CHAPTER XXIX.

NINETY SIX.

DORINDA found ease for the pangs of despised love in the knowledge that she had it in her power to indulge the fury of the woman scorned. Her ancient governess had brought her word of a vengeance almost too complete. Miss Twitterley, always acting on some amiable inspiration, generally contrived to do the wrong thing whenever she acted. She did not believe that Talbot Welbore had made a theatrical exit, but she left her patroness under the impression that he had. She illustrated this theory by parallels from various works of fiction, in which false lovers had more or less basely evaded their allegiance. She drew further on the treasury of romance for vivid pictures of the trouble in the Welbore household, and the misery that had fallen on what she called the lowly cot in Fowler'salley. Dorinda heard it, to do her justice, with mingled feelings. She had in her no more real element of tragedy than any other character in this story, and, relenting fool that she was, she felt during Miss Twitterley's narrative a certain pulse of pity for the woes of which her anger was the spring. Perhaps, too, she thrilled with a fond thought of the erring youth kneeling penitent at her feet. The remembrance of his grievous offence dashed the hope, which, however, still haunted and left her ire less bitter than it had been. But mercy was for the man. For the woman-the rival, the enemy-no quarter.

She made judicious report of the Twitterley bulletin to her father. That gentleman heard the details. with grim satisfaction. The passage of it which least interested his daughter struck him with most concern. It was the relation of Mrs. Darkin's arrival, the expectations the Welbores had of help from her, and the extremity in which they were left by her sudden illness.

Mr. Hardrop had heard from the member for Muddlebury, in the days of their intimacy, something of the quarrel between the Laurels and the Manor. He now recalled the terms of Mr. Welbore's appeal for respite, and concluded that he had before him a circumstance which needed immediate looking to. There was no taking Miss Twitterley's statement 'at the foot of the letter.' But there was no doubt some base, however slight, for the fantastic narrative she had reared. If the family feud had been made up, or was likely to be made up, there was more than a chance that his scheme of vengeance would be spoilt.

I must take care,' he thought, 'that this fellow does not slip out of my hands. There is a simple way to find out whether Welbore has made it up with those Darkins. If I find it is so. I'll take the rest for granted, and strike at my man to-morrow. That will test the thing.'

On this resolution he acted straightway. He went to the hotel named by Miss Twitterley, and there fell in with the manager.

'I can only answer you, sir,'

said Mr. Robins, 'in my managerial capacity. As manager, I regret to say that, from all I hear, 96 is low-very low indeed. But here's somebody who will be able to inform you more fully than Robert Robins.'

Mr. Hardrop turned, and met Lynton and young Welbore. Lynton took him by the arm.

Come,' said he; 'come and witness a miracle. Ask me nothing, but come. You will hear and see all.'

Impressed by Lynton's voice and manner, which suggested solemn mystery; impelled also by curiosity, which, like hope, begets enterprise-Mr. Hardrop suffered himself to be led up stairs. Talbot Welbore had hastened on before, seemingly too preoccupied by something more important to take note even of the man who had become for him and his so formidable a figure. As the doctor and the companion he had so curiously enlisted reached the foot of the staircase, Nurse Goodbody appeared on the landing above. The woman was in a panic. She called out to Mr. Robins, with vehement gestures,

'Make haste, for God's sake! You are wanted at 96 !'

This was no false alarm. Something very startling had happened in the sick-room.

In the interval since Lynton had set out in quest of Blossom the death-shadow had visibly deepened. Sir Minim Grainger owned that the collapse which he had foreseen had, all the same, taken him by surprise. He knew nothing of the killing effort the patient had made the night before. He marked the ebbing life, and muttered to himself, I wish she were here.'

It was a cool but fine spring evening, so fine that one window stood largely open. Through it poured the sunset, already yellowing. The room

overlooked Trafalgar-square, and the roar of the great thoroughfare at the side reached to mighty susurrus, deep as distant thunder, but soft like the hum of bees, and not loud enough to drown the song of caged birds in the neighbourhood, or the soothing music of the fountains in the square. Early odours from park and plot and window-sill helped the illusion of the country where the eye was not permitted to correct the impression received through the other

organs.

Mr. Darkin stood by the window. He had not greeted his brother-in-law when that gentleman presented himself. He felt himself at formal odds with Sir Minim; he had also an uncomfortable thought that the famous expert had reached certain conclusions in the case. He saw himself, moreover, ignominiously elbowed aside in the name of Science, and would have resented it but that there would be imprudence as well as impropriety in raising an issue, and maybe provoking a scene, by the very deathbed of his wife—as yet.

The crisis had arrived for him as for others. An hour, two hours, at the most some brief time, and all would be over one way or other. Life had dwindled till the very seconds seemed to take weight and size, and could be seen, as it were, visibly dropping from the shrunken space. Darkin kept furtive watch-his eye on the pale face on the pillow, his ear on the waning breath. Coolness and caution must be his guides now. He was tormented by a haunting anxiety respecting the precious deposit hidden so loosely outside the door. Was it safe? The uneasiness remained after he had looked out and seen the garment hanging in the dusky corridor, limp, pendent, unshaped, as a suicide

would hang. The likeness flashed upon him disagreeably; he returned to his place. 'My nerves are affected,' he thought.

Sir Minim Grainger and his colleague reserved judgment on what they had learnt from Miss Welbore respecting the extraordinary incident in Fowler's-alley, and other aspects of the case. Each had, however, formed an opinion which he would hardly have undertaken to define. They suspected a mystery of some kind; they indulged an experimental instinct which suggested its solution. It was necessary that the patient should be not only alive, but sensible, when the experiment was made. Mr. Welbore had been sent for in the hope that his presence would stimulate the flagging vitality. His sister had recognised him, but only by signs.

It was a severe ordeal for the member for Muddlebury, who found himself, in the midst of other trials, called upon to bear the loss of his sister at the moment of reconciliation, and just when her hand might save him and his from at least the utter ruin which threatened them.

Mr. Welbore had left Despair to wait upon Death. His wife had made him a miserable scene before he left Dorchester-place that afternoon. The poor lady had quite lost tone and temper under a stroke of fortune which she resented in a manner at variance with true philosophy and the deportment of genteel society. O, the criticism of the squares, the terraces, the places, the triumph and scorn of the world!

She locked the breakfast-room door-thereby obliging Mary Maid to take observation through the keyhole-and went wringing her hands up and down the floor in an agony of grief and shame, her handsome and matronly coun

VOL. XXXI.

tenance dabbled and sodden with tears, as she wailed:

'I could bear it all, I think, if these people knew nothing of it. But O, Edith my child, it kills me, it kills me to fancy them talking over it exulting over it. What will become of us, what will become of us? They all hated and envied us! You remember what that Miss Pleadham said about our position and our pride? Ah ! where is our pride, and where is our position now? It maddens me

maddens me !' And so on.

In that frame of mind it was not very surprising that the good woman somewhat unreasonably turned upon her husband, and charged the calamities which had fallen upon the house to his lack of worldly prudence, his neglect of his own affairs, to his ill-governed ambition, and his costly weakness for admiration and flattery.

Such

a sally, uttered for the first time, routed the member for Muddlebury. He rushed forth, taking his daughter, and made for the hotel, with a wild notion of appealing to his sister even in her extremity. He was quite beyond care for the thought of meeting Darkin now. The feud which had for him a sort of historical importance was diminished to a paltry squabble.

He found his sister in a condition which all but extinguished hope. The doctors had just left her, and were describing her state to her brother and niece during the minute or two which accident permitted Arthur Darkin to turn. to his purpose in the manner already related.

Mr. Welbore sat watching his dying sister, the dismal incarnation of a crushed man. Sir Minim Grainger had just returned from the door: it was his third journey. He had looked out and listened, but his impatience failed to hasten the coming he desired.

KK

Suddenly the sick woman spoke. 'Blossom!'

At the word her face lighted, her eyes went eagerly to the door. Darkin had also caught the sound which wrought this effect on his wife. He bent forward through the open window, and cast an oath abroad through his set lips. A movement at the door, a tap, and Edith Welbore appeared leading Blossom, who looked perplexed and more than half frightened. The Twitterley visage, with its setting of wiry ringlets, followed; and then occurred a brief interval, which was closed by the slow and sidelong projection of one round shoulder and the grimy and dogged visage of Tom Warnock. The costermonger planted himself on the threshold, half in, half out of the room, and so standing, with his hat in his hand and his air of sullen distrust and defiance, formed anything but a pleasing object to the view. He had evidently made up his mind not to stand any more trampling.

Edith, divining with a fine instinct the proprieties of the situation, removed the girl's bonnet, and left her head covered only with the blonde floss. The change, made without the least idea of its effect, completed the identity with the image shrined in the memory of

the hesitating and bewildered girl, and led her within the embrace which feebly fondled her.

'Now!' thought Arthur Darkin, and came forward from his station by the window. Tom Warnock and Miss Twitterley, drawn together, as it were, by the gravitation of a common wonderment, looked on mutely from the background.

The meeting of mother and child was not an incident to mould into words. Blossom remembered all her life with what instantaneous strange emotion her heart went out to the woman. The woman had but one cry: 'My child!'

The excitement which had given her supernatural strength had also shortened her little span. Sir Minim saw this, and knew that whatever the secret was it must be snatched from the jaws of death.

'My child! Ada!'

'You hear her all,' he said; 'you hear what she says.'

'She raves,' said Darkin, frowning on her. Her mind is gone; she talks at random.'

Mercy

'No, I thank my God. has been vouchsafed to me. This is my daughter, Ada Chadleigh. There are papers-proofs-'

Her speech failed. Those supporting her felt her grow suddenly more weighty. Her arms relaxed, her fingers plucked at the tresses ravelled by their caressing.

'She is going,' said the doctor, 'and the proofs die with her.'

Darkin turned his face from all present. He felt that its expression would betray him. But Sarah Goodbody spoke:

'I beg your pardon for making so free, Sir Minim,' she said, in the modestly sympathetic manner of a humble confederate. 'I has the papers, Sir Minim, all wrote out and signed, sealed, and delivered both by this poor lady and