"Now that Nardini is dead I am helpless in the hands of my unscrupulous
enemies," was her low, inert answer.
"That letter is best destroyed," I said. Then with murmured thanks she
tore it into tiny fragments and scattered it to the wind which carried
the pieces away across the wide field of ripe corn.
I told her nothing of the yellow document, that hideous record which
Nardini had preserved with her letter.
On the contrary, I implored her pardon for my visit and for my piece of
audacious imposture, and, as we walked on together, explained how her
father and myself had become friends.
At first she seemed full of fear and suspicion, but gradually, as I gave
a full description of how Miller had taken me over the house to see the
pictures and antiques, and she saw how enthusiastic I was over the
beautiful old place, she became reassured. Did she know the secret of
her father's double life? In any case I could see that she was prepared
to go to any length in order to shield him.
"I expect my aunt has been very much puzzled by your card," she said.
"She will probably be wondering whoever you can be."
"If you so desire, Miss Miller, you can explain to your aunt that I am a
friend of yours, and that by a mistake of the servant the card was sent
to her."
"A most excellent excuse," she laughed. "I'll tell her so, and then if
you are still remaining here over to-morrow, perhaps you will call."
"I shall be only too delighted," I assured her. "Your father I found a
most charming man--almost as charming as his daughter."
"Now no compliments please, Mr Leaf," she exclaimed, flushing slightly.
"It is not an idle one, I assure you," I said. "The compliment is
equally to your father as to yourself." And then we strolled forward
again along the banks of a small rippling brook overhung by willows and
hawthorns. Was it possible that she, so full of grace and sweetness,
was actually the woman who Sammy had declared her to be? No, I could
not bring myself to believe it. She spoke with such feeling and
sympathy, and she was so full of an ineffable charm that I refused to
believe that she was a mere adventuress assisting her father in his
direction of some ingenious gang of thieves who worked in secret.
Her father, too, was the very last man whom I should have believed to be
an adventurer had not the proof been so plain. Was not that appeal of
Lucie's to Nardini an ugly and suspicious truth?
The more suspicious, too, that she would give me no idea of the
allegation against her. She evidently feared lest I should make inquiry
and discover the disgraceful truth.
Presently, as we came to a bend in the stream where the water was
deeper, its unruffled surface shining like a mirror, I halted, and
looking straight into her face, said:--
"Miss Miller, yesterday at your house I made a discovery--one that
utterly astounded me."
Her countenance went ashen grey.
"A discovery!" she faltered. "What--what do you mean?"
Instantly I saw that I had quite unintentionally alarmed her and
hastened to set her at her ease.
"I saw upon a table in your drawing-room the photograph of a very dear
friend--Ella Murray. She was your friend, so your father told me. How
curious that we should both have been acquainted with her!"
"Oh! Ella! Did you really know poor Ella?" she exclaimed quickly,
reassured that my discovery was not of a compromising character.
"I knew her very well indeed," was my slow response. "When were you
acquainted with her?"
"Oh! years ago. We were together at the Sacre Coeur at Evreux, and both
left the convent the same year. She was my most intimate friend, and
once or twice came with me here, to Studland, when we had our holidays
together."
"She actually visited here!" I exclaimed in surprise.
"Several times. Mr Murray was my father's friend. As you know, he
lived at Wichenford, in Worcestershire. Then we went to reside entirely
abroad, and for quite a long time, a year or more, I lost sight of her.
She was very beautiful. From a child her wonderful face was everywhere
admired. In the convent we girls nicknamed her `The Little Madonna,'
for she bore a striking likeness to the Van Dyck's Madonna in the Pitti
in Florence, a copy of which hung in the convent chapel."
"Ah, of course!" I cried. Now that she recalled that picture, I
recognised the extraordinary likeness. Perhaps you, who read this
chronicle of strange facts, know that small canvas a foot square which
hangs in a corner of one of the great gold-ceilinged salons, almost
unnoticed save by the foreign art enthusiast. The expression of
sweetness and adoration distinguishes it as a marvellous work. "What do
you know further concerning her?" I asked. "Tell me all--for she was
my friend."
"About a year before we went to live at Enghien, near Paris, Mrs Murray
died. Then her father let Wichenford Place to an American, and went to
Australia for a sea-trip, leaving Ella in charge of an old aunt who
lived in London. I saw her once, at her aunt's house in Porchester
Terrace. She was very unhappy, and when I asked her the reason she told
me in bitter tears that she loved a man who adored her in return. She
would not tell me the man's name, but only said that her father and her
aunt were compelling her to marry a wealthy elderly man who was odious,
and whom she hated. Poor little Ella! I pitied her, and tried to
comfort her, but it was quite useless, for that very evening her father,
who was then back in London, compelled her to go out and meet her secret
lover and give him his _conge_. Who he was or what became of him I do
not know. I only know that she loved him as dearly as any woman has
ever loved a man--poor little Ella!"
I stood before her motionless, listening to those words. Was this true?
Had Fate any further shaft of bitterness to thrust into my already
broken heart?
"Miss Miller!" I managed to exclaim, in a very low voice I fear, "what
you tell me is utterly astounding. You know the man who loved Ella
Murray. He was none other than myself--I who loved her, ay better than
my own life--I who received that dismissal from the sweet lips that I so
adored--the lips that I now know were compelled to lie to me."
"You--Mr Leaf!" she cried. "Impossible. You were actually Ella's
secret lover!"
"Ah, yes! God alone knows how I have suffered all these years," I said,
half-choked. "You were her friend, Miss Miller, therefore you will
forgive me if even to-day I wear my heart upon my sleeve. You will say,
perhaps, that I am foolish, yet when a man loves a woman honestly, as I
did, and he craves for affection and happiness, the catastrophe of
parting is a very severe one--often more so to the man than to the
woman. But," I added quickly, "pardon me, I am talking to you as though
you were as old as myself. You, at your age, have never experienced the
bitterness of a blighted love."
"Unfortunately I have," she answered, in a low, trembling voice. "I,
too, loved once--and only once. But, alas! after a few short weeks of
affection, of a bliss that I thought would last always, the man I loved
was cruelly snatched from me for ever." And she sighed and tears welled
in her fine eyes, as she looked aimlessly straight before her--her mind
filled with painful recollections.
She told me no more, and left me wondering at the secret love romance
that, to my great surprise, seemed to have already hardened her young
heart.
Every girl, even in her school years, has her own little affair of the
heart, generally becoming hopelessly infatuated with some man much her
senior, who is in ignorance of the burning he is awakening within the
girlish breast. But hers was, I distinguished, a real serious
affection, one which, like my own, had ended in black grief and tragedy.
But she had told me one truth--a ghastly truth. I had misjudged my dear
dead love! She had still loved me--she had still been mine--in heart my
own!