"There have been secrets kept from us which have now come to light,"
said Maurice, sadly. "Oliver went there to see his brother Francis, who was ill in bed; and his brother"s wife was no other than the woman who acted as your maid, Mary Kingston--or rather Mary Trent. Kingston left your house on Sat.u.r.day, it seems, because she had caught sight of her husband in the street: he had been very ill, and she felt herself obliged to go home with him and put him to bed. He has been in bed, unable to rise, she tells me, ever since."
"But she--_she_," said Lesley eagerly, "can explain the whole matter.
She must have heard the fight--the scuffle--whatever it was--upon the stairs. She ought to be able to tell when father left the house--and when Mr. Trent left the house. They did not go together, did they?"
there was a touch of scorn in her voice.
"No, they did not go together. But what Mrs. Trent alleges is, that your father waited for Oliver on the stairs, and attacked him there. It is a malicious, wicked lie--I am sure of that. But it is what she says she is willing to swear."
"Mrs. Trent!" Lesley repeated vaguely. "Mrs. Trent! Do you mean--Kingston? _Kingston_ swears that my father lay in wait for Oliver Trent upon the stairs? It is impossible!"
"Yes, Kingston," Maurice answered, in a low, level voice. "It is Kingston who has accused your father of the crime."
Lesley covered her face with her hands, and for a moment or two did not speak. "It is too terrible," she said at last, not very steadily. "I do not know how to believe it. I always trusted her. Is there n.o.body worth trusting in the world? Is there no truth and faith anywhere at all?"
The tears were raining down her cheeks as she spoke. Maurice looked at her with wistful tenderness.
"Can you ask that question when you have _such_ a father?" he asked.
"And I--have I done anything to deserve your want of trust?"
She could only sob out incoherent words by way of answer. "Not you--not my father--I was thinking--of others--others I have trusted and been deceived in."
"Oliver Trent," he said--not as a question so much as by way of sad a.s.sertion. She drew her handkerchief away from her eyes immediately, and gazed at him through her tears, with flushed cheeks and panting breath.
What did he mean? He did not leave her long in doubt.
"Kingston--Mrs. Trent--has told a strange story," he said. "She avers that Oliver was false--false to my poor little sister who believed in him so entirely--false to himself and false to us. They say you knew of this. She says that he--he made love to you, that he asked you to marry him--to run away with him indeed--so late as last Sat.u.r.day. She had hidden herself between the folding-doors in order to hear what went on.
Lesley, is this true?"
She was white enough now. She cast one appealing glance at his face, and then said, almost inaudibly--
"Don"t tell Ethel."
"Then it was true?"
"Quite true!"
"Oh, my G.o.d!" cried Maurice, involuntarily. He did not use the words with any profane intention: they escaped his lips as a sort of cry of agony, of protest, almost of entreaty. He had hoped until this moment that Lesley would be able to deny this charge. When she acknowledged its truth, the conviction of Oliver"s falsity, the suspicion of Lesley"s faith, smote him like a blow. He drew back from her a little and looked at her steadfastly. Lesley raised her candid, innocent eyes to his, and, after a moment"s silence, made her defence.
"I could not help it. If Kingston speaks the truth, she will tell you that. He locked the door so that I could not get out, and then ... I said I would never speak to him again. I was never so angry--so ashamed--in all my life. You must not think that I--I too--was false to Ethel. She is my friend, and I never dreamed of taking him away from her. I never cared--in that way--for him, and even if I had----"
"You never cared? Did you not love him, too?"
"No! no, indeed! I hated him. If Kingston says so she is lying about me, as she is lying about my father. You say that you do not believe her when she speaks against him: surely you won"t believe her when she speaks against me? Can"t you trust my father"s daughter, as well as my father?"
The voice was almost pa.s.sionate in its pleading: the lovely eyes were eloquent of reproach. Maurice felt his whole being quiver: he was shaken to the very depths. Why should she plead to him in this way if she had no love at all for _him_? Why should she be so anxious that he should trust her? And did he not? He could not look into her face and think for one moment that she lied.
"I do trust--your father"s daughter," he said, hoa.r.s.ely. "I trust her above all women living!--G.o.d knows that I do. You did not love Oliver?
It was not to _him_ that you made some promise you spoke of--some promise against engaging yourself?"
"It was to my mother," said Lesley, simply. "I am sorry that I did not make you understand."
He took a quick step nearer. "May I say more?"
She shook her head.
"But--some day?"
"Not now," she answered, softly. But a very faint and tremulous smile quivered for one moment on her lips. "It is very wrong to talk of ourselves just now. Go on with your story--tell me about my dear, dearest father."
"I will," said Maurice. "I will do exactly what you wish--_just now_"--with a great accent on the last two words. "We will talk about that promise at a more fitting time, Lesley--I may call you Lesley, may I not? There is no harm in that, for you are like a sister to my poor Ethel, and you may as well let me be a brother to you, dear, _just now_.
Well, Lesley"--how he lingered over the name!--"Mrs. Trent says that she returned to your house on Monday afternoon in order to warn your father of what was going, on----"
"Oh! Did she really?"
"Yes, for your father tells me she did so. She also told him various stories of Oliver"s baseness, which he felt it his duty to inquire into, and in order that, he might have an interview with Oliver, she arranged with him to come that night to the house in Whitechapel, where she and her husband were living. There she was to confront him with Oliver, and she said that in _her_ presence he would not dare to deny that her tales were true."
"But why did father agree to that? Why did he want to find out?"
"For Ethel"s sake. He wanted to protect her. If Mrs. Trent could prove her stories, he meant to expose Oliver to Ethel and myself, if it were but an hour before her marriage----"
"And why didn"t he?" demanded Lesley, breathlessly.
"Because--here comes in your father"s evidence--your father a.s.sures me that when he reached the house that night and confronted Oliver, the woman took back every word that she had uttered, and declared that it was all a lie. And Oliver, of course, persisted that he had done nothing amiss. Your father says he was so much tempted to strike Oliver to the ground--for he did not believe in Kingston"s retractation--that he flung his stick out upon the landing lest he should use it too effectually. He forgot to pick it up, and came away without it. The pocket-book must of course have fallen out of his pocket as he left the house."
"Then he could not convict Mr. Trent of anything?"
"No, and so he did not feel justified in meddling. But he wishes that he had gone to Ethel at once--or that I had been at home and that he had come to me. He is reproaching himself terribly for his silence now."
"As I have been reproaching myself for mine," said Lesley.
"You have no need. Ethel would never have believed the stories--and as Mrs. Trent denied them again, I think that Oliver would have carried the day. But let her deny them as she will, I believe that they were true, and that Oliver was a villain. Our poor Ethel may live to bless the day when she was delivered from him."
"I am afraid she will never believe us, or forgive us if she does,"
sighed Lesley. "But what else happened?"
"Your father left the building, after a long and angry conversation, about midnight. Oliver remained behind. Of course your father knows nothing more. But Mrs. Trent says that Oliver went away ten minutes later, and that she then heard loud words and the sound of a struggle upon the stairs. Fights are too common in that neighborhood to excite much remark. She, however, feeling anxious, stole down the upper flight of stairs, and distinctly saw Mr. Brooke and her brother-in-law struggling together. She maintains that Mr. Brooke"s stick was in his hand."
"How wickedly false! Why did she not scream if she saw such a sight?"
"She was afraid. And she says that she did not think it would come to--_murder_. She crept back to her room again, and in a few minutes everything was quiet. Only--in the early morning the dead body of Oliver Trent was found upon the stairs, and then she gave information as to what she had seen and heard."
There was a short silence. Then Lesley said, very tremulously--"It sounds like a plot--a plot against my dear father"s good name!"
"And a very cleverly concocted plot too," thought Maurice to himself in silent rage; but he dared not say so much aloud. He only answered, tenderly--
"Such a plot can never come to good, Lesley. You and I together--we will unravel it--we will clear your father, and bring him back to the world again."
"He is not coming home just yet, then?"
"I am afraid--dear, do not tremble so--he will have to take his trial.