of their master's 
 doings, ' as if the devil himself were at his 
 heels.' 
 
 In these dreary October days — it was already 
 October — he would not return until dusk, often 
 not until long after dusk, and when he returned 
 the fumes of his morning potations \^'Ould have 
 passed off. He was seldom absent at dinner, 
 a meal that poor Dora dreaded ; she was never
 
 i;4 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 quite sure what mood her lord and master 
 might be in. Sometimes he would eat his dinner 
 in sullen silence ; at other times he would find 
 fault with everything, and get up from the 
 table, before the meal was half over, in a rage. 
 It was his pleasure that, at whatever hour he 
 left the dining-room — and he often sat over his 
 wine until midnight — Dora should await him 
 in the drawing-room upstairs, and if he were 
 so minded, he would keep her listening to his 
 ravings till daylight. 
 
 He had behaved better at Nunwell; if he had 
 sat late over his wine, he had had the grace 
 not to inflict his society upon his mother-in-law. 
 He never, while he was there alone, went up to 
 the drawing-room after dinner. When his 
 potations were ended he retired to smoke in the 
 billiard-room, and Mrs. Bellew saw no more of 
 him till the next morning. Perhaps the foot- 
 man could have told a tale ; but he knew his. 
 place, and kept silence. 
 
 Captain Tremlett did not come back until
 
 DORA'S HONEYMOON 175 
 
 dusk on that first afternoon after his return 
 from Nunwell. He had gone out after luncheon 
 and he had not come back till dinner-time. 
 His horse's coat was flecked with foam, and 
 its sides were heaving, as it was being led back 
 to the stables ; it had evidently been galloped 
 hard ; its owner, having nothing else to take his 
 ill humour out upon, had taken it out of his 
 beast. His brow was as black as night when 
 he sat down to dinner, and the meal passed in 
 sullen silence. Dora made a pretence of eating, 
 but every mouthful seemed to choke her ; she 
 was glad to rise up from the table and get 
 away. 
 
 She could not escape the storm for long. Her 
 husband followed her into the drawing-room 
 almost immediately. She had not noticed 
 that he had scarcely eaten anything — that 
 he had been drinking heavily all through the 
 dinner. 
 
 She was reading when he came into the 
 room — at least, she was trying to read — and she
 
 176 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 looked up with a terror she could not keep out 
 of her eyes when he entered. She could not 
 think what had brought him up so soon. He 
 strode across the room in his slow, heavy way, 
 and took up his accustomed place on the 
 hearthrug, with his back to the fire. It was 
 not a very large fire, and the night was chilly, 
 and he quite covered it up as he stood there. 
 Dora could not see a spark. He stood with his 
 black brows contracted, glaring down upon her 
 under his eyelids, with a gleam of something 
 like triumph in his bloodshot eyes. She 
 trembled and flushed beneath his scrutiny ; she 
 felt herself growing guiltily pink, and her 
 breath coming short and quick. 
 
 ' What is it, Lionel V she said timidly ; she 
 was obliged to say something to break the 
 dreadful silence. 
 
 * You may well ask what !' he said, his face 
 growing red with sullen wrath. ' I've found 
 you out, my meek little mouse ; your game's 
 discovered.'
 
 DORA'S HONEYMOON 177 
 
 * My game !' she repeated feebly ; she could 
 not think what he meant. 
 
 ' Your little game, that you thought so clever; 
 it's all unravelled ; the detectives have been too 
 much for you.' 
 
 ' The detectives !' she said ; ' I do not under- 
 stand. What have the detectives to do with 
 me?' 
 
 He laughed a harsh, brutal laugh that made 
 her shiver. 
 
 ' You'll find out soon enough, you little 
 innocence ; you won't be able to take them in 
 as you've taken me in. They've found out the 
 whole story, and a pretty story it is !' 
 
 ' What story, Lionel ? What have I done 
 that — that the detectives have found out V 
 
 Her face was red with indignation, and there 
 was a tremor in her voice that would have 
 touched any other man. She had never stood 
 up for herself in her life ; she had always had 
 people to stand up for her, to take her part, 
 if it were necessary — but it had never been 
 
 VOL. I. 12
 
 i;8 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 necessary. She had been so gently nurtured 
 all her life, so loved, and petted, and admired, 
 that, now that this dreadful thing had be- 
 fallen her, she did not know how to defend 
 herself. 
 
 He burst into a mocking, triumphant laugh. 
 
 ' You may well ask what you have done, now 
 that the mystery of the missing necklace is 
 unravelled ! All the world will soon know 
 what you have done ; it'll be on everybody's 
 tongue. Sir Bourchier's fellow was sharper 
 than the police, after all ; he's found out all 
 about those midnight meetings. I shouldn't 
 have thought your taste lay in that way.' 
 
 ' I don't know what you mean, Lionel,' she 
 said, with some show of spirit, and raising her 
 meek eyes to his with a look that he had not 
 seen in them before. * Why do you speak in 
 riddles V 
 
 ' By Jove !' he said, looking down at her 
 fiercely, with a red light in his eyes that she 
 quailed beneath, ' it's no riddle, and that you'll
 
 DORA'S HONEYMOON 179 
 
 find out. Your secret's discovered, madam, and 
 your fine lover is in gaol.' 
 
 She rose up from her seat and stood before 
 him white and trembling, with a certain pitiful 
 dignity that even in his drunken madness 
 appealed to him. 
 
 'I do not know what you mean/ she said, 
 with a little throaty quaver in her voice ; * I 
 only know that you mean to insult me, that 
 you are only saying this to cause me pain. If 
 — if I have become so odious to you, Lionel, let 
 me go back — let me go back to NunwelL' 
 
 ' Oh !' he said, his dark face distorted with 
 passion, * that's what you're aiming at ! You 
 want to go back ? I've been expecting this all 
 along. You want to go back, do you ?' 
 
 ' I AA'ill go back to-morrow if my presence 
 here is distasteful to you, Lionel,' she said 
 meekly. She hadn't the courage to defy him, 
 to stand up for herself ' I — I am ready to do 
 anything you desire to make you happy ' 
 
 ' Make me happy !' he said with a laugh.
 
 i8o THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 * By Jove ! this is the best thing I've heard. 
 Make me happy !' 
 
 She heard him repeating it to himself and 
 laughing all the way down the stairs ; he had 
 left the drawing-room door open as he flung 
 out, and as she stood there listening, with her 
 hands clasped before her, and every nerve in 
 an agony, she heard the door of the room below 
 close behind him. 
 
 She knew he had gone back for his evening's 
 carouse, and that hours hence, after midnight, 
 he would come upstairs again, and expect to 
 find her there. 
 
 It was hard to know what to do. She was 
 only a girl, a mere child, and she had formed 
 such wonderful ideas of a wife's duties ! The 
 words she had said on that memorable day, 
 when she stood in her white before that cold 
 altar, with the rain pattering on the roof, were 
 still ringing in her ears. 
 
 Love, honour, obey : she had promised to do 
 all these things ; there was no saving clause
 
 DORA'S HONEYMOON i8i 
 
 added to excuse their non-fulfilment. There 
 was nothing said about drunkenness, madness, 
 cruelty, neglect. The words were without any 
 qualification — when there is a new rubric these 
 things will be altered. She had promised to 
 love, honour, and obey her husband : she had 
 taken him for better or worse. If he turned 
 out ' worse,' all worse, and no better, she had 
 nothing to complain of. It was no more than 
 she had bargained for.
 
 CHAPTEK XII. 
 
 A STRANGE TASK. 
 
 Edith Darcy had not been idle all this time. 
 Her hands had been quite full. There was so 
 much to get ready for her wedding, and there 
 was no one to get it ready but herself Most 
 girls have friends, relatives, to assist, some- 
 times to undertake this happy work — it ought 
 to be happy work, or it should not be attempted 
 at all. 
 
 Edith had no one but herself to choose any- 
 thing, to decide any vexed question, to make 
 any wise suggestion ; no one to flutter about 
 her while she was trying on her wedding gown, 
 and say tender, foolish things.
 
 A STRANGE TASK 183 
 
 She had to go through it all alone in a cold, 
 matter-of-fact way. She did not feel her 
 loneliness so much as some gfirls would have 
 done. She had been used to doing things for 
 herself for years, since her mother died. It 
 would be quite a new thing for her to have 
 someone always by her side to consult, to fall 
 back upon. She was years older — four, nearly 
 five years older — than Derek Stanhope, but 
 she looked up to him as if he were years 
 her senior, perhaps because he was a man, or 
 because she loved to have someone to look 
 up to. 
 
 She consulted him about everything that she 
 bought for the flat. She would not decide on 
 a single thing without him. They spent hours 
 together going through the furnishing depart- 
 ments of the Army and Navy Stores. He had 
 no idea that so many things were wanted for 
 a flat, and he could not tell how Edith had 
 got the money. She bought everything they 
 would need before her wedding, and paid for it.
 
 i84 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 When she came back from her wedding tour 
 she would have a home ready for her — a nest 
 ready furnished. It would be something to 
 look forward to. 
 
 The money trouble had been all got over, and 
 the trousseau was complete, as rich and com- 
 plete a trousseau as any woman could desire ; 
 there was nothing wanting. The wedding was 
 to take place in town. Mrs. Bellew was 
 coming up on purpose that Edith might be 
 married from her house; and her uncle, Kichard 
 Darcy, her father's brother, was to give her 
 away. She would not be married from her 
 uncle's house — there was an old feud that had 
 not been bridged over, that separated her from 
 her uncle's wife (his second wife) and children — 
 but she had been willing that he should give 
 her away. 
 
 He had offered her a home when her mother 
 died, but she had refused it on his wife's 
 account. He had married a young wife, a 
 schoolfellow of Edith's, and there had been
 
 A STRANGE TASK 185 
 
 some disagreement at the time, and the breach 
 had never been healed. It would be so far 
 healed now that she would be at the wedding, 
 and two of the girls, her cousins, were to be 
 bridesmaids. 
 
 She could not afford, she told herself, to 
 marry a man and let his family think that she 
 had no relations. There must, for appearance' 
 sake, be somebody belonging to her at the 
 wedding. She had to make her peace with his 
 people, as it were, to justify herself for coming 
 into the family ; and her uncle, Richard Darcy, 
 was the peace-offering. He was a man of 
 wealth, and stood well with the world, and 
 represented an old family, two old families — the 
 Darcys and the Gunnings. The Gunnings were 
 the older family of the two ; the Darcys had 
 only come over at the French Revolution. 
 They were of recent date compared with the 
 Gunnings, who had been people of distinction 
 in the Church and country for centuries. Peter 
 Gunning had been Bishop of Ely in the time of
 
 i86 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 the Stuarts ; his portrait hangs on the staircase 
 of the University Library at Cambridge, and 
 smiles benevolently down upon the successive 
 generations of undergraduates who climb those 
 well-worn stairs. 
 
 Edith Darcy had to make the most of this 
 connection ; she had so few things to recom- 
 mend her to her husband's family that she had 
 to make the most of those she had. 
 
 The engagement had been a great disap- 
 pointment to Derek Stanhope's people. He 
 was a younger son, a third son, and his father, 
 who held the family living — which had been 
 decreasing in value every year — had nothing to 
 give him. He had his commission, and a great 
 deal of money had been spent on his education. 
 He represented in himself the capital that had 
 been sunk for his advancement, and it was 
 clearly his duty to make the most of himself. 
 It was a duty he owed to his parents for the 
 sacrifices they had made for him. 
 
 He discharged this duty by falling in love
 
 A STRANGE TASK 187 
 
 with a girl who hadn't a penny besides her 
 ' allowance ' — a slender allowance that was tied 
 down to her for life, and that she was not 
 suffered to anticipate. Edith had explained all 
 this to her lover ; he knew exactly how she 
 stood ; he had no excuse for his folly, except, 
 indeed, the excuse — the old, threadbare excuse 
 — that he was in love. 
 
 If he had married an heiress, or even a girl 
 with a moderate amount of wealth, sufficient 
 to enable him to keep up a certain position in 
 society — to keep his head above water — his 
 friends would have welcomed her with every 
 demonstration of affection ; but they had re- 
 ceived Edith coldly. Nothing could have been 
 colder than the reception she met with from 
 the family of hev Jiance. 
 
 They could not think what Derek could 
 see in her — ' a plain dowdy woman, old enough 
 to be his mother !' 
 
 Her future sisters-in-law were very sweeping 
 in their verdict ; they did not mince matters.
 
 i88 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 They were quite sure that Edith was thirty- 
 five, if she were a day ; that her beauty, if she 
 had ever had any, was a thing of the past ; and 
 that she was the last woman in the world that 
 Derek ought to have married ! If she had 
 had the excuse of beauty, they could have 
 understood his infatuation — men are so easily 
 led away by a pretty face — but Derek had no 
 such excuse. 
 
 They reckoned without their host ; they did 
 not know, they could not tell, what Derek 
 saw in the woman he loved. It is certain that 
 he saw something in her that he had never seen 
 in any other woman. 
 
 The attitude of her future husband's family 
 had something to do with Edith's arrangements 
 for the wedding. She would have been glad 
 to be married quietly, without any show or 
 expense, and to go away on her honeymoon 
 without anybody being the wiser. Under the 
 circumstances, this was out of the question. It 
 would not do to have a hole-and-corner affair,
 
 A STRANGE TASK 189 
 
 to slink into the family as if she had no right 
 there. There was nothing to be done but to 
 have a proper wedding, with the full comple- 
 ment of bridesmaids, and carriages, and wedding 
 guests, and a champagne breakfast to follow. 
 
 It was all utterly distasteful to Edith, but 
 it had to be done. Mrs. Bellew, who had 
 known her for years, and loved her as a 
 daughter, came up to town and offered to give 
 the wedding breakfast and invite the guests. 
 Edith was to be married from her house. She 
 did not stop with the breakfast ; she provided 
 the carriages and everything else that had to 
 be provided, as if Edith were her own child. 
 
 Grace Bellew, Dora's younger sister, had 
 come up with her mother ; she was to be one 
 of Edith's bridesmaids. There were to be the 
 regulation number — six bridesmaids. Edith's 
 two cousins, two sisters of the bridegroom, a girl- 
 friend, and little Grace, made up the number. 
 
 All this prejDaration was a worry and burden 
 to Edith, who had wished to be married as
 
 190 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 quietly as possible. A week before the time 
 fixed for the wedding, she went to Lowndes 
 Square to stay with Mrs. Bellew. Her things 
 were all ready, and it w^as easier to have them 
 sent direct there than to St. Oswald's. It was 
 understood that Dora and her husband were 
 coming up to town to the wedding. They had 
 not yet returned from their honeymoon. The 
 alterations that Captain Tremlett had suggested 
 at Fryston would delay the completion of the 
 work for another month. They could not 
 live in the house that was being prepared for 
 them if they came back. Dora had written to 
 her mother to say that her husband was willing 
 to come up to town till their house was ready 
 for them, and that they hoped to be present at 
 Edith's wedding. This had something to do 
 with Mrs. Bellew's stay in town. She was 
 longing to see her child again, and she would 
 certainly not have seen her if she had remained 
 at Nunwell. 
 
 There had been nothing heard of that wretched
 
 A STRANGE TASK 191 
 
 necklace. Detectives had been about the house, 
 making everybody's life a burden, ever since 
 the loss was discovered, and Mrs. Belle w was 
 not sorry to come up to town to get away 
 from them. 
 
 They could have no excuse for following her 
 here ; it was not likely that whoever had stolen 
 the necklace had brought it up to town with 
 him. She told Edith this on the first day that 
 she came to Lowndes Square, while they sat 
 talking after dinner. 
 
 Captain Stanhope had been dining with them, 
 and when he came upstairs after dinner, Mrs. 
 Bellew was telling Edith about the detectives ; 
 and then he learnt for the first time the story 
 of the missing necklace. Edith had never 
 mentioned it to him. Why should she ? She 
 had been so full of her own happiness — her 
 own affairs had so occupied, so entirely absorbed 
 her attention — that she had thought of nothing 
 else. She hadn't a thought to spare for Dora 
 Tremlett's loss.
 
 192 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 ' The detectives can't be very sharp,' he re- 
 marked, when he had heard the story from Mrs. 
 Bellew, ' or they would have discovered some 
 clue before now. Most likely the necklace has 
 been taken abroad for sale, or the stones have 
 been taken out and sold separately. They 
 generally do this sort of thing, I believe, in 
 diamond robberies.' 
 
 Edith dropped her fan while he was speaking 
 — it was only a fire-screen fan, and she was 
 shading her eyes with it from the fire— and he 
 stooped to pick it up. When he returned it to 
 her, he noticed that her face— she had been 
 looking pale all day, pale and worried — had 
 grown suddenly scarlet. He remarked it 
 because the colour was so becoming to her. 
 If an}^ woman had an excuse for assisting 
 Nature, it was Edith. She never looked so 
 well as when she had a rich streak of scarlet 
 on her cheeks. Her hand shook as she took 
 the fan from her lover and held it before 
 her hot cheeks. He did not think of it at
 
 A STRANGE TASK 195 
 
 the moment, but he remembered it after — long; 
 after. 
 
 She went back to St. Oswald's the next day; 
 she went back unexpectedly — some business, 
 she explained, had called her back — and she 
 did not return to Lowndes Square until the 
 day before the wedding. 
 
 A letter had reached her the morninp' after 
 that conversation about the missing diamonds, 
 when her lover was present, and it related to 
 the necklace. The letter had been forwarded 
 to her from St. Oswald's, and a post had been 
 lost in the transmission. It was from a gentle- 
 man who purposed to visit her at Gotham 
 House to ask some questions relative to the 
 loss of the diamond necklace. It was too late 
 when she received the letter to alter the place 
 appointed for the interview, and there was no 
 alternative but to return to St. Oswald's. 
 
 She did not say anything to her hostess as to 
 the nature of the business that called her back 
 to her aunt's house ; she only kissed her when 
 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 194 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 she went away, and promised to return the 
 next day. There could be no reason for her 
 keeping the object of her visit secret. Perhaps 
 she did not wish to revive the unpleasant sub- 
 ject ; Mrs. Belle w had already been worried to 
 death about it. 
 
 On the platform at St. Oswald's station she 
 saw the man who had oifered to take her ticket 
 a month aofo at the London terminus. She 
 recognised him the moment he got out of the 
 train. He had travelled down by the same 
 train, and stood waiting about the station until 
 she had driven away. She could not tell why, 
 but the sight of the man upset her — gave her 
 an unpleasant, creej^y sensation she could not 
 account for. 
 
 Miss Gunning was not so well, she learnt, 
 when she arrived at Gotham ; the doctors had 
 only just left her. One of her old delusions 
 had revived, and she was in great trouble about 
 being taken away. There had been some talk 
 at one time, years ago, when her weakness of
 
 A STRANGE TASK 195 
 
 mind first became apparent, of reLiioving her, 
 but it had been abandoned. Perhaps some 
 hint of this had reached her at the time, and 
 the old dread had suddenly revived. 
 
 She had been awake all nio-ht, listenino- for 
 the carriage to drive up to take her away ; and 
 she had given orders that all the doors and 
 windows should be secured — no one was to be 
 admitted. She had insisted upon having the 
 key of the front- door taken up into her room. 
 The key had been taken up over-night, and it 
 had not been brought down in the morning, 
 and when Edith arrived she had to go round 
 by the back w^ay. 
 
 She went up to her aunt's room at once ; 
 the old woman would not be pacified unless 
 she went up ; she would not be persuaded that 
 the men had not arrived, and were not in 
 hiding somewhere, unless Edith went up and 
 showed herself. 
 
 The bedroom-door was unlocked to admit 
 her, and locked acrain after her — locked and
 
 196 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 bolted. Miss Gunning was still in bed ; 
 she had refused to get up, and for further 
 security she had pinned herself to the bed- 
 clothes. 
 
 She had a pincushion before her when Edith 
 went in, and she was busily engaged pinning 
 herself to the sheets. 
 
 Blue- Eye and her female relative were sitting 
 at the foot of the bed watching her ; they had 
 been watching her for hours, and were still 
 interested spectators. 
 
 She could not spare a moment to return 
 Edith's greeting ; her hands were full of pins. 
 
 ' I am very sorry, my dear, but there is not 
 a minute to lose,' she said in her old quavering 
 voice, as with bent, withered hands, that shook 
 with eager haste, she stuck the pins in her 
 clothes ; ' the men will be here presently, and I 
 must be ready for them. They can't take me 
 away if I am fastened to the bed.' 
 
 The blinds of the room were closely drawn as 
 usual, and in the dim light — it was a dull.
 
 A STRANGE TASK 197 
 
 misty October day — Edith saw the strange 
 figure engaged in this strange task, sitting up 
 in the bed. It would have been a ridiculors 
 spectacle if it had not been pathetic — the 
 worn, wrinkled old face, with the scanty gray 
 hair straggling out beneath the wide frills of a 
 huge nightcap, and the long lean fingers eagerly 
 plying their ridiculous task. 
 
 She had once been a beauty — a beauty and 
 wit, the beautiful Miss Gunning— this silly 
 old woman pinning herself to the bedclothes. 
 Something in the attitude struck Edith as she 
 stood there watchino; her : ' Would she ever 
 come to this,' she asked herself, ' if she lived to 
 Dfrow old and selfish and narrow-minded, and 
 had no one to love her ? — would she grow like 
 this some day, and j^in herself to the bed- 
 clothes ?' 
 
 It was a dreadful question — it was a ridicu- 
 lous question to ask. She was not likely to 
 grow selfish and narrow ; her life was full of 
 interests, fresh human interests, and she had
 
 198 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 someone to love her, someone who was quite 
 ready to swear before Heaven that he would 
 love and cherish her all his life long ! 
 
 She could not help smiling at her dismal 
 thoughts ; and then she turned away to ask 
 Penfold how long this had been going on. 
 
 ' She was took bad soon after you went away 
 yesterday, Miss Edith, and she's been pinning 
 herself up since six o'clock. If I've took out 
 one pin I've took oiit a thousand ; as fast as I 
 take 'em out she sticks 'em in.' 
 
 ' She is not ill, then ? She can't be really ill 
 if she has been sitting up since six o'clock. 
 Perhaps it is only one of her whims.' 
 
 Penfold shook her head. 
 
 ' The doctors don't say, miss ; they are coming 
 again by-and-by ; they've only left instructions 
 that we are to humour her and keep her quiet.' 
 
 While Edith was still talking to the woman 
 at the foot of the bed, the front-door bell rano-. 
 It was a loud, noisy bell — its summons could be 
 heard all over the house. The old woman
 
 A STRANGE TASK 199 
 
 started up in bed, as far as the condltioii of the 
 bedclothes would allow her to move at all. 
 
 ' They've come !' she cried in her shrill, 
 quavering treble ; ' they've come for me at 
 last — at last ! I've been expecting them for 
 years, and they've come at last !' 
 
 They could not pacify her ; it was as much 
 as Pen fold could do to keep her quiet in the 
 bed, until Edith promised she would go down 
 and see the men who had come, and answer 
 for her. 
 
 The last sound she heard as she went slowly 
 down the stairs, when Penfold had locked the 
 door after her, was the old woman crying out : 
 
 ' They've come for me at last !'
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 WHAT WAS HE DRIVING AT ? 
 
 Edith went slowly down the stairs ; she was 
 not thinkmg of the interview that had brought 
 her back, of the man who was awaiting her in 
 the dining-room below ; she was thinking of 
 the scene she had just left, and wondering 
 vaguely if by any possibility — if her life were 
 suddenly wrecked and her happiness were to 
 slip away from her— she could ever become like 
 the old woman she had left pinning herself to 
 the bedclothes. 
 
 The man who had rung at the front-door 
 had been brought round the back way. The 
 woman who had brouofht him round had ex-
 
 WHAT WAS HE DRIVING AT? 201 
 
 plained to him, by way of apology, that it was 
 one of Miss Gunnino^'s whims to have the door 
 locked. There was no secret made in St. 
 Oswald's of the fact that Miss Gunning was 
 subject to ' whims.' 
 
 If the truth were to be owned, the people of 
 St. Oswald's were rather proud of the eccen- 
 tricities of the owner of Gotham. Her residence 
 in the High Street gave a certain amount of 
 interest and importance to the shabby, decaying 
 little town. 
 
 The man who was awaiting Edith in the 
 dininof-room below was the man she had seen 
 at the station, the man who had once offered to 
 take her ticket. She remembered the voice in 
 a moment, and it seemed to grate upon her. 
 There was no reason why it should grate upon 
 her. He was a civil-spoken man ^^'ho had only 
 called upon her on a matter of business. She 
 could not understand why his voice aifected 
 her ; she found herself recalling all the 
 iacidents of the day when she had heard it
 
 202 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 last. It was a day full of incidents, and they 
 all crowded into her mind as the man was 
 speaking to her. She did not pay much 
 attention to what he was saying ; she was 
 thinking of something else. She found herself 
 answering his questions vaguely, when she 
 ought to have well considered every word 
 before she spoke. He was only asking 
 questions about the missing necklace — ques- 
 tions she had already answered. She was 
 angry at being brought down here to go over 
 the old ground. 
 
 But it was not all the old ground that this 
 new man, with his unpleasant voice, was going 
 over. 
 
 ' Do you happen to remember what called you 
 to town on the twenty- third of last month ?' 
 he asked, referring to his pocket-book for the 
 date. 
 
 It was the day that she had seen him at the 
 London station. 
 
 One of her sudden flushes came over Edith's
 
 WHAT WAS HE DRIVIx\G AT? 203 
 
 white face at the man's question, and she did 
 not answer for a moment. 
 
 She was thinking of the quantity of business 
 — business and pleasure — she had crowded into 
 that short day. 
 
 ' There were several thincrs to call me to 
 town,' she said presently. 
 
 ' Would you mind telling me some of the 
 things V 
 
 She considered for a moment before she 
 spoke ; she could not see what her business in 
 town could have to do with the loss of Dora's 
 necklace. 
 
 ' There is no reason w4iy you should not 
 know,' she said, ' though I don't see how it can 
 possibly affect you. I went up to town to see 
 my lawyer.' 
 
 ' Would you mind giving me the address of 
 your lawyer V 
 
 Edith gave the information he desired rather 
 impatiently. She w^as almost Inclined not to 
 give it at all.
 
 204 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 ' You had business with your lawyer V 
 
 ' Of course I had business, or I should not 
 have gone up to town to see him,' she returned 
 somewhat haughtily. How could it concern 
 this man what business she had with her 
 lawyer ? 
 
 ' When you left Lincoln's Inn Fields, where 
 did you go V 
 
 ' Where ? Oh ! I did some shopping. I had 
 a great deal of shopping to do.' 
 
 * You were shopping all day V 
 'Most oftlie day.' 
 
 ' About what hour was your shopping over V 
 ' About four o'clock.' 
 
 ' You were shopping, then, from eleven o'clock 
 until four ?' 
 
 ' Yes ; I had a good deal to do.' 
 
 * Do you usually spend so many hours at a 
 time shopping V 
 
 The question was quite irrelevant ; it was 
 almost impertinent. 
 
 ' I had reasons for sj^ending so much time
 
 WHAT WAS HE DRIVING AT? 205 
 
 shopping. I am about to be marned, and I 
 was buying my wedding things.' 
 • The man didn't exactly whistle, but he drew 
 a Ion Of breath. 
 
 ' Indeed ! pardon me, but do you propose to 
 be married soon ?' 
 
 'I am to be married next week.' 
 
 Edith's 23atieuce was at an end. She could 
 hardly answer him civilly. If Derek Stan- 
 hope had been there, the man would not have 
 dared to ask her such questions ; he was taking 
 advantage of her being alone and unprotected. 
 In a few days more her lover would have the 
 right to protect her, to defend her against all 
 the world. 
 
 ' You were buying things for your new home, 
 then — furniture and such-like — besides your 
 wedding clothes V 
 
 ' Yes, I looked at some furniture. I don't 
 know whether I exactly bought it at that 
 time.' 
 
 ' You came up to town on a later occasion,
 
 2o6 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 then, to decide about the furniture you had 
 looked at V 
 
 ' I came up to town several times before I 
 quite settled upon the furniture. I am sure I 
 don't know what this can have to do with the 
 business you wished to see me upon,' Edith said 
 impatiently. 
 
 The man bowed and smiled, but he did not 
 attempt to go. 
 
 ' Would you nund giving me the address 
 where you bought the furniture V he continued. 
 He was not a bit disturbed by Edith's anger. 
 
 ' I bought most of the things at the Army 
 and Navy Stores,' she said shortly. 
 
 * Will you give me the dates of the various 
 occasions on which you went up to town to buy 
 furniture V 
 
 ' I did not always go up to buy furniture, 
 and I am sure I cannot remember the dates,' 
 Edith said indignantly. 
 
 ' Perhaps I can assist your memory,' the man 
 said, referring to his pocket-book. ' Did you
 
 WHAT WAS HE DRIVING AT? 20; 
 
 go to town on Monday the 28th of September, 
 and Wednesday the 30th, and again on Octo- 
 ber 6th, besides subsequent occasions V 
 
 The colour had dropped out of Edith's face 
 while he asked these questions, and a startled 
 look came into her eyes. She could not keep 
 her voice quite steady when she spoke, and the 
 words came reluctantly — 
 
 ' I believe — I went up to town — on — those — 
 dates.' 
 
 She could not have spoken another word if 
 she had tried. 
 
 ' And on each of these occasions you went for 
 the purpose of shopping?' 
 
 Edith nodded her head. 
 
 ' For no other purpose ? You had no other 
 business in town V 
 
 ' I had appointments to keep. I had to meet 
 Captain — the gentleman I — I am going to 
 marry ' 
 
 She spoke with difficulty ; there was a lump 
 in her throat that got in the way of the words
 
 2o8 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 she was trying to speak — that seemed to choke 
 them back. 
 
 ' Had you any other appointments to keep 
 besides those with the gentleman you are about 
 to marry V the man asked her, with his unplea- 
 sant smile and his unpleasant voice. 
 
 ' I had no other appointments,' Edith said, 
 turning away. 
 
 ' Think again ; try to recollect. Don't answer 
 in a hurry. Had you not any other business 
 engagements in town on the days that I have 
 mentioned, besides those connected with the 
 purchase of your furniture and wedding clothes, 
 and your meetings with the gentleman you are 
 about to marry V 
 
 * I had no other business engagements.' 
 
 The man did not ask Edith any more ques- 
 tions. He gathered up his pocket-book and 
 papers from the table, and he took u]^ his hat 
 off the floor, and wished Edith ' Good-morning ' 
 with his unpleasant voice, and went out, as he 
 had come in, by the back way.
 
 WHAT WAS HE DRIVING AT? 209 
 
 When the door had closed upon the detective, 
 Edith went upstairs. She went up more slowly 
 than she had come down. Something had come 
 to her feet ; they were so heavy that she could 
 hardly lift them from the ground, and there 
 was a strancre confusion in her head. All the 
 old portraits on the walls seemed to be looking 
 down upon her with reproachful eyes, and the 
 sound of her footfall on the stairs filled her with 
 vague alarms. 
 
 She was growing like her aunt, she told her- 
 self impatiently. If she encouraged these 
 foolish fancies, these groundless fears, she would 
 soon be pinning herself to the bed. 
 
 A strange thing happened when Edith 
 reached her own room. She sat down on a 
 chair beside the dressing-table, and rested her 
 head on her hand. She wanted to think, and 
 the confusion in her head would not let her 
 think. The room seemed to be going round 
 with her, and there was a strange flutter at her 
 heart and a gasping for breath, and then a 
 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 210 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 blank wall rose up before her. Edith had 
 fainted. 
 
 She did not remember any more until half an 
 hour later, when she found herself on the floor 
 of her room, and Blue-Eye's relative rubbing 
 its soft white fur against her cheek. 
 
 She did not know how long she had lain 
 there ; nobody would have come to her aid if 
 she had lain there all day. There was only a 
 white cat with a ridiculous name who took 
 any interest in her. She could not help 
 feeling grateful for even the affection of a 
 cat ; she wanted love, sympathy, so much, 
 just at that moment. She wanted strong, 
 tender arms around her, and a bosom to weep 
 upon ; and there was nothing but this white 
 cat. 
 
 She took the soft white fluffy morsel in her 
 arms, as she sat on the floor, and let her tears 
 drop down upon it, into its long white fur. All 
 the strength seemed to have gone out of her 
 when she attempted to get up from that un-
 
 WHAT WAS HE DRIVING AT? 211 
 
 dignified position ; she could not think what 
 had come to her. 
 
 The doctors — there were two doctors in 
 attendance on Miss Gunning — came to see 
 their patient again later in the day. She was 
 quieter after their second visit, and she had 
 allowed Penfold to take the pins out of the 
 bedclothes ; the delusion had passed, and she 
 had fallen asleep. She was asleep when Edith 
 went in to see her the last thing before she 
 went to bed, and Penfold, Avho was worn out 
 with watching, was nodding in her chair. 
 
 She stole softly out of the room without 
 disturbing either ; but she did not go to bed. 
 She had a good deal to think about, and she 
 had not been able to think till now. There 
 had been a strano^e confusion in her head all 
 day that had kept her from thinking. She 
 had not been able to analyze her feelings ; her 
 head had been in a whirl ever since that inter- 
 view with the man in the morning. Something 
 he had said had upset her — upset her more
 
 212 
 
 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 than she could tell. She did not understand 
 the drift of his inquiries— she could not tell 
 what he was driving at. 
 
 If only she could have known what he had 
 in his mind, she would have been more satis- 
 fied ; it was the uncertainty that upset her. 
 She had not answered his questions quite 
 truly — not with the accuracy and strict re- 
 gard to truth that was expected of her — 
 and the man knew it. She ivas sure the mem 
 kiieiv it. 
 
 What use he would make of that knowledge 
 it was impossible to say, or how it could con- 
 cern him or concern the matter he had in hand. 
 8he had a perfect right to answer him as she 
 had answered him ; he had no business to pry 
 into matters that only concerned herself Still, 
 if she had had to go through that interview 
 again, she would have answered him differently. 
 She would, as he had recommended her to do, 
 have taken time to think. 
 
 She had written to her lover by the evening
 
 WHAT WAS HE DRIVING AT? 213 
 
 post, but she had not told him anything about 
 that wretched interview — the business that 
 had called her back. She would not be able to 
 come up to town, she told him, for a few 
 days. Her aunt's illness would be a sufficient 
 reason for remaining at Gotham until the 
 weddino\ 
 
 She went to bed, feeling miserable and de- 
 pressed, with a load on her heart that she 
 could not account for. For all the sleep she 
 got, she might as well have stayed up. She 
 got up after a time, and threw on her dressing- 
 gown, and opened a bureau that stood against 
 the wall of her room. She had already re- 
 moved all her papers and letters from it — 
 taken them away or burnt them. She might 
 not have another chance of destroying them ; 
 it was not likely that she would ever return 
 here again. 
 
 When her aunt died — and from what the 
 doctors had let fall it was probable that the 
 end was not very far off — the establishment.
 
 214 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 such as it was, would be broken up, and the 
 things would be all sold, and the money 
 divided. There were ten living descendants 
 of her uncle Hichard Darcy — ten nephews and 
 nieces to take their share of the spoil. Only 
 an eleventh part would come to her ; it was 
 not likely that any of the things she saw around 
 her would descend to her : they would all pass 
 into the hands of strangers. 
 
 Edith was thinking of this as she lay awake ; 
 it was one of the things that kept her awake. 
 As soon as she got rid of one troublesome 
 thought another would take its 23lace. It was 
 this persistence of troublesome thoughts flitting 
 across her weary brain that made her get up. 
 
 She was wondering what would become of 
 the jewelry — the Gunning diamonds — that her 
 aunt had spoken of, when the time she was 
 anticipating came. No one knew of them, or 
 suspected their existence. Even the trustees 
 that Miss Gunning had appointed years ago 
 were unaware of their existence, and it was
 
 WHAT WAS HE DRIVING AT? 215 
 
 more than probable that they were not specially 
 mentioned in her will. They had never really 
 belonged to her aunt ; they had belonged 
 equally to both sisters. They were heirlooms, 
 and therefore the property of the eldest son of 
 the sister who had married, and of his descen- 
 dants. 
 
 Clearly, they were her own property, Edith 
 argued ; she had only taken of her own when 
 she removed that miniature-frame. She had 
 never paid a second visit to the marqueterie 
 bureau in the bow-room after she had shut it 
 up that night. She had shrunk from touching 
 things that, whether her own or not, she had 
 no authority for removing. 
 
 She had taken away nothing but the minia- 
 ture — the portrait of her own grandfather. 
 It was still in the bureau before which she was 
 sitting, and she took it up and looked at it as 
 she sat there. It was in a plain, old-fashioned 
 gold setting ; nobody would have believed, to 
 look at it, that it had ever had an outer frame.
 
 2i6 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 Edith had not taken it away from Gotham 
 with her other things ; she had purposely left 
 it behind her in the bureau. 
 
 It occurred to her, as she sat there with the 
 miniature in her hand, that it would be better 
 to return it, to put it back in the place from 
 which she had taken it. If it were found here 
 later on, it might provoke inquiry. It would be 
 safer to return it. She did not even admit to 
 herself that it was on account of anything that 
 the man had said during the interview in the 
 morning that she had decided to return it. 
 
 There could be no better time for returning 
 it than now, when everybody was asleep and 
 she was likely to be undisturbed. She opened 
 her door softly, and stole noiselessly down the 
 passage. It was a long passage, and the bow- 
 room was at the farther end. It seemed to 
 be full of threatening shadows as she went 
 hurriedly down it, and the flitting, uncertain 
 light of the candle she carried gave a kind of 
 weird life and movement to the painted faces
 
 WHAT WAS HE DRIVING AT? 217 
 
 that were looking down upon her from the wall. 
 She felt like a thief stealing through the silent 
 house in the night. She was not quite alone. 
 Blue-Eye's aunt, who had a strange affection for 
 her, had followed her softly down the passage, 
 and rubbed against her as she opened the door, 
 mewing in her ridiculous way to attract her 
 attention. 
 
 She had to take the cat into the room with 
 her; she could not leave it outside; it would have 
 waited there, mewing all the time, and would 
 have awoke the household. It was a horribly 
 ghostly room to go into in the middle of the 
 night, with all the cats in their cases glaring- 
 down upon her from the walls, and the stopped 
 clocks, and her aunt's empty high-backed chair 
 drawn up to the fireplace, and the great fire- 
 guard before the hearth. It was all so un- 
 canny and suggestive ! Edith felt that she, 
 too, should go mad if she lived long in this 
 room. 
 
 She opened the marqueterie bureau with
 
 2i8 THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS 
 
 difficulty ; there seemed something wrong with 
 the lock. The papers were thrown together of 
 a heap, as she had left them, but the recess 
 where the diamonds were concealed was closed. 
 She remembered pushing it hurriedly to when 
 Penfold had come into the room and disturbed 
 her, and now she could not open it again. She 
 felt all over the inside woodwork of the recess, 
 as Miss Gunning had done, but she could find 
 no spring or sliding panel. 
 
 The diamonds which had been hidden away 
 for fifty years were hidden away still ; it was 
 not likely that the secret of their hiding-place 
 would ever be discovered. The only thing that 
 Edith could do was to put the miniature at the 
 back of the recess, and pile the papers over it. 
 It would be found there some day ; she did not 
 really care what became of it ; it was out of her 
 hands, and that was really all she was con- 
 cerned about. It was with a feeling of relief 
 that she locked the bureau. It was very trouble- 
 some to get the lock to catch, but it caught
 
 WHAT WAS HE DRIVING AT? 219 
 
 at last, and she stole noiselessly back, as she 
 had come. 
 
 Not quite noiselessly, for the white cat, who 
 had followed her into the room, came out with 
 her — she was careful not to shut it up in the 
 room — and it rewarded her for her care by 
 mewing all the way down the passage. As she 
 passed her aunt's door, Penfold cautiously 
 opened it and looked out. 
 
 * Oh, how you frightened me, miss !' she 
 exclaimed, when she saw Edith outside. ' I 
 thouMit it was a o^host !' 
 
 ' There's nothing to be frightened about, 
 Penfold. I was anxious and couldn't sleep, so 
 I got up and came out to see how Aunt Maria 
 was.' 
 
 EXD OF VOL. I. 
 
 BILLING AND EONS, PKINTERS, GUILDFORD.
 
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