"But, Hugh, I wish you would be more frank with me," the girl said.
"There are several things you are hiding from me."
"I admit it, darling," he blurted forth, holding her hand in the darkness as they walked. The ecstasy and the bliss of that moment held him almost without words. She was as life to him. He pursued that soul-deadening evasion, and lived that grey, sordid life among men and women escaping from justice solely for her sake. If he married Louise Lambert and then cast off the matrimonial shackles he would recover his patrimony and be well-off.
To many men the temptation would have proved too great. The inheritance of his father"s fortune was so very easy. Louise was a pretty girl, well educated, bright, vivacious, and thoroughly up to date. Yet somehow, he always mistrusted Benton, though his father, perhaps blinded in his years, had reckoned him his best and most sincere friend. There are many unscrupulous men who pose as dear, devoted friends of those who they know are doomed by disease to die--men who hope to be left executors with attaching emoluments, and men who have some deep game to play either by swindling the orphans, or by advancing one of their own kith and kin in the social scale.
Old Mr. Henfrey, a genuine country landowner of the good old school, a man who lived in tweeds and leggings, and who rode regularly to hounds and enjoyed his days across the stubble, was one of the unsuspicious.
Charles Benton he had first met long ago in the Hotel de Russie in Rome while he was wintering there. Benton was merry, and, apparently, a gentleman. He talked of his days at Harrow, and afterwards at Cambridge, of being sent down because of a big "rag" in the Gladstonian days, and of his life since as a fairly well-off bachelor with rooms in London.
Thus a close intimacy had sprung up between them, and Hugh had naturally regarded his father"s friend with entire confidence.
"You admit that you are not telling me the whole truth, Hugh," remarked the girl after a long pause. "It is hardly fair of you, is it?"
"Ah! darling, you do not know my position," he hastened to explain as he gripped her little hand more tightly in his own. "I only wish I could learn the truth myself so as to make complete explanation. But at present all is doubt and uncertainty. Won"t you trust me, Dorise?"
"Trust you!" she echoed. "Why, of course I will! You surely know that, Hugh."
The young man was again silent for some moments. Then he exclaimed:
"Yet, after all, I can see no ray of hope."
"Why?"
"Hope of our marriage, Dorise," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "How can I, without money, ever hope to make you my wife?"
"But you will have your father"s estate in due course, won"t you?" she asked quite innocently. "You always plead poverty. You are so like a man."
"Ah! Dorise, I am really poor. You don"t understand--_you can"t_!"
"But I do," she said. "You may have debts. Every man has them--tailor"s bills, restaurant bills, betting debts, jewellery debts. Oh! I know.
I"ve heard all about these things from another. Well, if you have them, you"ll be able to settle them out of your father"s estate all in due course."
"And if he has left me nothing?"
"Nothing!" exclaimed the handsome girl at his side. "What do you mean?"
"Well----" he said very slowly. "At present I have nothing--that"s all.
That is why at Monte Carlo I suggested that--that----"
He did not conclude the sentence.
"I remember. You said that I had better marry George Sherrard--that thick-lipped a.s.s. You said that because you are hard-up?"
"Yes. I am hard-up. Very hard-up. At present I am existing in an obscure lodging practically upon the charity of a man upon whom, so far as I can ascertain, I have no claim whatsoever."
"The notorious thief?"
Hugh nodded, and said:
"That fact in itself mystifies me. I can see no motive. I am entirely innocent of the crime attributed to me, and if Mademoiselle were in her right mind she would instantly clear me of this terrible charge."
"But why did you go to her home that night, Hugh?"
"As I have already told you, I went to demand a reply to a single question I put to her," he said. "But please do no let us discuss the affair further. The whole circ.u.mstances are painful to me--more painful than you can possibly imagine. One day--and I hope it will be soon--you will fully realize what all this has cost me."
The girl drew a long breath.
"I know, Hugh," she said. "I know, dear--and I do trust you."
They halted, and he bent and impressed upon her lips a fierce caress.
So entirely absorbed in each other were the pair that they failed to notice the slim figure of a man who had followed the girl at some distance. Indeed, the individual in question had been lurking outside the house in Grosvenor Gardens, and had watched Dorise leave. At the end of the street a taxi was drawn up at the kerb awaiting him. Dorise had hailed the man, but his reply was a surly "Engaged."
Then, walking about a couple of hundred yards, she had found another, and entering it, had driven to the Marble Arch. But the first taxi had followed the second one, and in it was the well-set-up man who was silently watching her in the park as she walked with her lover towards the Victoria Gate.
"What can I say to you in reply to your words of hope, darling?"
exclaimed Hugh as he walked beside her. "I know full well how much all this must puzzle you. Have you seen Brock?"
"Oh! yes. I saw him two days ago. He called upon mother and had tea. I managed to get five minutes alone with him, and I asked if he had heard from you. He replied that he had not. He"s much worried about you."
"Is he, dear old chap? I only wish I dared write to him, and give him my address."
"I told him that you were back in London. But I did not give him your address. You told me to disclose nothing."
"Quite right, Dorise," he said. "If, as I hope one day to do, I can ever clear myself and combat my secret enemies, then there will be revealed to you a state of things of which you little dream. To-day I confess I am under a cloud. In the to-morrow I hope and pray that I may be able to expose the guilty and throw a new light upon those who have conspired to secure my downfall."
They had halted in the dark path, and again their lips met in fond caress. Behind them was the silent watcher, the tall man who had followed Dorise when she had made her secret exit from the house wherein the gay dance was till in progress.
An empty seat was near, and with one accord the lovers sank upon it, Hugh still holding the girl"s soft hand.
"I must really go," she said. "Mother will miss me, no doubt."
"And George Sherrard, too?" asked her companion bitterly.
"He may, of course."
"Ah! Then he is with you to-night?"
"Yes. Unfortunately, he is. Ah! Hugh! How I hate his exquisite and superior manners. But he is such a close friend of mother"s that I can never escape him."
"And he still pesters you with his attentions, of course," remarked Hugh in a hard voice.
"Oh! yes, he is always pretending to be in love with me."
"Love!" echoed Hugh. "Can such a man ever love a woman? Never, Dorise.
He does not love you as I love you--with my whole heart and my whole soul."
"Of course the fellow cannot," she replied. "But, for mother"s sake, I have to suffer his presence."