"Without a doubt. And what a sacrifice! She loved you, Mr Leaf, and yet she dismissed you in order to save her father from ruin."
"Blumenthal was a brute to have ever suggested such a condition," I declared savagely. "I never saw him. What kind of man was he? Did you meet him?"
"Yes. He was at Porchester Terrace on the afternoon when I called," she replied. "A short, stout, black-whiskered man, of a decidedly Hebrew cast. He was dressed loudly and wore a white waistcoat with heavy gold albert--a typical City man such as one sees in Cornhill or Lothbury."
"She showed no sign of affection towards him?"
"None whatever. He was introduced to me by Mr Murray as Ella"s affianced husband, and I was, of course, amazed that she should entertain a spark of affection for him. But half an hour later, when we were alone, she confessed in tears everything to me, just as I have related it to you."
"Well, you utterly astound me," was all I could exclaim.
What she had revealed to me placed my little Ella in an entirely new light. I never dreamed of her self-martyrdom. I sighed heavily, and a big lump arose in my throat as I reflected that, perhaps, after all death was preferable to life with a man whom she could not love.
The calm twilight was deepening into night, and the silence was broken only by the low murmuring of the water, the swift swish of some rat or water-hen in the rushes startled at our presence, and the dismal cry of a night-bird in the willows on the opposite bank.
"Did you hear nothing more of Ella after that day at Porchester Terrace--that 12th of November that was, alas! fatal to my happiness?"
"She wrote to me twice. One letter I received in Rome a month afterwards, and the second followed me about some weeks, and at last found me at Lindau, on the Lake of Constance. Both letters were full of her own unhappiness. In the first she reproached herself bitterly for having lied to the man she really loved--though she never mentioned your name--and said that she was back at Wichenford, but for her the world was dead. The man whom she had dismissed had left her in disgust and despair and had gone abroad, whither she knew not. A friend of yours had, it seemed, told her that you had gone to Algeria, and her letter concluded with the words: `I am alone to blame for this, yet how could I, in the circ.u.mstances, have acted otherwise?""
"And the second letter?" I asked eagerly.
"It was written a month later, from Blumenthal"s shooting-box near Blair Athol. She and her father were guests there at the great house-party consisting mostly of wealthy City men and their wives. She described it and said how she hated it all. She had, she told me, tried to escape.
She had even thought of writing to you to tell you the truth and ask your counsel, yet what use was it when she knew that she must save her father from the ruin that threatened. Wichenford Place had been the home of the Murrays ever since the days of James the First, when the King himself, granted it to his faithful partisan, Donald Murray of Parton, in Dumfriesshire. No Murray had ever before mortgaged it, therefore it was clearly her duty to her family to redeem it from the hands of usurers and vandals, even at cost of her own happiness."
"A n.o.ble sacrifice!" I sighed.
"Yes, Mr Leaf. She was a n.o.ble girl," declared my handsome companion.
"I, who knew her through ten years or so, knew her, perhaps, better than even you yourself did. The Little Madonna was never accused of an unkind or unjust action."
"And after that letter?"
"A few months later she came to visit us at Enghien. She and her father were in Paris, where she was buying her trousseau. But she made no mention of Blumenthal. Afterwards we were continually moving from place to place, and if she wrote, her letter never reached me. I heard no more."
A long deep silence fell between us. We were still standing there in the grey twilight at a small gate that led into the next field, our path still continuing beside the stream.
"Strange that it should be I who should tell you the truth," she remarked, almost as though speaking to herself. "You, a perfect stranger, offered to do me a service--indeed you have done me a very great service by restoring that letter to me--and in return, I have been able to tell you the truth regarding your lost love," and she looked into my face with her sad, serious eyes.
"Yes, it is indeed curious," I said. "Our circ.u.mstances are, in a measure, identical. We have both been the victims of dire misfortunes, both broken by the tragedy of an unhappy love. But you have told me hardly anything concerning yourself," I added.
The laces of her muslin blouse rose slowly and fell again. In that dim light I detected a hardness at the corners of her mouth, a hardness that, to me, was all-sufficient proof of the bitterness wearing out her young heart.
"Myself!" she echoed sadly. "What need I say about myself? It is of the past, and the memory of it all is a very bitter one. Like you, I believed that happiness was to be mine, the more so, because my father entirely approved of our union. He made confidential inquiries concerning him, and found that he was all that he represented himself to be. But love and happiness were not for me. I, alas! am one of those who are debarred the sweetness of life," she added hoa.r.s.ely, her small white hands clenching themselves, as thoughts of the past crowded upon her.
For some time we were again silent. I was anxious to know the truth of the love romance of my sweet-faced little friend--the girl whom Sammy had denounced as an adventuress. Yet surely there was nothing of the adventuress about her as she stood there in her plain white frock amid that purely English scene. I glanced at her countenance and saw that it was pale and agitated, and that her nervous lips were trembling. Her chin had sunk upon her breast and she stood deep in thought as though unconscious of my presence.
"Where did it occur? Here?"
"No, abroad," she answered, in a thin, mechanical voice. "I met him when we were living at Enghien, and from the first moment of our meeting we discovered that by some strange magnetism we were drawn irresistibly together. He was a foreigner, it is true, but his mother had been English, and his father was a Chilian."
"Chilian!" I cried, in a voice of surprise. But she never guessed the reason of my amazement.
"Yes. My father discovered that we met in secret, and then invited him to dine with us. From that evening he came daily out from Paris, and we used to spend each afternoon boating on the lake or playing tennis on the island. Before long we had pledged our love, and then commenced days of bliss such as I had never before experienced. I knew at last what was meant by perfect happiness, for we adored each other. I loved him just as dearly as Ella loved you. I would have died for him. Yet in all too short a time the blow fell upon me--the blow that has crushed all life from me, that has already made me a world-weary woman before my time."
"And what was the end?" I asked with deep sympathy, yet, alas! knowing too well the story of the tragedy.
"The end--ah?" she sighed. "How can I tell you? On the very night when we had secretly fixed the date of our marriage--a night when my father invited several friends to dine--he returned to Paris, and--" but she broke off short and burst into a wild pa.s.sion of tears.
For some time I waited, my hand placed tenderly upon her shoulder, striving to comfort her, and urging her to bear up against her heavy burden of trouble. Then at last when she grew calm again, she said in a hard tone:--
"On his return to Paris he found that during his absence thieves had obtained access to his room at the hotel, and securities for a very large amount, for the safe custody of which he was personally responsible, had been stolen. He saw that his own honour was at stake, that he alone was to blame for not leaving them in the bank, and in a fit of despondency--a mad paroxysm of temporary insanity--he took out his revolver and ended his life. I only knew of it four days after, when I chanced to read of it in the _Independance Belge_, for early on the morning following the dinner, my father had received a telegram and been compelled to go to Brussels, and I accompanied him. Before I knew the awful truth, poor Manuel was already dead and buried! Since that day," she added bitterly, "all hope of happiness has been crushed within me. I know now that the love of an honest man is not for me."
I made no response. I was too absorbed in my own thoughts. Every word of hers bore out Sammy"s story, yet I saw that she herself was innocent of the foul plot which had, as a sequel, the suicide of the poor girl"s lover.
Miller knew the truth; he was, indeed, in all probability the instigator of the ingenious theft that had had such a tragic sequel.
In silence I held the small gate open for her, and together we pa.s.sed on along the path beside the winding stream. Both our hearts were too full for words after that unusual exchange of confidences.
Of a sudden before us, advancing in our direction, there appeared the figure of some one in the shadow beneath the trees.
Lucie detected it at the same instant as myself, and halting drew back in quick alarm.
"We must not be seen here together," she gasped. "People would talk, and it would quickly get to my father"s ears."
"And what harm if it did?" I asked, but ere she could reply a strange thing happened--an incident more startling and more amazing than any I could have ever imagined in my wildest dreams.
I held my breath, and stood rooted to the spot.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
BENEATH THE LOVE-LIGHT.
What followed was amazing, mystifying.
With a loud cry that startled me the grey figure had come swiftly towards us, and I then saw that it was a woman.
My companion and she flew into each other"s arms and exchanged wild joyful greetings, while I, catching sight of her face, stood there open-mouthed, breathless in sheer astonishment.
At that moment I doubted whether I were actually sane and in possession of all my senses. I doubted even my own eyes. And had you been there, in my place, I think you also would have been dumbfounded.
"Fancy you--of all persons in this whole world!" Lucie cried, then turning to me after kissing the newcomer with wild enthusiasm, she laughed, adding:--
"This gentleman is not altogether a stranger, I believe?"
The woman turned her flushed countenance to mine, and in the dim twilight our eyes met.
She started back with a loud cry, then, next instant, dashed forward to me, grasping both my hands.
"Ella!" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. It was all I could say.