CHAPTER II. THE DESERTED CHAMBERS.
CHAPTER III. TAKING IT QUIETLY.
CHAPTER IV. MISS LAWFORD SPEAKS HER MIND.
CHAPTER V. THE RETURN OF THE WANDERER.
CHAPTER VI. A WIDOWER'S PROPOSAL.
CHAPTER VII. HOW THE TIDINGS WERE RECEIVED IN LINCOLNSHIRE.
CHAPTER VIII. MR. WESTON REFUSES TO BE TRAMPLED ON.
CHAPTER IX. "GOING TO BE MARRIED!"
CHAPTER X. THE TURNING OF THE TIDE.
CHAPTER XI. BELINDA'S WEDDING DAY.
CHAPTER XII. MARY'S STORY.
CHAPTER XIII. "ALL WITHIN IS DARK AS NIGHT."
CHAPTER XIV. "THERE IS CONFUSION WORSE THAN DEATH."
CHAPTER THE LAST. "DEAR IS THE MEMORY OF OUR WEDDED LIVES."
THE EPILOGUE.
JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY.
VOLUME III.
CHAPTER I.
CAPTAIN ARUNDEL'S REVENGE.
Edward Arundel went back to his lonely home with a settled purpose in
his mind. He would leave Lincolnshire,--and immediately. He had no
motive for remaining. It may be, indeed, that he had a strong motive
for going away from the neighbourhood of Lawford Grange. There was a
lurking danger in the close vicinage of that pleasant, old-fashioned
country mansion, and the bright band of blue-eyed damsels who inhabited
there.
"I will turn my back upon Lincolnshire for ever," Edward Arundel said
to himself once more, upon his way homeward through the October
twilight; "but before I go, the whole country shall know what I think
of Paul Marchmont."
He clenched his fists and ground his teeth involuntarily as he thought
this.
It was quite dark when he let himself in at the old-fashioned
half-glass door that led into his humble sitting-room at Kemberling
Retreat. He looked round the little chamber, which had been furnished
forty years before by the proprietor of the cottage, and had served for
one tenant after another, until it seemed as if the spindle-legged
chairs and tables had grown attenuated and shadowy by much service. He
looked at the simple room, lighted by a bright fire and a pair of
wax-candles in antique silver candlesticks. The red firelight flickered
and trembled upon the painted roses on the walls, on the obsolete
engravings in clumsy frames of imitation-ebony and tarnished gilt. A
silver tea-service and a Sevres china cup and saucer, which Mrs.
Arundel had sent to the cottage for her son's use, stood upon the small
oval table: and a brown setter, a favourite of the young man's, lay
upon the hearth-rug, with his chin upon his outstretched paws, blinking
at the blaze.
As Mr. Arundel lingered in the doorway, looking at these things, an
image rose before him, as vivid and distinct as any apparition of
Professor Pepper's manufacture; and he thought of what that commonplace
cottage-chamber might have been if his young wife had lived. He could
fancy her bending over the low silver teapot,--the sprawling inartistic
teapot, that stood upon quaint knobs like gouty feet, and had been long
ago banished from the Dangerfield breakfast-table as utterly rococo and
ridiculous. He conjured up the dear dead face, with faint blushes
flickering amidst its lily pallor, and soft hazel eyes looking up at
him through the misty steam of the tea-table, innocent and virginal as
the eyes of that mythic nymph who was wont to appear to the old Roman
king. How happy she would have been! How willing to give up fortune and
station, and to have lived for ever and ever in that queer old cottage,
ministering to him and loving him!
Presently the face changed. The hazel-brown hair was suddenly lit up
with a glitter of barbaric gold; the hazel eyes grew blue and bright;
and the cheeks blushed rosy red. The young man frowned at this new and
brighter vision; but he contemplated it gravely for some moments, and
then breathed a long sigh, which was somehow or other expressive of
relief.
"No," he said to himself, "I am _not_ false to my poor lost girl; I do
_not_ forget her. Her image is dearer to me than any living creature.
The mournful shadow of her face is more precious to me than the
brightest reality."
He sat down in one of the spindle-legged arm-chairs, and poured out a
cup of tea. He drank it slowly, brooding over the fire as he sipped the
innocuous beverage, and did not deign to notice the caresses of the
brown setter, who laid his cold wet nose in his master's hand, and
performed a species of spirit-rapping upon the carpet with his tail.
After tea the young man rang the bell, which was answered by Mr.
Morrison.
"Have I any clothes that I can hunt in, Morrison?" Mr. Arundel asked.
His factotum stared aghast at this question.
"You ain't a-goin' to 'unt, are you, Mr. Edward?" he inquired,
anxiously.
"Never mind that. I asked you a question about my clothes, and I want a
straightforward answer."
"But, Mr. Edward," remonstrated the old servant, "I don't mean no
offence; and the 'orses is very tidy animals in their way; but if
you're thinkin' of goin' across country,--and a pretty stiffish country
too, as I've heard, in the way of bulfinches and timber,--neither of
them 'orses has any more of a 'unter in him than I have."
"I know that as well as you do," Edward Arundel answered coolly; "but I
am going to the meet at Marchmont Towers to-morrow morning, and I want
you to look me out a decent suit of clothes--that's all. You can have
Desperado saddled ready for me a little after eleven o'clock."
Mr. Morrison looked even more astonished than before. He knew his
master's savage enmity towards Paul Marchmont; and yet that very master
now deliberately talked of joining in an assembly which was to gather
together for the special purpose of doing the same Paul Marchmont
honour. However, as he afterwards remarked to the two fellow-servants
with whom he sometimes condescended to be familiar, it wasn't his place
to interfere or to ask any questions, and he had held his tongue
accordingly.
Perhaps this respectful reticence was rather the result of prudence
than of inclination; for there was a dangerous light in Edward
Arundel's eyes upon this particular evening which Mr. Morrison never
had observed before.
The factotum said something about this later in the evening.
"I do really think," he remarked, "that, what with that young 'ooman's
death, and the solitood of this most dismal place, and the rainy
weather,--which those as says it always rains in Lincolnshire ain't far
out,--my poor young master is not the man he were."
He tapped his forehead ominously to give significance to his words, and
sighed heavily over his supper-beer.
* * * * *
The sun shone upon Paul Marchmont on the morning of the 18th of
October. The autumn sunshine streamed into his bedchamber, and awoke
the new master of Marchmont Towers. He opened his eyes and looked about
him. He raised himself amongst the down pillows, and contemplated the
figures upon the tapestry in a drowsy reverie. He had been dreaming of
his poverty, and had been disputing a poor-rate summons with an
impertinent tax-collector in the dingy passage of the house in
Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square. Ah! that horrible house had so long
been the only scene of his life, that it had grown almost a part of his
mind, and haunted him perpetually in his sleep, like a nightmare of
brick and mortar, now that he was rich, and had done with it for ever.
Mr. Marchmont gave a faint shudder, and shook off the influence of the
bad dream. Then, propped up by the pillows, he amused himself by
admiring his new bedchamber.
It was a handsome room, certainly--the very room for an artist and a
sybarite. Mr. Marchmont had not chosen it without due consideration. It
was situated in an angle of the house; and though its chief windows
looked westward, being immediately above those of the western
drawing-room, there was another casement, a great oriel window, facing
the east, and admitting all the grandeur of the morning sun through
painted glass, on which the Marchmont escutcheon was represented in
gorgeous hues of sapphire and ruby, emerald and topaz, amethyst and
aqua-marine. Bright splashes of these colours flashed and sparkled on
the polished oaken floor, and mixed themselves with the Oriental
gaudiness of a Persian carpet, stretched beneath the low Arabian bed,
which was hung with ruby-coloured draperies that trailed upon the
ground. Paul Marchmont was fond of splendour, and meant to have as much
of it as money could buy. There was a voluptuous pleasure in all this
finery, which only a parvenu could feel; it was the sharpness of the
contrast between the magnificence of the present and the shabby
miseries of the past that gave a piquancy to the artist's enjoyment of
his new habitation.
All the furniture and draperies of the chamber had been made by Paul
Marchmont's direction; but its chief beauty was the tapestry that
covered the walls, which had been worked, two hundred and fifty years
before, by a patient chatelaine of the House of Marchmont. This
tapestry lined the room on every side. The low door had been cut in it;
so that a stranger going into that apartment at night, a little under
the influence of the Marchmont cellars, and unable to register the
topography of the chamber upon the tablet of his memory, might have
been sorely puzzled to find an exit the next morning. Most tapestried
chambers have a certain dismal grimness about them, which is more
pleasant to the sightseer than to the constant inhabitant; but in this
tapestry the colours were almost as bright and glowing to-day as when
the fingers that had handled the variegated worsteds were still warm
and flexible. The subjects, too, were of a more pleasant order than
usual. No mailed ruffians or drapery-clad barbarians menaced the
unoffending sleeper with uplifted clubs, or horrible bolts, in the very
act of being launched from ponderous crossbows; no wicked-looking
Saracens, with ferocious eyes and copper-coloured visages, brandished
murderous scimitars above their turbaned heads. No; here all was
pastoral gaiety and peaceful delight. Maidens, with flowing kirtles and
crisped yellow hair, danced before great wagons loaded with golden
wheat. Youths, in red and purple jerkins, frisked as they played the
pipe and tabor. The Flemish horses dragging the heavy wain were hung
with bells and garlands as for a rustic festival, and tossed their
untrimmed manes into the air, and frisked and gamboled with their
awkward legs, in ponderous imitation of the youths and maidens. Afar
off, in the distance, wonderful villages, very queer as to perspective,
but all a-bloom with gaudy flowers and quaint roofs of bright-red
tiles, stood boldly out against a bluer sky than the most enthusiastic
pre-Raphaelite of to-day would care to send to the Academy in Trafalgar
Square.
Paul Marchmont smiled at the youths and maidens, the laden wagons, the
revellers, and the impossible village. He was in a humour to be pleased
with everything to-day. He looked at his dressing-table, which stood
opposite to him, in the deep oriel window. His valet--he had a valet
now--had opened the great inlaid dressing-case, and the silver-gilt
fittings reflected the crimson hues of the velvet lining, as if the
gold had been flecked with blood. Glittering bottles of diamond-cut
glass, that presented a thousand facets to the morning light, stood
like crystal obelisks amid the litter of carved-ivory brushes and
Sevres boxes of pomatum; and one rare hothouse flower, white and
fragile, peeped out of a slender crystal vase, against a background of
dark shining leaves.
"It's better than Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square," said Mr.
Marchmont, throwing himself back amongst the pillows until such time as
his valet should bring him a cup of strong tea to refresh and
invigorate his nerves withal. "I remember the paper in my room: drab
hexagons and yellow spots upon a brown ground. _So_ pretty! And then
the dressing-table: deal, gracefully designed; with a shallow drawer,
in which my razors used to rattle like castanets when I tried to pull
it open; a most delicious table, exquisitely painted in stripes,
olive-green upon stone colour, picked out with the favourite brown. Oh,
it was a most delightful life; but it's over, thank Providence; it's
over!"
Mr. Paul Marchmont thanked Providence as devoutly as if he had been the
most patient attendant upon the Divine pleasure, and had never for one
moment dreamed of intruding his own impious handiwork amid the
mysterious designs of Omnipotence.
The sun shone upon the new master of Marchmont Towers. This bright
October morning was not the very best for hunting purposes; for there
was a fresh breeze blowing from the north, and a blue unclouded sky.
But it was most delightful weather for the breakfast, and the
assembling on the lawn, and all the pleasant preliminaries of the day's
sport. Mr. Paul Marchmont, who was a thorough-bred Cockney, troubled
himself very little about the hunt as he basked in that morning light.
He only thought that the sun was shining upon him, and that he had come
at last--no matter by what crooked ways--to the realisation of his
great day-dream, and that he was to be happy and prosperous for the
rest of his life.
He drank his tea, and then got up and dressed himself. He wore the
conventional "pink," the whitest buckskins, the most approved boots and
tops; and he admired himself very much in the cheval glass when this
toilet was complete. He had put on the dress for the gratification of
his vanity, rather than from any serious intention of doing what he was
about as incapable of doing, as he was of becoming a modern Rubens or a
new Raphael. He would receive his friends in this costume, and ride to
cover, and follow the hounds, perhaps,--a little way. At any rate, it
was very delightful to him to play the country gentleman; and he had
never felt so much a country gentleman as at this moment, when he
contemplated himself from head to heel in his hunting costume.
At ten o'clock the guests began to assemble; the meet was not to take
place until twelve, so that there might be plenty of time for the
breakfast.
I don't think Paul Marchmont ever really knew what took place at that
long table, at which he sat for the first time in the place of host and
master. He was intoxicated from the first with the sense of triumph and
delight in his new position; and he drank a great deal, for he drank
unconsciously, emptying his glass every time it was filled, and never
knowing who filled it, or what was put into it. By this means he took a
very considerable quantity of various sparkling and effervescing wines;
sometimes hock, sometimes Moselle, very often champagne, to say nothing
of a steady undercurrent of unpronounceable German hocks and crusted
Burgundies. But he was not drunk after the common fashion of mortals;
he could not be upon this particular day. He was not stupid, or drowsy,
or unsteady upon his legs; he was only preternaturally excited, looking
at everything through a haze of dazzling light, as if all the gold of
his newly-acquired fortune had been melted into the atmosphere.
He knew that the breakfast was a great success; that the long table was
spread with every delicious comestible that the science of a first-rate
cook, to say nothing of Fortnum and Mason, could devise; that the
profusion of splendid silver, the costly china, the hothouse flowers,
and the sunshine, made a confused mass of restless glitter and glowing
colour that dazzled his eyes as he looked at it. He knew that everybody
courted and flattered him, and that he was almost stifled by the
overpowering sense of his own grandeur. Perhaps he felt this most when
a certain county magnate, a baronet, member of Parliament, and great
landowner, rose,--primed with champagne, and rather thicker of
utterance than a man should be who means to be in at the death,
by-and-by,--and took the opportunity of--hum--expressing, in a few
words,--haw--the very great pleasure which he--aw, yes--and he thought
he might venture to remark,--aw--everybody about him--ha--felt on this
most--arrah, arrah--interesting--er--occasion; and said a great deal
more, which took a very long time to say, but the gist of which was,
that all these country gentlemen were so enraptured by the new addition
to their circle, and so altogether delighted with Mr. Paul Marchmont,
that they really were at a loss to understand how it was they had ever
managed to endure existence without him.
And then there was a good deal of rather unnecessary but very
enthusiastic thumping of the table, whereat the costly glass shivered,
and the hothouse blossoms trembled, amidst the musical chinking of
silver forks; while the foxhunters declared in chorus that the new
owner of Marchmont Towers was a jolly good fellow, which--_i.e._, the
fact of his jollity--nobody could deny.
It was not a very fine demonstration, but it was a very hearty one.
Moreover, these noisy foxhunters were all men of some standing in the
county; and it is a proof of the artist's inherent snobbery that to him
the husky voices of these half-drunken men were more delicious than the
sweet soprano tones of an equal number of Pattis--penniless and obscure
Pattis, that is to say--sounding his praises. He was lifted at last out
of that poor artist-life, in which he had always been a groveller,--not
so much for lack of talent as by reason of the smallness of his own
soul,--into a new sphere, where everybody was rich and grand and
prosperous, and where the pleasant pathways were upon the necks of
prostrate slaves, in the shape of grooms and hirelings, respectful
servants, and reverential tradespeople.
Yes, Paul Marchmont was more drunken than any of his guests; but his
drunkenness was of a different kind to theirs. It was not the wine, but
his own grandeur that intoxicated and besotted him.
These foxhunters might get the better of their drunkenness in half an
hour or so; but his intoxication was likely to last for a very long
time, unless he should receive some sudden shock, powerful enough to
sober him.
Meanwhile the hounds were yelping and baying upon the lawn, and the
huntsmen and whippers-in were running backwards and forwards from the
lawn to the servants' hall, devouring snacks of beef and ham,--a pound
and a quarter or so at one sitting; or crunching the bones of a
frivolous young chicken,--there were not half a dozen mouthfuls on such
insignificant half-grown fowls; or excavating under the roof of a great
game-pie; or drinking a quart or so of strong ale, or half a tumbler of
raw brandy, _en passant_; and doing a great deal more in the same way,
merely to beguile the time until the gentlefolks should appear upon the
broad stone terrace.
It was half-past twelve o'clock, and Mr. Marchmont's guests were still
drinking and speechifying. They had been on the point of making a move
ever so many times; but it had happened every time that some gentleman,
who had been very quiet until that moment, suddenly got upon his legs,
and began to make swallowing and gasping noises, and to wipe his lips
with a napkin; whereby it was understood that he was going to propose
somebody's health. This had considerably lengthened the entertainment,
and it seemed rather likely that the ostensible business of the day
would be forgotten altogether. But at half-past twelve, the county
magnate, who had bidden Paul Marchmont a stately welcome to
Lincolnshire, remembered that there were twenty couple of impatient
hounds scratching up the turf in front of the long windows of the
banquet-chamber, while as many eager young tenant-farmers, stalwart
yeomen, well-to-do butchers, and a herd of tag-rag and bobtail, were
pining for the sport to begin;--at last, I say, Sir Lionel Boport
remembered this, and led the way to the terrace, leaving the renegades
to repose on the comfortable sofas lurking here and there in the
spacious rooms. Then the grim stone front of the house was suddenly
lighted up into splendour. The long terrace was one blaze of "pink,"
relieved here and there by patches of sober black and forester's green.
Amongst all these stalwart, florid-visaged country gentlemen, Paul
Marchmont, very elegant, very picturesque, but extremely
unsportsmanlike, the hero of the hour, walked slowly down the broad
stone steps amidst the vociferous cheering of the crowd, the snapping
and yelping of impatient hounds, and the distant braying of a horn.
It was the crowning moment of his life; the moment he had dreamed of
again and again in the wretched days of poverty and obscurity. The
scene was scarcely new to him,--he had acted it so often in his
imagination; he had heard the shouts and seen the respectful crowd.
There was a little difference in detail; that was all. There was no
disappointment, no shortcoming in the realisation; as there so often is
when our brightest dreams are fulfilled, and the one great good, the
all-desired, is granted to us. No; the prize was his, and it was worth
all that he had sacrificed to win it.
He looked up, and saw his mother and his sisters in the great window
over the porch. He could see the exultant pride in his mother's pale
face; and the one redeeming sentiment of his nature, his love for the
womankind who depended upon him, stirred faintly in his breast, amid
the tumult of gratified ambition and selfish joy.
This one drop of unselfish pleasure filled the cup to the brim. He took
off his hat and waved it high up above his head in answer to the
shouting of the crowd. He had stopped halfway down the flight of steps
to bow his acknowledgment of the cheering. He waved his hat, and the
huzzas grew still louder; and a band upon the other side of the lawn
played that familiar and triumphant march which is supposed to apply to
every living hero, from a Wellington just come home from Waterloo, to
the winner of a boat-race, or a patent-starch proprietor newly elected
by an admiring constituency.
There was nothing wanting. I think that in that supreme moment Paul
Marchmont quite forgot the tortuous and perilous ways by which he had
reached this all-glorious goal. I don't suppose the young princes
smothered in the Tower were ever more palpably present in Tyrant
Richard's memory than when the murderous usurper grovelled in
Bosworth's miry clay, and knew that the great game of life was lost. It
was only when Henry the Eighth took away the Great Seal that Wolsey was
able to see the foolishness of man's ambition. In that moment memory
and conscience, never very wakeful in the breast of Paul Marchmont,
were dead asleep, and only triumph and delight reigned in their stead.
No; there was nothing wanting. This glory and grandeur paid him a
thousandfold for his patience and self-abnegation during the past year.
He turned half round to look up at those eager watchers at the window.
Good God! It was his sister Lavinia's face he saw; no longer full of
triumph and pleasure, but ghastly pale, and staring at someone or
something horrible in the crowd. Paul Marchmont turned to look for this
horrible something the sight of which had power to change his sister's
face; and found himself confronted by a young man,--a young man whose
eyes flamed like coals of fire, whose cheeks were as white as a sheet
of paper, and whose firm lips were locked as tightly as if they had
been chiseled out of a block of granite.
This man was Edward Arundel,--the young widower, the handsome
soldier,--whom everybody remembered as the husband of poor lost Mary
Marchmont.
He had sprung out from amidst the crowd only one moment before, and had
dashed up the steps of the terrace before any one had time to think of
hindering him or interfering with him. It seemed to Paul Marchmont as
if his foe must have leaped out of the solid earth, so sudden and so
unlooked-for was his coming. He stood upon the step immediately below
the artist; but as the terrace-steps were shallow, and as he was taller
by half a foot than Paul, the faces of the two men were level, and they
confronted each other.
The soldier held a heavy hunting-whip in his hand--no foppish toy, with
a golden trinket for its head, but a stout handle of stag-horn, and a
formidable leathern thong. He held this whip in his strong right hand,
with the thong twisted round the handle; and throwing out his left arm,
nervous and muscular as the limb of a young gladiator, he seized Paul
Marchmont by the collar of that fashionably-cut scarlet coat which the
artist had so much admired in the cheval-glass that morning.
There was a shout of surprise and consternation from the gentlemen on
the terrace and the crowd upon the lawn, a shrill scream from the
women; and in the next moment Paul Marchmont was writhing under a
shower of blows from the hunting-whip in Edward Arundel's hand. The
artist was not physically brave, yet he was not such a cur as to submit
unresistingly to this hideous disgrace; but the attack was so sudden
and unexpected as to paralyse him--so rapid in its execution as to
leave him no time for resistance. Before he had recovered his presence
of mind; before he knew the meaning of Edward Arundel's appearance in
that place; even before he could fully realise the mere fact of his
being there,--the thing was done; he was disgraced for ever. He had
sunk in that one moment from the very height of his new grandeur to the
lowest depth of social degradation.
"Gentlemen!" Edward Arundel cried, in a loud voice, which was
distinctly heard by every member of the gaping crowd, "when the law of
the land suffers a scoundrel to prosper, honest men must take the law
into their own hands. I wished you to know my opinion of the new master
of Marchmont Towers; and I think I've expressed it pretty clearly. I
know him to be a most consummate villain; and I give you fair warning
that he is no fit associate for honourable men. Good morning."
Edward Arundel lifted his hat, bowed to the assembly, and then ran down
the steps. Paul Marchmont, livid, and foaming at the mouth, rushed
after him, brandishing his clenched fists, and gesticulating in
impotent rage; but the young man's horse was waiting for him at a few
paces from the terrace, in the care of a butcher's apprentice, and he
was in the saddle before the artist could overtake him.
"I shall not leave Kemberling for a week, Mr. Marchmont," he called
out; and then he walked his horse away, holding himself erect as a
dart, and staring defiance at the crowd.
I am sorry to have to testify to the fickle nature of the British
populace; but I am bound to own that a great many of the stalwart
yeomen who had eaten game-pies and drunk strong liquors at Paul
Marchmont's expense not half an hour before, were base enough to feel
an involuntary admiration for Edward Arundel, as he rode slowly away,
with his head up and his eyes flaming. There is seldom very much
genuine sympathy for a man who has been horsewhipped; and there is a
pretty universal inclination to believe that the man who inflicts
chastisement upon him must be right in the main. It is true that the
tenant-farmers, especially those whose leases were nearly run out, were
very loud in their indignation against Mr. Arundel, and one adventurous
spirit made a dash at the young man's bridle as he went by; but the
general feeling was in favour of the conqueror, and there was a lack of
heartiness even in the loudest expressions of sympathy.
The crowd made a lane for Paul Marchmont as he went back to the house,
white and helpless, and sick with shame.
Several of the gentlemen upon the terrace came forward to shake hands
with him, and to express their indignation, and to offer any friendly
service that he might require of them by-and-by,--such as standing by
to see him shot, if he should choose an old-fashioned mode of
retaliation; or bearing witness against Edward Arundel in a law-court,
if Mr. Marchmont preferred to take legal measures. But even these men
recoiled when they felt the cold dampness of the artist's hands, and
saw that _he had been frightened_. These sturdy, uproarious foxhunters,
who braved the peril of sudden death every time they took a day's
sport, entertained a sovereign contempt for a man who _could_ be
frightened of anybody or anything. They made no allowance for Paul
Marchmont's Cockney education; they were not in the dark secrets of his
life, and knew nothing of his guilty conscience; and it was _that_
which had made him more helpless than a child in the fierce grasp of
Edward Arundel.
So one by one, after this polite show of sympathy, the rich man's
guests fell away from him; and the yelping hounds and the cantering
horses left the lawn before Marchmont Towers; the sound of the brass
band and the voices of the people died away in the distance; and the
glory of the day was done.
Paul Marchmont crawled slowly back to that luxurious bedchamber which
he had left only a few hours before, and, throwing himself at full
length upon the bed, sobbed like a frightened child.
He was panic-stricken; not because of the horsewhipping, but because of
a sentence that Edward Arundel had whispered close to his ear in the
midst of the struggle.
"I know _everything_," the young man had said; "I know the secrets you
hide in the pavilion by the river!"