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 THE DAY WILL COME.
 
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 THE DAY WILL COME 
 
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 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
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 ETC., ETC. 
 
 IN THEEE VOLUMES 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
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 v,/ 
 
 THE DAY WILL COME 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " Farewell, too — now at last — 
 Farewell, fair lily." 
 
 The joy-bells clashed out upon the clear, bright 
 
 air, startling the rooks in the elm-trees that showed 
 
 their leafy tops above the grey gables of the old 
 
 church. The bells broke out with sudden jubilation ; 
 
 -^ sudden, albeit the village had been on the alert for 
 
 S that very sound all the summer afternoon, uncertain 
 
 [p as to when the signal for that joy peal might be 
 
 cTJ given. 
 
 on 
 
 The signal had come now, given by the telegraph 
 
 or 
 
 3^ wires to the old postmistress, and sent on to the 
 
 ,'} expectant ringers in the church tower. The young 
 
 ^ couple had arrived at Wareham station, five miles 
 
 <^ off; and four horses were bringing them to their 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 honeymoon home yonder amidst the old woods of 
 Cheriton Chase. 
 
 Cheriton village had been on tiptoe with expect- 
 ancy ever since four o'clock, although common sense 
 ought to have informed the villagers that a bride and 
 bridegroom who were to be married at two o'clock in 
 Westminster Abbey were not very likely to appear at 
 Cheriton early in the afternoon. But the village 
 having made up its mind to a half holiday was glad 
 to begin early. A little knot of gipsies from the 
 last race meeting in the neighbourhood had improved 
 the occasion and set up the friendly and familiar 
 image of Aunt Sally on the green in front of the 
 Eagle Inn ; while a rival establishment had started 
 a pictorial shooting gallery, with a rubicund giant's 
 face and wide-open mouth, grinning at the populace 
 across a barrel of Barcelona nuts. There are some 
 people who might think Cheriton village and Cheriton 
 Chase too remote from the busy world and its traffic 
 to be subject to strong emotions of any kind. Yet 
 even in this region of Purbeck, cut off from the rest 
 of England by a winding river, and ostentatiously 
 calling itself an island, there were eager interests and
 
 THE DAY VTLLJj COME. 3 
 
 warm feelings, and many a link with the great world 
 of men and women on the other side of the stream. 
 
 Cheriton Chase was one of the finest places in the 
 county of Dorset. It lay south of Wareham, between 
 Corfe Castle and Branksea Island, and in the midst 
 of scenery which has a peculiar charm of its own, a 
 curious blending of level pasture and steep hillside, 
 barren heath and fertile water-meadow ; here a Dutch 
 landscape, grazing cattle, and winding stream ; there 
 a suggestion of some lonely Scottish deer walk ; an 
 endless variety of outline ; and yonder on the steep 
 hilltop the gi'im stone walls and mouldering bastions 
 of Corfe Castle, standing dark and stern against the 
 blue fair-weather sky or boldly confronting the force 
 of the tempest. 
 
 Cheriton House was almost as old as Corfe in the 
 estimation of some of the country people. Its history 
 went back into the night of ages. But while the 
 Castle had suffered siege and battery by Cromwell's 
 ruthless cannon, and had been left to stand as that 
 arch destroyer left it, until only the outer walls of 
 the mighty fabric remained, with a tower or two, and 
 the mullions of one great window standing up above 
 
 B 2
 
 4 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 the rest, the mere skeleton of the gigantic pile, 
 Cheriton House had heen cared for and added to 
 century after century, so that it presented now a 
 picturesque blending of old and new, in which almost 
 every corridor and every room was a surprise to the 
 stranger. 
 
 Never had Cheriton been better cared for than by 
 its present owner, nor had Cheriton village owned a 
 more beneficent lord of the manor. And yet Lord 
 Cheriton was an alien and a stranger to the soil, and 
 that kind of person whom rustics mostly are inclined 
 to look down upon — a self-made man. 
 
 The present master of Cheriton was a man who 
 owed wealth and distinction to his own talents. He 
 had been raised to the peerage about fifteen years 
 before this day of clashing joy-bells and village re- 
 joicings. He had been owner of the Cheriton estate 
 for more than twenty years, having bought the pro- 
 perty on the death of the last squire, and at a time 
 of unusual depression. He was popularly supposed 
 to have got the estate for an old song ; but the old 
 song meant something between seventy and eighty 
 thousand pounds, and represented the bulk of his
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. O 
 
 wife's fortune. He had not been afraid so to swamp 
 his wife's dowry, for he was at this time one of the 
 most popular silk gowns at the equity Bar. He was 
 making four or five thousand a year, and he was 
 strong in the belief in his power to rise higher. 
 
 The purchase, prompted by ambition, and a desire 
 to take his place among the landed gentry, had 
 turned out a very lucky one from a financial point of 
 Tiew, for a stone quarry that had been unworked for 
 more than a century was speedily developed by the 
 new owner of the soil, and became a source of in- 
 come which enabled him to improve mansion-house 
 and farms without embarrassment. 
 
 Under Mr. Dalbrook's improving hand the Cheri- 
 ton estate, which had been gradually sinking to 
 decay in the occupation of an exhausted race, became 
 as perfect as human ingenuity, combined with 
 judicious outlay, can make any estate. The falcon 
 eye of the master was on all things. The famous 
 advocate's only idea of a holiday was to work his 
 hardest in the supervision of his Dorsetshire pro- 
 perty. He thought of Cheriton many a time in the 
 law courts, as Fox used to think of St. Anne's and
 
 6 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 his turnips amidst the debauchery of a long night's 
 card-playing, or in the whirl of a stormy debate. 
 Purbeck might have been the motto and password of 
 his life. He was born at Dorchester, the son of 
 humble shopkeeping parents, and was educated at 
 the quaint old stone grammar school in that good 
 old town. All his happiest hours of boyhood had 
 been spent in the Isle of Purbeck. Those watery 
 meadows and breezy commons and break-neck hills 
 had been his playground ; and when he went back 
 to them as a hard-headed, over-worked man of the 
 world, made arrogant from the magnitude of a 
 success which had never known check or retrogres- 
 sion, the fountains of his heart were unlocked by 
 the very atmosphere of that fertile land where the 
 salt breath of the sea came tempered by the balmy 
 perfume of the heather, the odour of hedgerow 
 flowers, rosemary, and thyme. 
 
 At Cheriton James Dalbrook unbent, forgot that 
 he was a great man, and remembered only that his 
 lot was cast in a pleasant place, and that he had 
 the most lovable of wives and the loveliest of 
 daughters.
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 7 
 
 His daughter had been born at Cheriton, had 
 known no other country home, and had never con- 
 sidered the first-floor flat in Victoria Street where 
 her father and mother spent the London season, 
 and where her father had his _/;?><:? a terre all the 
 year round, in the light of a home. His daughter, 
 Juanita, was the eldest of three children born in 
 the old manor house. The two younger, both sons, 
 died in infancy ; and it seemed to James Dalbrook 
 that there was a blight upon his offspring, such a 
 blight as that which withered the male children of 
 Henry of England and Catherine of Arragon. 
 Much had been given to him. He had been allowed 
 to make name and fortune, he whose sole heritage 
 was a little crockery shop in a second-rate street of 
 Dorchester. He had enjoyed the lordship of broad 
 acres, the honours and position of a rural squire ; 
 but he was not to be allowed that crowning glory 
 for which strong men yearn. He was not to be 
 the first of a long line of Barons Cheriton of 
 Cheriton. 
 
 After the grief and disappointment of those two 
 deaths — first of an infant of a few weeks old, and
 
 8 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 afterwards of a lovely child of two years — James 
 Dalbrook hardened his heart for a little while 
 against the fair young sister who survived them. 
 She could not perpetuate that barony which was the 
 crown of his greatness ; or if by special grace her 
 father's title might be in after days bestowed upon 
 the husband of her choice — which in the event of 
 her marrying judiciously and marrying wealth, 
 might not be impracticable — it would be an alien to 
 his race who would bear the title which he, James 
 Dalbrook, had created. He had so longed for a 
 son, and behold two had been given to him, and 
 upon both the blight had fallen. When people 
 praised his daughter's childish loveliness he shook 
 his head despondently, thinking that she too would 
 be taken, like her brothers, before ever the bud 
 became a flower. 
 
 His heart sickened at thought of this contingency, 
 and of his heir-at-law in the event of his dying child- 
 less, a first cousin, clerk in an auctioneer's office at 
 Weymouth, a sandy-haired freckled youth, without 
 an aspirate, with a fixed idea that he was an 
 authority upon dress, style, and billiards, an insup-
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 9 
 
 portable young man under any conditions, but hate- 
 ful to murderousness as one's next heir. To think 
 of that freckled snob strutting about the estate in 
 years to come, blinking with his white eyelashes at 
 those things which had been so dear to the dead. 
 
 His wife, to whom he owed the estate, had no 
 relations nearer or dearer to her than the freckled 
 auctioneer was to her husband. There remained 
 for them both to work out their plans for the dis- 
 posal of that estate and fortune which was their 
 own to deal with as they pleased. Already James 
 Dalbrook had dim notions of a Dalbrook Scholar- 
 ship Fund, in which future barristers should have 
 their long years of waiting upon fortune made easier 
 to them, and for which they should bless the 
 memory of the famous advocate. 
 
 Happily those brooding fears were not realized ; 
 this time the bud was not blighted, the flower carried 
 no canker in its heart, but opened its petals to the 
 morning of life, a strong bright blossom, revelling 
 in sun and shower, wind and spray. Juanita grew 
 from babyhood to girlhood with hardly an illness, 
 save the regulation childish complaints, which
 
 10 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 touched her as lightly as a butterfly's wing touches 
 the flowers. 
 
 Her mother was of Spanish extraction, the grand- 
 daughter of a Cadiz merchant, who had failed in the 
 wine trade and had left his sons and daughters to 
 carve their own way to fortune. Her father had 
 gone to San Francisco at the beginning of the gold 
 fever, had been one of the first to understand the 
 safest way to take advantage of the situation, and 
 had started a wine shop and hotel, out of which he 
 made a splendid fortune within fifteen years. He 
 acquired wealth in good time to send his two 
 daughters to Paris for their education, and by the 
 time they were grown up he was rich enough to re- 
 tire from business, and was able to dispose of his 
 hotel and wine store for a sum which made a con- 
 siderable addition to his capital. He established 
 himself in a brand new first floor in one of the 
 avenues of the Bois de Boulogne, a rich widower, 
 more of an American than a Spaniard after his long 
 exile, and he launched his two handsome daughters 
 in Franco-American society. From Paris they 
 went to London, and were well received in that
 
 THE DAY '^'ILL COME. 11 
 
 upper middle-class circle in ^vhich "wealth can 
 generally command a welcome, and in -^hicli a 
 famous barrister, like Mr. Dalbrook, ranks as a star 
 of the first magnitude. James Dalbrook was then 
 at the apogee of his success, a large handsome man 
 on the right side of his fortieth birthday. He was 
 not by any means the kind of man who would seem 
 a likely suitor for a beautiful girl of three and 
 twenty ; but it happened that his heavily handsome 
 face and commanding manner, his deep, strong 
 voice and brilliant conversation possessed just the 
 charm that could subjugate Maria Morales' fancy. 
 His conquest came upon him as a bewildering sur- 
 prise, and nothing could be further from his thoughts 
 than a marriage with the Spaniard's daughter ; 
 and yet within six weeks of their first meeting at a 
 Royal Academy soiree in the shabby old rooms in 
 Trafalgar Square, Mr. Dalbrook and Miss Morales 
 were engaged, with the full consent of her father, 
 who declared himself willing to give his daughter 
 forty thousand pounds, strictly settled upon herself, 
 for her dowry, but who readily doubled that sum 
 when his future son-in-law revealed his desire to
 
 12 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 become owner of Cheriton, and to found a family. 
 Por such a laudable purpose Mr. Morales was willing 
 to make sacrifices ; more especially as Maria's elder 
 sister had offended him by marrying without his con- 
 sent, an offence which was only cancelled by her 
 untimely death soon after her marriage. 
 
 Juanita was only three years old when her father 
 was raised to the bench, and she was not more than 
 six when he was offered a peerage, which he ac- 
 cepted promptly, very glad to exchange the name of 
 Dalbrook — still extant over the old shop window in 
 Dorchester, though the old shopkeepers were at rest 
 in the cemetery outside the town— for the title of 
 Baron Cheriton. 
 
 As Lord Cheriton James Dalbrook linked himself 
 indissolubly with the lands which his wife's money 
 had bought ; money made in a 'Frisco wine- shop for 
 the most part. Happily, however, few of Lord 
 Cheriton's friends were aware of that fact. Morales 
 had traded under an assumed name in the miners' 
 city, and had only resumed his patronymic on re- 
 tiring from the bar and the wine vaults. 
 
 It will be seen, therefore, that Juanita could not
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 13 
 
 boast of aristocratic lineage upon either side. Her 
 beauty and grace, her lofty carriage and high-bred 
 air, were spontaneous as the beauty of a wild flower 
 upon one of those furzy knolls over which her young 
 feet had bounded in many a girlish race with her 
 dogs or her chosen companion of the hour. She 
 looked like the daughter of a duke, although one of 
 her grandfathers had sold pots and pans, and the 
 other had kept order, with a bowie-knife and 
 revolver in his belt, over the humours of a 'Frisco 
 tavern, in the days when the city was still in its 
 rough and tumble infancy, fierce as a bull-pup. 
 Her father, who as the years went on, worshipped 
 this only child of his, never forgot that she lacked 
 that one sovereign advantage of good birth and 
 highly-placed kindred ; and thus it was that from her 
 childhood he had been on the watch for some alliance 
 which should give her these advantages. 
 
 The opportunity had soon offered itself. Among 
 his Dorsetshire neighbours one of the most dis- 
 tinguished was Sir Godfrey Carmichael, a man of 
 old family and good estate, highly connected on the 
 maternal side, and well connected all round, and
 
 14 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 married to the daughter of an Irish peer. Sir 
 Godfrey showed himself friendly from the hour of 
 Mr. Dalbrook's advent in the neighbourhood. He 
 declared himself delighted to welcome new blood 
 when it came in the person of a man of talent and 
 power. Lady Jane Carmichael was equally pleased 
 with James Dalbrook's gentle wife. The friendship 
 thus begun never knew any interruption till it ended 
 suddenly in a ploughed field between Wareham and 
 Wimbourne, where Sir Godfrey's horse blundered at 
 a fence, fell, and rolled over his rider, ten years 
 after Juanita's birth. 
 
 There were two daughters and a son, considerably 
 their junior, who succeeded his father at the age of 
 fifteen, and who had been Juanita's playfellow ever 
 since she could run alone. 
 
 The two fathers had talked together of the possi- 
 bilities of the future while their children were play- 
 ing tennis on the lawn at Cheriton, or gathering 
 blackberries on the common. Sir Godfrey was 
 enough a man of the world to rejoice in the idea of 
 his son's marriage with the heiress of Cheriton, 
 albeit he knew that the little dark-eyed girl, with
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 15 
 
 the tall slim figure and graceful movements, had no 
 place among the salt of the earth. His own estate 
 was a poor thing compared with Cheriton and the 
 Cheriton stone quarries ; and he knew that Dal- 
 brook's professional earnings had accumulated into 
 a very respectable fortune invested in stocks and 
 shares of the soundest quality. Altogether his son 
 could hardly do better than continue to attach him- 
 self to that dark -eyed child as he was attaching him- 
 self now in his first year at Eton, riding his pony 
 over to Cheriton every non-hunting day, and 
 ministering to her childish caprices in all things. 
 
 The two mothers had talked of the future with 
 more detail and more assurance than the fathers, as 
 men of the world, had ventured upon. Lady 
 Cheriton was in love with her little girl's boyish 
 admirer. His frank, handsome face, open-hearted 
 manner, and undeniable pluck realised her ideal of 
 high-bred youth. His mother was the daughter of 
 an earl, his grandmother was the niece of a duke. 
 He had the right to call an existing duke his cousin. 
 These things counted for much in the mind of the 
 storekeeper's daughter. Her experience at a fashion-
 
 16 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 able Parisian convent had taught her to worship 
 rank ; her experience of English middle-class 
 society had not eradicated that weakness. And then 
 she saw that this fine, frank lad was devoted to her 
 daughter with all a boy's ardent feeling for his first 
 sweetheart. 
 
 The years went on, and young Godfrey Carmichael 
 and Juanita Dalbrook were sweethearts still — sweet- 
 hearts always — sweethearts when he was at Eton, 
 sweathearts when he was at Oxford, sweethearts in 
 union, and sweethearts in absence, neither of them 
 ever imagining any other love ; and now, in the wester- 
 ing sunhght of this July evening, the bells of Cheri- 
 ton Church were ringing a joy -peal to celebrate their 
 wedded loves, and the little street was gay with floral 
 archways and bright-coloured bunting, and mottoes 
 of welcome and greeting, and Lady Cheriton' s barouche 
 was bringing the bride and bridegroom to their first 
 honeymoon dinner, as fast as four horses could trot 
 along the level road from quiet little Wareham. 
 
 By a curious fancy Juanita had elected to spend 
 her honeymoon in that one house of which she ought 
 to have been most weary, the good old house in
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 17 
 
 which she had heeii born, and where all her days of 
 courtship, a ten-years' courtship, had been spent. 
 In vain had the fairest scenes of Europe been sug- 
 gested to her. She had travelled enough to be in- 
 different to mountains and lakes, glaciers, and fjords. 
 
 " I have seen just enough to know that there is no 
 place like home," she said, with her pretty air of 
 authority. '' I won't have a honeymoon at all if I 
 can't have it at Cheriton. I want to feel what it is 
 like to have j'ou all to myself iu my own place, 
 Godfrey, among all the things I love. I shall feel 
 like a queen with a slave ; I shall feel like Delilah 
 with Samson. When you are quite tired of Cheri- 
 ton — and subjection, you shall take me to the 
 Priory ; and once there you shall be master and I 
 will be slave." 
 
 "Sweet mastership, tyrannous slavery," he an- 
 swered, laughing. *'My darling, Cheriton will suit 
 me better than any other place in the world for my 
 honeymoon, for I shall be near my future electors, 
 and shall be able to study the political situation in 
 all its bearings upon — the Isle of Purbeck." 
 
 Sir Godfrey was to stand for his division of the 
 
 VOL. I. C
 
 18 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 county in the election that was looming in the dis- 
 tance of the late autumn. He was very confident of 
 success, as a young man might be who came of a 
 time-honoured race, and knew himself popular in the 
 district, armed with all the newest ideas, too, full to 
 the brim of the most modern intelligence, a brilliant 
 debater at Oxford, a favourite everywhere. His mar- 
 riage would increase his popularity and strengthen 
 his position, with the latent power of that larger 
 wealth which must needs be his in the future. 
 
 The sun was shining in golden glory upon grey 
 stone roofs and grey stone walls, clothed with rose 
 and honeysuckle, clematis and trumpet ash — upon 
 the village forge, where there had been no work done 
 since the morning, where the fire was out, and the 
 men were lounging at door and window in their Sun- 
 day clothes — upon the three or four village shops, 
 and the two village inns, the humble little house of 
 call opposite the forge, with its queer old sign, " Live 
 and Let Live," and the good old " George Hotel," 
 with sprawling, dilapidated stables and spacious 
 yard, where the mail-coach used to stop in the days 
 that were gone.
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 19 
 
 There "was a floral arcli between the Httle tavern 
 and the forge — a floral display along the low rustic 
 front of the butcher's shop — and the cottage post- 
 office was converted into a bower. There were calico 
 mottoes flapping across the road — "Welcome to the 
 Bride and Bridegroom," " God Bless Them Both," 
 " Long Life and Happiness," and other fond and 
 hearty phrases of time-honoured familiarity. But 
 those clashing bells, with their sound of tumultuous 
 gladness, a joy that clamoured to the blue sides above 
 and the woods below, and out to the very sea yonder, 
 in its loud exuberance, those and the smiling faces 
 of the villagers were the best of all welcomes. 
 
 There were gentlefolks among the crowd — a string 
 of pony carts and carriages drawn up on the long slip 
 of waste grass beyond the forge, just where the road 
 turned ofi" to Cheriton Chase ; and there were two or 
 three horsemen, one a young man upon a fine bay 
 cob, who had been walking his horse about restlessly 
 for the last hour or so, sometimes riding half a mile 
 towards the station in his impatience. 
 
 The carriage came towards the turning point, the 
 bride bowing and smiling as she returned the greet- 
 
 c 2
 
 20 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 ings of gentle and simple. Emotion had paled the 
 delicate olive of her complexion, but her large dark 
 eyes were bright with gladness. Her straw-coloured 
 tussore gown and leghorn hat were the perfection of 
 simplicity, and seemed to surround her with an 
 atmosphere of coolness amidst the dust and glare 
 of the road. 
 
 At sight of the young man on the bay cob she put 
 her hand on Sir Godfrey's arm and said something 
 to him, on which he told the coachman to stop. 
 They had driven slowly through the village, and the 
 liorses pulled up readily at the turn of the road. 
 
 *' Only to think of j^our coming so far to greet us, 
 Theodore," said Juanita, leaning out of the carriage 
 to shake hands with the owner of the cob. 
 
 *'I wanted to be among the first to welcome you, 
 that was all," he answered, quietly. " I had half a 
 mind to ride to the station and be ready to hand you 
 into your carriage, but I thought Sir Godfrey might 
 think me a nuisance." 
 
 ** No fear of that, my dear Dalbrook," said the 
 bridegroom. '' I should have been very glad to see 
 you. Did you ride all the way from Dorchester ? "
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 21 
 
 " Yes ; I came over early in the morning, break- 
 fasted with a friend, rested the cob all day, and now 
 he is ready to carry me home again." 
 
 "What devotion! " said Juanita, laughingly, yet 
 with a shade of embarrassment. 
 
 ** What good exercise for Peter, you mean. Keeps 
 him in condition against the cubbing begins. God 
 bless you, Juanita. I can't do better than echo the 
 invocation above our heads, ' God bless the bride and 
 bridegroom." 
 
 He shook hands with them both for the second 
 time. A faint glow of crimson swept over his 
 frank fair face as he clasped those hands. His 
 honest grey eyes looked at his cousin for a moment 
 with grave tenderness, in which there was the 
 shadow of a life-long regret. He had loved and 
 wooed her, and resigned her to her more favoured 
 lover, and he was honest in his desire for her 
 happiness. His own gladness, his own life, seemed 
 to him of small account when weighed against her 
 well-being. 
 
 *' You must come and dine with us before we 
 leave Cheriton, Dalbrook," said Sir Godfrey.
 
 22 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 " You are very good. I am off to Heidelberg 
 for a holiday as soon as I can wind up my office 
 work. I will offer myself to you later on, if I may, 
 when you are settled at the Priory." 
 
 " Come when you like. Good-bye." 
 
 The carriage turned the corner. The crowd 
 burst into a cheer : one, two, three, and then 
 another one : and then three more cheers louder 
 than the first three, and the horses were on the 
 verge of bolting for the rest of the way to Cheriton. 
 
 Theodore Dalbrook rode slowly away from the 
 village festivities, rode away from the clang of the 
 .joy bells, and the sound of rustic triple bob majors. 
 It would be night before he reached Dorchester ; 
 but there was a moon, and he knew every yard of 
 high road, every grassy ride across the wide barren 
 heath between Cheriton and the old Koman city. 
 He knew the road and he knew his horse, which 
 was as good of its kind as there was to be found in 
 the county of Dorset. He was not a rich man, and 
 he had to work hard for his living, but he was the 
 son of a well-to-do father, and he never stinted the 
 price of the horse that carried him, and which was
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 23 
 
 something more to Theodore Dalbrook than most 
 men's horses are to them. It was his own familiar 
 friend, companion, and solace. A man might have 
 understood as much only to see him lean over the 
 cob's neck, and pat him, as he did to-night, riding 
 slowly up the hill that leads from Cheriton to the 
 wild ridge of heath above Branksea Island. 
 
 Theodore Dalbrook, juuior partner in the firm of 
 Dalbrook & Son, Cornhill, Dorchester, was a more 
 distant relative of Juanita's than the sandy first 
 cousin in the auctioneer's office whom Lord Cheri- 
 ton had once hated as the only alternative to a 
 charitable endowment. The sandy youth was the 
 only son of Lord Cheriton' s elder brother, long 
 since dead. Theodore was the grandson of a certain 
 Matthew Dalbrook, a second cousin of Lord Cheri- 
 ton's, and once upon a time the wealthiest and 
 most important member of the Dalbrook family. 
 The humble -minded couple in the crockery shop had 
 looked up to Matthew Dalbrook, solicitor, with a 
 handsome old house in Cornhill, a smart gig, a stud 
 of three fine horses, and half the county people for 
 his clients. To the plain folks behind the counter,
 
 24 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 who dined at one and supped on cold meat and 
 pickles and Dutch cheese at nine of the clock, Mr. 
 Dalbrook, the lawyer, was a great man. They 
 were moved by his condescension when he dropped 
 in to the five o'clock tea, and talked over old family 
 reminiscences, the farmhouse on the Weymouth 
 Boad, which was the cradle of their race, and where 
 they had all known good days while the old people 
 were alive, and while the homestead was a family 
 rendezvous. That he should deign to take tea and 
 water- cresses in the little parlour behind the shop, 
 he who had a drawing-room almost as big as a 
 church, and a man servant in plain clothes to wait 
 upon him at his six o'clock dinner, was a touching 
 act of humility in their eyes. When their younger 
 boy brought home prizes and certificates of all kinds 
 from the grammar school it was from Matthew 
 they sought advice, modestly, and with the appre- 
 hension of being deemed over-ambifcious. 
 
 " I'm afraid he's too much of a scholar for the 
 business," said the mother, shyly, looking fondly 
 at her tall overgrown son, pallid with rapid growth 
 and overmuch Greek and Latin.
 
 THE DAY TVILL COME. 
 
 "Of course he is; that boy is too good to sell 
 pots and pans. You must send him to the Uni- 
 Yersity, Jim." 
 
 Jim, the father, looked despondently at James, 
 the son. The University meant something awful in 
 the crockery merchant's mind; a Yast expenditure 
 of money ; dreadful hazards to rehgion and morals ; 
 friendships with dukes and marquises, whose in- 
 fluence would alienate the boy from his parents, 
 and render him scornful of the snug back parlour, 
 with his grandfather's portrait over the mantelpiece, 
 painted in oils by a gifted townsman, who had once 
 had a picture Yery nearly hung in the Royal 
 Academy. 
 
 " I couldn't afford to send him to college," he 
 said. 
 
 " Oh, but you must afford it. I must help you, if 
 you and Sarah haven't got enough in an old stock- 
 ing anywhere — as I dare say you have. My boys 
 are at the University, and they didn't do half as well 
 at the grammar school as your boy has done. He 
 must go to Cambridge, he must be entered at 
 Trinity Hall, and if he works hard and keeps steady
 
 26 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 he needn't cost you a fortune. You would work, 
 eh, James ? " 
 
 " Wouldn't I just, that's all," James replied with 
 emphasis. 
 
 His heart had sickened at the prospect of the 
 crockery business ; the consignments of pots and 
 pans ; the returned empties, invoices, quarterly ac- 
 counts, matchings, rivetings, dust, straw, dirt, and 
 degradation. He could not see the nobility of labour 
 in that dusty shop, below the level of the pavement, 
 amid ewers and basins, teacups and beer jugs, 
 sherries and ports. But to work in the University 
 — hard by that great college where Bacon had 
 worked, and Newton, and a host of the mighty dead, 
 and where Whewell, a self-made man, was still 
 head — to work among the sons of gentlemen, and 
 with a view to the profession of a gentleman. That 
 would be labour for which to live ; for which to die, 
 if need be. 
 
 *' If — if mother and me were to strain a p'int," 
 mused the crockery man, who was better able to 
 afford the University for his son than many a gentle- 
 man of Dorset whose boys had to be sent there,
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 27 
 
 willy nilly, "if mother and me that have worked so 
 hard for our money was willing to spend a goodish 
 bit of it upon sending him to college, what are we to 
 do with him after we've made a fine gentleman of 
 him ? Thafs where it is, you see. Mat." 
 
 *' You are not going to make a fine gentleman of 
 him. God forbid. If he does well at Cambridge 
 you can make a lawyer of him. Trinity Hall is the 
 nursery of lawyers. You can article him to me ; 
 and look you here, Jim, if I don't have to help you 
 pay for his education, I'll give him his articles. 
 There, now, what do you say to that ? " 
 
 The ofi'er was pronounced a generous one, and 
 worthy of a blood relation ; but James Dalbrook 
 never took advantage of his kinsman's kindness. 
 His University career was as successful as his pro- 
 gress at the quaint stone grammar school, and his 
 college friends, who were neither dukes nor mar- 
 quises, but fairly sensible young men, all advised 
 him to apply himself to the higher branch of the 
 law. So James Dalbrook, of Trinity Hall, ate his 
 dinners at the Temple during his last year of under- 
 graduate life, came out seventh wrangler, was called
 
 28 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 to the Bar, and in due course wore crimson, velvet, 
 and ermine, and became Lord Cheriton, a man 
 whose greatness in somewise overshadowed the 
 small provincial dignity of the house of Matthew 
 Dalbrook, erstwhile head of the family. 
 
 The Dalbrooks, of Dorchester, had gone upon 
 their way quietly, thriving, respected, but in no wise 
 distinguished. Matthew, junior, had succeeded his 
 father, Matthew, senior, and the firm in Cornhill 
 had been Dalbrook & Son for more than thirty 
 years; and now Theodore, the eldest of a family 
 of five, was Son, and his grandfather, the founder 
 of the firm, was sleeping the sleep of the just in 
 the cemetery outside Dorchester. 
 
 Lord Cheriton was too wise a man to forget old 
 obligations or to avoid his kindred. There was 
 nothing to be ashamed of in his connection with a 
 thoroughly reputable firm like Dalbrook & Son. 
 They might be provincial, but their name was a 
 synonym for honour and honesty. They had taken 
 as firm root in the land as the county families whose 
 title-deeds and leases, wills and codicils they kept. 
 They were well-bred, well-educated, God-fearing
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 29 
 
 people, with no struggling ambitions, no morbid 
 craving to get upon a higher social level than the 
 status to which their professional position and their 
 means entitled them. They rode and drove good 
 horses, kept good servants, lived in a good house, 
 visited among the county people with moderation, 
 but they made no pretensions to being *' smart." 
 They offered no sacrifices of fortune or self-respect 
 to the modern Moloch — Fashion. 
 
 There was a younger sou called Harrington, 
 destined for the Church, and with advanced views 
 upon church architecture and music, and there were 
 two unmarried daughters, Janet and Sophia, also 
 with advanced views upon the woman's rights ques- 
 tion, and with a sovereign contempt for the standard 
 young lady. 
 
 Theodore's lines were marked out for him with 
 inevitable precision. He had been taken into 
 partnership the day he was out of his articles, and 
 at seven-and- twenty he was his father's right hand, 
 and represented all that was modern and popular in 
 the firm. He was steady as a rock, had an intellect 
 of singular acuteness, a ready wit, and very pleasing
 
 30 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 manners. He had, above all things, the inestimable 
 gift of an equable and happy temper. He had been 
 everybody's favourite from the nursery upwards, 
 popular at school, popular at the University, popular 
 in the local club, popular in the hunting field ; and 
 it was the prevailing opinion of Dorchester that he 
 ought to marry an heiress and make a great position 
 for the house of Dalbrook. Some people had gone 
 so far as to say that he ought to marry Lord 
 Cheriton's daughter. 
 
 He had been made free of the great house at 
 Cheriton from the time he was old enough to visit 
 anywhere. His family had been bidden to all not- 
 able festivities ; had been duly called upon, at not 
 too long intervals, by Lady Cheriton. He had 
 ridden by Juanita's side in many a run with the 
 South Dorset foxhounds, and had waited about with 
 her outside many a covert. They had pic-nicked 
 and made gipsy tea at Corfe Castle; they had 
 rambled in the woods near Studland ; they had 
 sailed to Branksea, and, further away, to Lulworth 
 Cove, and the romantic caves of Stare ; but this 
 had been all in frank cousinly friendship. Theodore
 
 THE DAY WILL COIME. 31 
 
 had seen only too soon that there was no room for 
 him in his kinswoman's heart. He began by 
 admiring her as the loveliest girl he had ever seen ; 
 he had ended by adoring her, and he adored her 
 still ; but with a loyal regard which accepted her 
 position as another man's wife ; and he would have 
 died sooner than dishonour her by one unholy 
 thought. 
 
 It was nearly ten o'clock when he rode slowly 
 along the avenue that led into Dorchester. The 
 moon was shining between the overarching boughs 
 of the sycamores. The road with that high over- 
 arching roof had a solemn look in the moonlit still- 
 ness. The Roman amphitheatre yonder, with its 
 grassy banks rising tier above tier, shone white in 
 the moonbeams ; the old town seemed half asleep. 
 The house in Cornhill had a very Philistine look as 
 compared with that fine old mansion of Cheriton 
 which was present to his mind in very vivid colours 
 to-night, those two wandering about the old Italian 
 garden, hand-in-hand, wedded lovers, with the 
 lamplit rooms open to the soft summer night, and 
 the long terrace and stone balustrade and moss-
 
 32 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 grown statues of nymph and goddess silvered by 
 the moonbeams. The Cornhill house was a good 
 old house notwithstanding, a panelled house of the 
 Georgian era, with a wide entrance hall, and a well- 
 staircase with carved oak balusters and a baluster 
 rail a foot broad. The furniture had been very 
 little changed since the days of Theodore's great- 
 grandfather, for the late Mrs. Dalbrook had 
 cherished no yearnings for modern art in the 
 furniture line. Her gentle spirit had looked up to 
 her husband as a leader of men, and had reverenced 
 chairs and tables, bureaus and wardrobes that had 
 belonged to his grandfather, as if they were made 
 sacred by that association. And thus the good old 
 house in the good old town had a savour of bygone 
 generations, an old family air which the parvenu 
 would buy for much gold if he could. True that 
 the dining-room chairs were over-ponderous, and 
 the dining-room pictures belonged to the obscure 
 school of religious art in which you can only catch 
 your saint or your martyr at one particular angle ; 
 yet the chairs were of a fine antique form, and bore 
 the crest of the Dalbrooks on their shabby leather
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 33 
 
 backs, and the pictures had a respectable brownness 
 which might mean Holbein or Kembrandt. 
 
 The drawing-room was large and bright, with 
 four narrow, deeply-recessed windows commanding 
 the broad street and the Antelope Hotel over the 
 way, and deep window seats crammed with flower?. 
 Here the oak panelling had been painted pale pink, 
 and the mouldings picked out in a deeper tint by 
 successive generations of Vandals, but the effect 
 was cheerful, and the pink walls made a good back- 
 ground for the Chippendale secretaires and cabinets 
 filled with willow-pattern Worcester or Crown 
 Derby. The window- curtains were dark brown 
 cloth, with a border of Berlin wool lilies and roses, 
 a border which would have set the teeth of an 
 aesthete on edge, but which blended with the general 
 brightness of the room. Old Mrs. Matthew Dal- 
 brook, the grandmother, and her three spinster 
 daughters had toiled over those cross-stitch borders, 
 and Theodore's mother would have deemed it sacri- 
 lege to have put aside this labour of a vanished life. 
 
 Harrington Dalbrook and his two sisters were in 
 the drawing-room, each apparently absorbed in an 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 instructive book, and yet all three had been talking 
 for the greater part of the evening. It was a charac- 
 teristic of their highly intellectual lives to nurse a 
 volume of Herbert Spencer or a treatise upon the 
 deeper mysteries of Buddha, while they discussed 
 the conduct or morals of their neighbours — or their 
 gowns and bonnets. 
 
 *' I thought you were never coming home, Theo," 
 said Janet. " You don't mean to say you waited to 
 see the bride and bridegroom ? ' ' 
 
 *•■ That is exactly what I do mean to say. I had 
 to get old Sandown's lease executed, and when I had 
 finished my business I waited about to see them 
 arrive. Do you think you could get me anything in 
 the way of supper, Janie ? " 
 
 *' Father went to bed ever so long ago," replied 
 Janet ; ** it's dreadfully late." 
 
 " But I don't suppose the cook has gone to bed, 
 and perhaps she would condescend to cut me a sand- 
 wich or two," answered Theodore, ringing the bell. 
 
 His sisters were orderly young women who objected 
 to eating and drinking out of regulation hours. Janet 
 looked round the room discontentedly, thinking that 
 her brother would make crumbs. Young men she
 
 THE DAY WLLIj COME. 35 • 
 
 had observed, are almost miracle workers in the way 
 of crumbs. They can get more superfluous crumbs 
 out of any given piece of bread than the entire piece 
 would appear to contain, looked at by the casual eye. 
 
 " I have found a passage in Spencer which most 
 fully bears out my view, Theodore," said Sophia, 
 severely, referring to an argument she had had with 
 her brother the day before yesterday. 
 
 " How did she look ? " asked Janet, openly frivo- 
 lous for the nonce. 
 
 '•'Lovelier than I ever saw her look in her life," 
 answered Theodore. " At least I thought so." 
 
 He wondered, as he said those words, whether it 
 had been his own despair at the thought of having 
 irrevocably lost her which invested her familiar 
 beauty with a new and mystic power. " Yes, she 
 looked exquisitely lovely, and completely happy — an 
 ideal bride." 
 
 *' If her nose were a thought longer her face would 
 be almost perfect," said Janet. "How was she 
 dressed?" 
 
 " I could no more tell you than I could say how 
 many petals there are in that Dijon rose yonder. 
 
 D 2
 
 36 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 She gave me an impression of cool soft colour. I 
 think there was yellow in her hat — pale yellow, like 
 a primrose." 
 
 *'Men are such dolts about women's dress," re- 
 torted Janet, impatiently ; " and yet they pretend to 
 have taste and judgment, and to criticize everything 
 we wear." 
 
 " I think you may rely upon us for knowing what 
 we don't like," said Theodore. 
 
 He seated himself in his father's easy chair, a roomy 
 old chair with projecting sides, that almost hid him 
 from the other occupants of the room. He was weary 
 and sad, and their chatter irritated his overstrung 
 nerves. He would have gone straight to his own 
 room on arriving, but that would have set them 
 wondering, and he did not want to be wondered about. 
 He wanted to keep his secret, or as much of it as he 
 could. No doubt those three knew that he had been 
 fond of her, very fond ; that he would have sacrificed 
 half his lifetime to win her for the other half ; but they 
 did not know how fond. They did not know that he 
 would fain have melted down all the sands of time 
 into one grain of gold — one golden day in which 
 to hold her to his heart and know she loved him.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " And warm and light I felt her clasping hand 
 "\Mien twined in mine ; she followed where I went."' 
 
 There is a touch of childishness in all honeymoon 
 couples, a something which suggests the Babes in 
 the Wood, left to play together by the Arch Deceiver, 
 Fate ; wandering hand in hand in the morning sun- 
 shine, gathering flowers, pleased with the mossy 
 banks and leafy glades, like those children of the 
 old familiar story, before ever hunger or cold or fear 
 came upon them, before the shadow of night and 
 death stole darkly on their path. Even Godfrey 
 Carmichael, a sensible, highly-educated young man, 
 whose pride it was to march in the van of progress 
 and enlightenment, even he had that touch of 
 childishness which is adorable in a lover, and which 
 lasts, oh, so short a time : transient as the bloom 
 on the peach, the down on the butterfly's wing, the 
 morning dew on a rose.
 
 88 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 He had loved her all his life, as it seemed to him. 
 They had been companions, friends, lovers, for 
 longer than either could remember, so gradual had 
 been the growth of love. Yet the privilege of 
 belonging to each other was not the less sweet 
 because of this old familiarity. 
 
 *' Are we really married — really husband and wife 
 — Godfrey ? " asked Juanita, nestling to his side as 
 they stood together in the wide verandah where 
 they breakfasted on these July mornings among 
 climbing roses and clematis. " Husband and wife 
 — such prosaic words. I heard you speak of me to 
 the Vicar yesterday as ' my wife.' It gave me quite 
 a shock." 
 
 *' Were you sorry to think it was true ? " 
 
 " Sorry — no ! But wife. The word has such a 
 matter-of-fact sound. It means a person who writes 
 cheques for the house accounts, revises the bill of 
 fare, and takes all the blame when the servants do 
 wrong." 
 
 ** Shall I call you my idol, then, my goddess — the 
 enchantress whose magic wand wafts gladness and 
 sunshine over my existence ?<"
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 3'9 
 
 " No, call me wife. It is a good word, after all, 
 Godfrey — a good serviceable word, a word that will 
 stand wear and tear. It means for ever." 
 
 They breakfasted tcte-d-tete in their bower of 
 roses ; they wandered about the Chase or sat in the 
 garden all day long. They led an idle desultory 
 life like little children, and wondered that even- 
 ing came so soon, and stayed up late into the 
 summer night, steeping themselves in the starshine 
 and silence which seemed new to them in their 
 mutual delight. 
 
 There was a lovely view from that broad terrace, 
 with its Italian balustrade and statues, its triple 
 flight of marble steps descending to an Italian 
 garden, which had been laid out in the Augustan 
 age of Pope and Addison, when the distinctive 
 feature of a great man's garden was stateliness. 
 Here was the lovers' favourite loitering place when 
 the night grew late, Juanita looking like Juliet in 
 her loose white silk tea gown, with its Venetian 
 amplitude of sleeve and its media3val gold embroidery. 
 The fashionable dressmaker who made that gown 
 had known how to adapt her art to Miss Dalbrook's
 
 40 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 beauty. The long straight folds accentuated every 
 line of the j&nely moulded figure, fuller than the 
 average girlish figure, suggestive of Juno rather than 
 Psyche. She was two inches taller than the average 
 girl, and looked almost as tall as her lover as she 
 stood beside him in the moonlight, gazing dreamily 
 at the landscape. 
 
 This hushed and solemn hour on the verge of mid- 
 night was their favourite time. Then only were 
 they really alone, secure in the knowledge that all 
 the household was sleeping, and that they had their 
 world verily to themselves, and might be as foolish 
 as they liked. Once at sight of a shooting star 
 Juanita flung herself upon her lover's breast and 
 sobbed aloud. It was some minutes before he could 
 soothe her. 
 
 *' My love, my love, what does it mean?" he 
 asked, perplexed by her agitation. 
 
 " I saw the star, and I prayed that we might never 
 be parted; and then it flashed upon me that we 
 might, and I could not bear the thought," she sobbed, 
 clinging to him like a frightened child. 
 
 ** My dear one, what should part us, except death? "
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 41 
 
 *'Ah, Godfrey, death is everywhere. How could 
 a good God make His creatures so fond of each other 
 and yet part them so cruelly as He does some- 
 times ? " 
 
 ** Only to unite them again in another world, Nita. 
 I feel as if our two lives must go on in an endless 
 chain, circling among those stars yonder, which could 
 not have been made to be for ever unpeopled. There 
 are happy lovers there at this instant, I am con- 
 vinced — lovers who have lived before us here, and 
 have been translated to a higher life yonder ; lovers 
 who have felt the pangs of parting, the ecstacy of 
 reunion." 
 
 He glanced vaguely towards that starry heaven, 
 while he fondly smoothed the dark hair upon Juauita's 
 brow. It was not easy to win her back to cheerful- 
 ness. That vision of possible grief had too com- 
 pletely possessed her. Godfrey was fain to be 
 serious, finding her spirits so shaken ; so they talked 
 together gravely of that unknown hereafter which 
 philosophy or religion may map out with mathe- 
 matical distinctness, but which remains to the indi- 
 vidual soul for ever mysterious and awful.
 
 42 THE DAY WILL COME, 
 
 Her husband found it wiser to talk of solemn 
 things, finding her so sad, and she took comfort from 
 that serious conversation. 
 
 "Let us lead good lives, dear, and hope for the 
 best in other worlds," he said. " There is sound 
 sense in the Buddhist theory, that we are the makers 
 of our own spiritual destiny, and that a man may be 
 in advance of his fellow men, even in getting to 
 Heaven." 
 
 Those grave thoughts had little place in Juanita's 
 mind next day, which was the first day the lovers 
 devoted to practical things. They started directly 
 after breakfast for a tete-a-tete drive to Milbrook 
 Prior}^, where certain alterations and improvements 
 were contemplated in the rooms which were to be 
 Juanita's. Godfrey's widowed mother, Lady Jane 
 Carmichael, had transferred herself and her belong- 
 ings to a villa at Swanage, where she was devoting 
 herself to the creation of a garden, which was on a 
 small scale to repeat the beauties of her flat old- 
 fashioned flower garden at the Priory. It irked her 
 somewhat to think how long the hedges of yew and 
 holly would take to grow ; but there was a certain
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 43 
 
 pleasure in creation. She was a mild, loving crea- 
 ture, with an aristocratic profile, silvery grey hair, 
 and a small fragile figure ; a woman who looked a 
 patrician to her finger tips, and whom everybody 
 imposed upon. Her blue blood had not endowed 
 her with the power to rule. She adored her son, 
 was very fond of Juanita, and resigned her place in 
 her old home without a sigh. 
 
 " The Priory was a great deal too big for me," 
 she told her particular friends. " I used to feel very 
 dreary there when Godfrey was at Oxford, and after- 
 wards, for of course he was often away. It was only 
 in the shooting season that the house looked cheer- 
 ful. I hope they will soon have a family, and then 
 that will enliven the place a little." 
 
 Milbrook Village and Milbrook Priory lay twelve 
 miles nearer Dorchester than Cheriton Chase. 
 Juanita enjoyed the long drive in the fresh morning 
 air through a region of marsh and watery meadow, 
 where the cattle gave charm and variety to a land- 
 scape which would have been barren and monotonous 
 without them, a place of winding streams on which 
 the summer sunlio^ht was shinins:.
 
 44 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 The Priory was by no means so fine a place as 
 Cheriton, but it was old, and not without interest, 
 and Lady Jane was justified in the assertion that it 
 was too large for her. It would be too small perhaps 
 for Sir Godfrey and his wife in the days to come, 
 when in the natural course of events James Dalbrook 
 would be at rest after his life labour, and Cheriton 
 would belong to Juanita. 
 
 " No doubt they will like Cheriton better than the 
 Priory when we are all dead and gone," said Lady 
 Jane, with her plaintive air. " I only hope they will 
 have a family. Big houses are so dismal without 
 little people." 
 
 This idea of a family was almost a craze with 
 Lady Jane Carmichael. She had idolized her only 
 son, had been miserable at every parting, and it had 
 seemed a hard thing to her that there was not more 
 of him, as she had herself expressed it. 
 
 ** Godfrey has been the dearest boy. I only wish 
 I had six of him," she would say piteously; and 
 now her mind projected itself into the future, and 
 she pictured a bevy of grandchildren — numerous as 
 a covey of partridges in the upland fields of the home
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 45 
 
 farm at Cberiton — and fancied herself lavishing her 
 hoarded treasures of love upon them. She had 
 grandchildren already, and to spare, the offspring 
 of her two daughters, but these did not bear the 
 honoured name of Carmichael, and, though they 
 were very dear to her maternal heart, they were not 
 what Godfrey's children would be to her. 
 
 She would be gone, she told herself, before they 
 would be old enough to forsake her. She would be 
 gone before those young birds grew too strong upon 
 the wing. A blessed spell of golden years lay before 
 her ; a nursery, and then a schoolroom ; and then 
 perhaps before the last dim closing scene a bridal, a 
 granddaughter clinging to her in the sweet sadness 
 of leave-taking, a fair young face crowned with 
 orange flowers pressed against her own in the bride's 
 happy kiss — and then she would say Nunc dimittis, 
 and feel that her cup of gladness had been filled to 
 the brim. 
 
 The lovers' talk was all of that shadowy future, as 
 the pair of greys bowled gaily along the level road. 
 The horses were Godfrey's favourite pair, and be- 
 longed to a team of chestnuts and greys which had
 
 46 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 won him some distinction last season in Hyde Park, 
 when the coaches met at the corner bj^ the Magazine, 
 and when the handsome Miss Dalbrook, Lord Cheri- 
 ton's heiress, was the cynosure of many eyes. The 
 thoughts of Sir Godfrey and his wife were far from 
 Hyde Park and the Four-in-Hand Club this morning. 
 Their minds were filled with simple rural anticipa- 
 tions, and had almost a patriarchal turn, as of an 
 Arcadian pair whose wealth was all in flocks and 
 herds, and green pastures like these by which they 
 were driving. 
 
 The Priory stood on low ground between Wareham 
 and Wimbourne, sheltered from the north by a bold 
 ridge of heath, screened on the east by a little wood 
 of oaks and chestnuts, Spanish chestnuts, with 
 graceful drooping branches, whose glossy leaves 
 contrasted with the closer foliage of the rugged old 
 oaks. The house was built of Purbeck stone, and 
 its bluish grey was touched with shades of gold and 
 silvery green where the lichens and mosses crept 
 over it, while one long southern wall was clothed 
 with trumpet-ash and magnolia, myrtle and rose, as 
 with a closely interwoven curtain of greenery, from
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 47 
 
 which the small latticed windows flashed back the 
 sunshine. 
 
 Nothing at the Priory was so stately as its counter- 
 part at Cheriton. There were marble balustrades 
 and rural gods there on the terrace ; here there was 
 only a broad gravel walk along the southern front, 
 with a little old shabby stone temple at each end. 
 At Cheriton three flights of marble steps led from 
 the terrace to the Italian garden, and then again 
 three more] flights led to a garden on a lower 
 level, and so by studied gradations to the bottom 
 of the slope on \Yhich the mansion was built. 
 Here house and garden were on the same leve], and 
 those gardens which Lady Jane had so cherished 
 were distinguished only by an elegant simplicity. 
 Between the garden and a park of less than fifty 
 acres there was only a sunk fence, and the sole 
 glory of that modest domain lay in a herd of choice 
 Channel Island cows, which had been Lady Jane's 
 pride. She had resigned them to Juanita without a 
 sigh, although each particular beast had been to her 
 as a friend. 
 
 " My dear, what could I do with cows in a villa ? '*
 
 48 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 she said, when Juanita suggested that she should at 
 least keep her favourites, Beauty, and Maydew, and 
 Coquette. " Of course, as you say, I could rent a 
 couple of paddocks ; but I should not like to see 
 the herd divided. Besides, you will want them all 
 by-and-by, when you have a family." 
 
 Nita stepped lightly across the threshold of her 
 future home. The old grey porch was embedded in 
 roses and trailing passion flowers. Everything had 
 a shabby, old-world look compared with Cheriton. 
 Here there had been no improvement for over a cen- 
 tury ; all things had been quiescent as in the Palace 
 of the Sleeping Beauty. 
 
 "What a dear old house it is, Godfrey, and how 
 everything in it speaks to me of your ancestors — 
 your own ancestors — not other people's ! That 
 makes all the difference. At Cheriton I feel always 
 as if I were surrounded by malevolent ghosts. I 
 can't see them, but I know they are there. Those 
 poor Strangways, how they must hate me." 
 
 "If there are any living Strangways knocking 
 about the world houseless, or at any rate landless, 
 I don't suppose they feel over kindly disposed to
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 49 
 
 you," said Godfrey ; *' but the ghosts have done 
 with human habitations. It can matter very Httle 
 to them who lives in the rooms where they were 
 once happy or miserable, as the case may be. 
 Has your father ever heard anything of the old 
 family ? " 
 
 " Never. He says there are no Strangways left 
 on this hemisphere. There may be a remnant of 
 the race in Australia," he says, *' for he heard of 
 a cousin of Reginald Strangway's who went out to 
 Brisbane years ago to work with a sheep farmer on 
 the Darling Downs. There is no one else of the old 
 race and the old name that he can tell me about. 
 I take a morbid interest in the subject, you know. 
 If I were to meet a very evil-looking tramp in the 
 woods and he were to threaten me, I should sus- 
 pect him of being a Strangway. They all must 
 hate us." 
 
 ** With a very unreasonable hatred, then, Nita, for 
 it was no fault of j'our father's that the family went 
 to the bad. I have heard my father talk of the 
 Strangways many a time over his wine. They had 
 been a reckless, improvident race for ever so many 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 generations, men who lived only for the pleasure of 
 the hour, whose motto was * Carpe diem ' in the 
 worst sense of the words. There was a Strangway 
 who was the fashion for a short time during the 
 Regency, wore a hat of his own invention, and got 
 himself entangled with a popular actress, who sued 
 him for breach of promise. He dipped the property. 
 There was a racing Strangway who kept a stable at 
 Newmarket, and married — well — never mind how. 
 He dipped the property. There was Georgiana 
 Strangway, an heiress and a famous beauty, in the 
 Sailor King's reign. Two of the Royal Dukes 
 wanted to marry her; but she ran away with a 
 bandmaster in the Blues. She used to ride in Hyde 
 Park at nine o'clock every morning in a green cloth 
 spencer trimmed with sable, at a time when very 
 few women rode in London. She saw the band- 
 master, fell over head and ears in love with him, and 
 bolted. They were married at Gretna. He spent 
 ,as much of her fortune as he could get at, and was 
 reported to have thrashed her before they parted. 
 She set up a boarding-house at Ostend, gambled, 
 drank cheap brandy, and died at five-and-forty."
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 61 
 
 " What a dreadful ghost she would be to meet," 
 said Nita, with a shudder. 
 
 " From first to last they have been a bad lot," 
 concluded Sir Godfrey, " and the Isle of Purbeck 
 was a prodigious gainer when your father became 
 master of Cheriton Chase and Baron Cheriton of 
 Cheriton." 
 
 " That is what they must feel worst of all," said 
 Nita, speaking of the dead and the living as if they 
 were one gi-oup of banished shades. " It must be 
 hard for them to think that a stranger takes his title 
 from the land that was once theirs, from the house 
 in which they were born. Poor ill-behaved things, 
 I can't help being sorry for them." 
 
 " My fanciful Nita, they do not deserve your pity. 
 They made their own lives, love. They have only 
 suflfered the result of their own Karma." 
 
 *' I only hope they will be better off in their next 
 incarnations, and that they won't get to that dreadful 
 eighth world which leads nowhere," said Juanita. 
 
 She made this light allusion to a creed which she 
 and her lover had discussed seriously many a time 
 in their graver moods. They had read Mr. Sinnett's 
 
 E 2 
 
 LIBRARY ~~ 
 
 iiNi\/i:R<;iTv OF fOsanQ
 
 52 THE DAY WILL COME, 
 
 books together, and had given themselves up in 
 somewise to the fascinating theories of Esoteric 
 Buddhism, and had been impressed by the curious 
 parallel between that semi-fabulous Eeformer of the 
 East and the Teacher and Eedeemer in whom 
 they both believed. 
 
 They went about the house together, Nita ad- 
 miring everything, as if she were seeing those old 
 rooms for the first time. The alterations to be made 
 were of the smallest. Nita would allow scarcely any 
 change. 
 
 *' Whatever was nice enough for Lady Jane must 
 be good enough for me," she said, decisively, when 
 Godfrey proposed improvements which would have 
 changed the character of his mother's morning 
 room ; a conservatory, and a large bay window 
 opposite the fire-place, for instance. 
 
 " But it is such a shabby old hole, compared with 
 your room at Cheriton." 
 
 " It is a dear old hole, sir, and I won't have it 
 altered in the smallest detail. I adore those deep- 
 set windows and wide window-seats ; and this apple- 
 blossom chintz is simply delicious. Faded, sir?
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 53 
 
 What of that? One can't buy such patterns now- 
 a-days, for love or money. And that old Chinese 
 screen must have belonged to a mandarin of the 
 highest rank. My only feeling will be that I am a 
 wretch in appropriating dear Lady Jane's surround- 
 ings. This room fitted her like a glove." 
 
 " She is charmed to surrender it to you, love ; 
 and your forbearance in the matter of improvement 
 will delight her." 
 
 *' Your improvements would have been destruc- 
 tion. A conservatory opening out of that window 
 would suggest a city man's drawing-room at Tulse 
 Hill. I have seen such in my childhood when 
 mother used to visit odd people on the Surrey side 
 of the river." 
 
 " Loveliest insolence ! " 
 
 ** Oh, I am obliged to cultivate insolence. It is 
 a parvenue's only defensive weapon. We new- 
 made people always give ourselves more airs than 
 you who were born in the purple." 
 
 She roamed from room to room, expatiating upon 
 everything with a childlike pleasure, delighted at 
 the idea of this her new kingdom, over which she
 
 54 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 was to reign with undivided sovereignty. Cheriton 
 was ever so mucli grander ; but at Cheriton she 
 had only been the daughter of the house ; indulged 
 in every fancy, yet in somewise in a state of sub- 
 jection. Here she was to be sole mistress, with 
 Godfrey for her obedient slave. 
 
 "And now show me your rooms, sir," she ex- 
 claimed, with pretty authority. "I may wish to 
 make some improvements tliere." 
 
 " You shall work your will with them, dearest, 
 as you have done with their master." 
 
 He led her to his study and general den, a fine 
 old room looking into the stable-5^ard, capacious, 
 but gloomy. 
 
 "This is dreadful," she cried, "no view, and 
 ever so far from me ! You must have the room 
 next the morning-room, so that we can run in to 
 each other, and talk at any moment." 
 
 " That is one of the best bedrooms." 
 
 " What of that ! We can do without superfluous 
 bedrooms ; but I cannot do without you. This 
 room of yours will make a visitor's bedroom. If he 
 or she doesn't like it, he or she can go away, and
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 55 
 
 leave us to ourselves, which ice shall like ever so 
 much better, shan't we ? " she asked, caressingly, 
 as if life were going to be one long honey- 
 moon. 
 
 Of course he assented, kissed the red frank lips, 
 and assured her that for him bliss meant a per- 
 petual tete-a-tete. Yes, his study should be next 
 her boudoir ; so that even in his busiest hours he 
 should be able to turn to her for gladness — refresh- 
 ing himself with her smiles after a troublesome 
 interview with his bailiff — taking counsel with her 
 about every change in his stable, sharing her 
 interest in every new book. 
 
 "I will give orders about the change at once," 
 he said, " so that everything may be ready for us 
 when you are tired of Cheriton." 
 
 They lunched gaily in the garden. Nita hated 
 eating indoors when the weather was good enough 
 for an al fresco meal. They lunched under a 
 Spanish chestnut that made a tent of foliage on 
 the lawn in front of the house. They lingered over 
 the meal, full of talk, finding a new world of con- 
 versation suggested by their surroundings ; and
 
 56 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 then the greys were brought round to the hall door, 
 and they started on the return journey. 
 
 It began to rain before they reached Cheriton, 
 and the afternoon clouded over with a look of pre- 
 mature winter. No saunterings on the terrace this 
 evening ; no midnight meanderings among the 
 cypresses and yews, the gleaming statues and 
 dense green walls ; as if they had been Eomeo 
 and Juliet, wedded and happy, in the garden at 
 Verona. For the first time since the beginning of 
 their honeymoon they were obliged to stay in- 
 doors. 
 
 *'Itis positively chilly," exclaimed Juanita, as 
 her maid carried off her damp mantle. 
 
 *' My dearest love, I'm afraid you've caught cold," 
 said Godfrey, with apprehension. 
 
 " Do I ever catch cold, Godfrey ? " she cried, 
 scornfully; and indeed her splendid physique seemed 
 to negative the idea as she stood before him, tall 
 and buoyant, with the carnation of health upon 
 cheek and lips, her eyes sparkling, her head erect. 
 
 " Well, no, my Juno, I believe you are as free 
 from all such weakness as human nature can be ;
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 67 
 
 but I shall order fires all the same, and I implore 
 you to put on a warm gown." 
 
 "I will," she answered, gaily. " You shall see 
 me in my copper plush." 
 
 ** Thanks, love. That is a vision to live for." 
 
 ** Shall we have tea in my dressing-room — or in 
 yours ? " 
 
 " In mine. I think we have taken tea in almost 
 every other room in the house, as well as in every 
 corner of the garden." 
 
 It had been one of her girlish caprices to devise 
 new places for their afternoon tea. Whether it had 
 been as keen a delight to the footmen to carry 
 Japanese tables and bamboo chairs from pillar to 
 post was open to question ; but Juanita loved to 
 colonize, as she called it. 
 
 ** I feel that wherever we establish our teapot we 
 invest the spot with the sanctity of home," she 
 said. 
 
 Fires were ordered, and tea in Sir Godfrey's 
 dressing-room. 
 
 It was Lord Dalbrook's dressing-room actually, 
 and altogether a sacred chamber. It had been one
 
 58 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 of the best bedrooms in the days of the Strangways ; 
 but his Lordship liked space, and had chosen this 
 room for his den — a fine old room, with full length 
 portraits of the Sir Joshua period let into the panel- 
 ling. The furniture was of the plainest, and very 
 different from the luxurious appointments of the 
 other rooms, for these very chairs and tables, and 
 yonder substantial mahogany desk, had done duty 
 in James Dalbrook's charobers in the Temple thirty 
 years before. So had the heavy-looking clock on 
 the chimney-piece, surmounted by a bronze Saturn 
 leaning upon his scythe. So had the brass candle- 
 sticlis, and the ink- stained red morocco blotter on 
 the desk. He had fallen asleep in that capacious 
 arm-chair many a time in the small hours, after 
 struggling with the intricacies of a railway bill or 
 poring over a volume of precedents. 
 
 The thick Persian carpet, the velvet window- 
 curtains, panelled walls, and fine old fireplace gave 
 a look of subdued splendour to the room, in spite 
 of the dark and heavy furniture. There was a large 
 vase of roses on the desk, where Lord Cheriton 
 never tolerated a flower ; and there were more roses
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 69 
 
 on the cLimrieT-piece ; and some smart bamboo 
 chairs, many coloured, like Joseph's coat, had been 
 brought from Kita's morning room — and so, with 
 logs blazing on the floriated iron dogs, and a scarlet 
 tea-table set out with blue and gold china, and a 
 Moorish copper kettle s\\iuging over a lamp, the 
 room had as gay an aspect as any one could desire. 
 
 Juanita had made her toilet by the time the tea- 
 table was ready, and came in from her room next 
 door, a radiant figure in a gleaming copper-coloured 
 gown, flowing loose from throat to foot, and with no 
 adornment except a broad collar and cufi's of old 
 Venice point. Her brilliant complexion and 
 southern eyes and ebon hair triumphed over the 
 yivid hue of the gown, and it was at her Sir Godfrey 
 looked as she came beaming towards him, and not 
 at the dressmaker's master-piece. 
 
 " How do you like it ? " she asked, with childhke 
 pleasure in her fine raiment. " I ought to have 
 kept it till October, but I couldn't resist putting it 
 on, just to see what you think of it. I hope you 
 won't say it's gaudy." 
 
 " My dearest, you might be clad in a russet cloud
 
 60 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 for anything I should know to the contrary. A 
 quarter of a century hence, when you are beginning 
 to fancy yourself passee we will talk about gowns. 
 It will be of some consequence then how you dress. 
 It can be none now." 
 
 " That is just a man's ignorance, Godfrey," she 
 said, shaking her finger at him, as she seated her- 
 self in one of the bamboo chairs, a dazzling figure 
 in the light of the blazing logs, which danced about 
 her eyes and hair and copper-coloured gown in a 
 bewildering manner. *' You think me handsome, 
 I suppose ? " 
 
 " Eminently so." 
 
 " And you think I should be just as handsome if 
 I dressed anyhow — in a badly-fitting Tussore, for 
 instance, made last year and cleaned this year, and 
 with a hat of my own trimming, eh, Godfrey ? " 
 
 " Every bit as handsome." 
 
 ** That shows what an ignoramus a University 
 education can leave a man. My dearest boy, half 
 my good looks depend upon my dressmaker. Not 
 for worlds would I have you see me a dowdy, if only 
 for a quarter of an hour. The disillusion might
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 61 
 
 last a lifetime. I dress to please you, remember, 
 sir. It was of jou I thought when I was choosing 
 my trousseau. I want to be lovely in your eyes 
 always, always, always." 
 
 " You need make no effort to attain your wish. 
 You have put so strong a spell upon my eyes 
 that with me at least you are independent of the 
 dressmaker's art." 
 
 " Again I say you don't know what you are talk- 
 ing about. But frankly now, do you think this 
 gown too gaudy? " 
 
 *' That coppery background to my Murillo Ma- 
 donna. No, love; the colour suits you to perfection." 
 
 She poured out the tea, and then sank back in her 
 comfortable chair, in a reverie, languid after her 
 explorations at the Priory, full of a dreamlike happi- 
 ness as she basked in the glow of the fire, welcome 
 as a novel indulgence at this time of the year. 
 
 '* There is nothing more delightful than a fire in 
 July," she said. 
 
 Her eyes wandered about the room idly. 
 
 *' Do 3'ou call them handsome ? " she asked pre- 
 sently.
 
 62 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 Godfrey looked puzzled. Was she still harping 
 on the dress question, or was she challenging his 
 admiration for those glorious eyes which he had heen 
 watching in their rovings for a lazy five minutes. 
 
 " I mean the Strangways. That is their famous 
 beauty — the girl in the scanty white satin petticoat, 
 with the goat. Imagine any one walking about a 
 wood, with a goat, in white satin. What queer ideas 
 portrait painters must have had in those days. She 
 is very lovely though, isn't she ? " 
 
 *' She is not my ideal. I don't admire that nar- 
 row Cupid's-bow mouth, the lips pinched up as if 
 they were pronouncing ' prunes and prism,' The 
 eyes are large and handsome, but too round, the 
 complexion is wax-dollish. No, she is not my ideal." 
 
 " I should have been miserable if you had ad- 
 mired her." 
 
 " There is a face in the hall which I like ever so 
 much better, and yet I doubt if it is a good face.'* 
 
 " Which is that ? " 
 
 *' The face of the girl in that group of John 
 Strangway's three children." 
 
 "That girl with the towsled hair and bright blue
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 63 
 
 eyes. Yes, she must have been handsome — but she 
 looks — I hope you won't be shocked, but I really 
 can't help saying it — that girl looks a deyil." 
 
 " Poor soul ! Her temper did not do much good 
 for her. I believe she came to a melancholy end." 
 
 " How was that ? " 
 
 ** She eloped from a school in Switzerland with an 
 officer in a line regiment — a love match ; but she 
 went wrong a few years afterwards, left her husband, 
 and died in poverty at Boulogne, I believe." 
 
 ** Another ghost!" exclaimed Juanita, dolefully. 
 " Poor, lost soul, she must walk. I can't help feel- 
 ing sorry for her — married to a man who was unkind 
 to her, perhaps, and whom she discovered unworthy 
 of her love. And then years afterwards meeting 
 some one worthier and better, whom she loved pas- 
 sionately. That is dreadful ! Oh, Godfrey ! if I 
 had been married before I saw you — and we had met 
 — and you had cared for me — God knows what kind 
 of woman I should have been. Perhaps I should 
 have been one of those poor souls who have a history, 
 the women mother and her friends stare at and 
 whisper about in the Park. Why are people so
 
 64 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 keenly interested in them, I wonder ? Why can't 
 they leave them alone ? " 
 
 *' It would be charity to do so." 
 
 ** No one is charitable — in London." 
 
 ** Do you think people are more indulgent in the 
 country ? " 
 
 " I suppose not. I'm afraid English people keep 
 all their charity for the Continent. I shall never look 
 at the girl in that group without thinking of her sad 
 story. She looks hardly fifteen in the picture. Poor 
 thing ! She did not know what was coming." 
 
 They loitered over their tea table, making the most 
 of their happiness. The sweetness of their dual life 
 had not begun to pall. It was still new and wonder- 
 ful to be together thus, unrestrained by any other 
 presence. 
 
 In the midst of their gay talk Juanita's eyes wan- 
 dered to the bronze Time upon the chimney piece, 
 and the familiar figure suggested gloomy ideas. 
 
 ** Oh, Godfrey ! look at that grim old man with 
 his scythe, mowing down our happy moments so 
 fast that we can hardly taste their sweetness before 
 they speed away. To think that our lives are hurry-
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 65 
 
 ing past us like a rapid river, and that we shall be like 
 him " (pointing distastefully to the type of old age 
 — the wrinkled brow and flowing beard) ** before we 
 know that we have lived." 
 
 " It is a pity, sweet, that life should be so short." 
 
 Her glance wandered to the dark oak panel above 
 the clock, and she started up from her low chair 
 with a faint scream, stood on tiptoe before the fire- 
 place, snatched half-a-dozen scraggy peacock's 
 feathers from the panel, and threw them at her 
 husband's feet. 
 
 "Look at those," she exclaimed, pointing to them 
 as they lay there. 
 
 *' Peacock's feathers ! What have they done that 
 you should use them so ? " 
 
 *' Oh, Godfrey, don't you know?" sLe asked, 
 earnestly. 
 
 *' Don't I know what?" 
 
 " That peacock's feathers bring ill luck. It is 
 fatal to take them into a house. They are an evil 
 omen. And father icill pick them up when he is 
 strolling about the lawn, and icill bring them in- 
 doors ; though I am always scolding him for his 
 
 VOL. I. p
 
 66 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 obstinate folly, and always throwing tlie horrid 
 things away." 
 
 "And this kind of thing has been going on for 
 some years, I suppose ? " asked Godfrey, smiling at 
 her intensity. 
 
 " Ever since I can remember." 
 
 *' And have the peacock's feathers brought you 
 misfortune ? " 
 
 She looked at him gravely for a few moments, and 
 then burst into a joyous laugh, 
 
 " No, no, no, no," she said, '' Fate has been over 
 kind to me. I have never known sorrow. Fate has 
 given me you, I am the happiest woman in the world 
 — for there can't be another you, and you are mine. It 
 is like owning the Kohinoor diamond ; one knows that 
 one stands alone. Still, all the same, peacock's feathers 
 are unlucky, and I will not suffer them in your room." 
 
 She picked up the offending feathers, twisted them 
 into a ball, and flung them at the back of the deep 
 old chimney, behind the smouldering logs ; and then 
 she produced a chess board, and she and Godfrey 
 began a game with the board on their knees, and 
 played for an hour by firelight.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 *' A deadly silence step by step increased, 
 Until it seemed a horrid presence there." 
 
 That idea of the Strangways had taken hold of 
 the bride's fancy. She went into the hall with 
 Godfrey after dinner, and they looked together at 
 the family group. The picture was a bishop's half- 
 length, turned lengthwise, and the figures showed 
 only the head and shoulders. The girl stood 
 between the two boys, her left arm round her 
 younger brother's neck. He was a lad of eleven or 
 twelve, in an Eton jacket and broad white collar. 
 The other boy was older than ^the girl, and was 
 dressed in dark green corduroy. The heads were 
 masterly, but the picture was uninteresting. 
 
 " Did you ever see three faces with so little 
 fascination among the three?" asked Godfrey; 
 *' the boys look arrant cubs ; the girl has the 
 makings of a handsome woman, but the lines of her 
 
 F 2
 
 b» THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 mouth and chin have firmness enough for forty, and 
 yet she could hardly have heen over fifteen when that 
 picture was painted." 
 
 " She has a lovely throat and lovely shoulders." 
 
 " Yes, the painter has made the most of those." 
 
 " And she has fine eyes." 
 
 " Fine as to colour and shape, but as cold as a 
 Toledo blade — and as dangerous. I pity her hus- 
 band." 
 
 " That must be a waste of pity. If he had been 
 good to her she would not have run away from 
 him." 
 
 " I am not sure of that. A woman with that 
 mouth and chin would go her own gate if she 
 trampled upon bleeding hearts. I wonder your 
 father keeps these shadows of a vanished race." 
 
 " He would not part with them for worlds. They 
 are like the peacock's feathers that he ivill bring 
 indoors. I sometimes think he has a fancy for 
 unlucky things. He says that as we have no 
 ancestors of our own — to speak of — I suppose we 
 must have ancestors, for everybody must have come 
 down from Adam somehow "
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 69 
 
 ** Naturally, or from Adam's ancestor, the 
 common progenitor of the Darwinian thesis." 
 
 *' Don't be horrid. Father's idea is that as we 
 have no ancestors of our own, we may as well keep 
 the Strangway portraits. The faces are the history 
 of the house, father said, when mother wanted 
 those dismal old pictures taken down to make 
 way for a collection of modern art. So there 
 they are, and I can't help thinking that they over' 
 look us." 
 
 They were still standing before the trio of young 
 faces contemplatively. 
 
 "Are they all dead?" asked Juanita, after a 
 pause. 
 
 ** God knows. I believe it is a long time since 
 any of them were heard of. Jasper Blake talks to 
 me about them sometimes. He was in service here, 
 you know, before he became my father's bailiff. In 
 fact, he only left Cheriton after the old squire's 
 death. He is fond of talking of the forgotten race, 
 and it is from him that most of my information is 
 derived. He told me about that unlucky lad," 
 pointing to the younger boy. " He was in the navy,
 
 70 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 distinguished himself out in China, and was on the 
 high road to getting a ship when he got broke for 
 drunkenness — a flagrant case, which all but ended 
 in a tremendous disaster and the burning of a man- 
 of-war. He went into the merchant service- — did 
 well for a year or two, and then the old enemy took 
 hold of him again, and he got broke there. After 
 that he dropped through — disappeared in the great 
 dismal swamp where the men who fail in this world 
 sink out of knowledge." 
 
 " And the elder boy ; what became of him ? " 
 "He was in the army — a tremendous swell, I 
 believe, married Lord Dangerfield's youngest 
 daughter, and cut a dash for two or three years, and 
 then disappeared from society, and took his wife to 
 Corsica, on the ground of delicate health. For any- 
 thing I know to the contrary they may still be 
 living in that free-and-easy little island. He was 
 fond of sport, and liked a rough life. I fancy that 
 Ajaccio would suit him better than Purbeck or Pall 
 Mall." 
 
 " Poor things ; I wonder if they ever long for 
 Cheriton?"
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 71 
 
 ** If old Jasper is to be believed, they were pas- 
 sionately fond of the place, especially that girl. 
 Jasper was groom in those days, and he taught her 
 to ride. She was a regular dare devil, according to 
 his account, with a temper that no one had ever been 
 able to control. But she seems to have behaved 
 pretty well to Jasper, and he was attached to her. 
 Her father couldn't manage her unyhow. They 
 were too much alike. He sent her to a school at 
 Lausanne soon after that picture was painted, and 
 she never came back to Cheriton. She ran away 
 with an English officer who was home from India 
 on furlough, and was staying at Ouchy for his 
 health. She represented herself as of full age, and 
 contrived to get married at Geneva. The squu-e 
 refused ever to see her or her husband. She ran 
 away from the husband afterwards, as I told you. 
 In fact, to quote Jasper, she was an incorrigible 
 bolter." 
 
 **Poor, poor thing. It is all too sad," sighed 
 Juanita. " Let us go into the library and forget 
 them. There are no Strangways there, thank 
 Heaven."
 
 72 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 She put her arm through Godfrey*s and led him 
 off, unresisting. He was in that stage of devotion 
 in which he followed her like a dog. 
 
 The library was one of the best rooms in the 
 house, but the least interesting from an archaeo- 
 logist's point of view. It had been built early in 
 the eighteenth century for a ballroom, a long 
 narrow room, with five tall windows, and it had 
 been afterwards known as the music room ; but 
 James Dalbrook had improved it out of its original 
 character by throwing out a large bay, with three 
 windows opening on to a semicircular terrace, with 
 marble balustrade and steps leading down to the 
 prettiest portion of that Italian garden which was 
 the crowning glory of Cheriton Manor, and which it 
 had been Lord Cheriton' s delight to improve. The 
 spacious bay gave width and dignity to the room, 
 and it was in the space between the bay and the 
 fireplace that people naturally grouped themselves. 
 It was too large a room to be warmed by one fire 
 of ordinary dimensions, but the fireplace added by 
 James Dalbrook was of abnormal width and 
 grandeur, while the chimney-piece was rich in
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 73 
 
 coloured marbles and niassive sculpture. The 
 room was lined with books from floor to ceiling. 
 Clusters of wax candles were burning on the mantel- 
 piece, and two large moderator lamps stood on a 
 massive carved oak table in the centre of the room 
 — a table spacious enough to hold all the maga- 
 zines, reviews, and periodicals in three languages 
 that were worth reading — Quarterlies, Revue des 
 Deux MondeSj Rundschau, Figaro, World, Satur- 
 day, Truth, and the rest of them — as well as guide 
 books, peerages, clergy and army lists — which 
 made a formidable range in the middle. 
 
 Godfrey flung himself into a long, low, arm-chair, 
 and Juanita perched herself lightly beside him on 
 the cushioned arm, looking down at him from that 
 point of vantage. There was a wood fire here as 
 well as in the hall ; but the rain was over now, the 
 evening had grown warmer, and the French win- 
 dows in the bay stood open to the dull grey night. 
 
 "What are you reading now, Godfrey?" asked 
 Juanita, glancing 'at the cosy double table in a 
 corner by the chimney-piece, loaded with books 
 above and below.
 
 74 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 ** For duty reading Jones' book on * Grattan and 
 the Irish Parliament ; ' for old books * Plato ; ' for 
 new * Wider Horizons.' " 
 
 He was an insatiable reader, and even in those 
 long summer days of honeymoon bliss he had felt 
 the need of books, which were a habit of his life. 
 
 "Is * Wider Horizons ' a good book ? " 
 
 "It is full of imagination, and it carries one 
 away ; but one has the same feeling as in ' Esoteric 
 Buddhism.' It is a very comforting theory, and it 
 ought to be true ; but by what authority is this 
 gospel preached to us, and on what evidence are we 
 to believe?" 
 
 " ' Wider Horizons ' is about the life to come ? " 
 
 "Yes; it gives us a very vivid picture of our 
 existence in other planets. The author writes as if 
 he had been there." 
 
 "And according to this theory you and I are to 
 meet and be happy again in some distant star ? " 
 
 " In many stars — climbing from star to star, 
 and achieving a higher spirituality, a finer essence, 
 with every new existence, until we attain the ever- 
 lasting perfection."
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 75 
 
 *' And we who are to die old and worn out here 
 are to be young and bright again there — in our 
 next world ? " 
 
 " Naturally." 
 
 " And then we shall grow old again — go through 
 the same slow decay — grey hairs, fading sight, 
 duller hearing ? " 
 
 " Yes ; as we blossom so must we fade. The 
 withered husk of the old life holds the seed from 
 which the new flower must spring ; and with every 
 incarnation the flower is to gain in vigour and 
 beauty, and the life period is to lengthen till it 
 touches infinity." 
 
 '* I must read the book, Godfrey. It may be all 
 a dream ; but I love even dreams that promise a 
 future in which you and I shall always be together 
 — as we are now, as we are now." 
 
 She repeated those last four words with infinite 
 tenderness. The beautiful head sank down to 
 nestle upon his shoulder, and they were silent for 
 some minutes in a dreamy reverie, gazing into the 
 fire, where the logs had given out their last flame, 
 and were slowly fading from red to grey.
 
 76 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 It was a quarter to eleven by the dial let into 
 the marble of the chimney-piece. The butler had 
 brought a tray with wine and water at ten o'clock, 
 and had taken the final orders before retiring. 
 Juanita and her husband were alone amid the 
 stillness of the sleeping household. The night 
 was close and dull, not a leaf stirring, and only a 
 few dim stars in the heavy sky. 
 
 As the clock told the third quarter with a small 
 silvery chime, as if it were a town clock in fairy- 
 land, Juanita started suddenly from her half re- 
 clining position, and listened intently, with her 
 face towards the open window. 
 
 ** A footstep ! " she exclaimed. "I heard a 
 footstep on the terrace." 
 
 " My dearest, I know your hearing is quicker 
 than mine ; but this time it is your fancy that heard 
 and not your ears. I heard nothing. And who 
 should be walking on the terrace at such an hour, 
 do you suppose ? " 
 
 *' I don't suppose anything about it, but I know 
 there was some one. I heard the steps, Godfrey. 
 I heard them as distinctly as I heard you speak just
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 77 
 
 now ; light footsteps — slow, very slow, and with 
 that cautious, treacherous sound which light, slow 
 footsteps always have, if one hears them in the 
 silence of night." 
 
 *' You are very positive." 
 
 *' I know it, I heard it ! " she cried, running to 
 the window, and out into the grey night. 
 
 She ran along the whole length of the terrace and 
 back again, her husband following her with slower 
 steps, and they found no one, heard nothing from 
 one end to the other. 
 
 "You see, love, there was no one there," said 
 Godfrey. 
 
 " I see nothing of the kind — only that the some 
 one who was there has vanished very cleverly. An 
 eavesdropper might hide easily enough behind any 
 one of those cypresses," she said, pointing to the 
 obelisk-shaped trees which showed black against 
 the dim grey of the night. 
 
 " Why should there be any eavesdropper, love ? 
 What secrets have you and I that any prowler 
 should care to watch or listen. The only person of 
 the prowling kind to be apprehended would be a
 
 78 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 burglar ; and as Cheriton has boen burglar-free all 
 these years, I see no reason for fear ; so unless your 
 mysterious footfall belonged to one of the servants 
 or a servant's follower, which is highly improbable 
 on this side of the house, I take it that you must 
 have heard a ghost." 
 
 He had his arm around her, and was leading her 
 out of the misty night into the warm, bright room, 
 and his voice had the light sound of laughter ; but 
 at that word ghost she started and trembled, and 
 her voice was very serious as she answered, — 
 
 " A ghost, yes ! It was just like the footfall of a 
 ghost — so slow, so soft, so mysterious. I believe it 
 was a ghost, Godfrey — a Strangway ghost. Some 
 of them must revisit this house.'*
 
 CHAPTER lY. 
 
 *'TMio will dare 
 To pluck thee from me ? And of thine own will, 
 Full well I feel that thou would'st not leave me." 
 
 The sunshine of a summer morning, streaming 
 in through mullioned windows that looked due south, 
 raised Juanita's spirits, and dispersed her fears. It 
 was impossible to feel depressed under such a sky. 
 She had been wakeful for a considerable part of the 
 night, brooding upon that ghostly footstep which had 
 sent such a sudden chill to her warm young heart, 
 but that broad clear light of morning brought com- 
 mon sense. 
 
 "I daresay it was only some love-sick housemaid, 
 roaming about after all the others had gone to bed, 
 in order to have a quiet think about her sweetheart, 
 and what he said to her last Sunday as they went 
 home from church. I know how I used to walk about 
 with no company but my thoughts of you, Godfrey.
 
 80 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 and how sweet it used to be to go over all your 
 dearest words — over and over again — and no doubt 
 the heart of a housemaid is worked by just the same 
 machinery that sets mine going — and her thoughts 
 would follow the same track." 
 
 *' That is what we are taught to believe, dearest, 
 in this enlightened age." 
 
 i' Why should it be a ghost ? " pursued Juanita, 
 leaning back in her bamboo chair, and lazily en- 
 joying the summer morning, somewhat languid after 
 a sleepless night. 
 
 They were breakfasting at the western end of the 
 terrace, with an awning over their heads, and a 
 couple of footmen travelling to and from the house 
 in attendance upon them, and keeping respectfully 
 out of earshot between whiles. The table was 
 heaped with roses, and the waxen chalices of a 
 great magnolia on the lower level showed above the 
 marble balustrade, and shed an almost overpowering 
 perfume on the warm air. 
 
 " Why should a ghost come now?" she asked, 
 harping upon her morbid fancies. " There has 
 never been a hint of a ghost in all the years that
 
 THE DAY WILL COiTE. 81 
 
 father and mother have lived here. Why should 
 one come now, unless " 
 
 *' Unless what, love?" 
 
 " Unless one of the Strangways died last night — 
 at the very moment when we heard the footfall — 
 died in some distant land, perhaps, and with his 
 last dying thought revisited the place of his birth. 
 One has heard of such things." 
 
 " One has heard of a great many strange 
 things. The human imagination is very inven- 
 tive." 
 
 " Ah, you are a sceptic, I know. I don't think I 
 actually believe in ghosts — but I am afraid of being 
 forced to believe in them. Oh, Godfrey, if it were 
 meant for a warning," she cried, with sudden terror 
 in the large dark eyes. 
 
 " What kind of warning ? " 
 
 " A presage of misfortune — sickness — death. I 
 have read so many stories of such warnings." 
 
 '' My dearest love, you have read too much rub- 
 bish in that line. Your mind is full of morbid 
 fancies. If the morning were not too warm, I 
 should say put on your habit and let us go for a 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 long ride. I am afraid this sauntering life of ours 
 is too depressing for you." 
 
 "Depressing — to be with you all day! Ob, 
 Godfrey, you must be tired of me if you can suggest 
 such a thing." 
 
 *' But, my Nita, when I see you giving yourself 
 up to gloomy speculations about ghosts and omens." 
 
 " Oh, that means nothing. When one has a very 
 precious treasure one must needs be full of fears. 
 Look at misers ; how nervous they are about their 
 hidden gold. And my treasure is more to me than 
 all the gold of Ophir — infinitely precious." 
 
 She sprang up from her low chair, and leaned 
 over the back of his to kiss the broad brow which 
 was lifted up to meet those clinging lips. 
 
 ''Oh, my love, my love, I never knew what fear 
 meant till I knew the fear of parting from you,'* 
 she murmured. 
 
 " Put on you habit, Nita. We will go for a ride 
 in spite of the sun. Or what do you say to driving 
 to Dorchester, and storming your cousins for a 
 lunch ? I want to talk to Mr. Dalbrook about 
 Skinner's bill of dilapidations."
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 83 
 
 Her mood changed in an instant. 
 
 ** That would be capital fun," she cried. " I 
 wonder if it is a breach of etiquette to lunch with 
 one's cousins during one's honeymoon ? " 
 
 ** A fig for etiquette. Thomas," to an approaching 
 footman, " order the phaeton for half-past eleven." 
 
 ** What a happy idea," said Juanita, ** a long, 
 long drive with you, and then the fun of seeing how 
 you get on with my strong-minded cousins. They 
 pretend to despise everything that other girls care 
 for, don't you know — and go in for literature, 
 science, politics, everything intellectual, in short — 
 and I have seen them sit and nurse Darwin or 
 Buckle for a whole evening, while they have 
 talked of gowns and bonnets and other girls' flirta- 
 tions." 
 
 " Then they are not such Roman maidens as they 
 affect to be." 
 
 ** Far from it. They will take the pattern of my 
 frock with their eyes before I have been in the 
 room ten minutes. Just watch them." 
 
 *' I will ; if I can take my eyes off you." 
 
 Juanita ran away to change her white peignoir for 
 
 G 2
 
 84 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 a walking dress, and reappeared in half an hour 
 radiant and ready for the drive. 
 
 " How do you like my frock ? " she asked, posing 
 herself in front of her husband, and challenging 
 admiration. 
 
 The frock was old gold Indian silk, soft and dull, 
 made with an exquisite simplicity of long flowing 
 draperies, over a kilted petticoat which just showed 
 the neat little tan shoes, and a glimpse of tan silk 
 stocking. The bodice fitted the tall supple figure 
 like a glove ; the sleeves were loose and short, tied 
 carelessly at the elbow with a broad satin ribbon, 
 and the long suede gloves matched the gown to the 
 nicest shade. Her hat was Leghorn, broad enough 
 to shade her eyes from the sun, high enough to add 
 to her importance, and caught up on one side with a 
 bunch of dull yellow barley and a few cornflowers, 
 whose vivid hue was repeated in a cluster of the 
 same flowers embroidered on one side of the bodice. 
 Her large sunshade was of the same silk as her gown, 
 and that was also embroidered with cornflowers, a 
 stray blossom flung here and there with an acci- 
 dental air.
 
 THE PAY WILL COME. 85 
 
 " My love, you look as if you had stepped out of 
 a fashion book." 
 
 "I suppose I am too smart," said Juanita with 
 an impatient sigh ; "and yet my colouring is very 
 subdued. There is only that touch of blue in the 
 cornflowers— just the one high light in the picture. 
 That is the only drawback to country life. Every- 
 thing really pretty seems too smart for dusty roads 
 and green lanes. One must be content to grope one's 
 obscure way in a tailor gown or a cotton frock all the 
 year round. Now this would be perfection for a 
 Wednesday in Hyde Park, wouldn't it ? '' 
 
 " My darling, it is charming. Why should you 
 not be prettily dressed under this blue summer sky ? 
 You can sport your tailor gowns in winter. You 
 are not too smart for me, Xita. You are only too 
 lovely. Bring your dust cloak, and you may defy 
 the perils of the road.'' 
 
 Celestine, Lady Carmichael's French-Swiss maid, 
 was in attendance with the dust cloak, an ample 
 wrap of creamy silk and lace, cloudlike, indescribable. 
 This muffled the pretty gown from top to toe, and 
 Nita took her seat in the phaeton, and prepared for
 
 86 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 a longer drive and a longer talk than they had had 
 yesterday. 
 
 She was pleased at the idea of showing off her 
 handsome young hushand and her new frock to those 
 advanced young ladies, who had affected a kind of 
 superiority on the ground of what she called " heavy 
 reading," and what they called advanced views. 
 Janet and Sophia had accepted Lady Cheriton's 
 invitations with inward protest, and in their appre- 
 hension of heing patronized had heen somewhat 
 inclined to give themselves airs, taking pains to 
 impress upon their cousin that she was as empty- 
 headed as she was heautiful, and that they stood 
 upon an intellectual plane for which she had no 
 scaling ladder. She had put up with such small 
 snuhbings in the sweetest way, knowing all the time 
 that as the Honorable Juanita Dalbrook, of Cheriton 
 Chase, and one of the debutantes whose praises 
 had been sung in all the society papers, she inhabited 
 a social plane as far beyond their reach as their 
 intellectual plane might be above hers. 
 
 *'I don't suppose we shall see Theodore," said 
 Juanita, as the bays bowled merrily along the level 
 road.
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 87 
 
 The greys were getting a rest after yesterday's 
 work, and these were Lady Cheriton's famous 
 barouche horses, to whom the phaeton seemed a toy. 
 
 " He must have gone to Heidelberg before now," 
 added Juanita. 
 
 ** He must be fond of Heidelberg to be running 
 off there when it is so jolly at home." 
 
 "He was there for a year, you know, before he 
 went to Cambridge, and he is always going back 
 there or to the Hartz for his holidays. I some- 
 times tell him he is half a German." 
 
 She rather hoped that Theodore was in Germany 
 by this time ; and yet she had assured herself in her 
 own mind that there could be no pain to him in 
 their meeting. She knew that he had loved her — 
 that in one rash hour, after a year's absence in 
 America, when he had not known, or had chosen to 
 forget, the state of affairs between her and Godfrey, 
 he had told her of his love, and had asked her to 
 give him hope. It was before her engagement ; but 
 she was not the less frank in confessing her attach- 
 ment to Godfrey. "I can never care for anyone 
 else," she said ; ** I have loved him all my life."
 
 88 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 All her life ! Yes, that was Theodore's irrepar- 
 able loss. While he, the working man, had been 
 grinding out his days in the treadmill round of a 
 country solicitor's office, the young patrician had 
 been as free as the butterflies in Juanita's rose 
 garden ; free to woo her all day long, free to share 
 her most trifling pleasures and sympathize with her 
 lightest pains. What chance had the junior partner 
 in Dalbrook & Son against Sir Godfrey Carmichael 
 of Milbrook Priory ? 
 
 Theodore had managed his life so well after that 
 one bitter rebuff that Juanita had a right to suppose 
 that his wound had healed, and that the pain of that 
 hour had been forgotten. She was sincerely attached 
 to him, as a kinsman, and respected him more than 
 any other young man of her acquaintance. Had 
 not Lord Cheriton, that admirable judge of character, 
 declared that Theodore was one of the cleverest men 
 he knew, and regretted that he had not attached 
 himself to the higher branch of the law, as the more 
 likely in his case to result in wealth and fame ? 
 
 The phaeton drove up to the old Hanoverian 
 doorway as St. Peter's clock chimed the quarter
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 89 
 
 after one. The old man-servant looked surprised at 
 this brilliant vision of a beautiful girl, a fine pair of 
 horses, a smart groom, and Sir Godfrey CarmichaeL 
 The tout-ensemhle was almost bewildering even to a, 
 man accustomed to see the various conveyances of 
 neighbouring landowners at his master's door. 
 
 " Yes, my lady, both the 3'oung ladies are at 
 home," said Brown, and led the way upstairs with 
 unshaken dignity. 
 
 He had lived in that house five-and-thirty 3-ears, 
 beginning as shoe-black and errand boy, and he was 
 proud to hear his master tell his friends how he had 
 risen from the ranks. He had indulged in some 
 mild philanderings with pretty parlour-maids in the 
 days of his youth, but had never seriously entangled 
 himself, and was a confirmed bachelor, and some- 
 thing of a misogynist. He was a pattern of honesty 
 and conscientiousness, having no wife and family to 
 be maintained upon broken victuals and illuminated 
 with filched candle-ends or stolen oil. He had not 
 a single interest outside his master's house, hardly 
 so much as a thought ; and the glory and honour of 
 ** family " were his honour and glory. So as he
 
 90 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 ushered Lady Carmicbael and her husband to the 
 drawing-room he was meditating upon what addi- 
 tions to the luncheon he could suggest to cook which 
 might render that meal worthy of such distinguished 
 guests. 
 
 Sophia was seated by one of the windows painting 
 an orchid in a tall Venetian vase. It was a weak- 
 ness with these clever girls to think they could do 
 everything. They were not content with Darwin 
 and the new learning, but they painted indifferently 
 in oils and in water colours, played on various in- 
 struments, sang in three languages, and fancied 
 themselves invincible at lawn tennis. 
 
 The orchid was top-heavy, and had been tumbling 
 out of the vase every five minutes in a manner that 
 had been very trying to the artist's temper, and 
 irritating to Janet, who was grappling with a volume 
 of Johann Miiller, in the original, and losing herself 
 in a labyrinth of words beginning with ver and 
 ending with lieit. 
 
 They both started up from occupations of which 
 both were tired, and welcomed their visitors with a 
 show of genuine pleasure ; for although they had
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 91 
 
 been very determined in their resistance to any- 
 thing like patronage on Juanita's part when she 
 was Miss Dalbrook they were glad that slie should 
 be prompt to recognize the claims of kindred now 
 that she was Lady Carmichael. 
 
 " How good of you to come," exclaimed Janet, *' I 
 didn't think you would remember us, at such a time." 
 
 *' Did you think I must forget old friends because 
 I am happy ? " said Juanita. " But I mustn't take 
 credit for other people's virtues. It was Godfrey 
 who proposed driving over to see you." 
 
 " I wanted to show you what a nice couple we 
 make," said Sir Godfrey, gaily, drawing his bride 
 closer to him, as they stood side by side, tall and 
 straight, and glowing with youth and gladness, in 
 the middle of the grave old drawing-room. *' You 
 young ladies were not so cousinly as your brother 
 Theodore. Yon didn't drive to Cheriton to welcome 
 us home." 
 
 *' If Theo had told us what he was going to do we 
 should have been very glad to be there too," replied 
 Sophy, **but he rode off in the morning without 
 saying a word to anybody."
 
 92 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 *' He is in Germany by this time, I suppose ? '* 
 said Juanita. 
 
 ** He is downstairs in the office. His portmanteau 
 has been packed for a week, I believe," explained 
 Janet, " but there is always some fresh business to 
 prevent his starting. My father relies upon him 
 more every day.'' 
 
 " Dear, good Theodore, he is quite the cleverest 
 man I know," said Juanita, without the slightest 
 idea of disparaging her husband, whom she con- 
 sidered perfection. " I think he must be very much 
 like what my father was at his age." 
 
 *' People who are in a position to know tell us that 
 he is exactly what his onm father was at that age," 
 said Janet, resenting this attempt to trace her 
 brother's gifts to a more distant source. *' I don't 
 see why one need go further. My father would not 
 have been trusted as he has been for the last thirty 
 years if he were a simpleton ; and Galton ob- 
 serves " 
 
 The door opened at this moment and Theodore 
 came in.
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 93 
 
 He greeted his cousin and his cousin's husband 
 -with unaffected friendliness. 
 
 *' It is against my principles to take luncheon," 
 he said, laughingly, as he gave Juanita his hand, 
 **but this is a red-letter day. My father is waiting 
 for us in the dining-room." 
 
 They all went down stairs together, Theodore lead- 
 ing the way with his cousin, talking gaily as they 
 went down the wide oak staircase, between sober 
 panelled walls of darkest brown. The front part of 
 the ground floor was given up to offices, and the 
 dining-room was built out at the back, a large bright- 
 looking room with a bay window, opening on to a 
 square town garden, a garden of about half an acre, 
 surrounded with high walls, above which showed the 
 treetops in one of the leafy walks that skirt the town. 
 It vras very different to that Italian garden at Cheri- 
 ton where the peacocks strutted slowly between long 
 rows of cypresses, where the Italian statues showed 
 white in every angle of the dense green wall, and 
 where the fountain rose and fell with a silvery cadence 
 in the still summer atmosphere. Here there was 
 only a square lawn, just big enough for a tennis
 
 94 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 court, and a broad border of hardy flowers, with one 
 especial portion at the end of the garden, where 
 Sophia experimented in cross fertilisation after the 
 manner of Darwin, seeming for ever upon the thres- 
 hold of valuable discoveries. 
 
 Mr. Dalbrook was a fine-looking man of some 
 unascertained age between fifty and sixty. He 
 boasted that he was Lord Cheriton's junior by a 
 year or two, although they had both come to a time 
 of life when a year or two more or less could matter 
 very little. 
 
 He was very fond of Juanita, and he welcomed her 
 with especial tenderness in her new character as a 
 bride. He kissed her, and then held her away from 
 him for a minute, with a kindly scrutiny. 
 
 ** Lady Godfrey surpasses Miss Dalbrook," he 
 said, smiling at the girl's radiant face. *' I suppose 
 now you are going to be the leading personage in 
 our part of the county. We quiet townspeople will 
 be continually hearing of you, and there will not be 
 a local paper without a notice of your doings. Any- 
 how I am glad you don't forget old friends." 
 
 He placed her beside him at the large oval table,
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 95 
 
 on which the handsomest plate and the oldest china 
 had heen set forth with a celerity which testified to 
 Brown's devotion. Mr. Dalbrook was one of those 
 sensible people who never waste keep or wages upon 
 a bad horse or a bad servant, whereby his cook was 
 one of the best in Dorchester ; so the luncheon, 
 albeit plain and unpretentious, was a meal of which 
 no man need feel ashamed. 
 
 Juanita was fond of her uncle, as she called this 
 distant cousin of hers, to distinguish him from the 
 younger generation, and she was pleased to be sit- 
 ting by him, and hearing all the news of the county 
 town and the county people who were his clients, 
 and in many cases his friends. It may be that his 
 cousinship with Lord Cheriton had gone as far as 
 his professional acumen to elevate him in the esteem 
 of town and county, and that some people who would 
 hardly have invited the provincial solicitor for his 
 own sake, sent their cards as a matter of course to 
 the law lord's cousin. But there were others who 
 esteemed Matthew Dalbrook for his own sterling 
 qualities, and who even liked him better than the 
 somewhat severe and self-assertive Lord Cheriton.
 
 ^6 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 While Juanita talked confidentially to her kins- 
 man, and while Sir Godfrey discussed the latest 
 theory about the sun, and the probable endurance of 
 our own little planet, with Janet and Sophia, Theo- 
 ciore sat at the bottom of the table, silent and 
 thoughtful, watching the lovely animated face with 
 its look of radiant happiness, and telling himself 
 that the w^oman he loved was as far away from him 
 sitting there, within reach of his touch, within the 
 sound of his lowest whisper, as if she had been in 
 another world. He had borne himself bravely on 
 her wedding-day, and smiled back her happy smile, 
 and clasped her hand with the steady grip of friend- 
 ship ; but after that ordeal there had been a sad 
 relapse in his fortitude, and he had thought of her 
 ever since as a man thinks of that supreme posses- 
 sion without which life is worthless — as the miser 
 thinks of his stolen gold — or the ambitious man of 
 his blighted name. 
 
 Yes, he had loved her with all the strength of his 
 heart and mind, and he knew that he could never 
 again love with the same full measure. He was too 
 wise a n:au, and too experienced in life, to tell him-
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 97 
 
 self that for him time could have no healing power — 
 that no other woman could ever be dear to him ; hut 
 he told himself that another love like unto this was 
 impossible, and that all the future could bring him 
 would be some pale faint copy of this radiant picture. 
 
 " I suppose it's only one man in fifty who marries 
 his first love," he thought, and then he looked at 
 Godfrey Carmichael and thought that to him over 
 much had been given. He was a fine young fellow, 
 clever, unassuming, with a frank good face ; a man 
 who was liked by men as well as by women ; but 
 what had he done to be worthy of such a wife as 
 Juanita ? Theodore could only answer the question 
 in the words of Figaro, *' He had taken the trouble 
 to be born." 
 
 That one thoughtful guest made no difi'erence in 
 the gaiety of the luncheon table. Matthew Dal- 
 brook had plenty to say to his beautiful cousin, and 
 Juanita had all the experiences of the last season to 
 talk about, while once having started upon Sir 
 William Thomson and the ultimate exhaustion of 
 the sun's heat, the sisters were not likely to stop. 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " Poor little life that toddles half an hour, 
 Crowned with a flower or two, and there an end — " 
 
 Sir Godfrey's device for diverting his wife's mind 
 from the morbid fancies of the previous night 
 answered admirably. She left Dorchester in high 
 spirits, after having invited her cousins to Cheriton 
 for tennis and lunch on the following day, and after 
 having bade an affectionate good-bye to Theodore, 
 who was to start on his holiday directly he could 
 make an end of some important business now in 
 hand. His father told him laughingly that he 
 might have gone a week earlier had he really wanted 
 to go. 
 
 ** I believe there must be some attraction for you 
 in Dorchester, though I am not clever enough to find 
 out what it is," said Mr. Dalbrook, innocently, *'for 
 you have been talking about going away for the last 
 fortnight, and yet you don't go."
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 99 
 
 Lady Carmichael had lingered in the homely old 
 house till afternoon tea, had lingered over her tea, 
 telling her cousins all they wanted to know about 
 smart society in London, that one central spot of 
 bright white light in the dull, grey mass of a busy, 
 common-place world, of which she knew so much, 
 and of which they knew so little. Janet and Sophia 
 professed to be above caring for these things, except 
 from a purely philosophical point of view, as they 
 cared for ants, bees, and wasps ; but they listened 
 eagerly all the same, with occasional expressions of 
 wonder that human beings could be so trivial. 
 
 ** Five hundred pounds spent in flowers at Lady 
 Drumlock's ball ! " cried Sophy, " and to think that 
 in a few more million years the sun may be as cold 
 as the north pole, and what trace will there be then 
 of all this butterfly world ? " 
 
 *' Did the Mountains cut a tremendous dash this 
 season ? " asked Janet, frivolously curious about their 
 immediate neighbours, county people who went to 
 London for the season. '' Of course you know she 
 had thirty thousand pounds left her by an uncle 
 quite lately. And she is so utterly without brains 
 
 H 2
 
 100 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 that I daresay she will spend it all in entertain- 
 ments.'* 
 
 " Oh, they did entertain a good deal, and they did 
 their hest, poor things, and people went to them," 
 Juanita answered, with a deprecating air ; *' but still 
 I should hardly like to say that they are in society. 
 In the first place, she has never succeeded in getting 
 the Prince at any of her dances ; and in the next 
 place, her parties have a cloud of provincial dulness 
 upon them, against which it is in vain to struggle. 
 He can never forget his constituents and his duty to 
 his borough, and that kind of thing does not answer 
 if one wants to give really nice parties. I'm afraid 
 her legacy won't do her much good, poor soul, unless 
 she gets some clever person to show her how to 
 spend it. There is a kind of society instinct, don't 
 you know, and she is without it. I believe the people 
 who give good parties are born, not made — like poets 
 and orators." 
 
 Sir Godfrey looked down at her, smiling at 
 her juvenile arrogance, which, to his mind, 
 was more bewitching than another woman's 
 humility.
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 101; 
 
 ** We mean to show them the way next year, if 
 we take a house in town," he said. 
 
 "But we are not going to have a house in town," 
 answered Juanita, quickly. "Why, Godfrey, you 
 know I have done with all that kind of frivolity. We 
 can go to Victoria- street in May, and stay with our 
 people there long enough to see all the pictures and 
 hear some good music, and just rub shoulders with 
 the friends we like at half-a-dozen parties, and then 
 we will go back to our nest at the Priory. Do you 
 think that I am like Lady Mountain, and want to 
 waste my life upon the society struggle, when I have 
 youV 
 
 It was after five o'clock when they left Dorchester. 
 It was more than half-past seven when they drew 
 near Cheriton, and the sun was setting behind the 
 irregular line of hills towards Studland. They ap- 
 proached the Manor by one of the most picturesque 
 lanes in the district, a lane sunk between high banks, 
 rugged and rocky, and with here and there a massive 
 trunk of beech or oak jutting out above the roadway, 
 while the gnarled and twisted roots spread over the 
 rough, shelving ground, and seemed to hold up the
 
 102 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 meadow-land upon the higher level : a dark, secret- 
 looking lane it must have seemed on a moonless 
 night, sunk so deeply between those earth walls, and 
 overshadowed by those gigantic trunks and interlacing 
 branches ; but in this mellow evening light it was a 
 place in which to linger. There was a right of way 
 through Cheriton Chase, and this sunk lane was the 
 favourite approach. A broad carriage drive crossed 
 the Chase and park, skirted the great elm avenue that 
 led to the house, and swept round by a wide semi- 
 circle to the great iron gates which opened on the 
 high road from Wareham. 
 
 The steep gable ends of an old English cottage 
 rose amidst the trees, on the upper ground just out- 
 side the gate at the end of the lane. It was a 
 veritable old English cottage, and had been standing 
 at that corner of the park- like meadow for more than 
 two hundred years, and had known but little change 
 during those two centuries. It was a good deal 
 larger than the generality of lodges, and it differed 
 from other lodges insomuch as it stood outside the 
 gate instead of inside, and on a higher level than the 
 road ; but it was a lodge all the same, and the duty
 
 THE DAY WILL CO]trE. 103 
 
 of the person who lived in it was to open the gate of 
 Cheriton Chase to all comers, provided they came in 
 such vehicles as were privileged to enjoy the right of 
 way. There was a line drawn somewhere ; perhaps 
 at coal waggons or tradesmen's carts ; but for the 
 generality of vehicles the carriage road across Cheri- 
 ton Chase was free. 
 
 A rosy-faced girl of about fourteen came tripping 
 down the stone steps built into the bank as the car- 
 riage approached, and was curtseying at the open 
 gate in time for Sir Godfrey to drive through with- 
 out slackening the pace. He gave her a friendly 
 nod as he passed. 
 
 " Does Mrs. Porter never condescend to open the 
 gate herself? " he asked Juanita. 
 
 ** Seldom for anyone except my father. I think 
 she makes a point of doing it for him, though I 
 believe he would much rather she didn't. You mustn't 
 sneer at her, Godfrey. She is a very unassuming 
 person, and very grateful for her comfortable position 
 here, though she has known better days, poor soul." 
 
 *' That is always such a vague expression. What 
 were the better days like ? "
 
 104 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 " She is the widow of a captain — in the mercan- 
 tile marine, I think it is called — a man who was 
 almost a gentleman. She was left very poor, and my 
 father, who knew her husband, gave her the lodge to 
 take care of, and a tiny pension — not so much as I 
 spend upon gloves and shoes, I'm afraid ; and she 
 has lived here contentedly and gratefully for the last 
 ten years. It must be a sadly dull life, for she is an 
 intellectual woman, too refined to associate with 
 upper servants and village tradespeople ; so she has 
 no one to talk to — literally no one — except when 
 the Vicar, or any of us call upon her. But that is 
 not the worst, poor thing," pursued Juanita, drop- 
 ping her voice to a subdued and sorrowful tone ; 
 *' she had a great trouble some years ago. You 
 remember, don't you, Godfrey ? " 
 
 " I blush to say that Mrs. Porter's trouble has 
 escaped my memory." 
 
 " Oh, you have been so much away ; you would 
 hardly hear anything about it, perhaps. She had 
 an only daughter — her only child — a very handsome 
 girl, whom she had educated most carefully ; and 
 the girl went wrong, and disappeared. I never heard
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 105 
 
 the circumstances. I was not supposed to know, but 
 I know slie vanished suddenly, and that there was a 
 good deal of fuss with mother and the servants, and 
 the Vicar; and Mrs. Porter's hair began to whiten 
 from that time, and people who had not cared much 
 for her before were so sorry that they grew quite 
 fond of her." 
 
 "It is a common story enough," said Godfrey, 
 *' what could a handsome girl do — except go wrong 
 — in such a Hfe as that. Did she open the gate 
 while she was here ? " 
 
 " Only for my father, I believe. Mrs. Porter has 
 always contrived to keep a girl in a pinafore, like 
 that girl you saw just now. All the girls come 
 from the same family, or have done for the last six 
 or seven years. As soon as the girl grows out of 
 pinafores she goes off to some better service, and a 
 younger sister drops into her place." 
 
 *' And her pinafores, I suppose." 
 
 " Mrs. Porter's girls always do well. She has a 
 reputation for making a good servant out of the raw 
 material." 
 
 ** A clever woman, no doubt ; very clever, to have
 
 106 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 secured a lodge-keeper's berth without being obliged 
 to open the gate ; a woman who knows how to take 
 care of herself." 
 
 '* You ought not to disparage her, Godfrey. The 
 poor thing has known so much trouble — think of 
 what it was to lose the daughter she loved — and in 
 such a way — worse than death." 
 
 ** I don't know about that. Death means the 
 end. A loving mother might rather keep the sinner 
 than lose the saint, and the sinner may wash herself 
 clean and become a saint — after the order of Mary 
 Magdalene. If this Mrs. Porter had been really 
 devoted to her daughter she would have followed her 
 and brought her back to the fold. She would not 
 be here, leading a life of genteel idleness in that 
 picturesque old cottage while the lost sheep is still 
 astray in the wilderness." 
 
 " You are very hard upon her, Godfrey." 
 
 " I am hard upon all shams and pretences. I 
 have not spoken to Mrs. Porter above half-a-dozen 
 times in my life — she never opens the gate for me, 
 you know — but I have a fixed impression that she 
 is a hypocrite — a harmless hypocrite, perhaps — one
 
 THE DAY ^'ILL COME. 107 
 
 of those women whose chief object in life is to stand 
 well with the Yicar of her parish." 
 
 They were at the hall door by this time, and it 
 was a quarter to eight. 
 
 ''Let us sit in the drawing-room this evening, 
 Godfrey," said Juanita, as she ran off to dress for 
 dinner. '' The library would give me the horrors 
 after last night." 
 
 ** My capricious one. You will be tired of the 
 drawing-room to-mon'ow. I should not be sur- 
 prised if you ordered me to sit on the housetop. 
 We might rig up a tent for afternoon tea between 
 two chimney stacks." 
 
 Juanita made a rapid toilet, and appeared in one 
 of her graceful cream white tea gowns, veiled in a 
 cloud of softest lace, just as the clocks were striking 
 eight. She was all gaiety to-night, just as she had 
 been all morbid apprehension last night ; and when 
 they went to the drawing-room after dinner — to- 
 gether, for it was not to be supposed that Sir God- 
 frey would linger over a solitary glass of claret — she 
 flew to the grand piano and began to play Tito 
 Mattei's famous waltz, which seemed the most con-
 
 108 * THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 summate expression of joyousness possible to her. 
 The brilliant music filled the atmosphere with 
 gaiety, while the face of the player, turned to her 
 husband as she played, harmonized with the light- 
 hearted melody. 
 
 The drawing-room was as frivolously pretty as the 
 library was soberly grand. It was Lady Cheriton's 
 taste which had ruled here, and the room was a 
 kind of record of her ladyship's travels. She had 
 bought pretty things, or curious things wherever 
 they took her fancy, and had brought them home to 
 her Cheriton drawing-room. Thus the walls were 
 hung with Algerian embroideries on damask or 
 satin, and decorated with Ehodian pottery. The 
 furniture was a mixture of old French and old 
 Italian. The Dresden tea services and ivory statu- 
 ettes, and capo di monte vases, and Copenhagen 
 figures, had been picked up all over the Continent, 
 without any regard to their combined effect; but 
 there were so many things that the ultimate result 
 was delightful, the room being spacious enough to 
 hold everything without the slightest appearance of 
 over-crowding.
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 109 
 
 The piano stood in a central position, and was 
 draped with a Japanese robe of state — a mass of 
 rainbow-hued embroidery on a ground of violet satin 
 almost covered with gold thread. It was the most 
 gorgeous fabric Godfrey Carmichael had ever seen, 
 and it made the piano a spot of vivid parti-coloured 
 light, amidst the more subdued colouring of the 
 room — the silvery silken curtains, the delicate 
 Indian muslin draperies, and the dull tawny plush 
 coverings of sofas and chairs. 
 
 The room was lighted only by clusters of wax 
 candles, and a reading lamp on a small table near 
 one of the windows. It was a rule that wherever 
 Sir Godfrey spent his evening there must always be 
 a reading table and lamp ready for him. 
 
 He showed no eagerness for his books yet awhile, 
 but seemed completely happy lolling at full length 
 on a sofa near the piano listening and watching as 
 Juanita played. She played more of Mattel's 
 brilliant music — another waltz — an arrangement of 
 Non e ver — and then dashed into one of Chopin's 
 wildest mazurkas, with an audacious self-abandon- 
 ment that was almost genius.
 
 110 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 Godfrey listened rapturously, delighted with the 
 music for its own sake, but even more delighted for 
 the gladness which it expressed. 
 
 She stopped at last, breathless, after Mendel- 
 ssohn's Capriccio. Godfrey had risen from the sofa 
 and was standing by her side. 
 
 " I'm afraid I must have tired you to death," she 
 said, " but I had a strange sort of feeling that I 
 must go on playing. That music was a safety valve 
 for my high spirits." 
 
 " My darling, I am so glad to see that you have 
 done with imaginary woes. We may have real 
 troubles of some kind to face by-and-by, perhaps, 
 as we go down the hill, so it would be very foolish 
 to abandon ourselves to fancied sorrows while we 
 are on the top." 
 
 " Keal troubles — yes — sickness, anxiety, the fear 
 of parting," said Juanita, in a troubled voice. 
 " Oh, Godfrey, if we were to give half our fortune 
 to the poor — if we were to make some great sacri- 
 fice — do you think God would spare us such pangs 
 as these — the fear — the horrible fear of being 
 parted from each other?"
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. Ill 
 
 " My dearest, we cannot make a bargain with 
 Providence. We can only do our duty, and hope 
 for the best." 
 
 " At any rate, let us be very — very good to the 
 poor," urged Juanita, with intense earnestness, 
 " let us have their prayers to plead for us." 
 
 The night was warm and still, and the windows 
 were all open to the terrace. Godfrey and Juanita 
 took their coffee in their favourite corner by the 
 magnolia tree, and sat there for a long time in the 
 soft light of the stars, talking the old sweet talk of 
 their future life. 
 
 " We must drive to Swanage and see Lady Jane 
 to-morrow," said Juanita by-and-by. *' Don't you 
 think it was very wrong to go to see my people — only 
 cousins after all — before we went to your mother? " 
 
 " She will come to us, dear, directly we give her 
 permission. I know she is dying to see you in your 
 new character." 
 
 *' How lovely she looked at the wedding, in her 
 pale grey gown and bonnet. I love her almost as 
 well as I love my own dear, good, indulgent mother, 
 and I think she is the most perfect lady I ever met."
 
 112 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 " I don't think you'll find her very much like the 
 typical mother-in-law, at any rate," replied Godfrey, 
 gaily. 
 
 They decided on driving to Swanage next morn- 
 ing. They would go in the landau, and bring " the 
 mother " back with them for a day or two, if she 
 could be persuaded to come. 
 
 Juanita stifled a yawn presently, and seemed 
 somewhat languid after her sleepless night and long 
 day of talk and vivacity. 
 
 "I am getting very stupid company," she said. 
 ** I'll go to bed early to-night, Godfrey, and leave 
 you an hour's quiet with 'Wider Horizons.' I 
 know you are longing to go on with that book, but 
 your chatter-box wife won't let you." 
 
 Of course he protested that her society was worth 
 more than all the books in the British Museum. He 
 ofi'ered to take his book up to her room and read her 
 to sleep, if she liked ; but she would not have it so. 
 
 ** You shall have your own quiet corner and your 
 books, just as if you were still a bachelor," she said, 
 caressingly, as she hung upon his shoulder for a 
 good-night kiss. *'As for me, I am utterly tired
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 113 
 
 out. Janet and Sophy talked me to death ; and 
 then there was the long drive home. I shall be as 
 fresh as ever to-morrow morning, and ready to be 
 off to dear Lady Jane." 
 
 He went into the hall with her, and to the top of 
 the stairs for the privilege of carrying her candle- 
 stick, and he only left her at the end of the corridor 
 out of which her room opened. 
 
 She did not ring for her maid, preferring solitude 
 to that young person's attendance. She did not 
 want to be worried with elaborate hair-brushing or 
 ceremonies of any kind. She was thoroughly ex- 
 hausted with the alternations of emotion of which 
 her life had been made up of late, and she fell asleep 
 almost as soon as her head touched her pillow. 
 
 The bedroom was over the drawing-room. Her 
 last look from the open casement had shown her the 
 reflection of the lights below on the terrace. She 
 was near enough to have spoken out of the window 
 to her husband, had she been so minded. She could 
 picture him sitting at the table at the corner window, 
 in his thoughtful attitude, his head bent over his 
 book, one knee drawn up nearly to his chin, one 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 arm hanging loosely across the arm of his low^ easy 
 chair. She had watched him thus many a time, 
 completely absorbed in his book. 
 
 She slept as tranquilly as an infant, and her 
 dream-wanderings were all in pleasant places ; with 
 him ; always with him ; confused after the manner 
 of all dreams, but with no sign of trouble. 
 
 What was this dream about being with him at 
 Woolwich where they were firing a big gun ? A 
 curious dream ! She had been there once with her 
 father to see a gun drawn — but she had never seen 
 one fired there — and now in her dream she stood in 
 a crowd of strange faces, fronting the river, and 
 there was a long grey ironclad on the water — a 
 turret ship — and there came a flash, and then a puff 
 of white smoke, and the report of a gun, short and 
 sharp, not like the roar of a cannon by any means, 
 and yet her dream showed her the dark sullen gun 
 on the grey deck, the biggest gun she had ever seen. 
 
 She started up from her pillow, cold and trem- 
 bling. That report of the gun had seemed so real 
 and so near, that it had awakened her. She was 
 wide awake now, and pushed back her loose hair
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 115 
 
 from her eyes, and felt under her pillow for her 
 watch, and looked at it in the dim light of the night- 
 lamp on the table by her bed. 
 
 *' A quarter to one." 
 
 She had left the drawing-room a few minutes after 
 ten. It was long for Godfrey to have sat reading 
 alone ; but he was insatiable when he had a new 
 book that interested him. 
 
 She got up and put on her slippers and dressing- 
 gown, prepared to take him to task for his late 
 hours. She was not alarmed by her dream, but the 
 sound of that sharp report was still in her ears as 
 she lighted her candle and went down into the silent 
 house. 
 
 She opened the drawing-room door, and looked 
 across to the spot where she expected to see her 
 husband sitting. His chair was empty. The lamp 
 was burning just as she had left it hours ago, burn- 
 ing with a steady light under the green porcelain 
 shade, but he was not there. 
 
 Puzzled, and with a touch of fear, she went 
 slowly across the room towards his chair. He had 
 strayed out on to the terrace perhaps — he had gone 
 
 I 2
 
 116 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 out for a final smoke. She would steal after him 
 in her long white gown, and frighten him if she 
 could. 
 
 *' He ought at least to take me for a ghost," she 
 thought. 
 
 She stopped transfixed with a sudden horror. He 
 was lying on the carpet at her feet in a huddled 
 heap, just as he had rolled out of his chair. His 
 head was bent forward between his shoulders, his 
 face was hidden. She tried to lift his head, hang- 
 ing over him, calling to him in passionate entreaty ; 
 and, behold, her hands and arms were drowned in 
 blood. His blood splashed her white peignoir. It 
 was all over her. She seemed to be steeped in it, 
 as she sat on the floor trying to get a look at his 
 face — to see if his wound was mortal. 
 
 For some moments she had no other thought than 
 to sit there in her horror, repeating his name in 
 every accent of terror and of love, beseeching him 
 to answer her. Then gradually came the conviction 
 of his unconsciousness, and of the need of help. 
 He was badly hurt — dangerously hurt — but it might 
 not be mortal. Help must be got. He must be
 
 THE DAY VTLLIj COME. 117 
 
 cured somehow. She could not believe that he was 
 to die. 
 
 She rushed to the bell and rang again, and again, 
 and again, hardly taking her finger from the little 
 ivory knob, listening as the shrill electric peal 
 vibrated through the silent house. It seemed an 
 age before there was any response, and then three 
 servants came hurrying in — the butler, and one of 
 the footmen, and a scared housemaid. They saw her 
 standing there, tall and white, dabbled with blood. 
 
 ** Some one has been trying to murder him," she 
 cried. " Didn't you hear a gun ? " 
 
 No, no one had heard anything till they heard the 
 bell. The two men lifted Sir Godfrey from the floor 
 to the sofa, and did all they could do to staunch 
 that deadly wound in his neck, from which the blood 
 was still pouring — a bullet wound. Lambert, the 
 butler, was afraid that the bullet had pierced the 
 jugular vein. 
 
 If there was life still, it was only ebbing life. 
 Juanita flung herself on the ground beside that 
 prostrate form and kissed the unconscious lips, and 
 the cold brow, and those pallid cheeks ; kissed and
 
 lis THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 cried over him, and repeated again and again that 
 the wound was not mortal. 
 
 "Is anyone going for the doctor?" she cried, 
 frantically. "Are you all going to stand still and 
 see him die?" 
 
 Lamhert assured her that Thomas was gone to 
 the stable to wake the men, and despatch a 
 mounted messenger for Mr. Dolby, the family 
 doctor. 
 
 " He might have helped us more if he had run 
 there himself," cried Juanita. " There will be time 
 lost in waking the men, and saddling a horse. I 
 could go there faster." 
 
 She looked at the door as if she had half re- 
 solved to rush off to the village in her dressing- 
 gown and slippers. And then she looked again at 
 that marble face, and again fell upon her knees by 
 the sofa, and laid her cheek against that bloodless 
 cheek, and moaned and cried over him ; while the 
 butler went to get brandy, with but little hope in 
 his own mind of any useful result. 
 
 "What an end to a honeymoon," he said to 
 himself despondently.
 
 CHAPTER YI. 
 
 " Is not short pa^Tie well borne that bringes long ease, 
 And laves the soiile to sleepe in quiet grave ? 
 
 Sleeps after toyle, port after stormie seas, 
 Ease after warre, death after life . . . /' 
 
 The morning dawned upon a weeping household. 
 There was nothing to be done when Mr. Dolby, the 
 village surgeon, arrived at Cheriton House. He 
 could only examine the death-wound and express his 
 opinion as to its character. 
 
 •• It was certainly not self-inflicted," he told the 
 servants, as they stood about him in a stony group. 
 
 *' Self-inflicted, indeed!" echoed Lambert, "I 
 should think not. If ever there was a voung man 
 who had cause to set store by his life it was Sir 
 Godfrey Carmichael. It's murder, Mr. Dolby, rank 
 murder." 
 
 "Yes, I'm afraid it's murder," said Dolby, with 
 an air which implied that suicide would have been a 
 bagatelle in comparison.
 
 120 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 " But who can have done it, and why?" he asked 
 after a pause. 
 
 The servants inclined to the opinion that it was 
 the act of a poacher. Lord Cheriton had always 
 been what they called a mark upon poachers. There 
 was doubtless a vendetta to which the pheasant snar- 
 ing fraternity had pledged themselves, and Sir God- 
 frey was the victim of that vendetta ; however strange 
 it might appear that hatred of Lord Cheriton should 
 find its expression in the murder of Lord Cheriton's 
 son-in-law. 
 
 " We must wait for the inquest before we can 
 know anything," said Dolby, when he had done all 
 that surgery could do for that cold clay, which w^as 
 to compose the lifeless form in its final rest in a 
 spare bedroom at the end of the corridor, remote 
 from that bridal chamber where Juanita was lying 
 motionless in her dumb despair. 
 
 The local policeman was on the scene at seven 
 o'clock, prowling about the house with a countenance 
 of solemn stolidity, and asking questions which 
 seemed to have very little direct bearing on the 
 case, and taking measurements between the spot
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 121 
 
 where the murdered man had been found, too plainly 
 marked by the pool of blood which had soaked into 
 the velvet pile, and imaginary points upon the ter- 
 race outside, with the doctor at his elbow to make 
 suggestions, and as far as in him lay behaving as a 
 skilled London detective might have behaved under 
 the same circumstances, which conduct on his part 
 did not prevent Mr. Dolby telegraphing to Scotland 
 Yard as soon as the wires were at his disposal. 
 
 He was in the village post-office when the clock 
 struck eight, and the post-mistress, who had hung 
 out a flag and decorated her shop front with garlands 
 on the wedding day, was watching him with an 
 awe-stricken countenance as he wrote his tele- 
 grams. 
 
 The first was to Scotland Yard : — 
 
 ** Sir Godfrey Carmichael murdered late last 
 night. Send one of your most trustworthy men to 
 investigate." 
 
 The second was to Lord Cheriton, Grand Hotel, 
 Parame St. Malo, France : — 
 
 ** Sir Godfrey Carmichael was murdered last 
 eight, between twelve and one o'clock. Murderer
 
 122 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 unknown. Death instantaneous. Pray come imme- 
 diately." 
 
 The third was to Matthew Dalbrook, more briefly 
 announcing the murder. 
 
 He was going to send a fourth message to Lady 
 Jane Carmichael, began to write her address, then 
 thought better of it, and tore up the form. 
 
 "I'll drive over and tell her," he said to himself. 
 *' Poor soul, it will break her heart, let her learn it 
 hov/ she may. But it would be cruel to telegraph, 
 all the same." 
 
 Every one at Cheriton knew that Lady Jane's 
 affections were centred upon her only son. She had 
 daughters, and she was very fond of them. They 
 were both married, and had married well ; but their 
 homes lay far off, one in the Midlands, the other in 
 the North of England, and although in each case 
 there was a nursery full of grandchildren, neither 
 the young married women nor the babies had ever 
 filled Lady Jane's heart as her son had filled it. 
 
 And now Mr. Dolby had taken upon himself to go 
 and tell this gentle widow that the light of her life 
 was extinguished ; that the son she adored had been
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 123 
 
 brutally and inexplicably murdered. It was a hard 
 thing for any man to do ; and Mr. Dolby was a 
 warm-hearted man, with home ties of his own. 
 
 Before Mr. Dolby's gig was half-way to Swanage, 
 his telegram had been delivered at Dorchester, and 
 Matthew Dalbrook and his son were starting for 
 Cheriton with a pair of horses in the solicitor's neat 
 T cart, which was usually driven with one. Theo- 
 dore drove, and father and son sat side by side in a 
 dreary silence. 
 
 What could be said ? The telegram told so little. 
 They had speculated and wondered about it in brief 
 broken sentences as they stood in the office fronting 
 the sunny street, waiting for the carriage. They 
 had asked each other if this ghastly thing could be ; 
 if it were not some mad metamorphose of words, 
 some blunder of a telegraph clerk's, rather than a 
 horrible reality. 
 
 Murdered — a man who had been sitting at their 
 table, full of life and spirits, in the glow of youth, 
 and health, and happiness, less than twenty-four 
 hours ago ! Murdered — a man who had never known 
 what it was to have an enemy, who had been popular
 
 124 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 with all classes ! Had been ! How awful to think 
 of him as belonging to the past, he who yesterday 
 looked forward to so radiant a future. And Theo- 
 dore Dalbrook had envied him, as even the most 
 generous of men must needs envy the winner in the 
 race for love. 
 
 Could it be ? Or if it were really true, how could 
 it be ? What manner of murderer ? What motive 
 for the murder ? Where had it happened ? On the 
 highway — in the woody labyrinths of the Chase ? 
 And upon the mind of Theodore flashed the same 
 idea which had suggested itself to the servants. It 
 might be the work of a poacher whom Sir Godfrey 
 had surprised during a late ramble. Yet a poacher 
 must be hard bested before he resorts to murder, 
 and Sir Godfrey — easy tempered and generous — was 
 hardly the kind of man to take upon himself the 
 functions of a gamekeeper, and give chase to any 
 casual depredator. It was useless to wonder or to 
 argue while the facts of the case were all unrevealed. 
 It would be time to do that when they were at 
 Cheriton. So the father and son sat in a dismal 
 silence, save that now and again the elder man
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 125 
 
 siglied "Poor Juanita, my poor Juanita; and she 
 was so happy yesterday." 
 
 Theodore winced at the words. Yes, she had 
 been so happy, and he had despaired because of her 
 happiness. The cup of gladness which had brimmed 
 over for her had been to him a fountain of bitterness. 
 It seemed to him as if he had never realized how 
 fondly he loved her till he saw her by her husband's 
 side, an embodiment of life's sunshine, innocently 
 revealing her felicity in every look and word. It 
 was so long since he had ceased to hope. He had 
 even taught himself to think he was resigned to his 
 fate, that he could live his life without her. But 
 that delusion ceased yesterday, and he knew that 
 she was dearer than she had ever been to him now 
 that she was irrevocably lost. It was human nature, 
 perhaps, to love her best when love was most hope- 
 less. 
 
 They drove along the level road towards Cheriton, 
 in the dewy freshness of the summer morning, by 
 meadow and copse, by heath and cornfield, the sky- 
 larks carolling in the hot blue sky, the corncrake 
 creaking inside the hedge, the chaffinch reiterating
 
 126 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 bis monotonous note, the jay screaming in the wood, 
 all living creatures revelling in the cloudless summer. 
 It was hard, awful, unsupportable, that he who was 
 with them yesterday, who had driven along this road 
 under the westering sun, was now cold clay, a subject 
 for the coroner, a something to be hidden away in 
 the family vault, and forgotten as soon as possible ; 
 for what does consolation mean except persuasion to 
 forget ? 
 
 Never had the way between Dorchester and Cheri- 
 ton Chase looked lovelier than in this morning 
 atmosphere ; never had the cattle grouped them- 
 selves into more delightful pictures amidst those 
 shallow waters which reflected the sky ; never had 
 the lights and shadows been fairer upon those level 
 meadows and yonder broken hills. Theodore Dal- 
 brook loved every bit of that familiar landscape ; and 
 even to-day, amidst the horror and wonder of his 
 distracted thoughts, he had a dim sense of surround- 
 ing beauty, as of something seen in a dream. He 
 could have hardly told where he was, or what the 
 season was, or whether it was the morning or the 
 evening light that was gilding the fields yonder.
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 127 
 
 The lowered blinds at Cheriton told only too 
 surely that the ghastly announcement in the tele- 
 gram was no clerical error. The face of the foot- 
 man who opened the door was pale with distress. 
 He conducted Mr. Dalbrook and his son to the 
 library, where the butler appeared almost imme- 
 diately to answer the elder man's eager questions. 
 
 Not on the highway, not in the woods or the Park, 
 but in the drawing-room where the butler had seen 
 him sitting in a lov; arm-chair by the open window, 
 in the tranquil summer night, absorbed in his book. 
 
 " He was that wrapped up that I don't believe he 
 knew I was in the room, sir," said Lambert, *' till I 
 asked him if there was anything further wanted for 
 the night, and then he starts, looks up at me with 
 his pleasant smile, and answers in his quiet friendly 
 way, * Nothing more, thank you, Lambert. Is it 
 very late ? ' I told him it was past eleven, and I 
 asked if I should shut the drawing-room shutters 
 before I went to bed, but he says * No, I'll see to 
 that — I like the windows open,' and then he went on 
 reading, and less than two hours afterwards he was 
 lying on the ground, in front of the window — dead.'
 
 128 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 " Have you any suspicion, Lambert, as to the 
 murderer ? " 
 
 "Well, no, sir; not unless it was a poacher or 
 an escaped lunatic." 
 
 *' The lunatic seems rather the more probable 
 conjecture," said Matthew Dalbrook. " The police 
 are at work already, I hope." 
 
 *'Well, sir, yes; our local police are doing all 
 that lies in their power, and I have done what I 
 could to assist them. Mr. Dolby wired to Scotland 
 Yard at the same time as he wired to you." 
 
 " That was wisely done. Have there been no 
 traces of the murderer discovered ? No indication 
 of any kind? " 
 
 *' Nothing, sir ; but one of the under-housemaids 
 remembers to have heard footsteps about on the 
 terrace, after dark, on several occasions within the 
 last fortnight ; once while Sir Godfrey and our 
 young lady were at dinner, and two or three times 
 at a later hour when they were in the drawing-room 
 or the library." 
 
 ** Did she see any one ? " 
 
 " No, sir ; she is rather a dull kind of girl, and
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 129 
 
 never so much as troubled to find out what the 
 footsteps meant. Her bedroom is one of the old 
 attics on the south side of the house, and she was 
 sitting at work near her open window when she 
 heard the footsteps — going and coming — slow and 
 stealthy like — upon the terrace at intervals. She is 
 sure they were not her ladyship's nor Sir Godfrey's 
 steps on either occasion. She says she knows their 
 walk, and she would swear to these footsteps as 
 altogether different. Slower, more creeping-like, as 
 she puts it." 
 
 '' Has no one been seen lurking about after 
 dark?" 
 
 "No one, sir, as we have heard of; and the 
 constable questioned all the servants, pretty close, I 
 can tell you. He hasn't left much for the London 
 detective to do." 
 
 Matthew Dalbrook had been the only questioner 
 in this interrogatory. Theodore had sunk into a 
 chair on entering the room, and sat silent, with a 
 face of marble. He was thinking of the stricken 
 girl whose life had been desolated by this mysterious 
 crime. His father had not forgotten her; but he 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 had wanted, first of all, to learn all lie could about 
 her husband's death. 
 
 " How does Lady Carmichael bear it? " he asked 
 presently. 
 
 "Very sadly, sir; very sadly. Mrs. Morley and 
 Celestine are both with her. Mr. Dolby ordered 
 that she should be kept as quite as possible, not 
 allowed to leave her room if they could help it, but 
 it has been very difficult to keep her quiet. Poor 
 dear young lady ! She wanted to go to him.'* 
 
 *' Poor girl ! poor girl ! So happy yesterday ! " 
 said Matthew Dalbrook. 
 
 His son sat silent, as if he were made of stone. 
 
 Far, very far off, as it were at the end of a long 
 dark vista, cut sharply across an impenetrable wood 
 of choking thorns and blinding briars, he saw 
 Juanita again radiant, again happy, again loving 
 and beloved, and on the threshold of another life. 
 The vision dazzled him, almost to blindness. But 
 could it ever be ? Could that loving heart ever 
 forget this agony of to-day — ever beat again to a 
 joyful measure? He wrenched himself from that 
 selfish reverie ; he felt a wretch for having yielded
 
 THE DAY ^TLL COME. 131 
 
 up his imagination, even for a moment, to that 
 alluring vision. He was here to mourn with her, 
 here to pity her — to sympathize with this unspeak- 
 able grief. Murdered ! Her lover-husband shot to 
 death by an unknown hand, her honeymoon ended 
 with one murderous flash — that honeymoon which 
 had seemed the prelude to a lifetime of love. 
 
 " I should like to see her," said Mr. Dalbrook. 
 *•' I think it would be a comfort to her to see me, 
 however agitated she may be. ^Yill you take my 
 name to the housekeeper, and ask her opinion '? " 
 
 Lambert looked doubtful as to the wisdom of the 
 course, but was ready to obey all the same. 
 
 *' Mr. Dolby said she was to be kept very quiet, 
 sir — that she wasn't to see anybody." 
 
 " That would hardly apply to her own people. 
 Mr. Dolby telegi-aphed for me." 
 
 ** Did he, sir ? Then I conclude he would not 
 object to her ladyship seeing you. I'll send up 
 your name. Perhaps, while the message is being 
 taken, you would like to have a look at the spot 
 where it happened? " 
 
 *' Yes. I want to know all that can be known. '^ 
 
 K 2
 
 132 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 Lambert had been so busy with the constable all 
 the morning that he felt himself almost on a level 
 with Scotland Yard talent, and he took a morbid 
 interest in that dark stain on the delicate half tints 
 of the velvet pile, and in such few details as he was 
 able to expound. He despatched a footman up- 
 stairs, and he led the Dalbrooks to the drawing- 
 room, where he opened the shutters of that window 
 through which the assassin must have aimed, and 
 let a flood of sunshine into the darkened room. 
 
 The chair, the table, and lamp stood exactly as 
 they had stood last night. Lambert took credit 
 to himself for not having allowed them to be moved 
 by so much as an inch. 
 
 *' Any assistance in my power I shall be only to 
 happy to give to the London detective," he said. 
 *' Of course, coming on the scene as a total stranger, 
 he can't be expected to do much without help." 
 
 There was no need to point out that ghastly stain 
 upon the carpet. The shaft of noonday sunshine 
 seemed to concentrate its brightness on that grisly 
 patch. Dark, dark, dark with the witness of a 
 •cruel murder — the murder of a man who had never
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 133 
 
 done an unkindly act, or harboured an unworthy 
 thought. 
 
 Theodore Dalbrook stood looking at that stain. 
 It seemed to bring the fatal reality nearer to him. 
 He looked at the low chair with its covering of pea- 
 cock plush, and its Turkish embroidery draped 
 daintily across the broad back and capacious arms — 
 a chair to live in — a sybarite's estate — and then at 
 the satinwood book-table filled with such books as 
 the lounger loves — Southey's " Doctor," " Burton,'' 
 *' Table Talk," by Coleridge, Whateley, Rogers, 
 *' The Sentimental Journey," "Rochefoucauld," 
 ** Caxtoniana," "Elia," and thrown carelessly upon 
 one of the shelves a handkerchief of cobweb cambric, 
 with a monogram that occupied a third of the fabric, 
 " J.C." Her handkerchief, dropped there last night, 
 as she arranged the books for her husband's use — 
 putting her own favourites in his way. 
 
 Lambert took up a book and opened it with a dis- 
 mal smile, handing it to Mr. Dalbrook as he did so. 
 
 It was "Wider Horizons," the volume he had 
 been reading when the bullet struck him, and those 
 open pages were spattered with his blood.
 
 134 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 "Put it away for God's sake, man," cried Dal- 
 brook, horrified. '*' Whatever you do don't let Lady 
 Carmichael see it." 
 
 "No, sir, better not, perhaps, sir — but it's 
 evidence, and it ought to be produced at the 
 inquest." 
 
 " Produce it if you like ; but there is evidence 
 enough to show that he was murdered on this 
 spot." 
 
 "As he sat reading, sir; the book is a great 
 point." 
 
 And then Lambert expounded the position of that 
 lifeless form, making much of every detail, as he had 
 done to the constable. 
 
 While he was talking, the door was opened 
 suddenly, and Juanita rushed into the room. 
 
 " Lord have mercy on us, she musn't see that," 
 cried Lambert, pointing to the carpet. 
 
 Matthew Dalbrook hurried forward to meet her, 
 and caught her in his arms before she could reach 
 that fatal spot. He held her there, looking at her 
 with pitying eyes, while Theodore approached slowly, 
 silently, agonized by the sight of her agony. The
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 135 
 
 change from the joyous self-abandonment of yester- 
 day to the rigid horror of to-day was the most 
 appalling transformation that he had ever looked 
 upon. Her face was of a livid pallor, her large 
 dark eyes were distended and fixed, and all their 
 brilliancy was quenched like a light blown out. 
 Her blanched lips trembled as she tried to speak, 
 and it was after several futile efforts to express her 
 meaning that she finally succeeded in shaping a 
 sentence distinctly. 
 
 ** Have they found his murderer ? " 
 
 *'Not yet, dearest. It is far too soon to hope for 
 that. But it is not for yoa to think about that, 
 Juanita. All will be done — be sure — rest secure in 
 
 the devotion of those who love you; and " with 
 
 a break in his voice, ** who loved him." 
 
 She lifted her head quickly, with an angry light 
 in the eyes which had been so dull till that moment. 
 
 " Do you think I will leave that work to others ?" 
 she said. " It is my business. It is all that God 
 has left me to do in this world. It is my business 
 to see that his murderer suffers — not as I suffer — 
 that can never be — but all that the law can do —
 
 136 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 tne law which is so merciful to murderers now-a- 
 days. You don't think he can get off hghtly, do 
 you, uncle ? They will hang him, won't they ? 
 Hang him — hang him — hang him," she repeated, 
 in hoarse dull syllables. " A few moments' agony 
 after a night of terror. So little — so little ! And 
 I have to live my desolate life. My punishment is 
 for a lifetime." 
 
 **My love, God will be good to you. He can 
 lighten all burdens," murmured Mr. Dalbrook, 
 gently. 
 
 *' He cannot lighten mine, not by the weight of a 
 single hair. He has stretched forth His hand 
 against me in hatred and anger, perhaps because I 
 loved His creature better than I loved Him." 
 
 ** My dearest, this is madness " 
 
 ** I did, I did," she reiterated. " I loved my 
 husband better than I loved my God. I would 
 have worshipped Satan if I could have saved him 
 by Satan's help. I loved him with all my heart, 
 and mind, and strength, as we are taught to love 
 God. There was not room in my heart for any 
 other rehgion. He was the beginning and the end
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 137 
 
 of my creed. And God saw my happy love and 
 hated me for it. He is a jealous God. We are 
 taught that when we are little children. He is a 
 jealous God, and He put it into the head of some 
 distracted creature to come to that window and shoot 
 my husband." 
 
 A violent fit of hysteria followed these wild words. 
 Matthew Dalbrook felt that all attempts at conso- 
 lation must needs be vain for some time to come. 
 Until this tempest of grief was calmed nothing could 
 be done. 
 
 " She will have her mother here in a day or 
 two," said Theodore. " That may bring some 
 comfort." 
 
 Juanita heard him even in the midst of her 
 hysterical sobbing. Her hearing was abnormally 
 keen. 
 
 "No one, no one can comfort me, unless they can 
 give me back my dead." 
 
 She started up suddenly from the sofa where Mat- 
 thew had placed her, and grasped his arm with con- 
 vulsive force. 
 
 *' Take me to him," she entreated, '' take me to
 
 138 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 liim, uncle. You were always kind to me. They 
 won't let me go to him. It is brutal, it is infamous 
 of them. I have a right to be there." 
 
 *' By-and-by, my dear girl, when you are 
 calmer." 
 
 ** I will be calm this instant if you will take me 
 to him," she said, commanding herself at once, 
 with a tremendous effort, choking down those rising 
 sobs, clasping her convulsed throat with constrain- 
 ing hands, tightening her tremulous lips. 
 
 " See," she said, "I am quite calm now. I will 
 not give way again. Take me to him. Let me see 
 him — that I may be sure my happy life was not all 
 a dieam — a mad-woman's dream — as it seems to 
 have been now, when I cannot look upon his face." 
 
 Mr. Dalbrook looked at his son interrogatively. 
 
 " Let her see him," said Theodore, gently. 
 *' We cannot lessen her sorrow. It must have its 
 way. Better perhaps that she should see him, and 
 accustom herself to her grief ; better for her brain, 
 however it may torture her heart." 
 
 He saw the risk of a further calamity in his 
 cousin's state — the fear that her mind would sue-
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 139 
 
 cumb under the burden of her sorrow. It seemed 
 to him that there was more danger in thwarting her 
 natural desire to look upon her beloved dead than in 
 letting her have her way. 
 
 The housekeeper had followed her young mistress 
 to the drawing-room door, and was waiting there. 
 She shook her head, and murmured something 
 about Mr. Dolby's orders, but submitted to the 
 authority of a kinsman and family solicitor, as 
 even superior to the faculty. 
 
 She led the way silently to that upper chamber 
 where the murdered man was lying. Matthew 
 Dalbrook put his cousin's icy hand through his arm 
 and supported her steps as they slowly followed. 
 Theodore remained in the drawing-room, walking 
 up and down, in deepest thought, stopping now and 
 then in his slow pacing to and fro to contemplate 
 that stain upon the velvet pile, and the empty chair 
 beside it. 
 
 In the room above Juanita knelt beside the bed 
 where he who kissed her last night on the threshold 
 of her chamber lay in his last slumber, a marble 
 figure with calm dead face shrouded by the snowy
 
 140 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 sheet, with flowers — white waxen exotics — scattered 
 about the bed. She lifted the sheet, and looked 
 upon him, and kissed him with love's last despair- 
 ing kiss, and then she knelt beside the bed, with 
 her face bent in her clasped hands, calmer than she 
 had been at any moment since she found her mur- 
 dered husband lying at her feet. 
 
 "It's wonderful," whispered the housekeeper to 
 Mr. Dalbrook ; "it seems to have soothed her, poor 
 dear, to see him — and I was afraid she would have 
 broke down worse than ever." 
 
 " You must give way to her a little, Mrs. Morley. 
 She has a powerful mind, and she must not be 
 treated like a child. She will live through her 
 trouble, and rise superior to it, be sure of that ; 
 terrible as it is." 
 
 The door opened softly, and a woman came into 
 the room, a woman of about five-and-forty, of 
 middle height, slim and delicately made, with aqui- 
 line nose and fair complexion, and flaxen hair just 
 touched with grey. She was deadly pale, but her 
 eyes were tearless, and she came quietly to the bed, 
 and fell on her knees by Juanita's side and hid her
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 141 
 
 face as Juainta's was hidden, and the first sound 
 that came from her lips was a long low moan — a 
 sound of greater agony than Matthew Dalbrook had 
 ever heard in his life until that moment. 
 
 "Good God," he muttered to himself, as he 
 moved to a distant window, " I had forgotten Lady 
 Jane." 
 
 It was Lady Jane, the gentle soul who had loved 
 that poor clay with a love that had grown and 
 strengthened with every year of his life, with a love 
 that had won liberal response from the recipient. 
 There had never been a cloud between them, never 
 one moment of disagreement or doubt. Each had 
 been secure in the certainty of the other's affection. 
 It had been a union such as is not often seen be- 
 tween mother and son ; and it was ended — ended by 
 the red hand of murder. 
 
 Mattbew Dalbrook left the room in silence, beck- 
 oning to the housekeeper to follow him. 
 
 "Leave them together," he said. " They will be 
 more comfort to each other than anyone else in the 
 world can be to either of them. Keep in the way — 
 here, in the corridor, in case of anything going
 
 142 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 wrong — fainting, or hysterics, for instance — but so 
 long as they are tolerably calm let them be together, 
 and undisturbed." 
 
 He went back to his son, and they both left the 
 house soon afterwards and drove off to find the 
 Coroner and to confer with him. Later in the 
 afternoon they saw the local policeman, whose dis- 
 coveries, though he evidently thought them import- 
 ant, Mr. Dalbrook considered 7iil. 
 
 He had found out that a certain village free- 
 booter — ostensibly an agricultural labourer, noc- 
 turnally a poacher — bore a grudge against Lord 
 Cheriton, and had sworn to be even with him 
 sooner or later. The constable opined that, being 
 an ignorant man, this person might have mistaken 
 Lord Cheriton's son-in-law for Lord Cheriton himself. 
 
 He had discovered, in the second place, that two 
 vans of gipsies had encamped just outside the Chase 
 on the night after the arrival of the bridal pair. 
 They were, in fact, the very gipsies who had pro- 
 vided Aunt Sally and the French shooting gallery 
 for the amusement of the populace, and he opined 
 that some of these gipsies were " in it."
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 143 
 
 Why they should be in it he did not take upon 
 himself to explain, but he declared that his experi- 
 ence of the tribe justified his suspicions. He was 
 also of opinion that the murderer had come with the 
 intent to plunder the drawing-room, which was in 
 his own expression, "chock-full of valuables." and 
 that, beiug disappointed, and furthermore detected, 
 in that intent, he had tried to make all things safe 
 by a casual murder. 
 
 " But, man alive, Sir Godfrey was sitting in his 
 arm-chair, absorbed in his book. There was nothing 
 to prevent any intending burglar sneaking away 
 unseen. You must find some better scent than that 
 if you mean to track the murderer." 
 
 " I hope, sir, with my experience of the district, I 
 shall have a better chance of finding him than a 
 stranger imported from the Metropolis," said 
 Constable Barber, severely. " I conclude there will 
 be a reward ofi'ered, Mr. Dalbrook ? ' ' 
 
 " There will, and a large one. I must not take 
 upon myself to name the figure. Lord Cheriton 
 will be here to-morrow or next day, and he will, no 
 doubt, take immediate steps. You may consider
 
 144 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 yourself a very lucky man, Barber, if you can solve 
 this mystery." 
 
 Matthew Dalbrook turned from the eager face of 
 the police-officer with a short, angry sigh. It was 
 of the reward the man was thinking, no doubt — 
 congratulating himself perhaps upon the good luck 
 which had thrown such a murder in his way. And 
 presently the man from Scotland Yard would be on 
 the scene, keen and business-like, yet full of a 
 sportsman's ardour, intent on discovery, as on a 
 game in which the stakes were worth winning. 
 Little cared either of these for the one fair life cut 
 short, for the other young life blighted.
 
 CHAPTER YII. 
 
 " I saw a Fury whetting a death-dart."' 
 
 Lord Cheeiton liked to take his summer holiday 
 on a sunny sea-shore where there \^■ere not many 
 English visitors. Parame St. Malo fulfilled both 
 these conditions. It afi'ordecl him a vast expanse of 
 golden sands, firm beneath his foot, steeped in sun- 
 shine for the most part, on which to pace to and fro, 
 lifting his eyes dreamily now and then to the sea-girt 
 city, with its stony rampart, and its quaint Louis 
 Quatorze mansions, facing the sea in the sober dignity 
 of massive stone fa9ade and tall windows ; gi-ey old 
 houses, which seem too good for the age in which 
 they find themselves, solid enough to last through 
 long centuries, and to o.Ulive all that yet lingers of 
 that grandiose France in which they were built. 
 Roof above roof rises the Breton city, steep old streets 
 leading up to Cathedral and Municipal Palace, with 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 the crocketed steeple for its pinnacle, shining with a 
 pale brilliance in the summer sunlight, verdureless, 
 and with but little colour save the reflected glory of 
 the skies, and the jasper green of the sea in its ring 
 of golden sand. 
 
 Lord Cheriton affected Parame because though it 
 was within a summer night's journey from his own 
 Isle of Purbeck, it was thoroughly out of the beaten 
 track, and he was tolerably secure from those hourly 
 encounters with his most particular friends, to which 
 he must have submitted at Baden or Spa, at Trou- 
 ville or Dieppe. Parame was Parisian or nothing. 
 The smart people all came from Paris. English 
 smartness had its centre at Dinard, and the English 
 who patronize Dinard will tell you there is no other 
 paradise on earth, and that its winter climate is 
 better than that of the Kiviera, if people would only 
 have faith. So long as the Cheriton s could keep 
 out of the way of exploring friends from Dinard, his 
 Lordship was exempt from the amusements which 
 to some minds make life intolerable. 
 
 Lady Cheriton was distinctly social in her 
 instincts, and looked Dinard-wards sometimes from
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 147 
 
 her lotus-land with a longing eye. She would have 
 liked to ask some nice people to luncheon ; and she 
 knew so many nice people at Dinard. She would 
 have liked to organize excursions to Mont St. Michel, 
 or up the Ranee to Dinan. She would have liked to 
 plunge into all manner of innocent gaieties ; but her 
 husband stamped out these genial yearnings. 
 
 ** It seems such a pity not to have people over to 
 dinner when there are such nice operettas and 
 vaudevilles every night at the Casino," she sighed. 
 
 *' And if you had them over to dinner, how do you 
 suppose they would get back ? " asked her husband, 
 sternly. " Would you wish to keep tbem all till 
 next morning, and be bored with them at break- 
 fast ? " 
 
 That intervening strip of sea, narrow as it was 
 afforded unspeakable comfort to Lord Cheriton. It 
 was an excuse for refusing to go over and take after- 
 noon tea with people he was supposed to hold in his 
 heart of hearts in the way of friendship. 
 
 "You can go, Maria, if you like," he told his 
 wife; " but I am not a good sailor, and I came here 
 on purpose to be quiet." 
 
 L 2
 
 148 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 This was his Lordship's answer to every hospit- 
 able suggestion. He had come to Parame for rest ; 
 and not for gadding about, or entertaiments of any 
 kind. 
 
 So the long summer days succeeded each other 
 in a lazy monotony, and whatever gaiety there 
 might be in the great white hotel, the English law- 
 lord and his wife had no share in it. They 
 occupied a suite of light, airy rooms in the west 
 pavilion, and were served apart from the vulgar 
 herd, after the fashion which befitted a person of 
 Lord Cheriton's distinction. They had only their 
 body servants, man and maid, so they were waited 
 upon by the servants of the hotel, and they drove 
 about the dusty, level roads between St. Servans 
 and Dol in a hired landau, driven by a Breton 
 coachman. Lady Cheriton was dull, but contented. 
 She had always submitted to her husband's pleasure. 
 He had been a very indulgent husband in essentials, 
 and he had made her a peeress. Her married life 
 had been eminently satisfactory ; and she could 
 afford to endure one summer month of monotony 
 amidst pleasant surroundings. She dropped in at
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 149 
 
 the Casino every evening, while Lord Cheriton read 
 the papers in the seclusion of his salon — with the 
 large French window wide open to the blue sea, 
 and the blue moonlight — hearing the tramp of feet 
 on the terrace, or the sea wall beyond, or now and 
 again strains of lively music from the theatre, where 
 the little opera company from Paris were singing 
 Lecocq's joyous music. 
 
 People used to turn round to look at Lady Cheri- 
 ton as she walked gravely between the rows of seats 
 to her place near the orchestra, his Lordship's valet 
 following with an extra shawl, an opera-glass, and a 
 footstool. He established her in her chair, and 
 then retired discreetly to the back of the theatre to 
 await her departure, and to escort her safely back to 
 the hotel. He was a large, serious looking man, a 
 French Swiss, who had lived ten years in Italy, and 
 over fifteen years in Lord Cheriton's service, and 
 who spoke French, Italian, German, and English 
 indifferently. 
 
 Lady Cheriton was handsome still, with a grand 
 Spanish beauty which time had touched lightly. 
 She was tall and dignified in carriage, though a
 
 150 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 shade stouter than she could have wished, and she 
 dressed to perfection with sobriety of colouring and 
 richness of material. Her life had been full of 
 pleasantness, her only sorrow being the loss of her 
 infant sons, which she had not taken to heart so 
 deeply as the proud father who had pined for an 
 heir to his newly- won honours. She had her 
 daughter, her first-born, the child for whom her 
 heart had first throbbed with the strange new 
 love of maternity. She shed some natural tears 
 for the boy-babies, and then she let Juanita fill 
 their place in her heart, and her life again seemed 
 complete in its sum of happiness. And now in 
 this sleepy summer holiday — cut off from most 
 things that she cared for — Juanita's letters had 
 been her chief joy — those happy, innocent, girlish 
 letters, overflowing with fond, foolish praise of the 
 husband she loved, letters made up of nothings — of 
 what he had said to her, and what she had said to 
 him — and where they had taken afternoon tea — 
 and of their morning ride, or their evening walk, 
 and of those plans for the long future which they 
 were always making, projecting their thoughts into
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 151 
 
 the time to come, and laying out those after years 
 as if they were a certainty. 
 
 There had been no fairer morning than that 
 which followed the night of the murder. Lord 
 Cheriton was an early riser at all seasons, most of 
 all in the summer, when he was generally awake 
 from five o'clock, and had to beguile an hour or so 
 with one of the books on the table by his bed — a 
 well-thumbed "Horace " or a duodecimo "Don 
 Quixote," in ten volumes, which went everywhere 
 with him. By seven o'clock he was dressed, and 
 ready to begin the day ; and between that hour and 
 breakfast it was his habit to attend to the corres- 
 pondence which had accumulated during the previ- 
 ous day. This severe rule was suspended, however, 
 at Parame, and he gave himself up to restful 
 vacuity, strolling up and down the sands, or walking 
 round the walls of St. Malo, or sauntering into the 
 cathedral in a casual way for an early mass, enjoy- 
 ing the atmosphere of the place, with its old- 
 world flavour. 
 
 On this particular morning he went no further 
 than the sands, where he paced slowly to and fro
 
 152 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 in front of the long white terrace, hotel, and casino, 
 heedless alike of Parisian idlesse coquetting with 
 the crisp wavelets on the edge of the sea, and of 
 the mounted officer yonder drilling his men upon 
 the sandy flat towards St. Malo. He was in a 
 mood for idleness, but with him idleness was only 
 a synonym for deep thought. He was meditating 
 upon his only child's future, and telling himself 
 that he had done well for her. 
 
 Sir Godfrey Carmichael would be made Baron 
 Cheriton in the days to come, when he, the first 
 Baron, should be laid in the newly built vault in 
 the cemetery outside Dorchester. He was not going 
 to sever himself from his kindred in that last sleep, 
 albeit they were common folk. He would lie under 
 the Egyptian sarcophagus which he had set up in 
 honour of his father, the crockery dealer, and his 
 mother, the busy, anxious house-wife. The sarco- 
 phagus was plain and unpretentious, hardly too good 
 for the shopkeeper ; yet with a certain solid dignity 
 which was not unbefitting the law-lord, almost as 
 massive as that mammoth cross which marks the 
 resting-place of Henry Brougham in the fair southern
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 153 
 
 land. He had chosen the monument with uttermost 
 care, so that it might serve the double purpose. He 
 had looked at the broad blank panel many a time, 
 wondering how his own name would look upon it, 
 and whether his daughter would have a laurel wreath 
 sculptured above it. It might be that admiring 
 friends would suggest his being laid in the Abbey, 
 hard by those shabby disused courts where he had 
 pleaded and sat in judgment through so many 
 laborious years ; and it might be that the sugges- 
 tion would be accepted by Dean and Chapter, and 
 that the panel on the Dorchester sarcophagus would 
 remain blank. James Dalbrook knew that he had 
 deserved well of posterity, and, above all, of the 
 ruling powers. He had been staunch and unwaver- 
 ing in his adherence to his own party, and he knew 
 that he had a strong claim upon any Conservative 
 Ministry. He had sounded those in authority, and 
 he had been assured that there would be very little 
 difficulty in getting Sir Godfrey Carmichael a peerage 
 by-and-by, when he, Lord Cheriton, should be no 
 more. Sir Godfrey's family was one of the oldest in 
 the country, and he had but to deserve well of his
 
 154 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 party, when lie had got his seat, to ensure future 
 favours. As the owner of the Cheriton and Milbrook 
 estates, he would be a worthy candidate for one of 
 those coronets which seem to be dealt round so 
 freely by expiring Ministries, as it were a dying 
 father dividing his treasures among his weeping 
 children. So far as any man can think with satis- 
 faction of the days when he shall be no more — and 
 when this world will go on, badly, of course, but 
 somehow, without him — Lord Cheriton thought of 
 those far off years when Godfrey Carmichael should 
 be owner of Cheriton Chase. The young man had 
 shown such fine qualities of heart and mind, and, 
 above all, had given such unobtrusive evidence of 
 his affection for Juanita's father, that the elder man 
 must needs give measure for measure ; therefore 
 Godfrey had been to Lord Cheriton almost as a son. 
 The union of his humbly-born daughter with one of 
 the oldest families in the south of England gratified 
 the pride of the self-made man. His own pedigree 
 might be of the lowliest; but his grandson would 
 be able to look back upon a long line of ancestors, 
 glorified by many a patrician alliance. Strong and
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 155 
 
 stern as was the fabric of James Dalbrook's mind, 
 he was not superior to the Englishman's foible, and 
 he loved rank and ancient lineage. He was a Tory 
 to the core of his heart ; and it was the earnestness 
 and thoroughness of his convictions which had given 
 him weight with his party. Wherever he spoke, or 
 whatever he wrote — and he had written much upon 
 current politics in the Saturday Review, and the 
 higher class monthlies — bore the stamp of a Crom- 
 wellian vigour and a Cromwellian sincerity. 
 
 He had never felt more at ease than upon that 
 balmy summer morning, pacing those golden sands 
 in quiet meditation — brooding over Juanita's last 
 letter received overnight — with its girlish raptures, 
 its girlish dreams ; picturing her in the near future 
 as happy a mother as she was a bride, with his 
 grandson, the third Baron Cheriton of the future, in 
 her lap. He smiled at his own foolishness in think- 
 ing of that first boy-baby by the title which was but 
 one of the possibilities of a foreshadowed sequence of 
 events; yet he found himself repeating the words 
 idly, to the rhythm of the wavelets that curled and 
 sparkled near his feet — third Baron Cheriton,
 
 156 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 Godfrey Dalbrook Carmichael, third Baron Cheri- 
 ton. 
 
 The cathedral clock was striking nine as he went 
 into the hotel. The light breakfast of coffee and 
 rolls was laid on a small round table near the window. 
 Lady Cheriton was sitting in a recess between the 
 massive stone columns which supported the balcony 
 above, reading yesterday's Morning Post in her soft 
 grey cashmere peignoir, whose flowing lines gave 
 dignity to her figure. Her dark hair, as yet un- 
 touched by time, was arranged with an elegant 
 simplicity. The fine old lace about her throat 
 harmonised admirably with the pale olive of her 
 complexion. She looked up at her husband with 
 her placid smile, and gave him her hand in affec- 
 tionate greeting. 
 
 " What a morning, James ! One feels it a privi- 
 lege to live. What a superb day it would be for 
 Mont St. Michel ?'' 
 
 " A thirty- mile drive in the dust ! Do you really 
 think that it is the best use to which to put a summer 
 day? You may be sure there will be plenty of 
 worthy people of the same opinion, and that the
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 157 
 
 rock will swarm with cheap tourists, and pretty 
 little Madame Poulard will be put to the pin of her 
 collar to feed them all." 
 
 She had seated herself at the table by this time, 
 and was pouring out coffee with a leisurely air, 
 smiling at her husband all the time, thinking him 
 the greatest and wisest of men, even when he re- 
 strained her social instincts. She was never tired of 
 looking at that massive face, with its clearly defined 
 features, sharply cut jaw, and large gi-ey eyes — dark 
 and deep as the eyes of the earnest thinker rather 
 than the shrewd observer. The strong projection of 
 the lower brow indicated keen perceptions, and the 
 power of rapid judgment ; but above the perceptive 
 organs the upper brow towered majestically, giving 
 the promise of a mind predominant in the regions 
 of thought and imagination — such a brow as we look 
 upon with reverence in the portraits of Walter Scott. 
 
 Intellectually the brow was equal to Scott's ; 
 morally there was something wanting. Neither 
 benevolence nor veneration was on a par with the 
 reasoning faculties. Tory principles with Lord 
 Cheriton were not so much the result of an upward-
 
 158 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 looking nature as they were with Scott. This, at 
 least, is the opinion at which a phrenologist might 
 have arrived after a careful contemplation of that 
 powerful brow. 
 
 Lord Cheriton sipped his coffee, and leaned back 
 in his arm-chair, with his face to the morning sea. 
 He sat in a lazy attitude, still thoughtful, with those 
 pleasant thoughts which are the repose of the work- 
 ing man's brain. 
 
 The tide was going out ; the rocky islets stood 
 high out of the water; the sands were widening, 
 till it seemed almost as if the sea were vanishing 
 altogether from this beautiful bay. 
 
 ** I suppose they will finish their honeymoon in a 
 week or two, and move on to the Priory," said Lord 
 Cheriton, by-and-by, revealing the subject of his 
 reverie. 
 
 - '* Yes, Juanita says we may go home as early as 
 the second week in August if we like. She is to be 
 at the Priory in time to settle down before the 
 shooting begins. They will have visitors in Sep- 
 tember — his sisters, don't you know — the Morning- 
 sides and the Grenvilles, and children and nurses —
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 159 
 
 a house full. Lady Jane ouglit to be there to help 
 her to entertain." 
 
 *' I don't think Nita will want any help. She 
 will be mistress of the situation, depend upon it, 
 and would be if there were forty married sisters with 
 their husbands and belongings. She seemed to be 
 mistress of us all at Chariton ? " 
 
 " She is so clever," sighed the mother, remember- 
 ing that Cheriton House would no longer be under 
 that girlish sovereignty. 
 
 The grave looking French-Swiss valet appeared 
 with a telegram on a salver. 
 
 " Who can have sent me a j^^^^i hleue ? " ex- 
 claimed Lord Cheriton, who was accustomed to 
 receive a good many of those little blue envelopes 
 when he was in Paris, but expected no such com- 
 munications at St. Malo. 
 
 Before leaving for his holiday he had impressed 
 upon laud steward and house steward that he was 
 not to be bothered about anything. 
 
 " If there is anything wanted you will communi- 
 cate with Messrs. Dalbrook," he said. '* They have 
 full powers."
 
 160 THE DAY WILL COME, 
 
 And yet here was some worrying message — some 
 question about a lease or an agreement, or some- 
 body's rick had been burnt, or somebody's chimney 
 had fallen through the roof. He opened the little 
 envelope with a vexed air, resentful of an expected 
 annoyance. He read the message, and then sat 
 blankly staring ; read again, and rose from his seat 
 suddenly with a cry of horror. 
 
 Never in his life had he experienced such a 
 shock; never had those iron nerves, that heart, 
 burned hard in the furnace of this world's strife, 
 been so tried. He stood aghast, and could only 
 give the little paper — with its type-printed syllables 
 — to his scared wife, while he stood gazing at 
 summer sky and summer sea in a blank helpless- 
 ness, realizing dimly that something had happened 
 which must change the whole course of the future, 
 and overthrow every plan he had ever made. 
 
 " The third Baron Cheriton." Strange, but in 
 that awful moment the words he had repeated idly 
 on the sands half an hour ago echoed again in his 
 ear. 
 
 Alas, he felt as if that title for which he had
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. iGl 
 
 toiled was already extinct. He saw, as in a vision, 
 the velvet cap and golden coronet upon the 
 coffin lid, as the first and last Lord Cheriton was 
 carried to his grave. That prophetic vision must 
 needs be realized within a few years. There would 
 be no one to succeed him. 
 
 Murdered ! Why ? By whom ? What devil had 
 been conjured out of hell to cut short that honest, 
 stainless life? What had Godfrey Carmichael 
 done that a murderer's hand should be raised 
 against him ? 
 
 Lady Cheriton' s softer nature found relief in tears 
 before the day was done ; tears and agonized pacings 
 up and down those rooms where life had been so 
 placid in the sunlight — agonized supplications that 
 God would take pity upon her widowed girl. 
 
 *' So young, and so happy, and a widow — a 
 widow before her nineteenth birthday," wailed the 
 mother. 
 
 Lord Cheriton' s grief was of a sterner kind, and 
 found no outlet in words. He held a brief consulta- 
 tion with his valet, a soldierly-looking man, who 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 had fought under Garibaldi in Burgundy, when the 
 guerilla captain made his brilliant endeavour to 
 save sinking France. They looked at time-tables 
 and calculated hours. The express to Paris would 
 not arrive in time for the evening mail via Calais 
 and Dover. It was Saturday. The cargo boat 
 would cross to Southampton that night, and in- 
 fluence would obtain accommodation for his Lord- 
 ship and party on board her. The valet took a fly 
 and drove off to the quay to find the South-Western 
 superintendent, and secure a private cabin for his 
 master and mistress. They would have the boat to 
 themselves, and would be at Southampton at seven 
 o'clock next morning, and at Cheriton before noon, 
 even if it were necessary to engage a special engine 
 to take them there. 
 
 Lord Cheriton telegraphed to his daughter. 
 
 " Your mother and I will be with you to-morrow 
 morning. Be brave for our sakes. Remember 
 that you are all we have to live for." 
 
 Another telegram to the house-steward ordered a 
 close carriage to be in attendance at Wareham 
 Station at ten o'clock on Sunday morning.
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 163 
 
 "How quietly you bear it, James," bis wife told 
 Lord Cberiton, wouderingly, wben tbe mode of tbeir 
 return bad been arranged, and ber maid was pack- 
 ing ber trunks, witb tbose soberly bandsome gowns 
 wbicb bad been tbe wonder of many a butterfly 
 Parisienne. 
 
 Sbe called bim by bis Cbristian name now as in 
 tbeir earliest years of wedded life. It was only on 
 ceremonious occasions, and wben tbe eye of society 
 was upon ber tbat sbe addressed bim by bis 
 title. 
 
 Tbat stern quietude of bis, tbe fine features set 
 and rigid, frigbtened ber more tban a loquacious 
 grief would bave done. And yet sbe bardly knew 
 wbetber be felt tbe calamity too mucb for words ; or 
 wbetber be did not feel it enougb. 
 
 " Poor Godfrey," sbe sigbed, ''be was so good to 
 me — all tbat a son could ba\e been — murdered ! 
 My God ! my God ! bow borrible. If it bad been 
 any otber kind of deatb one migbt bear it — and yet 
 tbat he sbould die at all would be too dreadful. So 
 young, so bandsome — cut off in tbe flower of bis 
 days ! And sbe loved bim so. Sbe bas loved him 
 
 M 2
 
 164 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 all her life. What will become of her without 
 him ? " 
 
 *' What will become of her ? " that was the 
 mother's moaning cry all through that dreary day. 
 
 Lord Cheriton paced the sands as far as he could 
 go from that giddy multitude in front of the sea 
 wall — beyond the little rocky ridge by the pleasant 
 Hotel des Bains, where the young mothers, and 
 nurses, and children, and homely, easy-going 
 visitors congregate — away towards Cancale, where 
 all was loneliness. He walked up and down, medi- 
 tating upon his blighted hopes. He knew now that 
 he had loved this young man almost as well as he 
 loved his own daughter, and that his death had 
 -shattered as fair a fabric as ever ambition built on 
 the further side of the grave. 
 
 '* She will go in mourning for him all the days of 
 my life, perhaps," he thought, " and then some 
 day after I am in my grave she will fall in love with 
 an adventurer, and the estate I love and the for- 
 tune I have saved will be squandered on the Turf or 
 thrown away at Monte Carlo." 
 
 A grim smile curled his lip at a grim thought, as
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 165 
 
 he paced that lonely shore beyond the jutting cliff 
 and the Tilla on the point. 
 
 "I am sorry I left the Bench when I did," he 
 thought, " it would have been something to have 
 put on the black cap and passed sentence upon that 
 poor lad's murderer." 
 
 Who was his murderer, and what the motive of 
 the crime ? Those were questions which Lord 
 Cheriton had been asking himself with maddening 
 iteration through that intolerable summer day. He 
 welcomed the fading sunlight of late afternoon. He 
 could eat nothing ; would not even sit down to 
 make a pretence of dining ; but waited chafing in 
 the great stone hall of the hotel for the carriage 
 that was to take him and his wife to the steamer.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 " The stars move still, Time runs, the clock will strike." 
 
 Trains were favourable, and there was no necessity 
 for a special engine to carry Lord Cheriton and his 
 wife to the house of mourning. It was not yet noon 
 when the closed landau drove in at the chief gate of 
 the park, not that side gate in the deep, rocky lane, 
 of which Mrs. Porter was custodian. One o.f the 
 gardeners lived at the lodge, and it was he who 
 opened the gate this Sunday morning. Lord Cheri- 
 ton stopped the carriage to question him. He had 
 heard a full account of the murder already from the 
 station-master at Wareham. 
 
 " Have they found the murderer ? " he asked. 
 
 " No, my Lord, I'm afraid they're not likely to — 
 begging your Lordship's pardon for venturing an 
 opinion."
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 167 
 
 The man was an old servant, and altogether a 
 superior person. 
 
 " Were the gates locked at the usual time on 
 Friday night ? " 
 
 "Yes, my Lord — the gates were locked, but that 
 wouldn't keep out a foot-passeuger. There's the 
 turnstile in the lane.'* 
 
 " Of course. Yes, yes. A London detective has 
 been at work, I hear." 
 
 " Yes, my Lord ; came yesterday before two 
 o'clock, and has been about with Barber ever since." 
 
 " And have they discovered nothing ? " 
 
 " Nothing, my Lord — or if they have it has been 
 kept dark." 
 
 Lord Cheriton asked no further questions. The 
 man was right. A detective from Scotland Yard was 
 not likely to talk about any minor discoveries that 
 he might have made. Only the one grand discovery 
 of the guilty man would have been made known. 
 
 Five minutes later the carriage drew up in front 
 of the hall door. What a blank and melancholy 
 look the fine old house had with all the windows 
 darkened. It did not look so dismal as a London
 
 168 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 Louse with its level rows of windows and its flat 
 fapade would have looked under similar conditions ; 
 for here there was variety of muUion and moulding, 
 bay-windows and oriel, dormer and lattice, and over 
 all the growth of lovely creeping plants, starry 
 clematis and passion-flower, clustering Banksia 
 roses and waxen magnolia, an infinite beauty of 
 form and colour. Yet the blind windows were 
 there, with their dull, dead look and chilling sug- 
 gestion of death. Lady Cheriton looked at the house 
 for a moment or so as she got out of the carriage, 
 and then burst into tears. It seemed to her as if 
 she had scarcely realized the stern reality till that 
 moment. 
 
 She went straight to her daughter's boudoir, a 
 room with an oriel window looking across the wide 
 expanse of the park, where the turf lay openest to 
 the sunshine, and where the deer were wont to con- 
 gregate. The garden was at its narrowest point 
 just below this window, and consisted only of a 
 broad gravel path, and a strip of flowers at the top 
 of a steep grass bank that sloped down to the ha-ha 
 which divided garden and park. The room was full
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 169 
 
 of Juanita's girlish treasures — evidences of fancies 
 that had passed like summer clouds — accomplish- 
 ments hegun and abandoned — a zither in one corner 
 — a guitar and a mandolin against the wall — an 
 easel in front of one window — a gigantic rush work- 
 basket lined with amber satin and crammed with all 
 manner of silks, wools, scraps, and unfinished under- 
 takings in another. The room remained just as she 
 had left it when she went to London at the beginning 
 of May. She had not occupied it during her honey- 
 moon ; and perhaps that was the reason she was 
 here now in her desolation, sitting silent, statue-like, 
 with Lady Jane by her side, on a sofa opposite the 
 oriel. She lifted her eyelids when her mother came 
 into the room, and looked up at her in speechless 
 despair. She uttered no word of greeting, but sat 
 dumbly. Lady Cheriton went over to her, and knelt 
 by her side, and then, feebly, automatically, the 
 widowed girl put her limp, cold hand into her 
 mother's and hid her bloodless face upon her 
 mother's breast. 
 
 Lady Cheriton held her there with one hand while 
 she stretched out her other hand to Lady Jane.
 
 170 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 *'Dear Lady Jane, how good of you to be with 
 her — to comfort her." 
 
 " Where else should I be ? — I want to be near 
 him ! " 
 
 The gentle blue eyes filled with tears, the gracious 
 head trembled a little. Then came a long shivering 
 sigh and silence. 
 
 The mother knelt beside the sofa with her child's 
 head leaning forward upon her matronly bosom. 
 There may have been some comfort perhaps in that 
 contact, some recurrence of the thoughts and feelings 
 of earlier years, when the mother could console every 
 grief and soothe every pain. No words came to 
 either of those mourners. What could be said in 
 mitigation of a sorrow that seemed to offer no point 
 of relief, no counter-balancing good. There was 
 nothing to be done but to sit still and suffer. 
 
 The silence lasted long, and then Juanita lifted 
 her head suddenly from its heavy repose and looked 
 fixedly in her mother's face. 
 
 "My father has come back with you?" she 
 asked. 
 
 ** Yes, dearest. We did not lose an hour. Had
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 171 
 
 there been any quicker way of travelliDg we would 
 have been here sooner." 
 
 " My father will be able to find the murderer," 
 said Juanita, scarcely hearing her mother's words, 
 intent upon her own thought. " A great lawyer as 
 he was ; a judge, too ; he must be able to trace the 
 murderer — to bring him to justice — to take a life for 
 a life. Oh, God ! " with a shrill agonizing cry, 
 " could a thousand lives give me back one hour of 
 that one life ? Yet it will be something — some- 
 thing — to know that his murderer has been killed — 
 killed shamefully, in cold blood, in the broad light 
 of day. Oh, God, thou Avenger of wi-ong, make 
 his last hours bitter to him, make his last moments 
 hopeless, let him see the gates of hell opening before 
 him when he stands trembling with the rope round 
 his neck." 
 
 There was an intensity of hatred in this vindic- 
 tive appeal, which thrilled the two listeners with an 
 icy horror. It was like a blast from a frozen region 
 blowing suddenly in their faces, and they shivered 
 as they heard. Could it be the girl they knew, the 
 loving, lovable girl, who, in those deep, harsh tones,
 
 172 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 called upon her God for vengeance and not for 
 mercy ? 
 
 " Oh, my love, my poor heart-broken love, pray 
 to Him to have pity upon us, ask Him to teach us 
 how to bow to the rod, how to bear His chastise- 
 ment. That is the lesson we have to learn,'* 
 pleaded Lady Jane, tearful and submissive, even in 
 the depth of sorrow. 
 
 " Is it ? My lesson is to see justice done upon 
 the wretch who killed my husband — the malignant, 
 the merciless devil. There was not one of those 
 slayers of women and children in the Indian mutiny 
 worse than the man who killed my love. What had 
 lie done — he, the kindest and best — generous, frank, 
 pitiful to all who ever came in his way — what had 
 he done to provoke any man's enmity? Oh, God, 
 when I remember how good he was, and how much 
 brighter and better the world was for having 
 him " 
 
 She began to pace the room, as she had paced it 
 again and again in her slow hours of agony, her 
 hands clasped above her dishevelled head, her great 
 dark eyes— so dove-like in their hours of love and
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 173 
 
 happiness — burning with an angry light, lurid 
 almost, in the excitement of her fevered brain. 
 There had been times when Lady Jane had feared 
 that reason must give way altogether amidst this 
 wild delirium of grief. She had stayed to watch, 
 and to console, forgetting her own broken heart, 
 putting aside all considerations of her own sorrow as 
 something that might have its way afterwards, in 
 order to comfort this passionate mourner. 
 
 Comfort, even from affection such as this, was un- 
 availing. Now and again the girl turned her burn- 
 ing eyes upon the mother's pale, resigned face, and 
 for a moment a thought of that chastened, gentle 
 grief softened her. 
 
 ** Dear, dear Lady Jane, God made you better than 
 any other woman on this earth, I believe," she cried 
 amidst her anguish. *' The saints and martyrs must 
 have been like you, but I am not. I am not made 
 like that. I cannot kiss the rod." 
 
 The meeting between Juanita and her father was 
 more painful to him than to her. She hung upon 
 bis neck in feverish excitement, imploring him to 
 avenge her husband.
 
 174 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 "You Ccan doit," she urged; *'you wlio are so 
 clever must know how to bring the murderer's guilt 
 home to him. You will find him, will you not, 
 father ? He cannot have gone very far. He cannot 
 have got out of the country yet. Think, it was only 
 Friday. I was a happy woman upon Friday ; onlj^ 
 think of that — happy — sitting by Godfrey's side in 
 the phaeton, driving through the sunset, and think- 
 ing how beautiful the world was and what a privi- 
 lege it was to live. I had no more foreboding than 
 the skylark had singing above our heads. And in 
 less than an hour after midnight my darling was 
 dead. Oh, God, how sudden. I cannot even re- 
 member his last words. He kissed me as he left 
 me at my bedroom door — kissed me and said some- 
 thing. I cannot remember what it was ; but I can 
 hear the sound of his voice still — I shall hear it all 
 my life." 
 
 Lord Cheriton let her ramble on. He had, alas, 
 so little to say to her, such sorry comfort to offer. 
 Only words, mere words — which must needs sound 
 idle and hollow in the ear of grief, frame his con- 
 solatory speeches with what eloquence he might.
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 175 
 
 He could do nothing for lier, since lie could not give 
 her back her dead. This wild cry for vengeance 
 shocked him from those young lips; yet it was 
 natural perhaps. He too would give much to see 
 the assassin suffer ; he too felt that the dock and the 
 gallows would be too trivial a punishment for that 
 accursed deed. 
 
 He had looked upon the marble face of him who 
 was to have been the second Baron Cheriton — 
 looked upon it in its placid repose, and had sworn 
 within himself to do all that ingenuity could do to 
 avenge that cruel murder. 
 
 *' He could not have had an enemy," he told him- 
 self, *' unless it was some wretch who hated him for 
 being happy and beloved." 
 
 He had a long talk with Mr. Luke Churton, the 
 London detective, who had exhausted all his means 
 without arriving at any satisfactory result. 
 
 " I confess, my Lord, that I am altogether at a 
 standstill," said Mr. Churton, when he had related 
 all that he had done since his arrival on the scene 
 early on Saturday afternoon. " The utmost infor- 
 mation I have been able to obtain leaves me without
 
 176 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 one definite idea. There is no one in the neigh- 
 bourhood open to suspicion, so far as I can make 
 out ; for I am sure your lordship will agree with me 
 that your butler's notion of a poacher resenting your 
 treatment by the murder of your son-in-law is much 
 too thin. One cannot accept such a notion as that 
 for a moment," said Mr. Churton, shaking his 
 head. 
 
 "No, that is an untenable idea, no doubt." 
 " The next suggestion is that some person was 
 prowling about with the intention of abstracting 
 trinkets and other valuables from the drawing-room 
 — in an unguarded moment when the room might 
 happen to be empty — and I admit that the present 
 fashion of covering drawing-room tables and cabinets 
 with valuables of every description is calculated to 
 suggest plunder'; but that kind of thing would be prob- 
 able enough in London rather than in the country, 
 and nothing is more unlikely than that a prowler of 
 that order would resort to murder. Again, the 
 manner in which the body was found, with the open 
 book lying close to the hand that had held it, goes for 
 to prove that Sir Godfrey was shot as he sat reading
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 177 
 
 — and at a time when a burglar could have no 
 motive for shooting him." 
 
 " Do you think it was the act of a lunatic ? " 
 
 " No, my Lord, for in that event the murderer 
 would have been heard of or found before now. The 
 gardens, park, and chase have been most thoroughly 
 searched under my superintendence. It is not 
 possible for a lap-dog to be hidden anywhere within 
 this demesne. The neighbouring villages — solitary 
 cottages — commons and copses — have been also 
 submitted to a searching investigation — the police 
 all over the country are on the alert. Of course the 
 crime is still of very recent date. Time to us 
 seems longer than it really is." 
 
 " No doubt, no doubt ! I can find no other hypo- 
 thesis than that the act was done by a madman — 
 such a motiveless murder — a man sitting by a 
 window reading — shot by an unknown hand from a 
 garden terrace — remote from the outer world. Were 
 we in Ireland the crime might seem common- 
 place enough. Sir Godfrey was a landowner — 
 and that alone is an offence against the idle and 
 the lawless in that unhappy country — but here, 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 in the midst of an orderly, God-fearing popula- 
 tion " 
 
 ** Had Sir Godfrey no enemy, do you think, my 
 Lord?" asked the detective, gravely. " The crime 
 has the look of a vendetta." 
 
 *' There never was a young man, owner of a 
 considerable estate, more universally beloved. His 
 tenants adore him — for as a landlord he has been 
 exceptionally indulgent." 
 
 " He may have granted too much in some quarters, 
 and too little in others." 
 
 " No, no. He has been judicious in his liberality, 
 and he has a capital bailiff, an old man who was a 
 servant on this estate many years ago." 
 
 " But there are other influences," said the detec- 
 tive, musingly. "Whenever I meet with a crime of 
 this kind — motiveless apparently — I remember the 
 Eastern Prince — I think he was one of those long- 
 headed Orientals, wasn't he, my Lord, who used to 
 ask ' Who is she ? ' In a thoroughly dark case I 
 always suspect a woman behind the curtain. Sir 
 Godfrey had been independent of all control for a 
 good many years — and a young man of fortune,
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 179 
 
 handsome, open-hearted, with only a mother to look 
 after him — well, my Lord, you know the kind of 
 thing that generally happens in such cases." 
 
 *' You mean that my son-in-law may have been 
 involved in some disreputable intrigue? " 
 
 " I don't say disreputable, my Lord ; but I venture 
 to suggest that there may have been some — ahem — 
 some awkward entanglement — with a married woman, 
 for instance — and the husband — or another lover — 
 may have belonged to the criminal classes. There 
 are men who think very little of murder when they 
 fancy themselves ill-used by a woman. Half the 
 midnight brawls, and nearly half the murders, in the 
 metropolis are caused by jealousy. I know what a 
 large factor that is in the sum-total of crime, and 
 unless you are sure there was no entanglement " 
 
 " I am as sure as I can be of anything outside 
 my own existence. I don't believe that Sir Godfrey 
 ever cared for any woman in his life except my 
 daughter." 
 
 "He might not have cared, my Lord, but he 
 might have been drawn in," suggested Mr. 
 Churton. ''Young men are apt to be weak where 
 
 N 2
 
 180 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 women are concerned ; and women know that, 
 unfortunately, and they don't scruple to use their 
 power ; not the best of 'em even." 
 
 Young men are apt to be weak. Yes, Lord 
 Cheriton had seen enough of the world to know 
 that this was true. It was just possible that in 
 that young life, which had seemed white as snow to 
 the eye of kindred and friends, there had been one 
 dark secret, one corroding stain, temptation yielded 
 to, promises given — never to be fulfilled. Such 
 things have been in many lives, in most lives, 
 perhaps, could we know all. Lord Cheriton thought, 
 as he sat silently meditating upon the detective's 
 suggestions. 
 
 Lady Jane might know something about her 
 son's past, perhaps, something that she might have 
 kept locked in the beneficent maternal heart. He 
 determined to sound her delicately at the earliest 
 opportunity. 
 
 But on being sounded Lady Jane repudiated any 
 such possibility. No, again and again no. His 
 youth had been spotless ; no hint of an intrigue 
 had ever reached her from any quarter. He had
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 181 
 
 chosen his friends among the most honourable 
 young men at the University — his amusements had 
 been such as became a young Englishman of 
 exalted position — he had never stooped to low 
 associations or even doubtful company ; and from 
 his boyhood upwards he had adored Juanita. 
 
 "That love alone would have kept him right," 
 said Lady Jane ; " but I do not believe that it was 
 in his nature to go wrong." 
 
 It would seem, therefore, that the detective's 
 suspicion was groundless. Jealousy could not have 
 been the motive of the crime. 
 
 "If any of us could be sure that we know each 
 other I ought to accept Lady Jane's estimate of her 
 son," thought Lord Cheriton ; "but there is always 
 the possibility of an unrevealed nature — one phase 
 in a character that has escaped discovery. I am 
 almost inclined to think the detective may have hit 
 upon the truth. There must have been a motive for 
 this devilish act — unless it were done by a maniac." 
 
 The latter supposition seemed hardly probable. 
 Lunacy wandering loose about the country would 
 have betrayed itself before now.
 
 182 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 It was past five upon that summer afternoon, and 
 Lord Cheriton, having seen his daughter and inter- 
 viewed the detective, was sauntering idly about the 
 gardens in the blank hours before dinner. That 
 meal would be served as usual, no doubt, at eight 
 o'clock, with all due state and ceremony. The 
 cook and her maids were busied about its prepara- 
 tion even now in this tranquil hour when afternoon 
 melts into evening, sliding so softly from day to 
 night that only those evening hymns of the birds — 
 and on Sundays those melancholy church bells 
 thrilling across the woods — mark the transition. 
 They were scraping vegetables and whipping eggs 
 while the birds were at vespers, and they were 
 talking of the murder as they went about their 
 work. When would they ever cease to gloat with 
 ghoulish gusto on that deadly theme, with endless 
 iteration of " says he " and *' says she " ? 
 
 Lord Cheriton left the stately garden with its 
 quadruple lines of cypress and juniper, its marble 
 balustrades, and clipped yew hedges five feet thick, 
 its statues and alcoves. He passed through a little 
 gate, and across a classic single-arched bridge to
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 183 
 
 the park, where he sauntered slowly beneath his 
 immemorial elms, in a strange dream-like frame of 
 mind, in which he allowed his senses to be beguiled 
 by the balmy afternoon atmosphere and the golden 
 light, until the all-pervading consciousness of a 
 great grief, which had been with him all day, 
 slipped off him for the moment, leaving only a 
 feeling of luxurious repose, rest after labour. 
 
 Cheriton Chase was exercising its wonted influ- 
 ence upon him. He loved the place with that deep 
 love which is often felt by the hereditary owner, the 
 man born on the soil, but perhaps still oftener, and 
 to a greater degree by him who has conquered and 
 won the land by his own hard labour of head or 
 hand, by that despicable personage, the self-made 
 man. In all his wanderings — those luxurious 
 reposeful journeyings of the man who has conquered 
 fortune — James Dalbrook's heart yearned towards 
 these ancient avenues and yonder grey walls. 
 House and domain had all the charm of antiquity, 
 and yet they were in a measure his own creation. 
 Everywhere had his hand improved and beautified ; 
 and he might say with Augustus that where he
 
 184 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 found brick he would leave marble. The dense 
 green walls — those open-air courts and quadrangles 
 — those obelisks of cypress and juniper had been there 
 in the dominion of the Strangways, with here and 
 there a mouldering stone Syrinx or a moss. grown 
 Pan ; but it was he who brought choicest marbles 
 from Rome and Florence to adorn that stately 
 pleasaunce ; it was he who had erected yonder 
 fountain, whose waters made a monotonous music 
 by day and night. The marble balustrades, the 
 mosaic floors, the artistic enrichment of terrace and 
 mansion had been his work. If the farms were 
 perfect it was he who had made them so. If his 
 tenants were contented it was because he had 
 shown himself a model landlord — considerate and 
 liberal, but severely exacting, satisfied with nothing 
 less than perfection. 
 
 Having thus in a manner created his estate 
 James Dalbrook loved it, as a proud, self-contained 
 man is apt to love the work of his own hands, and 
 now in this quiet Sunday afternoon the very atmo- 
 sphere of the place soothed him, as if by a spell. 
 A kind of sensuous contentment stole into his
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 185 
 
 heart, with temporary forgetfuhiess of his daughter's 
 ruined life. But this did not last long. As he 
 drew near the drive by which strangers were 
 allowed to cross the park by immemorial right, 
 he remembered that he had questioned one of 
 the lodge-keepers, but not the other. He struck 
 across an open glade where only old hawthorn 
 trees cast their rugged shadows on the close- 
 cropped turf, and made for the gate opening into 
 the lane. 
 
 Mrs. Poi-ter's cottage had its usual aspect, a 
 cottage such as any gentleman or lady of refined 
 taste might have been pleased to inhabit, quaint, 
 mediaeval, with heavy timbers across rough cast 
 walls, deep- set casements, picturesque dormers, and 
 thatched roof, with gable ends which were a source 
 of rapture to every artist who visited Cheriton — a 
 cottage embowered in loveliest creeping plants, 
 odorous of jasmine and woodbine, and set in a 
 garden where the standard roses and carnations were 
 rumoured to excel those in her ladyship's own par- 
 ticular flower-garden. Well might a lady who had 
 known better days rejoice in such a haven ; more
 
 186 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 especially when those better days appeared to have 
 raised her no higher than the status of a merchant- 
 captain's wife. 
 
 Very few people about Cheriton envied her lady- 
 ship. It was considered that, if not born in the 
 purple, she had at least brought her husband a large 
 fortune, and had a right to taste the sweets of 
 wealth. But there were many hard-driven wives 
 and shabby genteel spinsters who envied Mrs. 
 Porter her sinecure at the gate of Cheriton Park, 
 and who looked grudgingly at the garden brimming 
 over with flowers and the lattices shining in the 
 evening sun, and through the open casements at 
 prettily furnished rooms, rich in books and photo- 
 graphs, and other trivial indications of a refined 
 taste. 
 
 "It is well to be she," said the curate's wife, as 
 she went home from the village with two mutton 
 chops in her little fancy basket, a basket which sug- 
 gested ferns, and in which she always carried a 
 trowel, to give the look of casual botany to her 
 housewifely errands. " I wonder whether Lord 
 Cheriton allows her an income for doing nothing.
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 187 
 
 or is it only house, and coals, and candles that she 
 gets ? " speculated the curate's wife, who lived in a 
 hrand new villa on the outskirts of Cheriton village, 
 a villa that was shabhy and dilapidated after three 
 years' occupation, through whose thin walls all the 
 winds of winter blew, and whose slate roof made the 
 upper floor like a bakehouse under the summer 
 sun. 
 
 Lord Cheriton, still sauntering in gloomy medita- 
 tion, came to the cottage garden outside his gates, 
 and found Mrs. Porter standing among her roses, a 
 tall, black figure, the very pink and pattern of re- 
 spectability, with her prayer-book in one hand and 
 a grey silk sunshade in the other. She turned at 
 the sound of those august footsteps, and came to 
 the little garden gate to greet her benefactor, with a 
 grave countenance, as befitted the circumstances. 
 
 " Good afternoon," he said briefly. ** Have you 
 just come from church ? " 
 
 *' Yes, I have been to the children's service." 
 
 ** Not very interesting, I should imagine, for any- 
 body past childhood ? " 
 
 "It is something to do on a Sunday afternoon,
 
 188 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 ,and I like to hear Mr. Kempster talk to the 
 children." 
 
 ** Do you ? Well, there is no accounting for 
 tastes. Can you tell me anything about my son-in- 
 law's murderer ? Have you seen any suspicious 
 characters hanging about ? Did you notice any one 
 going into the park on Friday night ? " 
 
 " No, I have not seen a mortal out of the common 
 way. The gate was locked at the usual hour. Of 
 course the gate would make no difference — it would 
 be easy for any one to get into the park." 
 
 " And no one was seen about ? It is extra- 
 ordinary. Have you any idea, Mrs. Porter, any 
 theory about this horrible calamity that has come 
 upon us ? " 
 
 '* How should I have any theory ? I am not 
 skilled in finding out such mysteries, like the man 
 who came from London yesterday. Has he made 
 no discoveries ? " 
 
 "Not one." 
 
 " Then you can't expect me to throw a light upon 
 the subject." 
 
 ** You have an advantage over the London detec-
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 189 
 
 tive. You know the neighbourhood — and you know 
 what kind of man Sir Godfrey was." 
 
 " Yes, I know that. How handsome he was, 
 how frank and pleasant looking, and how your 
 daughter adored him. They were a beautiful 
 couple." 
 
 Her wan cheeks flushed, and her eyes kindled as 
 she spoke, as if with a genuine enthusiasm. 
 
 " They were, and they adored each other. It will 
 break my daughter's heart. You have known trouble 
 — about a daughter. I think 3-ou can understand 
 what I feel for my girl." 
 
 " I do — I do ! Yes, I know what you must feel — 
 what she must feel in her desolation, with all she 
 valued gone from her for ever. But she has not to 
 drink the cup that my girl must drink, Lord 
 Cheriton. She has not fallen. She is not a thing 
 for men to trample under foot, and women to shrink 
 away from." 
 
 " Forgive me," said Lord Cheriton, in a softened 
 voice. ** I ought not to have spoken of — Mercy." 
 
 " You ought never to speak of her — to me. I 
 suppose you thought the wound was so old that it
 
 190 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 might be touched with impunity, but you were 
 wrong. That wound will never heal." 
 
 " I am sure you know that I have always been 
 deeply sorry for you — for that great affliction," said 
 Lord Cheriton gently, 
 
 " Sorry, yes, I suppose you were sorry. You 
 would have been sorry if a footman had knocked 
 down one of your Sevres vases and smashed it. 
 One is sorry for anything that can't be replaced." 
 
 " That is a harsh and unjust way of speaking, 
 Mrs. Porter," said Lord Cheriton, drawing himself 
 up suddenly with an air of wounded dignity. " You 
 can tell me nothing about our trouble, I see ; and I 
 am not in the mood to talk of any older grief. 
 Good night." 
 
 He lifted his hat with grave respect and walked 
 back to the park gate, vanishing slowly from those 
 grey eyes which followed him in eager watchful- 
 ness. 
 
 ** Is he really sorry ? " she asked herself. " Can 
 such a man as that be sorry for anyone, even his 
 own flesh and blood ? He has prospered ; all 
 things have gone well with him. Can he be sorry ?
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 191 
 
 It is a check, perhaps ; a check to his ambitious 
 hopes. It baulks him in his longing to found a 
 family. He looks pale and worn, as if he had 
 suffered : and at his age, after a prosperous life, it 
 must be hard to suffer." 
 
 So mused the woman who had seen better days — 
 embittered doubtless by her own decadence — em- 
 bittered still more by her daughter's fall. 
 
 It was nearly ten years since the daughter had 
 eloped with a middle-aged Colonel in a cavalry 
 regiment, a visitor at the Chase — a man of fortune 
 and high family, with about as diabolical a reputa- 
 tion as a man could enjoy and yet hold Her 
 Majesty's commission. 
 
 Mercy Porter's fall had been a surprise to every- 
 body. She was a girl of shy and reserved manners, 
 graver and sadder than youth should be. She had 
 been kept very close by her mother, allowed to make 
 no friendships among the girls in the village, to 
 have no companions of her own age. She had early 
 shown a considerable talent for music, and her piano 
 bad been her chief pleasure and occupation. Lady 
 Cheriton had taken a good deal of notice of her
 
 192 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 when she grew up, and she might have done well, 
 the gossips said, when they recalled the story of her 
 disgrace ; but she chose to fall in love with a 
 married man of infamous character, a notorious pro- 
 fligate, and he had. but to beckon with his finger for 
 her to go off with him. The circumstances of her 
 going off were discussed confidentially at feminine 
 tea-drinkings, and it was wondered that Mrs. Porter 
 could hold her head so high, and show herself at 
 church three times on a Sunday, and entertain the 
 curate and his wife to afternoon tea, considering 
 what had happened. 
 
 The curate and his wife were new arrivals com- 
 paratively, and only knew that dismal common story 
 from hearsay. They were both impressed by Mrs. 
 Porter's regular attendance at the church services, 
 and by the excellence of that cup of tea with which 
 she was always ready to entertain them whenever 
 they cared to drop in at her cottage between four 
 and five o'clock. 
 
 The inquest was opened early on the afternoon of 
 Monday at the humble little inn near the forge.
 
 THE DAY WILL C03IE. 193 
 
 with its rustic sign, " Live and let live." 
 Juanita gave her evidence with a stony calmness 
 which impressed those who heard her more than the 
 stormiest outburst of grief would have done. Her 
 mother and her husband's mother had both im- 
 plored her not to break down, to bear herself heroic- 
 ally through this terrible ordeal, and they were 
 both in the room to support her by their pre- 
 sence. Both were surprised at the firmness of 
 her manner, the clear tones of her voice as she 
 made her statement, telling how she had heard 
 the shot in her dream, and how she had gone 
 down to the drawing-room to find Sir Godfrey 
 lying face downward on the carpet, in front of 
 the chair where he had been sitting, his hand 
 still upon the open book, which had fallen as he 
 fell. 
 
 " Did you think of going outside to see if any- 
 one was lurking about ? " 
 
 "No, I thought of nothing but trying to save 
 him. I did not believe that he was dead." 
 
 There was a look of agony in her large wide open 
 eyes as she said this — a piteous remembrance of 
 
 VOL I. o
 
 194 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 the moment while she still hoped — which thrilled 
 the spectators. 
 
 *'What course did you take?" 
 
 *'I rang for the servants. They came after a 
 time that seemed long — but I believe they came 
 quickly." 
 
 " And after they had come ? " 
 
 "I remembered nothing more. They wanted 
 me to believe that he was dead — and I would not 
 — I could not believe — and — I remember no more 
 till next day." 
 
 *' That will do, Lady Carmichael. I will not 
 trouble you further." 
 
 Lady Jane and Lady Cheriton wanted to take 
 her away after this, but she insisted upon re- 
 maining. 
 
 " I wish to hear every word," she said. 
 
 They submitted, and the three women, robed 
 in densest black, sat in a little group behind the 
 Coroner till the end of that day's inquiry. 
 
 No new facts were elicited from any of the wit- 
 nesses, and nothing had resulted from the elabor- 
 ate search made not only throughout Lord Cheri-
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 195 
 
 ton's domain, but in the neighbourhood. No 
 suspicious prowlers had been heard of. The gip- 
 sies who had contributed to the gaiety of the wed- 
 ding day had been ascertained to have left the Isle 
 of Purbeck a fortnight before the murder, and to be 
 delighting the larger world between Portsmouth 
 and Havant. Nothing had been discovered; no 
 sale of revolver or gun to any questionable pur- 
 chaser at Dorchester ; no indication however slight 
 which might put a keen-witted detective upon the 
 trail. Mr. Churton confessed himself completely at 
 fault. 
 
 The jury drove to Cheriton House to view the 
 body, and the inquest was adjourned for a fortnight, 
 in the expectation that some discovery might be 
 made in the interim. The funeral would take place 
 at the usual time ; there was nothing now to hinder 
 the victim being laid in his last resting-place in the 
 old Saxon church at Milbrook. 
 
 Bills offering a reward of £500 for any informa- 
 tion leading to the discovery of the murderer were 
 all over the village, and in every village and town 
 within a radius of forty miles. The stimulus of 
 
 o 2
 
 196 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 cupidity was not wanting to sharpen the rural wit. 
 Mr. Churton shook his head despondently when he 
 talked over the inquest with Lord Cheriton later in 
 the day, and owned himself " out of it." 
 
 '* I have been in many dark cases, my Lord," he 
 said, " and I've had many hard nuts to crack, but 
 this beats 'em all. I can't see my way to making 
 anything of it ; and unless you can furnish me with 
 any particulars of the poor young gentleman's past 
 life, of an enlightening character, I don't see much 
 hope of getting ahead." 
 
 "You stick to your idea of the murder being an 
 act of revenge ? " 
 
 "What other reason could there be for such a 
 murder ? " 
 
 That question seemed unanswerable, and Lord 
 Cheriton let it pass. Matthew Dalbrook and his 
 elder son were to dine with him that evening, in 
 order to talk quietly and calmly over the terrible 
 event of last week, and the bearing which it must 
 have upon his daughter's future life. Lady Cheriton 
 and Lady Jane Carmichael had lived entirely on the 
 upper floor, taking such poor apologies for meals as
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 197 
 
 they could be induced to take in her ladyship's 
 morning-room. That closed door at the eastern end 
 of the corridor exercised its solemn influence upon 
 the whole house. Those mourning women never 
 went in or out without looking that way — and again 
 and again through the long still days they visited 
 that chamber of death, carrying fairest blooms of 
 stephanotis or camellia, whitest rose-buds, waxen 
 lilies ; kneeling in silent prayer beside that white 
 bed. 
 
 During all those dismal days before the funeral 
 Juanita lived secluded in her own room, only leaving 
 it to go to that silent room where the white bed and 
 the white flowers made an atmosphere of cold purity, 
 which chilled her heart as if she too were dead. 
 She counted the hours which remained before even 
 this melancholy link between life and death would 
 be broken, and when she must stretch out her hands 
 blindly to find one whom the earth would hide from 
 her for evermore. In the brief snatches of troubled 
 sleep that had visited her since Friday night she 
 had awakened with her husband's name upon her 
 lips, with outstretched hands that yearned for the
 
 198 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 touch of his, awakening slowly to consciousness 
 of the horrible reality. In every dream that she 
 had dreamed he had been with her, and in some of 
 those dreams had appeared with a distinctness 
 which involved the memory of her sorrow. Yes, 
 she had thought him dead — yes, she had seen him 
 stretched bleeding at her feet ; but that had been 
 dream and delusion. Keality was here, here in his 
 strong voice, here in the warm grasp of his hand, 
 here in the lying vision that was kinder than truth. 
 
 Mr. Dalbrook and his son arrived at a quarter to 
 eight, and were received by Lord Cheriton in the 
 library. The drawing-room was now a locked 
 chamber, and it would be long doubtless before any 
 one would have the courage to occupy that room. 
 The Dalbrooks were to stay at Cheriton till after the 
 funeral. Matthew Dalbrook had been Sir Godfrey's 
 solicitor, and it would be his duty to read the 
 will. 
 
 He was also one of the trustees to Juanita's mar- 
 riage settlement, and the time had come — all too 
 soon — when the terms of that settlement would 
 have to be discussed.
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 199 
 
 " How is my cousin ? " asked Theodore, when he 
 had shaken hands with Lord Cheriton. 
 
 " Have you seen her since — Friday? " 
 
 "Yes, I saw her on Saturday morning. She was 
 terribly changed." 
 
 "A ghastly change, is it not?" said Lord 
 Cheriton, with a sigh. " I doubt if there is any 
 improvement since then ; but she behaved splen- 
 didly at the inquest this afternoon. "We were all 
 prepared for her breaking down. God knows 
 whether she will ever get the better of her grief, 
 or whether she will go down to the grave a broken- 
 hearted woman. Oh ! Matt," turning to his kins- 
 man and contemporary, " such a trial as this teaches 
 us how Providence can laugh at our best laid plans. 
 I thought I had made my daughter's happiness as 
 secure as the foundations of this old house." 
 
 " You did your best, James. No man can do 
 more." 
 
 Theodore was silent for the most part after his 
 inquiry about his cousin. He listened while the 
 elder men talked, and gave his opinion when it was 
 asked for, and showed himself a clear-headed man
 
 200 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 of business ; but his depression was not the less 
 evident. The thought of Juanita's grief — the con- 
 trast between her agony now and her joyousness the 
 day she was at Dorchester — was never absent from 
 his mind; and the talk of the two elder men, the 
 discussion as to the extent of her possessions, her 
 power to do this and that, the house she was to live 
 in, the establishment she was to keep, jarred upon 
 him horribly. 
 
 " By the conditions of the settlement, the Priory 
 is to be hers for her life, with everything it contains. 
 By the conditions of Sir Godfrey's will, in the event 
 of his leaving no issue, the Priory estate is to go 
 after his widow's death to Mrs. Grenville's eldest 
 son, or failing a son in that direction, then to Mrs. 
 Morningside's eldest son. Should neither sister 
 leave a son surviving at the time of Lady Car- 
 michael's death the estate is to be sold, and the 
 product divided in equal portions among the sur- 
 viving nieces ; but at the present rate at which the 
 two ladies are filling their nurseries there is very 
 little doubt there will be a surviving son. Mrs. 
 Grenville was Sir Godfrey's favourite, I know, and
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 201 
 
 I can understand his giving her boy the estate, and 
 thus founding a family, rather than dividing the 
 property between the issue of the two sisters." 
 
 ** I do not think anybody can find fault with his 
 will," said Lord Cheriton. " God knows that when 
 I saw him sign it in my room in Victoria Street, an 
 hour after his marriage, nothing was further from 
 my thoughts than the idea that the will would come 
 into force within the nest fifty years. It seemed 
 almost an idle precaution for so young a man to be 
 in such a hurry to set his house in order." 
 
 *' Do you think Juanita will decide to live at the 
 Priory ? " asked Mr. Dalbrook. 
 
 " It would seem more natural for her to live here 
 with her mother and me, but I fear that this house 
 will seem for ever accursed to her. She will re- 
 member that it was her own whim to spend her 
 honeymoon here. It will seem to her as if she had 
 brought her husband to his death. Oh, God, when 
 I remember how her mother and I suggested other 
 places — how we talked to her of the Tyrol and the 
 Dolomites, of Hungary, Norway — and with what a 
 kind of childish infatuation she clung to her fancy for
 
 202 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 this house, it seems as if a hideous fatality guided 
 her to her doom. It is her doom, as well as his. I 
 do not believe she will ever he a happy woman 
 again." 
 
 " It may seem so now to us all, to herself most of 
 all, poor girl," answered Matthew Dalbrook. *' But 
 I never saw a sorrow yet that Time could not heal, 
 and the sorrow of a girl of nineteen leaves such a 
 wide margin for Time's healing powers. God grant 
 that you and I may both live to see her bright and 
 happy again — with a second husband. There is 
 something prosaic, I feel, in the very sound ; but 
 there may be some touch of romance even in a 
 second love." 
 
 He did not see the painful change in his son's face 
 while he was talking : the sudden crimson which 
 faded slowly to a ghastly pallor. It had never 
 occurred to Matthew Dalbrook that his son Theodore 
 had felt anything more than a cousinly regard for 
 Lord Cheriton's daughter. 
 
 The funeral took place on the following Wednes- 
 day — one of those funerals about which people talk
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 203 
 
 for a month, and in which grief is almost lost sight 
 of by the majority of the mourners ^in a feverish 
 excitement. The procession of carriages, very few 
 of them unoccupied, was nearly half a mile long — 
 the little churchyard at Milbrook could scarcely 
 contain the mourners. The sisters' husbands were 
 there, with hats hidden in crape, and solemn coun- 
 tenances ; honestly sorry for their brother-in-law's 
 death, but not uninterested in his will. All the 
 district, within a radius of thirty miles, had 
 been on the alert to pay this last mark of re- 
 spect to a young man who had been universally 
 liked, and whose melancholy fate had moved every 
 heart. 
 
 The will was read in the library, and Juanita 
 appeared for the first time since her cousins had 
 been at Cheriton. She came into the room with her 
 mother, and went to Matthew and his son quietly, 
 and gave a hand to each, and answered their grave 
 inquiries about her health without one tear or one 
 faltering accent ; and then she took her seat beside 
 her father's chair, and waited for the reading of the 
 will. It seemed to her as if it contained her hus-
 
 204 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 band's last words, addressed to her from his grave. 
 He knew when he wrote or dictated those words that 
 she would not hear them in his lifetime. The will 
 left her a life-interest in everything, except twenty 
 thousand pounds in consols to Lady Jane, a few 
 legacies to old servants and local charities, and a few 
 souvenirs to college friends. Sir Godfrey had held 
 the estate in fee simple, and could deal with it as he 
 pleased. He expressed a hope that if his wife sur- 
 vived him she should continue to live at the Priory, 
 and that the household should remain, as far as 
 possible, unchanged, that no old horse should ever 
 be sold, and no dogs disposed of in any way off the 
 premises. This last request was to secure a con- 
 tinuance of old customs. His father had never 
 allowed a horse that he had kept over a twelvemonth 
 to be sold ; and had never parted with a dog. His 
 own hand shot the horse that was no longer fit for 
 service ; his own hand poisoned the dog whose life 
 had ceased to be a blessing. 
 
 When the will was finished, and it was by no 
 means a lengthy document. Lady Jane kissed her 
 daughter-in-law.
 
 THE DAY WILL CO^IE. 205 
 
 ** You will do as he wished, won't you, dearest ? " 
 she said, softly. 
 
 "Live at the Priory — yes. Lady Jane, unless you 
 will live there instead. It would be more natural 
 for you to be mistress there. When — when — my 
 darling made that will he must have thought of me 
 as an old woman, likely to survive him by a few 
 years at most, and it would seem natural to him 
 for me to go on living in his house — to continue to 
 live — those were his words, you know — to continue 
 to live in the home of my married life. But all is 
 diflferent now, and it would be better for you to have 
 the Priory. It has been your home so long. It is 
 full of associations and interests for you. I can 
 live anywhere — anywhere except in this detested 
 house." 
 
 She had spoken in a low voice all the time, so 
 low as to be quite inaudible to her father and Mat- 
 thew Dalbrook, who were talking confidentially 
 upon the other side of the wide oak table. 
 
 " My love, it is your house. It will be full of 
 associations for you too — the memories of his youth. 
 It may comfort you by-and-by to live among the
 
 206 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 things he cared for. And I can be with you there 
 now and then. You will bear with a melancholy 
 old woman now and then," pleaded Lady Jane, with 
 tearful tenderness. 
 
 The only answer was a sob, and a clinging 
 pressure of the hand; and then the three women 
 quietly left the room. Their interest in the busi- 
 ness was over. Blinds had been drawn up and 
 Yenetian shutters opened. There was a flood of 
 sunshine on the staircase and in the corridors as 
 Juanita went back to her room. The perfume of 
 roses and the breath of summer came in at the 
 open windows. 
 
 *' Oh, God, how the sun shines," she cried, in a 
 sudden agony of remembrance. 
 
 Those odours from the garden, the blue sky, sum- 
 mer greenery and dazzling summer light brought 
 back the image of her vanished happiness. 
 Last week, less than a week ago, she had been one 
 of the joyous creatures in that glad, gay world — 
 joyous as the thrush whose song was thrilling upon 
 the soft sweet air. 
 
 Lady Jane's two sons-in-law had drawn near the
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 207 
 
 oak table at which the lawyer was seated with his 
 papers before him. 
 
 Jessica's husband, Mr. Grenville, was sporting. 
 His thoughts were centred in his stable, where he 
 found an all-sufficient occupation for his intellectual 
 powers in an endless buying, exchanging, selling, 
 summering and wintering his stud ; in the inven- 
 tion of improved bits, and the development of new 
 ideas in saddlery ; in the performance of operations 
 that belong rather to the professional veterinary 
 than to the gentleman at large, and in the conversa- 
 tion of his stud groom. These resources filled up 
 all the margin that was left for a man who hunted 
 four days a week in his own district, and who often 
 got a fifth and even a sixth day in other countries 
 accessible by rail. It may have been a natural 
 result of Mr. Grenville's devotion to the stable that 
 Mrs. Grenville was absorbed by her nursery ; or it 
 may have been a natural bent on the lady's part. 
 However this might be, the lady and the gentleman 
 followed parallel lines, in which their interests never 
 clashed. He talked of hardly anything but his 
 horses ; she rarely mentioned any other subject than
 
 208 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 her children, or something hearing upon her chil- 
 dren's well-being. He believed his horses to be the 
 best in the county ; she considered her babies 
 unsurpassed in creation. Both in their line were 
 supremely happy. 
 
 Mr. Morningside, married to Sir Godfrey's 
 younger sister, Ruth, was distinctly Parliamentary ; 
 and had no sympathies in common with such men 
 as Hugo Grenville. To him horses were animals 
 with four legs who dragged burdens; who were 
 expensive to keep, and whose legs were liable to 
 " fill " or to develop superfluous bone on the slight- 
 est provocation. His only idea of a saddle horse 
 was a slow and stolid cob, for whose virtuous dispo- 
 sition and powerful bone he had paid nearly three 
 hundred pounds, and on which he pounded round 
 the park three or four times every morning during 
 the Parliamentary season, an exercise of which he 
 was about as fond as he was of Pullna water, but 
 which had been recommended him for the good of 
 his liver. 
 
 Mr. Morningside had a castle in the north, too 
 near Newcastle to be altogether beautiful, and he
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 209 
 
 had a small suite upon a fifth floor in Queen Anne's 
 Mansion. He had taken this apartment as a 
 hachelor x>ied a terrc for the Parliamentary season ; 
 and he had laid considerable emphasis upon the 
 landowner's necessity for stern economy which had 
 constrained him to take rooms so small as to be 
 altogether " impossible " for his wife. Mrs. Morn- 
 ingside was, however, of a different opinion. No 
 place was impossible for her which her dear Stuart 
 deigned to occupy. She did not mind small rooms, 
 or a fifth story. Was there not a lift, and were 
 there not charming people living ever so much 
 nearer the skies ? She did not mind even what she 
 gracefully described as "pigging it," for her dear 
 Stuart's sake. She was utterly unlike her elder 
 sister, and she had no compunction at placing 
 over two hundred miles between her and her 
 nursery. 
 
 *' They'd wire for me if anything went wrong," 
 she said, *' and the express would take me home in 
 a few hours." 
 
 " That would depend upon what time you got the 
 wire. The express doesn't go every quarter of an 
 
 VOL. I. P
 
 210 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 hour like a Eoyal Blue," replied Mr. Morningside, 
 gloomily. 
 
 He was a dry-as-dust man ; one of those self- 
 satisfied persons who are never less alone than when 
 alone. He had married at five-and-thirty, and the 
 comfortable habits of a priggish bachelor still clove 
 to him after six years of married bliss. He was 
 fond of his wife in her place, and he thought her a 
 very charming woman at the head of his table, and 
 receiving his guests at Morningside Castle. But it 
 was essential to his peace that he should have many 
 solitary hours in which to pore over Blue books and 
 meditate upon an intended speech. He fancied 
 himself greatly as a speaker, and he was one of 
 those Parliamentary bores whose ornate periods are 
 made mincemeat of by the reporters. He looked to 
 a day when he would take his place with Burke and 
 Walpole, and other giants, whose oratory had been 
 received coldly in the dawn of their senatorial 
 career. He gave himself up to much study of 
 politics past and present, and was one of those well- 
 informed bores who are only useful as a store-house 
 of hard facts for the use of livelier speakers.
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 211 
 
 When a man had to speak upon a subject of which 
 he knew nothing, he went to Mr. Morningside as to 
 a Parliamentary Encyclopasdia. 
 
 To sustain these stores of knowledge Mr. Morn- 
 ingside required much leisure for what is called 
 heavy reading ; and heavy reading is not easy in 
 that genial family life which means incessant talk 
 and incessant interruption. Mr. Morningside 
 would have preferred, therefore, to keep his den on 
 the fifth floor to himself; but his wife loved Lon- 
 don, and he could not refuse her the privilege of 
 occasionally sharing his nest on a level with the 
 spires and towers of the great city. She made her 
 presence agreeably felt by tables covered with photo- 
 gi'aph easels, Yallauris vases, stray flowers in speci- 
 men glasses, which were continually being knocked 
 over, Japanese screens, and every known variety of 
 chair-back ; and albeit he was an essentially dutiful 
 husband, Mr. Morningside never felt happier than 
 when he had seen his Ruth comfortably seated in 
 the Bournemouth express on her way to the home 
 of her forefathers for one of those protracted visits 
 that no one but a near relation would venture to 
 
 p 2
 
 212 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 make. He left her cheerily on such occasions, with 
 a promise to run down to the Priory on Saturday 
 evenings whenever it was possible to leave the helm. 
 
 Mr. Morningside had liked his brother-in-law as 
 well as it was in him to like any man, and had been 
 horrified at that sudden inexplicable doom ; but Sir 
 Godfrey being snatched off this earth in the flower 
 of his age, Mr. Morningside thought it only natural 
 that the young Morningsides should derive some 
 benefit, immediate or contingent, from their uncle's 
 estate. It was, therefore, with some disgust that 
 he heard that clause in the will which gave Jessica's 
 sons the preference over all the sons of Euth. 
 True that failing any son of Jessica's, the estate 
 was to lapse to the eldest surviving son of Kuth ; 
 but what earthly value was such a reversionary 
 interest as this in the case of a lady whose nursery 
 was like a rabbit warren ? 
 
 "I congratulate you on your eldest boy's pros- 
 pects, Grenville," said Mr. Morningside, sourly. 
 ^* Your Tom," a boy whom he hated, ** will come 
 into a very fine thing one of these days.'' 
 
 *' Humph," muttered Grenville, *' Lady Car-
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 213 
 
 micbaers is a good life, and I should be very sorry 
 to see it sbortened. Besides, wbo can tell ? Before 
 tbis time next year tbere may be a nearer claim- 
 ant." 
 
 " Lord have mercy upon us," exclaimed Morning- 
 side, " I never tbougbt of that contingency."
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 " Poor girl ! put on thy stifling widow's weed, 
 And 'scape at once from Hope's accursed bands ; 
 To-day thou wilt not see him, nor to-morrow, 
 And the next day will be a day of sorrow." 
 
 Life falls back into old grooves after calaniities 
 the most stupendous. After fires — after plagues — 
 after earthquakes — people breakfast and dine, marry 
 and are given in marriage. A few more graves 
 testify to the fever that has decimated a city; a 
 ruined village here and there along the smiling 
 southern shore, shells that were once houses, 
 churches beneath whose shivered domes no wor- 
 shipper dare ever kneel again, hear witness to 
 the earthquake ; but the monotonous common-place 
 of life goes on all the same in city and village, on 
 hill and sea-shore. And so when Godfrey Car. 
 michael was laid in his grave, when the police had 
 exhausted their ingenuity in the vain endeavour to 
 fathom the secret of his death — when the coroner
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 215 
 
 had adjourned and again adjourned his inquiry, and 
 an open verdict had been pronounced, life iu Cheri- 
 ton House resumed its old order, and the room in 
 which the bridegroom had lain murdered at the feet 
 of the bride was again thrown open to the sun and 
 air, and to the sound of voices, and to the going 
 and coming of daily life. 
 
 Lady Cheriton would have had the room closed ; 
 for a year at least, she pleaded ; but her husband 
 told her that to make it a sealed chamber now would 
 be to throw it out of use for his lifetime. 
 
 "If we once let servants and people think and 
 talk of it as a haunted room nobody will ever like to 
 occupy it again so long as this house stands," he 
 said. *' Stories will be invented — those things shape 
 themselves unawares in the human mind — sounds 
 will be heard, and the whole house will become un- 
 inhabitable. We both love our house, Maria. Our 
 own hands have fashioned it after our own hearts. 
 It would be folly to put a brand upon it, and to say 
 henceforward it shall be accursed to us. God 
 knows I am sorry for Juanita's sorrow, sorry for my 
 own loss ; but I look to you to help me in keeping
 
 216 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 our home bright and pleasant for our declining 
 days." 
 
 It was the habit of her life to obey him and try 
 to please him in all things ; so she answered 
 gently,— 
 
 " Of course, dear James, it shall be as you wish. 
 I feel sure you are right. It would be wicked to 
 shut up that lovely room " — with a faint shudder ; 
 " but I shall never go near the west window with- 
 out thinking of — our dear boy. And I'm afraid 
 Juanita will never be able to endure the room." 
 
 "Perhaps not. We can use the other rooms 
 when she is here. She has her own house now ; 
 and I daresay it will be some time before she will 
 care to cross this threshold. The house must seem 
 fatal to her. It was her own caprice that brought 
 him here. I'm afraid that recollection will torture 
 her, poor child." 
 
 It was finally decided therefore that the drawing- 
 room should be used nightly, as it had been in all 
 the peaceful years that were gone. The lamps with 
 their gay shades of rose or amber made spots of 
 coloured light amidst tables heaped with flowers.
 
 THE DAY "WILL COME. 217 
 
 All the choicest blooms that the hothouses or the 
 gardens could produce were brought as of old, like 
 offerings to a pagan shrine. The numberless toys 
 upon the tables were set out in the old orderly dis- 
 order — porcelain and enamel bon-bon boxes on one 
 table — antique watches and gold and silver snuff- 
 boxes on another — bronzes, intaglios, coins, medals, 
 filigree scent bottles upon a third, and a background 
 of flowers everywhere. The piano was opened, and 
 the candles lighted ready for her ladyship, who sang 
 Spanish ballads delightfully even yet, and who was 
 in the habit of singing to her husband of an evening 
 whenever they were alone. 
 
 They were generally alone now, not being able to 
 receive visitors from the outside world at such a 
 time. The Yicar of the parish dined at Cheriton 
 now and then, and Matthew Dalbrook spent a night 
 there occasionally, and talked over business matters, 
 and the future development of a tract of land at 
 Swanage, which formed a portion of the original 
 Strangway estate. 
 
 The widow had taken possession of her new home, 
 the home which they two were to have lived in for
 
 218 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 half a century of loving union. They had joked 
 about their golden wedding as they sat at lunch on 
 the lawn that day ; had laughed at the thought of 
 how they would look in white hair and wrinkles, 
 and then had sighed at the thought of how those 
 they loved now would be gone before that day came, 
 and how the friends who gathered round them would 
 be new friends, the casual acquaintances of the 
 passing years promoted to friendship in the place of 
 those earlier, nearer, dearer friends whom death had 
 taken. 
 
 They had talked of their silver wedding, which 
 seemed a happier idea ; for dear Lady Jane and 
 Juanita's mother and father might all live to see 
 that day. They would be old, of course, older by 
 five-and-twenty years ; but not too old to be happy 
 and beloved. The young wife and husband pictured 
 the lawn on which they were sitting crowded with 
 friends and tenants and villagers and children ; and 
 planned the feasting and the sports, which were to 
 have a touch of originality, something out of the 
 beaten track, which something was not easy to 
 devise.
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 219 
 
 And now she and Lady Jane were sitting in tlie 
 same spot, in the sultry August evening, two desolate 
 women ; the tawny giant at their feet, his dog, the 
 mastiff Styx, looking up at them now and then with 
 great serious eyes, as if asking what had become of 
 his master. 
 
 Juanita was strangely altered since the days of her 
 honeymoon. Her cheeks had hollowed, and the 
 large dark eyes looked larger, and gave a haggard 
 expression to the pallid face ; hut she was bearing 
 her sorrow bravely for Lady Jane's sake, as Lady 
 Jane had done for her sake, in the beginning of 
 things. That gentle lady had broken down after 
 the funeral, and Juanita had been constrained to 
 forget her own agony for a brief space in trying to 
 comfort the bereaved mother ; and so the two acted 
 and re-acted upon each other, and it was well for 
 them to be together. 
 
 They had settled down in the old house before they 
 had been there a week. Lady Jane put off her return 
 to Swanage indefinitely. She could drive over now 
 and then to supervise the gardening, and she would 
 stay at the Priory as long as Juanita wanted her.
 
 220 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 " That would be always," said Juanita. 
 
 "Ah, my love, that would not do. I dcn't forget 
 all that has been written about mothers-in-law. 
 There must be some truth in it." 
 
 " Oh, but you forget. That is when there is a 
 son and husband to quarrel about," said Juanita, 
 with a sudden sob. *' We have no cause for jealousy. 
 We have only our dead." 
 
 Lady Jane wanted to establish her daughter-in-law 
 in that cheerful sitting-room which had been her own, 
 but here Juanita opposed her. 
 
 *' I am not going to have it — now," she said, reso- 
 lutely. " It shall be your room always. No one 
 else shall use it. I am going to have his room for 
 my den." 
 
 " My dearest, it is the dullest room in the house." 
 
 " It was his room, and I like it better than any 
 other in the world." 
 
 She arranged all her own books and possessions in 
 the large room looking into the stable yard, which 
 had been Sir Godfrey's study from the time he went 
 to Eton. She found all his Eton books on a lower 
 shelf of one of the book-cases, and she sat on the
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 221 
 
 floor for an hour dusting grammars and dictionary, 
 first Greek Keader, Latin Gradus, and all the rest of 
 them. She found his college books, with the college 
 arms upon them, on another shelf. She would have 
 nothing disturbed or altered, and she was supremely 
 indifferent to the question of incongruity. Her own 
 book-cases from Cheriton, the dainty toy book-cases 
 of inlaid satin wood, were squeezed into the recesses 
 on each side of the fireplace. Her photographs of 
 mother, father, friends, horses, and dogs, were 
 arranged upon the carved oak mantelpiece, above 
 the quaint little cupboards with carved doors, spoil 
 of old Belgian churches, still fall of choice cigars, 
 the young man's store. His spurs and hunting- 
 crops, canes, and boxing-gloves, decorated the panel 
 between the two tall windows. His despatch box 
 still stood upon the library table, and the dog Styx 
 pushed the door open whenever it was left ajar and 
 strolled into the room as by old established right. 
 
 She felt herself nearer her dead husband here 
 than anywhere else ; nearer even than in the church- 
 yard, where she and Lady Jane went every afternoon 
 with fresh flowers for his grave. They had not laid
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 him in the family vault, hut among the graves 
 of gentle and simple, under the sunny turf. The 
 marhle was not yet carven which was to mark out 
 his grave amidst those humbler resting-places. 
 
 Theodore Dalbrook had not seen his cousin since 
 the day of the funeral. His father and his two 
 sisters had called upon her at the Priory, and had 
 hrought hack an account of the quiet dignity with 
 which she bore herself in her melancholy position. 
 
 " I did not think she had so much solid sense," 
 said Janet, and then she and Sophia talked about 
 the Priory as a dwelling-house, and of its inferiority 
 to Cheriton, and speculated upon the amount of their 
 cousin's income. 
 
 " She has a splendid position. She will be a fine 
 catch for some one by-and-by," said Harrington. " I 
 hope she won't go and throw herself away upon an 
 adventurer." 
 
 *' I hope not," said his father, *' but I suppose 
 she will marry again? That seems inevitable." 
 
 "I don't see that it is inevitable," argued Theo- 
 dore, almost angrily. '' She was devotedly attached
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 to her husband. I suppose there is now and then a 
 woman who can remain faithful to a first love '* 
 
 ** When the first love is alive, and not always 
 then," put in Sophia, flippantly. *' Of course she 
 will marry again. If she wanted to remain single 
 people would not let her, with her income." 
 
 Theodore got up and walked to the window. His 
 sister's talk often set his teeth on edge, but rarely so 
 much as it did to-day. 
 
 *' You talk of her as if she were the most shallow- 
 brained of women," he exclaimed, with his back to 
 the family group, looking out with gloomy eyes into 
 the old-fashioned street, the narrow circumscribed 
 view which he had hated of late with a deadly 
 hatred. 
 
 " I don't think she is very deep," answered 
 Sophia. " She never could appreciate Dar\vin. 
 She told me once that she wondered what I could 
 find to interest me in earth-worms." 
 
 ** A woman must, indeed, be shallow who feels 
 no interest in that thrilling subject," sneered Theo- 
 dore. 
 
 "Upon my word, now," said his father, " Dar-
 
 224 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 win's book interested me, though I'm not a scientific 
 man. And I never see a worm wriggling off the 
 gardener's spade without feeling that I ought to be 
 grateful to him as a factor in the landed interest. 
 Perhaps," continued Mr. Dalbrook, musingly, '* my 
 own practice in the conveyancing line owes some- 
 thing of its substantial character to earth-worms. 
 If it were not for them there might be no land to 
 convey." 
 
 The conversation drifted lightly away from 
 Juanita and her sorrow, but her image still filled 
 Theodore's mind, and he left the drawing-room and 
 the frivolous talk and the clinking of teacups and 
 teaspoons, and went out in the declining light to 
 walk in the avenue of sycamores on the edge of the 
 old city. 
 
 He had not called upon his cousin in her new 
 home ; he shrank from the very idea of meeting her 
 while her sorrow was still new, while her thoughts 
 and feelings were concentrated upon that one sub- 
 ject, while he could only be to her as an unwelcome 
 intruder from that outside world she loathed, as 
 <^rief loathes all but its own sad memories.
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 225 
 
 Had the calamity which had desolated her life 
 brought her any nearer to him who had loved her 
 so long and so unselfishly ? Alas, no ; he told him- 
 self that if she ever loved again, it would be to a 
 stranger that her reawakening heart would open 
 rather than to the rejected lover of the past, the 
 man whom her memory would couple with the hus- 
 band she had lost, and whom she would compare 
 disadvantageously with that chosen one. 
 
 Xo, he told himself, there was little more chance 
 for him in the future than there had been in the 
 past. She liked him and trusted him, with a 
 sisterly affection which nothing short of a miracle 
 could warm into love. Passion does not grow out 
 of such placid beginnings. 
 
 In her very dawn of girlhood she had been in love 
 with Godfrey : had blushed at his coming : had 
 quarrelled with him, and wept stormy tears : had 
 suffered all those alternations of joy and grief, pride 
 and self-abasement, which accompany love in an 
 impassioned nature. Theodore remembered her 
 treatment of the fifth-form Etonian, of the under- 
 graduate, remembered the passionate drama per- 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 228 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 petually being acted in those two young lives, a 
 drama which he had watched with aching heart; 
 and he felt that he could never be as that first lover 
 had been. He was associated with the common- 
 place of her life. She had laughed often at his 
 dry-as-dust talk wdth her father — the dull discus- 
 sions about leases and bills of dilapidation. A 
 solicitor living from year's end to year's end in a 
 country town — what a dreary person he must needs 
 appear beside the brilliant young Patrician, full of 
 the gladness of the life that knows neither labour 
 nor care. He sickened at the thought of that con- 
 trast. 
 
 He had served his father faithfully hitherto, and 
 the bond between father and son had been one of 
 strong affection as well as duty ; but for the last 
 jear there had been growing upon him an inexpres- 
 sible weariness of the house in which he was born, 
 and the city in which he had lived the chief part of 
 his uneventful life. He had struggled against the 
 disgust of familiar things, telling himself that it 
 w^as an unworthy feeling, and that he would be a 
 snob if he indulged it. Yet the disgust grew into
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 227 
 
 absolute loathing ; the monotonous days, the repe- 
 titive work, oppressed him like a nightmare. Since 
 Juanita*s marriage the burden had become more and 
 more intolerable. To be so near her, yet so far. 
 To be letting life creep away in dull drudgery which 
 could never bring him nearer her social level; to 
 feel that all his pursuits and associations were be- 
 neath the woman he loved, and could never arouse 
 the faintest interest in her mind. This was almost 
 too bitter to be borne, and he had for some time 
 past been meditating some way of escape, some 
 manner of release from these old fetters into the 
 wider arena of the outer world. 
 
 Such escape was not easy. He had to think of 
 his father, that indulgent, large-minded father who 
 had given his son a very remunerative share in his 
 practice at an age when most young men are depen- 
 dent for every suit of clothes or five pound note 
 upon parental bounty and parental caprice. He 
 knew that his father looked to him for an entire 
 release from work before they were many years 
 older ; and that he would then find himself sole 
 master of a business worth at least fifteen hundred 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 a year. All this had come to him and would come 
 to him easily, as the reward of conscientious and 
 intelligent work. It was a prospect which few 
 young men would forego without considerable hesi- 
 tation ; but Theodore hardly thought of the sub- 
 stantial advantages which he was so eager to 
 sacrifice. His sole hesitation was on account of the 
 disappointment which the step he contemplated 
 would inflict upon his father. 
 
 He was not without a foreshadowing of a plan 
 by which that disappointment might be in somewise 
 lessened. He had kept an eye upon his brother 
 for some time past, and he had discovered that the 
 young man's fervour for the Anglican Church had 
 begun to cool. There were all the signs of wavering 
 in that gifted youth. At one time he devoted all 
 his study to the writings of Cardinal Newman, 
 Hurrel Froude, and the Tractarian Party — he lived 
 in the atmosphere of Oxford in the forties ; he 
 talked of Cardinal Manning as the head and front 
 of religious thought. He was on the verge of 
 deciding for the Old Faith. Then a sudden change 
 came over the spirit of his dream. He began to
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 229 
 
 have doubts, not of the reformed faith, but of every 
 Western creed. 
 
 " Light comes from the East," he told his sisters 
 with au oracular air. "I doubt if there is any 
 nearer resting-place for the sole of my foot than 
 the Temple of Buddha. I find there the larger 
 creed for which my mind yearns — boundless 
 vistas behind and before me. I begin to enter- 
 tain painful doubts of my fitness for the Anglican 
 Church. I might be a power, perhaps, but it 
 would be outside those narrow bounds — like 
 Voysey, or Stopford Brooke. The Church, 
 with its present limitations, would not hold 
 me." 
 
 The sisters sympathized, argued, quoted Essays 
 and Reviews, and talked of Darwin and Spencer, 
 Huxley and Comte. Theodore listened and said 
 nothing. He saw which way the tide was turning, 
 and rejoiced in the change of the current. 
 
 And now this sultry August afternoon, pacing up 
 and down the green walk, he was expectant of an 
 opportunity of discussing his brother's future with 
 that gentleman himself, as Harrington was in the
 
 230 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 habit of taking his afternoon constitutional, book in 
 hand, upon this very path. 
 
 He appeared by-and-by, carrying an open volume 
 of Max Mllller and looking at the nursemaids and 
 perambulators. 
 
 ** What, Theo, taking your meditative cigar ? You 
 don't often give yourself a holiday before dinner." 
 
 " No, but I wanted to talk to you alone, and I 
 knew this was your beat." 
 
 ** Nothing gone wrong, I hope." 
 
 " No, it is your future I want to discuss — if you 
 don't mind." 
 
 " My future is wrapped in a cloud of doubt," re- 
 plied the younger man, dreamily. " Were the 
 Church differently constituted — were the minds 
 that rule in it of a larger cast, a wider grasp, 
 
 ** Harrington, how would you like the law as a 
 profession ? " Theodore asked abruptly, when the 
 other began to hesitate. 
 
 ** My dear fellow, it is all very well to ask me that 
 question, when you know there is no room for me 
 in my father's o£Sce," retorted Harrington, with a
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 231 
 
 contemptuous wave of that long, lean white hand, 
 which always reminded him of St. Francis de Sales 
 or Savonarola ; not that he had any positive know- 
 ledge of what those saintly hands were like. 
 
 " Room might be made for you," said Theodore. 
 
 *' I should not care to accept a subordinate posi- 
 tion — Aut Caesar " 
 
 " So far as the Caesar-ship of a provincial soli- 
 citor's office can go the whole empire may be yours 
 by-and-by, if you like — provided you put your 
 shoulder to the wheel and pass your examinations." 
 
 " Do you mean to say that you would throw up 
 your position — and an income which would allow of 
 your marrying to-morrow, if you chose — to make 
 room for me ? " 
 
 "If I can get my father's consent, yes, 
 decidedly." 
 
 '* And how do you propose to exist without a 
 profession 7 '' 
 
 " I don't propose anything of the kind. I mean 
 to go to the Bar. 
 
 " Oh, I begin to understand. A solicitor's office 
 is not good enough for you ? "
 
 232 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 " I don't say that ; but I have taken a disgust — 
 an unreasonable disgust no doubt — to that branch 
 of the law ; and I am very sick of Dorchester." 
 
 " So am I," retorted Harrington, gazing vaguely 
 at a pretty nursemaid. "We are agreed there at 
 any rate. And you want to follow in Lord Cheri- 
 ton's track, and make a great name ? " 
 
 *' It is only one man in a thousand who succeeds 
 as James Dalbrook has succeeded ; but if I go to 
 the Bar you may be sure I shall do my best to get 
 on ; and I shall start with a pretty good knowledge 
 of common law." 
 
 " You want to be in London — you are pining for 
 an aesthetic centre," sighed Harrington. 
 
 " I don't quite know what that is, but I should 
 prefer London to Dorchester." 
 
 " So should I — and you want me to take your 
 place at the mill ; to grind out my soul in the dull 
 round that has sickened you." 
 
 " The life has begun to pall upon me, but I think 
 it ought to suit you," answered Theodore, thought- 
 fully. "You are fonder of home — and of the 
 sisters — than I am. You get on better with them."
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 233 
 
 " You have been rather grumpy lately, I admit," 
 said Harrington. 
 
 ** And you have let yourself cool upon your 
 Divinity exam. You evidently don't mean the 
 Church ? " 
 
 •' I have outgrown the Church. You can't put a 
 quart of wine into a pint bottle." 
 
 " And you must do something. I don't think you 
 can do anything so good as to take my place, and 
 become my father's right hand until he chooses to 
 retire, and leave you the practice. You will have 
 married by that time, perhaps, and will have sobered 
 down — intellectually. Morally you are one of the 
 steadiest fellows I know." 
 
 " I suppose I ought to consider this what the 
 house-agents call an unusual opportunity?" said 
 Harrington ; " but you must give me time to think 
 it over." 
 
 ** Take time," answered Theodore, briefly. *'I'll 
 talk to my father in the meanwhile." 
 
 Mr. Dalbrook received his elder son's communi- 
 cation as if it had been a blow from an enemy's 
 hand.
 
 234 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 "Do yovL suppose that ass Harrington can ever 
 take your place?" he exclaimed, whereupon Theodore 
 took pains to explain that his brother was by no 
 means an ass, and that he was only labouring under 
 that burden of small affectations which weighs down 
 a young man who has been allowed to live too much 
 in the society of young women, sisters and sisters* 
 friends, and to consider all his own utterances 
 oracular. 
 
 " He is not so fit for the Church as Brown is,'* 
 said Theodore, " and he will only addle his brains if 
 he reads any more theology. He won't be content 
 with Paley and Butler, and the good old books which 
 have been the turnpike road to ordination for a cen- 
 tury. He is all for new ideas, and the new ideas 
 are too big for him. But if you will give him his 
 articles, and teach him, as you taught me " 
 
 " I don't think I taught you much. You seemed 
 to get at everything by instinct." 
 
 ** Ah, you taught me my profession without know- 
 ing it ; and you will teach Harrington with just as 
 little trouble. He will shake off that husk of affecta- 
 tion in your office — no solicitor can be affected — and
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 235 
 
 he will come out a good lawyer ; while I am trying 
 my luck in Temple chambers, reading, and waiting 
 for briefs. With your help, by-and-by, I am bound 
 to do something. I shall get a case or two upon 
 this circuit, anyhow." 
 
 "I can't think what has put this folly in your 
 head, Theo," said his father, with a vexed air. 
 
 *'It is not folly, father; it is not a caprice," the 
 young man protested, with sudden earnestness. 
 "For God's sake don't think me ungrateful, or that 
 I would willingly turn my back upon my duty to you. 
 Only — young people have troubles of their own, 
 don't you know ? — and of late I have not been 
 altogether happy. I have not prospered in my love- 
 dream ; and so I have set up a new idol, that idol 
 so many men worship with more or less reward — 
 Success. I want to spread my wings, and see if they 
 will can-y me on a longer flight than I have taken 
 
 yet." 
 
 " Well, it would be selfish of me to baulk you, 
 even if your loss were to cripple me altogether. And 
 it won't do that. I am strong enough to work on 
 for a few years longer than I intended."
 
 236 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 " Ob, my dear father, I hope it won't come to that. 
 I hope my change of plan won't shorten your years 
 of leisure.'' 
 
 **I am afraid that's inevitable, Theo. I can't 
 transfer a fine practice to my son till I've made him a 
 good lawyer — and God knows how long that will take 
 in Harrington's case. Judging by my present estima- 
 tion of him, I should say half a century. But don't 
 be downhearted, Theo. You shall eat your dinners. 
 You shall qualify for the Woolsack. After all I don't 
 know how a life of leisure might suit me. It would be 
 a change from the known to the unknown, almost 
 as stupendous as the change from life to death." 
 
 Perhaps Matthew Dalbrook had fathomed that 
 secret woe at which Theodore had hinted darkly ; 
 in any case he took his elder son's defection more 
 easily than might have been hoped, and bore 
 patiently with some preliminary fatuity from the 
 younger son, who accepted the gift of his articles, 
 an allowance of two hundred pounds per annum, and 
 the promise of a junior partnership in the near 
 future, with the languid politeness of one who felt 
 that he was renouncing a mitre.
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 237 
 
 Everything was settled off-hand, and Theodore 
 was to go to London at the end of September to 
 select and furnish his modest chambers in one of 
 those grave old courts of the Temple, and be ready 
 to begin his new life with the beginning of term. 
 
 He had not seen Juanita since the funeral, and 
 she had been told nothing of this sudden recon- 
 struction of his life ; but he determined to see her 
 before he left Dorchester, and he considered that 
 he had a right, as her kinsman, to bid her good-bye. 
 Perhaps in his heart-weariness he was inclined to 
 exaggerate the solemnity of that leave-taking, some- 
 what as if he had been starting for Australia. 
 
 He drove over to the Priory on a dull, grey after- 
 noon, his last day in Dorchester. His portmanteaus 
 were packed, and all things were ready for an early 
 departure next morning. Sorely as he had sickened 
 of the good old town which was his birth-place, he 
 felt a shade of melancholy at the idea of cutting 
 himself adrift altogether from that quiet haven ; 
 and the love of those open stretches of barren heath 
 and those swampy meadows and grazing cattle on 
 the way to Milbrook, was engrained in him deeper
 
 238 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 than he knew. It was a landscape which took a 
 peculiar charm from the grey dimness of an 
 autumnal atmosphere, and it seemed to Theodore 
 Dalbrook that those level pastures and winding 
 waters had never looked fairer than they looked 
 to-day. 
 
 He had written to his cousin a day before to tell 
 her of his intended visit. It was too solemn a 
 matter in his own mind for him to leave the finding 
 her at home to chance. His groom took the dog- 
 cart round to the stables, while he was ushered at 
 once to the drawing-room where Lady Carmichael 
 was sitting at her work-table in the bow window, 
 with Styx stretched on a lion -skin at her feet. 
 
 The silence of the house struck Theodore Dal- 
 brook painfully as he followed the footman across 
 the hall and along a corridor which led to the draw- 
 ing-room — that death-like silence of a roomy old 
 mansion in which there are neither children nor 
 guests, only one lonely inhabitant waited upon by 
 solemn-visaged servants, drilled to a phenomenal 
 quietness, and keeping all their good spirits for the 
 remoteness of the servants' hall, shut off by double
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 239 
 
 doors and long passages. Saddened by that atmo- 
 sphere of gloom, he entered his cousin's presence, 
 and stood with her small cold hand in his, looking 
 at the face which had changed so sorely from that 
 vivid beauty which had shone upon him in the low 
 light of the sinking sun on that summer evening 
 not three months ago. 
 
 As he looked the memory of the bride's face came 
 between him and the face of the widow, and for a 
 moment or two he stood speechless. The clearly- 
 cut features were pinched and sharpened, wasted by 
 long nights of weeping and long days of silent 
 regret. The dark eyes were circled by purple 
 shadows, and the oval cheeks were sunken and pallid. 
 All the colour and richness of that southern beauty 
 had vanished, as if some withering blight had 
 passed over the face. 
 
 " It was very good of you to think of me before 
 you left Dorchester," she said, gently. 
 
 She pushed forward a chair for her cousin, before 
 she sat down ; and Theodore seated himself opposite 
 to her with the wicker work-table between them. 
 He wondered a little to see that satin-lined re-
 
 240 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 ceptacle gorged with bright coloured silks, and 
 pieces of unfinished embroidery ; for it seemed to 
 him that there was a touch of frivolity in this light 
 ornamental needle- work which hardly harmonized 
 with her grief- stricken countenance. 
 
 ** You could not suppose that I should leave with- 
 out seeing you," he said ; " I should have come here 
 weeks ago, only " 
 
 " Only you wanted to give me time to grow calm, 
 to teach myself to look my trouble straight in the 
 face," she said, interpreting his thought. *' That 
 was very thoughtful of you. ^ Well, the storm is over 
 now. I am quite calm, as you see. I daresay 
 some people think I am getting over it. That is the 
 usual phrase, is it not ? And so you are going to 
 the Bar, Theodore. I am glad of that. You are 
 clever enough to make a name as my father did. It 
 will be slow work, I suppose ; but it will be a field 
 worthy of your ambition, which a solicitor's office in 
 a market- town never would be." 
 
 '* I have felt the want of a wider field for a long 
 time ; and I shall feel more interest in a barrister's 
 work. But I hope you don't] think I am con-
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 241 
 
 ceited enough to expect to get on as well as your 
 father." 
 
 "I don't know about that. I think you must 
 know you are a clever man. I have been wishing 
 to see you for a long time, Theodore, only I was like 
 you, I wanted to give myself time to be calm. I 
 want to talk to you about — the murderer." 
 
 ** Yes. Have you heard anything? Has there 
 been any discovery ? " 
 
 " Nothing. The offer of a reward has resulted 
 in nothing — not one little scrap of information. 
 The London detective gave up the business and went 
 back to town a week after the funeral, having ob- 
 tained only negative results. The police hereabouts 
 are creatures without an idea ; and so unless some- 
 thing is done, unless some clever brain can solve the 
 riddle, the wretch who killed my husband may go 
 down to the grave unpunished." 
 
 " It is hard that it should be so," said Theodore, 
 quietly, " yet it is an almost impossible case. There 
 is not a single indication so fur to put one on the 
 track — not one little clue." 
 
 " Not for these dull-brained, mechanical dis- 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 coverers, perhaps ; but for you or me, Theo ; for us 
 who loved him there ought to be light. Think, what 
 a strange murder it was. Not for gain, remember. 
 Had it been the hand of a burglar that shot him, I 
 could understand the difficulty of tracing that par- 
 ticular criminal among all the criminal classes. But 
 this murder, which seems utterly motiveless, must 
 have been prompted by some extraordinary motive. 
 It was not the act of a maniac ; a maniac must have 
 left some trace of his presence in the neighbourhood. 
 A maniac could not have so completely eluded the 
 police on the alert to hunt him down. There must 
 have been some indication." 
 
 " Put madness out of the question, Juanita, what 
 then?" 
 
 "Hatred, Theodore. That is the strongest pas- 
 sion in the human mind — a savage hatred which 
 could not be satisfied except with the brightest life 
 that it had the power to destroy — a relentless hatred 
 — not against him, not against my beloved. What 
 had he done in all his good life that any one upon 
 this earth should hate him. But against us — 
 against my father and mother and me — the usurpers.
 
 THE DAY WLUj COME. 243 
 
 the owners of Cheriton Manor ; against us who have 
 thrust ourselves upon the soil which that wicked race 
 held so long. Oh, Theodore, I have thought and 
 thought of this, till the conviction has grown into 
 my mind — till it has seemed like a revelation from 
 God. It was one of that wicked family who struck 
 this blow." 
 
 " One of your predecessors — the Strangways ? Is 
 that what you mean, Nita ? " 
 
 *' Yes, that is what I mean." 
 
 " My dear Juanita, it is too wild an idea. What, 
 after your father has owned the estate nearly a 
 quarter of a century ? Why should the enemy wait 
 all those years — and choose such a time?" 
 
 ** Because there never before was such an oppor- 
 tunity of striking a blow that should bring ruin 
 upon us. My father's hope of making his son-in- 
 law his successor in the peerage was known to a 
 good many people. It may easily have reached the 
 ears of the Strangways." 
 
 *' My dear girl, the family has died off like rotten 
 sheep. I doubt if there are any survivors of the 
 old race." 
 
 R 2
 
 244 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 " Oh, but families are not obliterated so easily. 
 There is always some one left. There were two sons 
 and a daughter of the old squire's. Surely one of 
 those must have left children." 
 
 " But, Juanita, to suppose that any man could 
 hate the purchaser of his squandered estate with a 
 hatred malignant enough for murder is to imagine 
 humanity akin to devils." 
 
 " We are akin to devils," cried Juanita, ex- 
 citedly. *' I felt that I could rejoice as the devils 
 rejoice at human suffering if I could see my hus- 
 band's murderer tortured. Yes, if he were tied 
 against a tree, as Indian savages tie their sacrificial 
 victims — tied against a tree and killed by inches, 
 with every variety of torture which a hellish in- 
 genuity can suggest, I would say my litany, like 
 those savages, my litany of triumph and content. 
 Yes, Theodore, we have more in common with the 
 devils than you may think." 
 
 ** I cannot see the possibility of murder, prompted 
 by such an inadequate motive," said Theodore, 
 ;slowly, remembering, as he spoke, how Churton had 
 suggested that the crime looked like a vendetta.
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 245 
 
 " iDadequate ! Ah, that depends, don't you see. 
 Remember, we have not to deal with good people. 
 The Strangways were always an evil race. Almost 
 every tradition that remains about their lives is a 
 story of wrong-doing. And think how small a 
 wound may be deadly when the blood has poison in 
 it beforehand. And is it a small thing to see 
 strangers in a home that has been in one's family 
 for three centuries ? Again, remember that although 
 nothing throve on the Cheriton Estate while the 
 Strangways held it — or at any rate not for the last 
 hundred years of their holding — no sooner was my 
 father in possession than the luck changed. 
 Quarries were developed; land that had been 
 almost worthless became valuable for building. 
 Everything has prospered with him. And think of 
 them outside — banished for ever, like Adam and 
 Eve out of Paradise. Think of them with hate and 
 envy gnawing their hearts.'* 
 
 ** There would be time for them to get over that 
 feeling in four- and- twenty years. And when you 
 talk about them, I should like to know exactly whom 
 you mean. I assure you the general idea is
 
 246 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 that they have all died off. That is to say, all of 
 the direct line." 
 
 " It is upon that very subject I want to talk to 
 you, Theodore. Would you like to do me a service, 
 a very great service ? " 
 
 "Nothing would make me happier." 
 
 " Then will you try to find out all about the 
 Strangways — if they are really all gone, or if there 
 are not some survivors, or a survivor, of the last 
 squire's family ? If you can do that much it will be 
 something gained. We shall know better what to 
 think. When I heard that you were going to live 
 in London, it flashed into my mind that you would 
 be just the right person to help me, and I knew 
 how good you had been to me always, and that you 
 ivould help. London is the place in which to make 
 your inquiries. I have heard my father say that all 
 broken lives — all doubtful characters — gravitate to- 
 wards London. It is the one place where people 
 fancy they can hide." 
 
 ** I will do everything in my power to realize your 
 wish, Juanita. I shall be a solitary man with a 
 good deal of leisure, so I ought to succeed, if suc- 
 cess be possible."
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 24J 
 
 They were silent for some few minutes, Juanita 
 being exhausted with the passionate vehemence of 
 her speech. She took up a piece of embroidery 
 from the basket, and began, with slow, careful 
 stitches, upon the petal of a dog rose. 
 
 " I am glad to see you engaged upon that artistic 
 embroidery," said Theodore, presently, for the sake 
 of saying something. 
 
 ** That means perhaps that you wonder I can 
 care for such frivolous work as this," she said, inter- 
 preting his recent thought, when his eyes first 
 lighted on her satin-lined basket with its rainbow- 
 hued silks. "It seems inconsistent, I dare say; 
 but this work has helped me to quiet my brain many 
 a time when I have felt myself on the brink of mad- 
 ness. These slow regular stitches, the mechanical 
 movement of my hand as the flowers grow gradually, 
 stitch by stitch, through the long melancholy day, 
 have quieted my nerves. I cannot read. Books give 
 me no comfort, for my eyes follow the page while my 
 mind is brooding on my own troubles. It is better to 
 sit and think quietly, while I work. It is better to 
 face my sorrow."
 
 2iS THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 ** Have you been long alone ? " 
 
 "No. It is only three weeks since Lady Jane 
 went back to Swanage ; and she comcd to see me 
 two or three times a week. My father and mother 
 come as often. You must not think I am deserted. 
 Every one is very good to me." 
 
 *<* They have need to be." 
 
 Again there was a brief interval of silence, and 
 then Juanita closed her basket, and lifted her 
 earnest eyes to her cousin's face. 
 
 ** You know all about the Strangways ? " she 
 inquired. 
 
 ** I have heard a good deal about them from one 
 and another. People who live in the country have 
 long memories, and are fond of talking of the lords 
 of the soil, even when the race has vanished from 
 the land. I have heard elderly men tell their after- 
 dinner stories about the Strangways at my father's 
 table." 
 
 " You know the family portraits at Cheriton ? " 
 
 "The pictures in the hall? Yes. I have 
 wondered sometimes that your father should have 
 kept them there — effigies of an alien race."
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 249 
 
 " I hate them," exclaimed Juanita, shuddering. 
 '* I always had an uncomfortable feeling about them, 
 a feeling of strange cold eyes looking at us in secret 
 enmity; but now I abhor them. There is a girl's 
 face — a cruel face — that I used rather to admire 
 when I was a child, and sometimes dream about ; 
 and on the last night but one — of — my happy life 
 — I looked at that picture with Godfrey, and told 
 him my feeling about that face, and he told me the 
 pitiful story of the girl whose portrait we were 
 looking at. The creature had a sad life, and died in 
 France, poor and broken-hearted. Two hours later 
 I heard a strange step upon the terrace — while 
 Godfrey and I were sitting in the library — a stealthy, 
 creeping step, coming near one of the open windows, 
 and then creeping away again. AVhen we looked 
 out there was no one to be seen." 
 
 " And this was the night before — Sir Godfrey's 
 death ? " 
 
 " Yes. I told my father about it — after — after 
 my trouble ; and when he questioned the gardeners 
 he discovered that footprints had been seen by one 
 of them on the damp gravel the morning after I
 
 250 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 heard that ghost-like step. They were strange foot- 
 prints the man was sure, or he would not have 
 noticed them — the prints of a shoe with a flat heel 
 — not of a large foot — hut they were not very dis- 
 tinct, and he went over them with his roller, and 
 rolled them out, and thought no more about the 
 fact till my father questioned him. The next day 
 was dry and warm, as you know, and the gravel was 
 hard next night. There were no footprints seen — 
 afterwards." 
 
 " Did the gardener trace those marks beyond the 
 terrace — to the avenue, for instance ? " 
 
 " Not he. All he did was to roll them out with 
 his iron-roller." 
 
 *' They suggest one point — that the murderer 
 may have been lurking about on the night before 
 the crime." 
 
 " I am sure of it. That footstep would not have 
 frightened me if there had been no meaning in it. 
 I felt as a Scotchman does when he has seen the 
 shadow of the shroud round his friend's figure. It 
 is a point for you to remember, Theodore ; if you 
 mean to help me."
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 251 
 
 ** I do mean to help you." 
 
 *' God bless you for that promise," she cried, 
 giving him her hand, " and if you want any further 
 information about the Strangways there is some one 
 here who may be useful. Godfrey's old bailifi', 
 Jasper Blake, lived over ten years at Cheriton. 
 He only left there when the Squire died, and he 
 almost immediately entered the service of Godfrey's 
 father. If you can stay till the evening I will send 
 for him, and you can ask him as many questions as 
 you like." 
 
 " I will stay. There is a moon rather late in the 
 evening, and I shall be able to get back any time 
 before midnight. But, Juanita, as an honest man, I 
 am bound to tell you that I believe you are following 
 an igtiis fatuiis — you are influenced by prejudices 
 and fancies, rather than by reason."
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 " The snow 
 Of her sweet coldness hath extinguished qmte 
 The fire that but even now began to flame." 
 
 Theodore Dalbrook, a sensible, hard-headed 
 man of business, was like a puppet in his cousin's 
 hands. She told him to toil for her, and he deemed 
 himself privileged to be allowed so to labour. She 
 put him upon that which, according to his own con- 
 viction, was an absolutely false track, and he was 
 compelled to follow it. She bade him think with 
 her thoughts, and he bent his mind to hers. 
 
 Yes, she was right perhaps. It was a vendetta. 
 Lord Cheriton had lived all these years hemmed 
 round with unseen, unsuspected foes. They had 
 not burned his ricks, or tried to burn his dwelling- 
 house; they had not slandered him to the neigh- 
 bourhood in anonymous letters ; they had not 
 poisoned his dogs or his pheasants. Such petty
 
 THE DAY WILL COMB. 253 
 
 malevolence bad been too insignificant for tbem. 
 But tbey bad waited till bis fortunes bad reacbed 
 tbeir apogee, till bis only cbild bad gi'own from bud 
 to flower and be bad wedded ber to an estimable 
 young man of patrician lineage and irreproacbable 
 cbaracter. And, just wben fate was fairest tbe 
 cowardly blow bad been struck — a blow tbat bligbted 
 one young life, and darkened tbose two otber lives 
 sloping towards tbe grave, tbe lives of fatber and 
 motber, rendered desolate because of tbeir daugbter's 
 desolation. 
 
 Mastered by tbat will wbicb was bis law, tbe will 
 of tbe woman be loved, Tbeodore began to believe 
 as sbe believed, or at least to tbink it just possible 
 tbat tbere migbt be amongst tbe remnant of tbe 
 Strangway race a man so lost and perverted, so 
 soured by poverty, so envenomed by disgraces and 
 mortifications, eating slowly into tbe angry beart, 
 like rust into iron, tbat be bad become at last the 
 very incarnation of malignity — bating tbe man wbo 
 had prospered while he had failed, hating tbe owner 
 of his people's forfeited estate as if tbat owner bad 
 robbed tbem of it — batiug with so passionate a
 
 254 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 malevolence that nothing less than murder could 
 appease his wrath. Yes, there might be such a 
 man. In the history of mankind there have been 
 such crimes. They are not common in England, 
 happily ; but among the Celtic nations they are not 
 uncommon. 
 
 " My first brief," mused Theodore, with a grim 
 smile, as he walked up and down the drawing-room 
 while his cousin was writing a memorandum request- 
 ing the bailiff's presence. " It is more like a case 
 entrusted to a detective than submitted to counsel's 
 opinion ; but it will serve to occupy my mind while 
 I am eating my dinners. My poor Juanita ! Will 
 her loss seem less, I wonder, when she has dis- 
 covered the hand that widowed her ? " 
 
 He dined with his cousin at a small round table 
 in the spacious dining-room which had held so many 
 cheerful gatherings in the years that were gone : 
 the sisters and their husbands, and the sisters' 
 friends; and Godfrey's college friends; and those 
 old friends of the neighbourhood who seemed only 
 a little less than kindred, by reason of his having 
 known them all his life. And now these two were
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 255 
 
 sitting here alone, and the corners of the room were 
 full of shadows. One large circular lamp suspended 
 over the table was the only light, the carving being 
 done in a serving-room adjoining. 
 
 Juanita was too hospitable to allow the meal to be 
 silent or gloomy. She put aside the burden of her 
 grief and talked to her cousin of his family and of 
 his own prospects ; and she seemed warmly inter- 
 ested in his future success. It was but a sisterly 
 interest, he knew, frankly expressed as a sister's 
 might have been ; yet it was sweet to him never- 
 theless, and he talked freely of his plans and hopes. 
 
 "I felt stifled in that old street," he told her. 
 "A man must be very happy to endure life in a 
 country town." 
 
 " But you are not unhappy, Theodore ? " she 
 interrupted, wonderingly. 
 
 ** Unhappy — no, that would be too much to say, 
 perhaps. You know how fond I am of my father. 
 I was glad to work with him, and to feel that I was 
 useful to him ; but that feeling was not enough to 
 reconcile me to the monotony of my days. A man 
 who has home ties — a wife and children — may be
 
 256 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 satisfied in that narrow circle ; but for a young man 
 with his life before him it is no better than a 
 prison." 
 
 **I understand," said Juanita, eagerly. *' I can 
 fully sympathize with you. I am very glad you are 
 ambitious, Theodore. A man is worthless who is 
 without ambition. And now tell me what you will 
 do when you go to London. How will you begin ?" 
 
 *' I shall put up at the Inns of Court Hotel for a 
 few days while I look about for a suitable set of 
 chambers, and when I have found them and fur- 
 nished them, and brought my books and belongings 
 from Dorchester, I shall sit down and read law. I 
 can read while I am qualifying for the Bar. I shall 
 go on reading after I have qualified. My life will be 
 to sit in chambers and read law books until some- 
 one brings me business. It hardly sounds like a 
 brilliant career, does it ? " 
 
 ** All beginnings are hard," she answered, gently. 
 ** I suppose my father went through just the same 
 kind of drudgery when he began ? " 
 
 *' Well, yes, he must have gone upon the same 
 lines, I fancy. There is no royal road."
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 257 
 
 '' And while you are studying law and waiting for 
 briefs, will you have time to look after my 
 interests ? " 
 
 *' Yes, Juanita. Your interest shall be my first 
 thought always. If it can make you happier to 
 discover your husband's murderer " 
 
 " Happier ! It is the only thing that can reconcile 
 me to the burden of living." 
 
 ''If it is for your happiness, you need not fear 
 that I shall ever relax in my endeavours. I may 
 fail, — indeedji fear I must fail, — but it shall not be 
 for the lack of earnestness or perseverance." 
 
 " I knew that you would help me," she said, 
 fervently, holding out her hand to him across the 
 table. 
 
 Dinner was over, and they vrere alone, with the 
 grapes and peaches of the Priory hothouses, which 
 were not even second to those of Cheriton, unheeded 
 upon the table before them. 
 
 " Blake is in the house by this time, I daresay," 
 said Juanita presently. "Would you like to see 
 him here, and shall I stay, or would you rather talk 
 to him alone ? " 
 
 VOL. I. s
 
 liSb THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 "I had better take him in hand alone. It is 
 always hard work to get straight answers out of that 
 sort of man, and any cross current distracts him. His 
 thoughts are always ready to go off at a tangent." 
 
 *' He knows all about the Squire's children. He 
 can give you any particulars you want about them.'* 
 
 The butler came into the room five minutes after- 
 wards with the coffee, and announced the bailiff's 
 arrival. 
 
 Juanita rose at once, and left her cousin to receive 
 Jasper Blake alone. 
 
 He came into the room with rather a sheepish 
 air. He was about sixty, young looking for his 
 age, with a bald forehead, and stubbly iron grey 
 hair, and a little bit of whisker on each sunburnt 
 cheek. He had the horsey look still, though he had 
 long ceased to have anything to do with horses 
 beyond buying and selling cart-horses for the home 
 farm, and occasionally exhibiting a prize animal in 
 that line. He was a useful servant, and a thoroughly 
 honest man, of the old-fashioned order. 
 
 " Mr. Blake, I want you to give me some informa- 
 tion about old friends of yours. I have a little
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 259 
 
 business in hand, which indirectly concerns the 
 Strangway family, and I want to be quite clear in 
 my own mind as to how many are left of them, and 
 where they are to be found." 
 
 The bailiff rubbed one of his stunted whiskers 
 meditatively, and shook his head. 
 
 " There was never many of 'em to leave, sir," he 
 said, grumpily, " and I don't believe there's any of 
 'em left anywheres. There seems to have been a 
 curse upon 'em, for the last hundred years. No- 
 thing ever throve with them. Look at what Cheri- 
 ton is now, and what it was in their time." 
 
 "I didn't know it in their time, Mr. Blake." 
 
 " Ah, you're not old enough ; but your father 
 knew the place. He did business for the old Squire 
 — till things got too bad — mortgages, and accommo- 
 dation bills, and overdrawn accounts at the bank, 
 and such like, and your father washed his hands of 
 the business — a long-headed gentleman, your father. 
 He can tell you what Cheriton was like in the 
 Squire's time." 
 
 " Why do you suppose the Strangways are all 
 dead and gone? " 
 
 s 2
 
 260 THE DAY WILL COIVIE. 
 
 " Well, sir, first and foremost it's fifteen years 
 and more since I've heard of any of 'em, and the 
 last I heard was about as bad as bad could be." 
 
 " What was that last report ? " 
 
 "It was about Master Eeginald — that was the 
 eldest son, him that was colonel of a Lancer regi- 
 ment, and married Lord Dangerfield's youngest 
 daughter. I remember the bonfires on the hills out 
 by Studlands just as if it happened yesterday, but 
 it*s more than forty years ago, and I was a boy in 
 the stables at fourteen shillings a week." 
 
 *' Keginakl, the elder son, colonel of Lancers, 
 married Lord Dangerfield's daughter — about 1840," 
 wrote Theodore in a pocket-book which he held 
 ready for taking notes. 
 
 " What was it you heard about him ? " he asked. 
 
 ** Well, sir, it was Mr. de Lacy's servant that 
 told me. He'd been somewhere in the south with 
 his master where there was gambling — a place 
 where the folks make a regular trade of it. It's a 
 wonderful climate, says Mr. de Lacy's man, and the 
 gentry go there for their health, and very often 
 finish by shooting themselves, and it seems Colonel
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 261 
 
 Strangway was there. He'd come over from Corsica, 
 which it seems was in the neighbourhood — where 
 he'd left his poor wife all among brigands and savages 
 — and he was at the tables day and night, and he 
 had a wonderful run of luck, so that they called him 
 the king of the place, and it was who but he ? 
 Howsoever the tide turned suddenly, and he began 
 losing, and he lost his last sixpence, in a manner of 
 speaking regular cleaned out, Mr. de Lacy's man 
 said ; and by-and-by there comes another gentleman, 
 a Jewish gentleman from Paris, rolling in money, 
 and playing for the sake of the science, and able to 
 hold out where another man must have given in ; 
 and in a week or two he was the king of the place, 
 and the Colonel was nowhere, just living on tick at 
 the hotel, and borrowing a fiver from Mr. de Lacy 
 or any other old acquaintance whenever he had the 
 chance, and making as much play as he could with 
 two or three cart wheels, where he used to play with 
 hundred franc pieces. And so it went on, and he 
 cut up uncommon rough when anybody happened to 
 ofi'end him, and there was more than one row at 
 the hotel or in the gardens — they don't allow no
 
 262 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 rows in the gambling rooms — and just as the 
 season was coming to an end the Colonel went off 
 one afternoon to catch the boat for Corsica. The 
 boat was to start after dark from Nice, and there 
 was a lot of traffic in the port, but not as much light 
 as there ought to have been, and the Colonel missed 
 his footing in going from the quay to the boat, and 
 went to the bottom like a plummet. Some people 
 thought he made away with himself on purpose, and 
 that the one sensible thing he did was to make it 
 look like accident, so as not to vitiate the insurance 
 on his life, which Lord Dangerfield had taken care 
 of, and had paid the premiums ever since the 
 Colonel began to go to the bad. Anyhow, he never 
 came up again alive out of that water. His death 
 was published in the papers : ' Accidentally drowned 
 at Nice.' I should never have known the rights or 
 the wrongs of it if Mr. de Lacy hadn't happened to 
 be visiting here soon afterwards. 
 
 " Did Colonel Strangway leave no children ? " 
 
 *' Neither chick nor child." 
 
 *' Do you know if his widow is still living ? " 
 
 " No, sir. That is the last I ever heard of him or 
 his."
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 2G3 
 
 " What about the younger brother ? " 
 " I believe he must be dead too, though I can't 
 give you chapter and verse. He never married, 
 didn't Mr. Frederick — not to my knowledge. He 
 went on board a man-of-war before he was fifteen, 
 and at five-and-twenty he was a splendid officer and 
 as fine a young man as you need wish to see ; but 
 he was too fond of the bottle. China was the ruin 
 of him, some folks said, and he got court-mar- 
 shalled out there, not long after they sacked that 
 there Summer Palace there was so much talk about ; 
 and then he contrived to pass into the mercantile 
 marine, which was a come-down for a Strangway, 
 and for a few years he was one of their finest officers, 
 a regular dare-devil ; could sail a ship faster and 
 safer than any man in the service ; used to race 
 home with the spring pickings of tea, when tea 
 wasn't the cheap muck it is now, and when there 
 weren't no Suez Canal to spoil sport. But he took 
 to his old games again, and he got broke again, 
 broke for drunkenness and insubordination ; and 
 then he went and loafed and drank in Jersey — 
 where, it's my belief, he died some years ago."
 
 2G4 THE DAY WILL COME, 
 
 "You have no positive information about his 
 death ? " 
 
 '* I can't say that I have." 
 
 " There was one daughter, I think ? " 
 
 "Yes, there was a daughter. Miss Eva. I 
 taught her to ride. There wasn't a finer horsewoman 
 in Dorsetshire, but a devil of a temper- — the real 
 vStrangway temper. I wasn't surprised when I 
 heard she'd married badly ; I wasn't surprised 
 when I heard she'd run away from her husband." 
 
 " Did she leave any children ? " 
 
 "No, not by him." 
 
 " But afterwards — do you know if there were 
 children ? " 
 
 " I can't say that I do. She was living in 
 Boulogne when I last heard of her, and somebody 
 told me afterwards that she died there." 
 
 " That's vague. She may be living still." 
 
 "I don't think that's likely. It's more than 
 ten years — ay, it's nearer fifteen — since I heard 
 of her death. She was not the kind of woman 
 to hide her light under a bushel for a quarter of a 
 century. If she were alive I feel sure we should
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 265 
 
 Lave heard of her at Cheriton. Lord ! how fond 
 she was of the place, and how proud she was of her 
 good looks and her old name, and how haughty and 
 overhearing she was with every other young woman 
 that ever came in her way." 
 
 ** She must have heen a remarkably disagreeable 
 young person, I take it." 
 
 ''Well, not altogether, sir. She had a taking 
 way when she wasn't in her tantrums, and she was 
 very good to the poor people about Cheriton. They 
 doated upon her. She never quarrelled with them. 
 It was with her father she got on worst. Those 
 two never could hit it off. They were too much 
 alike ; and at last, when she was close upon 
 seventeen, and a regular clipper, things got so bad 
 that the Squire packed off the governess at an 
 hour's warning. She was too young and silly to 
 manage such a pupil as Miss Strangway, and ifs 
 my belief she sided with her in all her mischief, 
 and made things worse. He turned her out of 
 doors neck and crop, and a week afterwards 
 he took his daughter up to London and handed 
 her over to an English lady, who kept a finishing
 
 266 THH DAY WILL COME. 
 
 school somewhere abroad, at a place called 
 Losun." 
 
 " At Lausanne, I think." 
 
 " Yes, that was the name. She was to stay 
 there for a year, and then she was to have another 
 year's schooling in Paris to finish her; but she 
 never got to Paris, didn't Miss Eva. She ran off 
 from Lausanne with a lieutenant in a marching 
 regiment, and her father never saw her face again. 
 He had no money to give her if she had married 
 ever so well, but he took a pride in striking her 
 name out of his will all the same." 
 
 '' What was her husband's name?" 
 
 *' Darcy — Tom Darcy. He was an Irishman, 
 and I've heard he treated her very badly." 
 
 " Do you know how long it was after her marriage 
 that she left him?" 
 
 *'I only know when I heard they were parted, 
 and that was six or seven years after she ran away 
 from Lausanne." 
 
 " How long was that before the Squire's death 
 and the sale of the estate ? " 
 
 "Nearly ten years, I should say."
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 267 
 
 ** That makes it about thirty-four years ago ?" 
 
 "Yes, that's about it." 
 
 Theodore noted down the date in bis book. He 
 had heard all these things before now — loosely, and 
 in a disjointed fashion — never haying been keenly 
 interested in the vicissitudes of the Strangways. 
 
 "Who was the man who took her away from her 
 husband?" 
 
 "God knows," said Jasper. "None of us at 
 Cheriton ever heard. AYe fancied he must have 
 been a Frenchman, for she was heard of afterwards 
 — a good many years afterwards — at Boulogne. 
 Our old Yicar saw her there the year before he 
 died — it must have been as late as sixty-four or 
 sixty-five, I fancy — a wreck, he said. He wouldn't 
 have recognized her if she hadn't spoken to him, 
 and she had to tell him who she was. I heard him 
 tell my old master all about it, one summer after- 
 noon at the Yicarage gate, when Sir Godfrey had 
 driven over to see him. Yes, it must have been as 
 late as sixty-five, I believe." 
 
 "Five years after Lord Cheriton bought the 
 estate?"
 
 268 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 " About that." 
 
 **Do you remember the name of Miss Strang- 
 way's governess ? Of course, you do, though." 
 
 The bailiff rubbed his iron grey whisker with a 
 puzzled air. 
 
 " My memory's got to be like a corn-sieve of late 
 years," he said, ** but I ought to remember her 
 name. She was at Cheriton over four years, and I 
 only wish I had a guinea for every time I've sat 
 behind her and Miss Strangway in the pony chaise. 
 She was a light-hearted, good-tempered young 
 woman, but she hadn't bone enough for her work. 
 She wasn't up to Miss Strangway's weight. Let 
 me see now — what was that young woman's name ? 
 — she was a good-looking girl, sandy, with a high 
 colour and a freckled skin. I ought to remember." 
 
 " Take a glass of claret, Mr. Blake, and take 
 your time. The name will come back to you. 
 Have you ever heard of the lady since she left 
 Cheriton ? " 
 
 ** Never — she wasn't likely to come back to this 
 part of the world after having been turned out neck 
 and crop, as she was. What was the name of the
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 269 
 
 man who saw the apple fall ? — Xewton — that was 
 it, Sarah Newton. Miss Strangway used to call 
 her Sally. I remember that." 
 
 " Do you know where she came from, or what 
 her people were ? " 
 
 ** She came from somewhere near London, and 
 it's my opinion her father kept a shop ; but she was 
 very close about her home and her relatives." 
 
 ** And she was young, you say *? " 
 
 *' Much too youDg for the place. She couldn't 
 have been five-and-twenty when she left ; and a 
 girl like Miss Strangway, a motherless girl, wanted 
 some one older and wiser to keep her in order." 
 
 "Had the Squire's wife been long dead at that 
 time?" 
 
 *' She died before I went to service at Cheriton, 
 Miss Eva couldn't have been much above seven 
 years old when she lost her mother." 
 
 Theodore asked no more questions, not seeing his 
 way to extracting any further information from the 
 bailiff. He had been acquainted with most of 
 these facts before, or had heard them talked about. 
 The handsome daughter who ran away from a
 
 270 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 foreign school with a penniless subaltern — the 
 Strangway temper, and the pitched battles between 
 the spendthrift father and the motherless un- 
 manageable girl — the life-long breach, and then a 
 life of poverty and an untimely death in a strange 
 city, only vaguely known, yet put forward as a 
 positive and established fact. He had heard all 
 this : but the old servant's recollections helped him 
 to tabulate his facts — helped him, too, with the 
 name of the governess, which might be of some use 
 in enabling him to trace the story of the last of the 
 Strangways. 
 
 " If there is any ground for Juanita's theory, I 
 think the man most likely to have done the deed 
 would be the Colonel of Lancers, supposed to be 
 drowned at Nice. If I were by any means to 
 discover that the story of the drowning was a 
 mistake, and that the Colonel is in the land of the 
 living, I should be inclined to adopt Juanita's view 
 of the murder." 
 
 He encouraged the bailiff to take a second glass 
 of claret, and talked over local interests with him for 
 ten minutes or so, while his dog-cart -svas being
 
 THE DAY WILL CO^IE. 271 
 
 brought round ; and then, Mr. Blake having with- 
 drawn, he went to the drawing-room where Juanita 
 was sitting at work by a lamp-lit table, and wished 
 her good night. 
 
 "Did you find Jasper intelligent?" she asked, 
 eagerly. 
 
 " Very intelligent." 
 
 " And did you find out all you wanted from 
 him?" 
 
 " Not quite all. He told me very little that I did 
 not know before ; but there were one or two facts 
 that may be useful. Good night, Nita, good night, 
 and good-bye." 
 
 " Not for long," she answered. " You will spend 
 Christmas at home, of course." 
 
 " Yes, I shall go home for the Christmas week, I 
 suppose." 
 
 " You will have something to tell me by that 
 time, perhaps. You will be on the track." 
 
 " Don't be too sanguine, Nita. I will do my 
 uttermost." 
 
 '' I am sure you will. Ah, you don't know how I 
 trust you, how I lean upon you. God bless you.
 
 272 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 Theodore. You are my strong rock. I, who never 
 had a brother, turn to you as a sister might. If you 
 can do this thing for me— if you can avenge his 
 cruel death " 
 
 " If — what then, Juanita ? " he asked, paling sud- 
 denly, and his eyes flaming. 
 
 " I shall honour — esteem you — as I have never 
 done yet , and you know I have always looked up to 
 you, Theodore. God bless and prosper you. Good 
 night." 
 
 Her speech, kind as it was, fell upon his en- 
 thusiasm like ice. He was holding both her hands, 
 almost crushing them unawares in his vehemence. 
 Then his grip loosened all at once, he bent his head, 
 gently kissed those slender hands, muttered a husky 
 good night, and hurried from the room.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 " The God of love — ah, henedicite ! 
 How mighty and how great a Lord is he 1 " 
 
 A WEEK later Theodore Dalbrook was established 
 in chambers on the second floor of No. 2, Ferret 
 Court, Temple. 
 
 Ferret Court is one of the few places in the 
 Temple which have not been improved and beauti- 
 fied out of knowledge within the last thirty years. 
 The architect and the sanitary engineer have passed 
 by on the other side, and have left Ferret Court to 
 its original shabbiness. Its ceilings have not been 
 elevated, or its windows widened, nor has the Early- 
 English stone front replaced the shabby old brick- 
 work. Its time has not come. The rooms are 
 small and low, the queer old closets where genera- 
 tions of lawyers have kept their goods and chattels 
 are dark and redolent of mice. The staircases are 
 rotten, the heavy old ballusters are black with age, 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 and the deep old window seats are set in windows of 
 the early Georgian era. 
 
 The chambers suited Theodore, first because they 
 were cheap, and next because the sitting-room, which 
 was at the back, commanded a good view of the 
 river. The bedroom was a tolerable size, and there 
 was a dressing-room just big enough to hold bath 
 and boots. He furnished the rooms comfortably, 
 with solid old-fashioned furniture, partly consisting 
 of surplus articles sent from the old house in Dor- 
 chester, and partly of his own purchases in London. 
 The rooms were arranged with a sober taste which 
 was by no means inartistic, and there was just 
 enough bright colouring in the Algerian portieres 
 and a few handsome pieces of Oriental crockery to 
 relieve the dark tones of old oak and Spanish 
 mahogany. Altogether the ^hambers had the 
 established look of a nest which was meant to last 
 through wind and weather, a shelter in which a man 
 expected to spend a good many years of his life. 
 
 He had another reason for choosing those old 
 rooms in Ferret Court in preference to chambers in 
 any of those new and commodious houses in the
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 275 
 
 courts that had been rebuilt of late years. It was 
 in this house that James Dalbrook had begun his 
 legal career ; it was here, on the ground floor, that 
 the future Lord Cheriton had waited for briefs 
 nearly forty years ago ; and it was here that fame 
 and fortune had first visited him, a shiniug appari- 
 tion, bringing brightness into the shabby old rooms, 
 irradiating the gloomy old court with the glory of 
 triumphant ambition, hopes suddenly realized, the 
 consciousness of victory. James Dalbrook had 
 occupied those dingy chambers fifteen years, and 
 long after he became a great man, and he had goue 
 from them almost reluctantly to a spacious first- 
 floor in King's Bench ^Yalk. He had eujoyed the 
 reputation of a miser at that period of his life. He 
 was never known to give a dinner to a friend ; he 
 lived in a close retirement which his enemies stig- 
 matized as a hole-and-corner life ; he was never seen 
 at places of amusement ; he never played cards, or 
 bet upon a race. Socially he was unpopular. 
 
 Theodore had taken all the preliminary steps, and 
 had arranged to read with a well-known special 
 pleader. He was thoroughly in earnest in his deter- 
 
 T 2
 
 276 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 mination to succeed in this new line. He wanted to 
 prove to his father that his abandonment of the 
 Dorchester office was neither a caprice nor a folly. 
 He was even more in earnest in his desire to keep 
 his promise to his cousin Juanita. 
 
 Almost his first act upon arriving in London had 
 been to go to Scotland Yard in the hope of finding 
 the detective who had been sent to Cheriton, and his 
 inquiries there were so far successful that he was 
 able to make an appointment with Mr. Churton for 
 the next day but one. 
 
 He had talked with Churton after the adjourned 
 inquest, and had heard all that the professional 
 intellect had to offer in the way of opinion at that 
 time ; but he thought it worth his while to find 
 out if the detective's ideas had taken any new 
 development upon subsequent reflection, and also to 
 submit Juanita' s theory to professional consideration. 
 He was not one of those amateurs who think that 
 they are cleverer at a trade than the man who has 
 .served a long apprenticeship to it. 
 
 " Have you thought anything more about the 
 €heriton murder since last July, Mr. Churton ? " he
 
 THE DAY ^ILL COME. Z i i 
 
 asked ; " or has your current work been too engross- 
 ing to give you time for thought ? " 
 
 "Xo, sir. I've had plenty of other cases to think 
 about, but I'm not likely to forget such a case as that 
 at CheritoD, a case in which I was worsted more com- 
 pletely than I have been in anything for the last ten 
 years. I've thought about it a good bit, I can assure 
 you, Mr. Dalbrook." 
 
 " And do you see any new light ? " 
 
 "No, sir. I stick pretty close to my original 
 opinion. Sir Godfrey Carmichael was murdered by 
 somebody that bore a grudge against him ; and 
 there's a woman at the bottom of it." 
 
 *' Why a woman 7 Might not a man's hatred be 
 deadly enough to lead to murder 7 " 
 
 " Not unless he was egged on by a woman ; or 
 bad been jilted by a woman ; or was jealous of a 
 woman ; or thought he had a woman's wrongs to 
 avenge.'' 
 
 *' Is that what your experience teaches you, Mr. 
 Churton?" 
 
 ** Yes, Mr. Dalbrook, that is what my experience 
 teaches me."
 
 278 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 " And you think it was an enemy of Sir Godfrey's 
 who fired that shot ? ' ' 
 
 *'Ido." 
 
 '* Do you think the enemy was a woman — the 
 hand that pulled the trigger a woman's hand ? " 
 
 " No, I do not. A woman couldn't have been 
 about the place without being remarked — or got clear 
 off, as a man might." 
 
 " There are the servants. Could the murderer 
 be one of them ?" 
 
 " I don't think so, sir. I've taken stock of 'them 
 all — stables — lodges — everywhere. I never met 
 with such a superior set of servants. The person at 
 the west lodge is a lady bred and born, I should say. 
 She gave me a good deal of information about the 
 household. I consider h(;r a remarkably intelligeDt 
 woman, and I know she is of my opinion as to the 
 motive of the murder." 
 
 " And yet if I tell you that Sir Godfrey had not 
 an enemy in the world ? " said Theodore, dwelling 
 on the main point, and not particularly interested 
 in what the highly-intelligent Mrs. Porter might 
 have said upon the subject.
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 279 
 
 " I should tell you, sir, that no man can answer 
 for another man. There is something in the lives of 
 most of us that we would rather keep dark." 
 
 " I don't helieve there was any dark spot in Sir 
 Godfrey's life. But what if there were an enemy of 
 Lord Cheriton's — a man who has been a judge is in 
 a fair way to have made enemies — a foe vindictive 
 enough to strike at him through his son-in-law, to 
 smite him by destroying his daughter's happiness ? 
 She is his only child, remember, and all his hopes 
 and ambitions centre in her." 
 
 " Well, Mr. Dalbrook, if there was such a man 
 he would be an out-and-out blackguard." 
 
 "Yes, it would be a refinement of cruelty — a 
 Satanic hate ; but such a man might exist. Ke- 
 member the murder of Lord Mayo — one of the 
 wisest and most beloved of India's rulers. The 
 wretch who killed him had never seen his face till 
 the day of the murder. He thought himself un- 
 justly condemned, and he killed the man who re- 
 presented the Power which condemned him. Might 
 not some wrong-headed Englishman have the same 
 vindictive feeling against an English judge ? "
 
 280 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 *' Yes, it is possible, no doubt." 
 
 "My cousin, Lad}^ Carmichael, has another 
 theory." 
 
 Theodore explained the positions of Lord Cheriton 
 and the race that preceded him as owners of the soil, 
 and Juanita's suspicion of some unknown member 
 of the Strangway family ; but the detective rejected 
 this notion as unworthy of professional considera- 
 tion. 
 
 ** It is like a young lady to get such an idea into 
 her head," he said. ** If the estate had changed 
 hands yesterday — well, even then I shouldn't sus- 
 pect the former owners of wanting to murder the 
 purchaser's son-in-law ; but when you reflect that 
 Lord Cheriton has been in peaceful possession of 
 the property for more than twenty years the idea 
 isn't worth a moment's thought. What put such 
 a fancy into the lady's head, do you think, Mr. 
 Dalbrook?'* 
 
 ** Grief ! She has brooded upon her loss until her 
 sorrow has taken strange shapes. She thinks that 
 it is her duty to help in bringing her husband's 
 murderer to justice. She has racked her brains to
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 281 
 
 discover the motive of that cruel crime. She has 
 coDJured up the image of incarnate hatred, and she 
 calls that image by the name of Strangway. I 
 have pledged myself to act upon this idea of hers 
 as if it were inspiration, and the first part of my 
 task will be to find out any surviving member of 
 Squire Strangway's family. He only left three child- 
 ren, so the task ought not to be impossible." 
 
 "You don't mean, sir, that 3-0U are going to act 
 upon the young lady's theory ? " 
 
 " I do mean it, Mr. Churton, and I want you to 
 help me ; or at any rate to give me a lesson. How 
 am I to begin ? ' ' 
 
 He laid his facts before the detective, reading 
 over the notes which he had elaborated from Jasper 
 Blake's reminiscences and from his own recollection 
 of various conversations in which the Strangways 
 had figured. 
 
 Churton listened attentively, nodded, or shook his 
 head occasionally, and was master of every detail 
 after that one hearing. 
 
 " Jersey is not a large place. If I were follow- 
 ing up this inquiry I should ^0 first for the son who
 
 282 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 is supposed to have died in Jersey," he said, when 
 he had heard all. "I should follow that line as far 
 as it goes, and then I should hunt up the particu- 
 lars of the Colonel's death, the gentleman who was 
 drowned at Nice. If any Strangway had a hand in 
 the business, it must have been one of those two, or 
 the son of one of them. But I tell you plainly, 
 Mr. Dalbrook, that I don't put any faith in that 
 poor lady's notion — no, not that much," said the 
 detective, snapping his fingers contemptuously. 
 
 " Yet it was you yourself who first mooted the 
 idea of a vendetta." 
 
 *' So it was ; but I didn't mean a vendetta on 
 such grounds as that. An estate changes hands, 
 and — after twenty years and more — the original 
 holders try to murder the son-in-law of the pur- 
 chaser! That won't hold water, sir. There's not 
 enough human passion in it. I've had to study 
 humanity, Mr. Dalbrook. It's been a part of my 
 profession, and perhaps I've studied human nature 
 closer than many a philosopher who sits in his 
 library and writes a book about it. Now, there*s no 
 human nature in that notion of Lady Carmichael's.
 
 THE DAY WILL COITE. 283 
 
 A man may be very savage because his spendthrift 
 father has squandered his estate, and he may feel 
 savage with the lucky man who bought and 
 developed that estate, and may envy him in his 
 enjoyment of it — but he won't nurse his wrath for 
 nearly a quarter of a century, and then give expres- 
 sion to his feeliugs all at once with a revolver. 
 That isn't human nature." 
 
 " How about the exception to every rule ? Might 
 not this be an exceptional case ? '* 
 
 " It might, of course. There's no truer saying 
 than that fact is stranger than fiction ; but for all, 
 that this notion of Lady Carmichael's is a 3'oung 
 lady's notion, and it belongs to fiction and not to 
 fact. I wouldn't waste my time upon it, if I were 
 you, Mr. Dalbrook." 
 
 " I must keep my promise, Mr. Churton. I am 
 obliged to you for your plain speaking, and I am 
 inclined to agi-ee with you ; but I have made a pro- 
 mise, and I must keep it." 
 
 ** Naturally, sir; and if in the course of your 
 inquiries I can be of any use to you, I shall be very 
 glad to co-operate."
 
 281 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 "I rely on your help. Kemember there is a 
 handsome reward to be earned by you if you can 
 bring about the discovery of the murderer. My 
 part in the search will count for nothing." 
 
 '■'I understand, sir. That's a stimulus, no 
 doubt ; but I hardly wanted it. When a case 
 baffles me as this case has done, I would work day 
 and night, and live on bread and water for a month, 
 to get at the rights of it. Good-day. You've got 
 my private address, and you can wire me any- 
 when." 
 
 " You're a Sussex man, Mr. Churton, I fancy? " 
 
 '* Born in the village of Bramber." 
 
 Theodore left Waterloo the following evening, and 
 landed at St. Heliers on the following morning an 
 hour or so before noon. He landed on the island 
 as an absolute stranger, and with the vaguest idea 
 of the work that lay before him, but with the deter- 
 mination to lose no time in beginning that work. 
 He sent his valise to Brett's Hotel, and he walked 
 along the pier to the town, and inquired his way to 
 the Police Office. He was not going in quest of
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 285 
 
 iuformatioii about a member of the criminal 
 classes ; but the man he was hunting had been a 
 notorious drunkard, and it seemed to him that in a 
 small settlement like St. Heliers such a man would 
 have been likely to attract the attention of the 
 police at some stage of his downward career. 
 
 The first official whom Theodore interrogated had 
 never heard of the name of Strangway in the 
 island ; but an elderly inspector appearing presently 
 upon the scene, and listening attentively to the con- 
 versation, made a suggestion. 
 
 '' You say the gentleman was fond of drink, sir, 
 and in that case he'd be likely to have his favourite 
 public, where they'd know all about him. Now, 
 there are not so many taverns in St, Heliers where 
 a sea-captain, and a broken-down gentleman, would 
 care to enjoy himself. He wouldn't go to a low 
 p)lace, you see ; and he wouldn't fancy a swell place. 
 It would be some house betwixt and between, where 
 he'd be looked up to a bit — and it would be some- 
 thing of a sea-faring place, you may be sure. 
 There ain't so many but what you could look in at 
 'em all, and ask a few questions, and get on the
 
 286 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 right track. I can give you the names of two or 
 three of the likeliest." 
 
 " I shall be much obliged," said Theodore. "I 
 think it's a capital idea." 
 
 The inspector wrote down the names of three 
 taverns, tore the leaf out of his pocket-book, and 
 banded it to Mr. Dalbrook. 
 
 " If you don't hear of him at one of those, I 
 doubt if you'll hear of him anywhere on the island,'^ 
 he said. " Those houses are all near the pier and 
 the quays. It won't take you long to go from one 
 to the other. * The Eose and Crown,' that's where 
 the English pilots go ; * La Belle Alliance,' that's a 
 French house with a table cVhote, They've got a 
 very good name for their brandy, and it's a great 
 place for broken-down gentlemen. You can get a 
 good dinner for half-a-crown with i/ir^ ordinaire in- 
 cluded." 
 
 *' I'll try the ' Belle Alliance ' first," said Theo- 
 dore. '* It sounds likely." 
 
 "Yes, I believe it's alout the likeliest," replied 
 the inspector. 
 
 The "Belle Alliance" fronted the quay, and
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 287 
 
 stood at the corner of a shabby old street. There 
 was a church close by, and a dingy old churchyard. 
 Everything surrounding the " Belle Alliance " was 
 shabby and faded, and its outlook on the dirty quay 
 and the traffic of ugly waggons and uglier trucks, 
 hogsheads and lumber of all kinds, was depress- 
 ing in the extreme. 
 
 But the tavern itself had an air of smartness 
 which an English tavern would hardly have had in 
 the same circumstances. The interior was gay 
 with much looking-glass, and a good deal of tar- 
 nished gilding. There were artificial flowers in 
 sham silver vases on the tables, and there was a 
 semi-circular counter at one end of the restaurant, 
 behind which a ponderous divinit}', still youthful, 
 but expansive, sat enthroned, her sleek, black 
 hair elaborately dressed, her forehead ornamented 
 with accroche-coeurs, and a cross of Jersey dia- 
 monds sparkling upon her swan-like throat, which 
 was revealed by one of those open collars which 
 are dear to the lower order of French women. There 
 was a row of tables in front of the windows which 
 looked towards the quay, and there was a long,
 
 288 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 narrow table in the middle of the room, laid for 
 the tahle dliote dejeuner ; but as yet the room was 
 empty, save for one young man and woman, of 
 the tourist order, who were whispering and titter- 
 ing over a cafe complet at one of the small tables 
 furthest from the buffet. 
 
 Theodore went straight to the front of the buffet, 
 and saluted the lady enthroned there. 
 
 " Madame speaks English, no doubt? " 
 
 *' Oh, yes, but a leetle. I am live long time 
 in Jairsey, where is more English as French 
 peoples." 
 
 After this sample speech it seemed to him that 
 he might get on better with the lady in her native 
 tongue, so he asked her for a cup of coffee in her 
 own language, and stood at the counter while he 
 drank it, and talked to her of indifferent matters, 
 she nothing loth. 
 
 "You have lived a long time in Jersey," he said. 
 *' Does that mean a long time in this house ? " 
 
 " Except one year I have lived in this house all 
 the time, nine years. I was only nineteen when I 
 undertook the position of dame dii comiotoir. I
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 289 
 
 could not have undertaken such a responsibility 
 with a stranger, but the proprietor is my uncle, and 
 he knew how to be indulgent to my youth and inex- 
 perience." 
 
 " And then, a handsome face is always an attrac- 
 tion. You must have brought him good fortune, 
 madame." 
 
 " He is kind enough to say so. He found it 
 difficult to dispense with my services while I was 
 absent, though he had a person from London who 
 had been much admired at the Crystal Palace." 
 
 " And you, madame. "^^as it a feminine caprice, 
 the desire for change, which made you abandon 
 your uncle during that time ? " 
 
 "I left him when I married," replied the lady, 
 with a profound sigh. " I returned to him a heart- 
 broken widow." 
 
 " Pray forgive me for having recalled the memory 
 of your grief. I am a stranger in this place, and I 
 am here on a somewhat delicate mission. My first 
 visit is to this house, because I knew I should find 
 intelligence and sympathy here rather than among 
 my own countrymen. I am fortunate in meeting 
 
 VOL. I. U
 
 290 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 with a lady who has occupied an important position 
 at St. Hehers for so long a period. I have strong 
 reasons for wishing to discover the history of a 
 gentleman who came to the Island some years ago 
 — I do not know how many — after having been un- 
 fortunate in the world. He was a naval man." 
 
 '* My poor husband was a naval man," sighed 
 the dame du comptoir. 
 
 '* A pilot, no doubt," thought Theodore. 
 
 Theodore's manner, which was even more flatter- 
 ing than his words, had made a favourable impres- 
 sion, and the lady was disposed to be confidential. 
 She glanced at the clock, and was glad to see that 
 it was only twenty minutes past twelve. There was 
 time for a little further conversation with this hand- 
 some, well-bred Englishman, before the habitues of 
 the ** Belle Alliance " came trooping in for the half- 
 past twelve o'clock table d'hote. Already the atmo- 
 sphere was odorous with fried sole and ragout de 
 mouton, 
 
 " The gentleman of whom I am in quest is re- 
 ported to have died on the Island," he continued ; 
 '* but this is very likely to have been a false report,
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 291 
 
 and it is quite possible that Captain Strangway may 
 still " 
 
 " Captain Strangway," echoed the woman, with 
 an agitated air. 
 
 " Yes, I see you know all about him. You can 
 help me to find him." 
 
 '' Know him ! " cried the woman. '* I should 
 think I did know him, to my bitter cost. Captain 
 Strangway was my husband." 
 
 " Good Heavens ! " 
 
 ** He was my husband. The people will be here 
 in a few minutes. If monsieur will do me the 
 honour to step into my sitting-room, we can talk 
 without interruption." 
 
 u 2
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 " The comfort is, you shall be called to no more payments, 
 fear no more tavern bills." 
 
 The dame du comptoir beckoned a waiter, and 
 delegated some portion of her supreme authority to 
 him for the next quarter of an hour. She consti- 
 tuted as it were a Regency, and gave her subordinate 
 command over her wine and liqueur bottles, her Jine 
 champagne, Bass and Guinness ; and then she 
 ushered Theodore Dalbrook into a very small sitting- 
 room at the back of the counter, so small indeed 
 that a large looking glass, a porcelain stove, two arm 
 chairs, and one little table left hardly standing 
 room. 
 
 Theodore followed with a sense of bewilderment. 
 He had told himself that the Island of Jersey was 
 a world so small that he could not have much diffi- 
 culty in tracing any man who had lived and died
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 293 
 
 there within the last ten years ; but accident had 
 been kinder to him than he had hoped. 
 
 The lady seated herself in one of the ruby velvet 
 arm chairs, and motioned him to the other. 
 
 " You have given me a shock, monsieur," she 
 said. " My friends in the island know that my 
 marriage was unfortunate, and they never mention 
 my husband. He is forgotten as if he had never 
 been. I sometimes fancy that year of my life was 
 only a troubled dream. Even my name is unchanged, 
 I was called Mdlle. Coralie before I married. I am 
 called Madame Coralie now." 
 
 " I am sorry to have caused you painful emotion, 
 madame, but it is most important to me to trace the 
 history of your husband's later years, and I deem 
 myself very fortunate in having found you." 
 
 " Is it about a property, a fortune left him, per- 
 haps ? ' ' exclaimed Coralie, with sudden animation, 
 her fine eyes lighting up with hope. 
 
 ** Alas, no. Fortune had nothing in reserve for 
 your unlucky husband." 
 
 " Unlucky, indeed, but not so unlucky as I was in 
 giving my heart to him. I knew that he was a
 
 294 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 drunkard. I knew that lie had been turned out of 
 the navy, and out of the mercantile marine on 
 account of that dreadful vice — but he — he was very 
 fond of me, poor fellow, and he swore that he would 
 never touch a glass of brandy again as long as he 
 lived, if I would consent to marry him. He did 
 turn over a new leaf for a time, and kept himself 
 sober and steady, and would hang over that counter 
 for a whole evening talking to me, and take nothing 
 but black coffee. I thought I could reform him. I 
 thought it would be a grand thing to reform a man 
 like that, a gentleman bred and born, a man whose 
 father had been a great landowner, and whose family 
 name was one of the oldest in England. He was a 
 gentleman in all his ways. He never forgot himself 
 even when he had been drinking. He was a gentle- 
 man to the last. Such a fine-looking man too. 
 While he was courting me and kept himself steady 
 he got back his good looks. He looked ten years 
 younger, and I was very proud of him the day we 
 were married. He had taken a house for me, a nice 
 little house on the hill near the Jesuits' College, with 
 a pretty little garden, and I had furnished the house
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 295 
 
 out of my savings. I had saved a goodish bit since 
 I came to Jersey, for my uncle is a generous man, 
 and my situation here is a good one. I had over two 
 hundred pounds in hand after I paid for the furni- 
 ture — these chairs were in my drawing-room — and he 
 hadn't much more than the clothes he stood upright 
 in, poor fellow. But I wouldn't have minded that if 
 he had only kept himself steady. I was prepared to 
 work for him. I knew I should have to keep him. 
 He was too much of a gentleman to be able to work 
 except in his profession, and that was gone from him 
 for ever ; so I knew it was incumbent on me to work 
 for both, and I thought that by letting our drawing- 
 room floor in the season, and by doing a little 
 millinery all the year round — I'm a good milHner, 
 monsieur — I thought I could manage to keep a com- 
 fortable home, without touching my two hundred 
 pounds in the Savings Bank." 
 
 " You were a brave, unselfish girl to think so." 
 " Ah, sir, we are not selfish when we love. I was 
 very fond of him, poor fellow. I had begun with 
 pitying him, and then he was a thoroughbred gentle- 
 man — he was vielle roche, monsieur, and I have
 
 296 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 always admired the noblesse. I am no Kepublican, 
 moi. x\nd he had such winning ways when he was 
 sober — and he was not stupid as other men are when 
 he was drunk — only more brilliant — la tete montee 
 — helaSj comme il petillait d' esprit — but it was his 
 brain that he was burning — that was the fuel that 
 made the light. But how is it you interest yourself 
 in him, monsieur? " she asked, suddenly, fixing him 
 with her sharp black eyes. *^You say it is not 
 about property. You must have a motive, all the 
 same." 
 
 ** I have a motive, but my interest is not personal. 
 I am acting for some one who now owns the Strang- 
 way estate, and who wishes to know what has 
 become of the old family." 
 
 " What can it matter to any one ? " asked Madame 
 Coralie, suspiciously. " They had lost all their 
 money — of the land that had been theirs not an acre 
 was left. What business is it of any one's what 
 became of them when they were driven from their 
 birth-place. Oh, how my poor Frederick hated the 
 race that had possessed itself of his estate. There 
 was nothing too bad for them. When he was ex-
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 297 
 
 cited he would rave about them awfully — a beggarly 
 lawyer, a black-hearted scoundrel, that is what he 
 would call Lord— Lord Sherrington, when he had 
 been drinking." 
 
 Theodore's brow grew thoughtful. How strange 
 this seemed, almost like a confirmation of Juanita's 
 superstitious horror of the banished race. Perhaps 
 it was not unnatural that an unlucky spendthrift — 
 ruined, disgraced — should hate the favourite of for- 
 tune who had ousted him ; but not with a hate 
 capable of murder, murder in cold blood, the murder 
 of a man who had never injured him even indirectly. 
 
 " Your husband has been dead some years, I 
 conclude ? " he said, presently. 
 
 " Three years and a half on the tenth of last 
 month." 
 
 "And you had a troublesome time with him, I 
 fear?" 
 
 " Trouble seems a light word for what I went 
 through. It was like living in hell — there is no 
 other word — the hell which a madman can make of 
 all around him. For a few weeks we went on quietly 
 — he seemed contented, and I was very happy,
 
 298 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 thinking I had cured him. I watched him as a cat 
 watches a mouse, for fear he should go wrong again. 
 He never went out without me ; and at home I did 
 all that a woman can do to make much of the man 
 she loves, studying him in everything, surrounding 
 him with every little luxury I could afford, cooking 
 dainty little meals for him, petting him as if he had 
 been an idolized child. He seemed grateful, for the 
 first few weeks, and almost happy. Then I saw he 
 was beginning to mope a little. He got low-spirited, 
 and would sit over the fire and brood — it was cutting 
 March weather — and would moan over his blighted 
 life, and his own folly. ' If I had to begin over 
 again,' he would say, ' ah, it would be different, 
 Cora, it would be all different.' " 
 
 ** He was not unkind to you ? " 
 
 " No, he was never unkind, never. To the last, 
 when he died raving mad with delirium tremens, he 
 was always kind. It was seeing his madness and 
 his ruin that made my trouble. He was violent 
 sometimes, and threatened to kill me, but that was 
 only when he didn't know me. I watched him 
 moping for a week or so, and then one day, I was
 
 THE DAY ^yILL C03IE. 299 
 
 so unhappy at seeing him fret, that I thought I 
 would do anything to cheer him. I fancied he 
 missed the company in this house, and the cards 
 and dominoes, and billiards — for before we were 
 married he used to dine at the table d'hote two or 
 three times a week, and used to be in the cafe or in 
 the billiard room every night." 
 
 " How did he manage to live without a profession, 
 and without ostensible means ? " 
 
 Madame shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 " God knows. I think he used to write to his 
 old friends — his brother officers in the navy or the 
 merchant service — and he got a little from one and 
 a little from another. He would borrow of any one. 
 And there was a small legacy from his mother's 
 sister which fell in to him soon after he came to 
 Jersey. That was all gone before I married him. 
 He hadn't a penny after he'd paid the marriage fees. 
 Well, monsieur, seeing him so down-hearted I pro- 
 posed that he should go down to the * Belle Alliance ' 
 and have a game at billiards and see his old friends. 
 * You needn't take any money,' I said, ' my uncle 
 will treat you hospitably.' He seemed pleased at
 
 300 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 the idea, and lie promised to be home early ; but 
 just as he was leaving the house he turned back and 
 said there was a little bill of thirty shillings he 
 owed to a bootmaker in the street round the corner, 
 and he didn't like to pass the man's shop without 
 paying. Would I let him have the money ? It was 
 the first money he'd asked me for since we were 
 married, and I hadn't the heart to say no, so I went 
 to my little cash-box and took out three half 
 sovereigns. I told him that the money meant a 
 week's housekeeping. * I give you nice little 
 dinners, don't I, Fred ? ' I said, * but you've no idea 
 how economical I am.' He laughed and kissed me, 
 and said he hated economy, and wished he had a 
 fortune for my sake, and he went down the street 
 whistling. Well, sir, perhaps you can guess what 
 happened. He came home at three o'clock next 
 morning mad with drink, and then I knew he was 
 not to be cured. I went on trying all the same, 
 though, till the last ; and I lived the life of a soul 
 in torment. I was fond of him to the last, and saw 
 him killing himself inch by inch, and saw him die a 
 dreadful death, one year and three days after our
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 301 
 
 wedding day. He spent every penny I had in the 
 world, and my uncle helped us when that was 
 gone, and I came back to this house after his 
 funeral a broken-hearted woman. All my furniture 
 which I'd worked for was sold to pay the rent, and 
 the doctors, and the undertaker. I just saved the 
 furniture in this room, and that is all that is left of 
 four hundred and seventy pounds and of my married 
 Hfe." 
 
 ** You were indeed the victim of a generous and 
 confiding heart." 
 
 " I was fond of him to the last, monsieur, and I 
 forgave him all my sufi'erings ; but let no woman 
 ever marry a drunkard with the hope of reforming 
 him." 
 
 " Were you quite alone in your martyrdom ; had 
 your husband no relatives left to help him on his 
 dying bed?" 
 
 "Not one. He told me he was the last of his 
 race. He must have had distant relations, I 
 suppose ; but his elder brother was dead, and his 
 sister." 
 
 " You are sure his brother was dead ? "
 
 302 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 " Yes ; he fell into the water at Nice on a dark 
 evening, when he was going on board the steamer 
 for Corsica. I have got the paper with the ac- 
 count of his death." 
 
 "Will you show me that paper, and any other 
 documents relating to your husband's family? I 
 know I have no right to ask such a favour ; but all 
 I can say is that I shall be very gratefal if you 
 will so far oblige me." 
 
 The table cVhote was in full swing in the ad- 
 joining room, as testified by the clattering of plates 
 and the jingle of knives and forks, and a subdued 
 murmur as of a good many confidential conversa- 
 tions carried on simultaneously. 
 
 " You want to see my poor Fred's private papers," 
 said the widow, meditatively. " That's a good deal 
 to ask ; not that there are any secrets in them that 
 can hurt anybody above ground. The Colonel is 
 dead, and his sister. My husband was the last. 
 But I can't understand why anybody should want to 
 pry into a dead man's papers, unless there's pro- 
 perty hanging to them." 
 
 She looked at Theodore suspiciously, as if she
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 803 
 
 could not divest herself of the idea of a fortune 
 having turned up somehow, unexpectedly ; a for- 
 tune to which her dead husband was entitled. 
 
 '* There is no property, I assure you. It is a 
 question of sentiment, not of money." 
 
 " You're a lawyer, I suppose ? " said Coralie, still 
 suspiciously. 
 
 She supposed that it was only lawyers who went 
 about prying into the affairs of the dead. 
 
 ''I am a lawyer; but the business which brings 
 me to Jersey is not law business." 
 
 ''Well, I don't see how any harm can come to me 
 through your seeing my husband's papers. There's 
 not many to see — a few letters from the Colonel, 
 and two or three from a lawyer about the legacy, 
 and a dozen or so from old friends, refusing or send- 
 ing him money. You've spoken kindly to me, and 
 I've felt that you could sympathize with me, though 
 you're a stranger — so — well — you may see his letters, 
 though it hurts me to touch anything that belonged 
 to him, le pauvre liomme,'" 
 
 She took a bunch of keys from her pocket, un- 
 locked the little secretaire, and from one of the
 
 304 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 drawers produced a bundle of old letters and cuttings 
 from newspapers, which she handed to Theodore 
 Dalbrook, and then seated herself opposite to him, 
 planted her elbows on the table, and watched him 
 while he read, keenly on the alert for any revela- 
 tion of his purpose which might escape him in the 
 course of his reading. She had not altogether re- 
 linquished that idea of an inheritance, or legacy — 
 property of some kind — involved in this endeavour 
 to trace a dead man's history. The explanation 
 which Theodore had given had not convinced her. 
 He had confessed himself a lawyer, and that was in 
 itself enough to make her doubt him. 
 
 The cuttings from old newspapers belonged to the 
 days when Frederick Strangway had commanded a 
 war ship, to the days when he fought in the Chinese 
 war. Some of them recorded the honour he had 
 won for himself at different stages of his career, and 
 it was only natural that these should have been 
 carefully preserved by him in all his wanderings. 
 But there were other cuttings — the report of the 
 court martial that broke him — the trial in which he 
 stood accused of having risked the loss of his ship
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 305 
 
 with all hands aboard by his dissolute habits — a 
 shameful and a painful story. This record of his 
 folly had been kept by that strange perversity of the 
 human mind which makes a man secrete and treasure 
 documents which must wring his heart and bow his 
 head with shame every time he looks at them. 
 There were other extracts of a like shameful kind 
 — reports of street rows, two cases of drunken 
 assault in San Francisco, one of a fight in Sydney 
 harbour. He had kept them all as if they had been 
 words of praise and honour. 
 
 The letters were most of them trivial — letters 
 from brother officers of the past — " very sorry to 
 hear of your embarrassments," ''regret inability to 
 do more than the enclosed small cheque," " the 
 numerous claims upon my purse render it impossible 
 for me to grant the loan requested," the usual varia- 
 tions upon the old tune in which a heavily-taxed 
 pater familias fences vdth. the appeal of an unlucky 
 acquaintance. They were such letters as are left by 
 the portmanteau full among the efi'ects of the man 
 for whom the world has been too hard. 
 
 Theodore put aside all this correspondence after a 
 
 VOL. I. X
 
 306 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 brief glance, and there remained only four letters in 
 the same strong, resolute hand — the handof Keginald 
 Strangway. 
 
 The first in date was written on Army and Navy 
 Club paper, and was addressed to Captain Strang- 
 way, R.N., H.M.S. Cobra, Hong Kong. 
 
 " My dear Fred, 
 
 " I have been sorry to leave your letter so 
 long unanswered, but I am bothered about a great 
 many things. My wife has been out of health for 
 nearly a year. The doctors fear her chest is 
 affected, and tell me I ought to get her away from 
 England before the winter. As things have been 
 going very badly with me for a long time I shall 
 not be sorry to cut this beastly town, where the 
 men who have made their money, God knows how, 
 are now upon the crest of the wave, and by their 
 reckless expenditure have made it impossible for a 
 man of small means to live in London — if he wants 
 to live like a gentleman. Everything is twice as 
 dear as it used to be when I was a subaltern. My 
 wife and I are pigging in two rooms on a second
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 307 
 
 floor in Jermyn Street. I live at my club, and she 
 lives on her relatives, so that we don't often have 
 to sit down to a lodging-house dinner of burnt soles 
 and greasy chops ; but the whole business is 
 wretched. She has to go to parties in a four-wheel 
 cab, and 1 can hardly afford the risk of a rubber. 
 So I shall be uncommonly glad to cut it all, and 
 settle in some out-of-the-way place where we can 
 live cheap, and where the climate will suit 
 Millicent. 
 
 " My first idea was Algiers, but things are still 
 rather unsettled there, as you know. Lambton, of 
 the Guards, has been shooting in Corsica lately, 
 and came home with a glowing account of the 
 climate and the cheapness of the inns, which are 
 roughish, but clean and fairly comfortable ; so I 
 have determined on Corsica. We shall be within 
 a day's sail of Nice, so not utterly out of reach of 
 civilisation, and we can live there how we like, 
 without entertaining a mortal, or having to buy new 
 clothes. Millicant, who is fond of novelty, is in 
 love with the notion, and Dangerfield has behaved 
 very well to her, promising her an extra hundred a 
 
 X 2
 
 308 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 year if we will live quietly and keep out of debt, 
 which, considering he is as poor as Job, is not so 
 bad. As for my creditors, they are pretty quiet 
 since I got Aunt Belle's legacy, part of which I 
 divided among 'em as a sop to Cerberus. They'll 
 have to be still quieter when I'm settled in Corsica. 
 " Of course, you heard of that wretched woman's 
 kicking over the traces altogether at last. God 
 knows what will become of her. I believe she had 
 been carrying on rather badly for some time before 
 Tom found out anything. You know what an ass 
 he is. However, he got hold of a letter one even- 
 ing — met the postman at the door and took her 
 letters along with his own, and didn't like the look 
 of one and opened it; and then there was an 
 infernal row, and she just put on her bonnet and 
 shawl, walked out of the house and called a cab 
 and drove off. He followed in another cab, but it 
 was a foggy night, and he lost her before she'd gone 
 far. They were in lodgings in Essex Street, and it 
 isn't easy for one cab to chase another on a foggy 
 evening. She never went back to him, and he 
 went all over London denouncing her, naming first
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 309 
 
 one man and then another, but without any definite 
 idea as to who the real man was. The letter was 
 only a couple of sentences in Itahan, which Tom 
 only knew by sight — but he could see it was an 
 appointment at a theatre, for the theatre and hour 
 were named. She snatched the letter out of his 
 hand while they were quarrelling, he told me, and 
 chucked it into the fire, so he hasn't even the 
 man's handwriting as evidence against him. It 
 was a hand he had never seen before, he says. 
 However, if he wants to find her no doubt he can 
 do so, if he takes the trouble. I am sorry she 
 should disgrace her family, and of course my wife 
 feels the scandal uncommonly hard upon her, I 
 can't say that I feel any pity for Tom Darcy. She 
 had led a wretched life with him ever since he sold 
 out, and I don't much wonder at her being deuced 
 glad to leave him. As it's Tom business to shoot 
 her lover, and not mine, I shan't mix myself up in 
 the afi'air — and as for her, well, she has made her 
 
 bed ! " 
 
 There was more in the letter, but the rest was of 
 no interest to Theodore.
 
 310 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 The letter was dated January 3rd, 1851. 
 
 Three of the remaining letters were from Corsica, 
 and contained nothing of any significance. A 
 fourth was written at Monte Carlo, in answer to an 
 appeal for money, and the date was twelve years 
 later than the first. It was a gloomy letter, the 
 letter of a ruined man, who had drunk the cup of 
 disappointment to the dregs. 
 
 " To ask me for help seems like a ghastly joke 
 on your part. Whatever your troubles may be, I 
 fancy my lookout is darker than yours. My wife 
 and I have vegetated on that accursed island for 
 just a dozen years — it seems like a lifetime to look 
 back upon. We just had enough to live upon while 
 my father was alive, for, bad as things were at 
 Cheriton, he contrived to send me something. 
 Now that he is gone, and the estate has been sold 
 by the mortgagees, there is nothing left for me 
 — and we have been living for the last two years 
 upon the pittance my poor Milly gets from her 
 father. Whatever your cares may be, you don't 
 know what it is to have a sick wife whose condition 
 requires every luxury and indulgence, and to have
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 311 
 
 barely enough for bread and cheese. If you were 
 to see the house we live in — the tiled floors and the 
 dilapidated furniture — and the windows that won't 
 shut — and the shutters that won't keep to, and our 
 two Corsican servants who look like a brace of 
 savages, though they are good creatures in the 
 main — you would be the last man to howl about 
 your own troubles to me. 
 
 '*I have been here a month, and with my usual 
 diabolical luck. I am going home to-morrow — 
 though perhaps I should be wiser if I went up into 
 the hills behind Monaco and put a bullet through 
 my brains. Millicent would be no worse off", Grod 
 help her ; for she is entirely dependent on her 
 father, and I am only an incubus — but she might 
 think herself worse off, poor soul, so I suppose I had 
 better go home. 
 
 " ^yhat am I thinking about? I can't aftbrd to 
 take refuge in the suicide's haven. My life is 
 insured in the Imperial for £'3,000, and poor old 
 Dangerfield has been paying the premium ever since 
 I began to go to the bad financially. It would be 
 too hard upon him if I shot myself."
 
 312 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 This was the last letter, and it was endorsed by 
 the brother's hand. 
 
 " Eeginald's last letter. I read in the Times 
 newspaper of his being drowned at Nice ten days 
 afterwards." 
 
 Theodore made a note of the dates of these 
 letters, and the name of the insurance office. 
 Provided with these data it would be easy for him 
 to verify the fact of Colonel Strangway's death, and 
 thus bring the history of the two sons of old 
 Squire Strangway to its dismal close in dust and 
 darkness. 
 
 And thus would be answered Juanita's strange 
 suspicion of the house of Strangway, answered 
 with an unanswerable answer. Who can argue 
 with Death ? Is not that at least the end of all 
 things — the road that leads no whither? 
 
 There remained for him only the task of tracing 
 the erring daughter to her last resting-place. This 
 would doubtless be more difficult, as a runaway 
 wife living under a false name, and in all prob- 
 ability going from place to place, was likely to
 
 THE DAY WILL COME. 313 
 
 have left but faint and uncertain indications of her 
 existence. But the first part of his task had been 
 almost too easy. He felt that he could take no 
 credit for what he had done, coald expect no 
 gratitude from Juanita. 
 
 He thanked Mrs. Strangwav — alias Madame 
 Coralie — for her politeness, and asked to be allowed 
 to ofi'er her a ten-pound note as a trifling acknow- 
 ledgment of the favour she had done him. She 
 promptly accepted this offering, and was only the 
 more convinced that there was " property " involved 
 in the lawyer's researches. 
 
 " If there is anything to come to vie from any of 
 his relations, I hope nobody will try to keep me out 
 of it," she said. " I hope his friends will remember 
 that I gave him my last shilling, and nursed him 
 when there wasn't many would have stayed in the 
 room with him ? " 
 
 Theodore reiterated his assurance that no ques- 
 tion of money or inheritance was involved in his 
 mission to the Island, and then bade the Captain's 
 widow a respectful adieu, and threaded his way 
 throufjh the avenue of tables to the door, and out of
 
 314 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 the garlic-charged atmosphere into the fresh 
 autumnal air. 
 4 He stayed one night in Jersey, and left at 
 eleven o'clock the next morning on board the 
 Fanny, and slept in his chambers in Ferret 
 Court, after having written a long letter to 
 Juanita with a full account of all that he had 
 learnt from the lips of the widow, and from the 
 letters of the dead. 
 
 " I do not surrender my hope of finding the 
 murderer," he wrote finally, " but you must now 
 agree with me that I must look elsewhere than 
 among the remnants of the Strangway race. They 
 can prove an unanswerable alibi — the grave." 
 
 He went to the office of the Imperial next 
 morning, saw the secretary, and ascertained that 
 the amount of the policy upon Colonel Strangway's 
 life had been paid to Lady Millicent Strangway, his 
 widow, in April, 1863, after the directors had re- 
 ceived indisputable evidence of his death. 
 
 " I remember the case perfectly," said the secre- 
 tary. " The circumstances were peculiar, and there 
 Tas a suspicion of suicide, ns the man had just left
 
 THE DAY WILL COME- 315 
 
 Monte Carlo, and was known to have lost his last 
 napoleon, after a most extraordinary run of luck. 
 There was some idea of disputing the claim ; but if 
 he did make away with himself he had contrived to 
 do it so cleverly that it would have been un- 
 commonly difficult to prove that his death was not 
 an accident — more particularly as Lord Danger field 
 brought an action against the steamboat company 
 for wilful negligence in regard to their gangway and 
 deficient lighting. The policy was an old one, too, 
 and so it was decided not to litigate." 
 
 " There could be no doubt as to the identity 
 of the man who was drowned at Nice. I con- 
 clude? " 
 
 " No, the question of identity was carefully gone 
 into. Lord Dangerfield happened to be wintering 
 at Cannes that year, and he heard of his son-in- 
 law's death in time to go over and identify the body 
 before it was coffined. You know how quickly burial 
 follows death in that part of the world, and there 
 would have been no possibiHty of the widow getting 
 over from Ajaccio before the funeral. We had 
 Lord Dangerfield's declaration that jthe body he saw
 
 316 THE DAY WILL COME. 
 
 at Nice was the body of Colonel Strangway, and we 
 paid the £3,000 on that evidence. We have 
 never had any reason to suspect error or foul 
 play." 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 Woodfall & Kinder, Printers, 70 to 76, Long Acre, London, W.C.