It was as he said. The cavalcade had come to its journey's end; and

there, picturesquely grouped upon the narrow road, were men and mules

and mountain ponies, giving more than a welcome splash of color to the

neighboring monotony of rock and shrub, and right glad all to be once

more at their ease. It now became plain that none but the gypsy leader

was to enter the Castle with the prisoners; and he, when he had

addressed some loud words to the others (for the roar of the torrent

compelled him to shout), passed first across the bridge, leading

Kenyon's pony and calling to the other to follow him. Just a glance

the men could turn upon raging waters, here of the deepest blue, there

a sour green, or again but a boiling, tumbling mass of writhing

foam--just this and the vista of the sheer, cruel rocks and the

infernal abyss; then they passed over and the bridge was drawn up and

they stood within the courtyard, as securely caged as though the

oubliettes prisoned them and gyves of steel were about their wrists.

"Excellents, my master, the Chevalier, would speak with you."

Thus said the guide--and, as he said it, Gavin understood that he had

come to the house of Count Odin's father, the man who had loved Dora

d'Istran, and for love of her had paid nearly twenty years of his

precious liberty.

"And this is the Castle of Okna?" he exclaimed.

The guide smiled.

"No, excellency," he said, "the Castle of Okna lies many miles from

here. You must speak to our master of that. That is his step,

excellency!"

They listened and heard the tapping of a stick upon a stone pavement.

It approached them laboriously; and after that which seemed an

interminable interval, an old white-haired man appeared at one of the

doors of the quadrangle and raising his voice bade them welcome. The

voice was the one they recognized as that of the wood; but the face of

the speaker sent a shudder through Gavin's veins which left him

unashamed.

"Blind," he muttered, amazed--"the man is blind."

CHAPTER XXVI

THROUGH A WOMAN'S HEART

The blind man felt his way down a short flight of stairs, and, standing

before the prisoners, he said in a voice indescribably harsh and

grating:

"Gentlemen, welcome to Setchevo," and so he told them the name of the

place to which their journey had carried them.

A man of middle stature, slightly bent, his face pitted and scarred

revoltingly, his fine white hair combed down with scrupulous vanity

upon his shoulders, the eyes, nevertheless, remained supreme in their

power to repel and to dominate. Sightless, they seemed to search the

very heart of him who braved them. Look where they might, the

Englishmen's gaze came back at last to those unforgettable eyes. The

horror of them was indescribable.

"Welcome to Setchevo, gentlemen. I am the Chevalier Georges Odin.

Yes, I have heard of you and am glad to see you. Please to say which

of you is Mr. Gavin Ord."

Gavin stepped forward and answered in a loud, courageous voice, "I am

he." The blind man, passing trembling claws over the hands and faces

of the two, smiled when he heard the voice and drew still nearer to

them.

"You came from England to see me," he said; "you bring me news from my

son and his English wife."

This was a thing to startle them. Did he, then, believe that Count

Odin, his son, had already married the Lady Evelyn, or was it but a

_coup de theatre_ to invite them to an indiscretion. Gavin, shrewd and

watchful, decided in an instant upon the course he would take.

"I bring no message from your son; nor has he, to my knowledge, an

English wife. Permit me an interview where we can be alone and I will

state my business freely. Your method of bringing us here, Chevalier,

may be characteristic of the Balkans; but I do not think it will be

understood by my English friends in Bukharest. You will be wise to

remember that at the outset."

Here was a threat and a wise threat; but the old man heard it with

disdain, his tongue licking his lips and a smile, vicious and cruel,

upon his scarred face.

"My friend," he said, "at the donjon of Setchevo we think nothing of

English opinion at Bukharest, as you will learn in good time. I thank

you, however, for reminding me that you are my guests and fasting. Be

good enough to follow me. The English, I remember, are eaters of flesh

at dawn, being thus but one step removed from the cannibals. This

house shall gratify you--please to follow me, I say."

Laboriously as he had descended the stairs, he climbed them again, the

baffling smile still upon his face and the stick tapping weirdly upon

the broken stone. The house within did not belie the house as it

appeared from without. Arched corridors, cracked groins, moulded

frescoes, great bare apartments with dismal furniture of brown oak, the

whole building breathed a breath both chilling and pestilential. If

there were a redeeming feature, Gavin found it in the so-called

Banqueting Hall, a fine room gracefully panelled with a barrel vault

and some antique mouldings original enough to awaken an artist's

curiosity. The great buffet of this boasted plate was of considerable

value and no little merit of design; and such a breakfast as the

Chevalier's servants had prepared was served upon a mighty oak table

which had been a table when the second Mohammed ravaged Bosnia.

The men were hungry enough and they ate and drank with good appetite.

Perhaps it was with some relief that they discovered a greater leniency

within the house than they had found without. Discomfort is often the

ally of fear; and whatever were the demerits of the House at Setchevo,

the discomforts were relatively trifling. As for the old blind

Chevalier, he sat at the head of the table just as though he had eyes

to watch their every movement and to judge them thereby. Not until

they had made a good meal of delicious coffee and fine white bread,

with eggs and a dish of Kolesha in a stiff square lump from the

pan--not until then did he intrude with a word, or appear in any way

anxious to question them.

"You pay a tribute to our mountain air," he exclaimed at last, speaking

a little to their astonishment in their own tongue; "that is your

English virtue, you can eat at any time."

"And some of us are equally useful in the matter of drinking," rejoined

Arthur Kenyon, who had begun to enjoy himself again, and was delighted

to hear the English language.

The Chevalier, however, believed this to be some reflection upon his

hospitality, and he said at once:

"I compliment you upon your frankness, _mein herr_--my servants shall

bring wine."

"Oh, indeed, no, I referred to a very bad habit," exclaimed Kenyon

quickly and then rising, he added, "With your permission, sir, I will

leave you with my friend. I am sure you have both much to say to each

other."

He did not wait for a reply but strolled off to the other end of the

hall and thence out to the courtyard, no man saying him nay. Alone

together, the Chevalier and Gavin sat a few moments in awkward silence,

each debating the phrase with which he should open the argument.

Meanwhile, a Turkish servant brought cigarettes, and the old man

lighted one but immediately cast it from him.

"The blind cannot smoke," he said irritably; "that is one of the

compensations of life which imagination cannot give us. Well, I am too

old to complain--my world lies within these walls. It is wide enough

for me."

"I am indeed sorry," said Gavin, for suffering could always arouse his

sympathies wherever he found it. "Is there no hope at all of any

relief?"

"None whatever. The nerves have perished. So much I owe to my English

friendship--the last gift it bestowed upon me. Shall I tell you by

what means I became blind, _mein herr_? Go down to the salt mines at

Okna and when they blast the rock there, you will say, 'Georges Odin,

the Englishman's friend, lost his eyesight in that mine.' It is true

before God. And the man who put this calamity upon me--what of him? A

rich man, _mein herr_, honored by the world, a great noble in his own

country, a leader of the people, the possessor of much land and many

houses. He sent me to Okna. We were boys together on the hills. If

he shamed me in the race for all that young men seek of life, I

suffered it because of my friendship. Then the night fell upon me--you

know the story. He took from me the woman I loved. We met as men of

honor should. I avenged the wrong--my God, what a vengeance with the

Russian hounds upon my track and the fortress prison already garnished

for me! _Mein herr_, you knew of this story or you would not have come

to my house. Tell me what I shall add to it, for I listen patiently."

He was a fine old actor and the melodramatic gesture with which he

accompanied the recital would have made a deep impression upon one less

given to cool analysis and reticent common sense than Gavin Ord.

Gavin, indeed, had thought upon this strange history almost night and

day since Lord Melbourne had first related it. If he had come to have

a settled opinion upon it all, nothing that had yet transpired upon his

journey from England altered that opinion or even modified it. This

blind man he believed to have been the victim of the Russian

Government. Lord Melbourne had acted treacherously in making no

attempt to release his old rival from the mines; but had he so

attempted, his efforts must have been futile--for the Russians believed

that Georges Odin was their most relentless enemy and had pursued him

with bitter and lasting animosity. So the affair stood in Gavin's

mind--nor was he influenced in any way by the forensic appeal now

addressed to him.

"Yes," he said slowly, "I know your story, Chevalier, and I am here

because of it. Let me say in a word that I come because Lord Melbourne

is anxious and ready, in so far as it is possible to do so, to atone

for any wrong he may have done you. He desires nothing so much as that

you two, who were friends in boyhood, should be reconciled now when

years must be remembered and the accidents of life be provided for. So

he sends me to Bukharest to invite you to England, there to hear him

for himself and to tell him how best he may serve you. I can add

nothing to that invitation save my own belief in his honesty, and in

the reality of those motives which now actuate him. If you decide to

accompany me to England----"

An exclamation which was half an oath arrested him suddenly and he

became aware that he was no longer heard patiently. In truth, the

native temper of his race mastered Georges Odin in that moment and left

him with no remembrance but that of the wretchedness of his own life

and the depth of the passions which had contributed to it.

"Money!" he cried angrily, "this man offers me money!"

"Indeed, no--he offers you friendship."

"Tell me the truth! He is afraid of me. Yes, there was always a

coward's cloak ready for him. He knew it and played his part in spite

of it. He is afraid of me and sends you here to say so. My friend,

that man shall yet fall on his knees before me. He shall beg mercy,

not for himself but for another. When his daughter--God be thanked he

has a daughter--when his daughter is my daughter--ha! we can reach many

hearts through the hearts of the women they love. As he did to me, so

will I do to this English girl he dotes upon. When she is my son's

wife!"

His laugh had a horrid ring in it--broken, stunted teeth protruded from

his hanging lips, his hands trembled upon the stick he carried. "When

she is my son's wife!" He seemed to moisten the very words with a

tongue lustful for vengeance. And Gavin heard him with a repulsion

beyond all experience, a horror that made him dread the very touch of

such a man's fingers.

"Chevalier," he said at length, "the Lady Evelyn will never be your

son's wife."

"Ha, a prophet? Tell me that you are her chosen husband, and I will

ask you no second question."

"I am her chosen husband and I return to England to marry her."

"You return! _Mein herr_, am I a madman that I should open my gates to

one who does not even know how to hold his tongue? Shall I send you

back to rob my son of the rewards of his fidelity? Return you

shall--when she is his wife. Until that time, _mein herr_, consider

yourself my guest."

He rose defiantly, brandishing his stick.

"Fool," he cried; "fool to dare the mountains which Zallony rules. As

you came in folly, so shall you go--when the Englishwoman is in my

son's arms."

[Illustration: "As you came in folly, so shall you go----"]

He turned, a laugh which was almost a cry upon his lips, and tapped his

way from the apartment. Gavin could hear the sound of his footsteps

long afterwards, passing from corridor to corridor of the great bare

house; but the words he had spoken lingered and were echoed, as though

by a spirit of vengeance moving in the room.

CHAPTER XXVII

ETTA ROMNEY'S RETURN

It would have been about half-past one upon the afternoon of a gloomy

November day, some three months after Gavin Ord set out for Roumania,

that a hansom cab was driven up to the stage-door of the Carlton

Theatre, the Lady Evelyn, wearing heavy black furs and a motor veil,

which entirely hid her face from the passers-by, alighted timidly and

offered the cabman a generous fare. Deaf to the man's effusive

assurance that he had no other ambition in life but to drive the same

fare back to the place whence she came, Evelyn entered the narrow alley

wherein the stage-door is situated and at once asked the stage-door

keeper if Mr. Charles Izard was or was not within the house? The

simple question provoked an answer that might have satisfied a

diplomatist but helped Evelyn not at all.

"Maybe he is, maybe he ain't. It depends on who wants him. Now, you

take a word from me, miss. Say to yourself, Shall I go and have dinner

with the Prince of Wales this afternoon or shall I not? That'll answer

you and leave old Jacob Briggs to finish his pipe in peace, he being

the father of widows, likewise of orphans."

Jacob, it was plain, had but just lunched and was more affable than

upon any less benign occasion. He sat with his back to a bill which

announced the concluding nights of that dismal play "Oliver Cromwell--a

comedy, by Rowland Wales," and he smoked a pipe with that which the

ancient Weller would have called an "uncommon power of suction." Here,

said he, is another of 'em, meaning thereby another candidate for

histrionic honors which twenty-five shillings a week should reward.

Jacob knew how to deal with them; "but," said he, "when I've got my

dinner in me then I'm a blessed lamb." So he addressed Evelyn

"humorous-like" and did not lose his patience even when she would not

go away.

"I must see Mr. Izard to-day. I am sure he will wish to see me. If

you would take my name into the theatre----"

Jacob Briggs, pulling the pipe to the right side of his mouth, ate a

smile as though it were good butter.

"Perhaps he was agoing to send a carriage and pair for yer, miss, or a

motor kar. That's wot he does ordinary to such young ladies as you.

Now, I shouldn't wonder if you don't think as you can play Miss Fay's

part better'n she herself. I've seed a many and most of 'em do. But,

lord, I'm too good-natured to take much notice on it. Tryin's tryin',

says I, and if you ask for a sufferin (sovereign), who knows as you

mayn't get a shilling. Wot you've got to do, miss, is to go round to

the horfiss. They'll soon turn you out of that, and better for you in

the long run----"

"And yet you used not to think so when I was playing Di Vernon, Mr.

Briggs."

The smile left Jacob's face as though some one had hit him. He slipped

down the board until he came near to sitting on the pavement. Speech

did not immediately assist him, and he could mutter nothing else but

the mystic and entirely irrelevant phrase, "D--n my uncle!" which he

continued to repeat until he had scrambled to his feet and doffed his

carpenter's cap.

"Good Lord, Miss Romney, if you'd have said so, why, I'd have pulled

the theatre down for ye, and willing. Mr. Izard now--he won't be glad

neither. 'Briggs,' says he to me, 'she'll come back some day just as

sure as Mrs. Briggs'--but that's neither here nor there, miss. He's

over at the tavern now and Mr. Lacombe with him. Let me say the word

and he'll come back in a fire-engine----"

Evelyn protested that she did not desire the word to be said; but would

wait in the auditorium and announce herself to the great man.

Understanding that the "tavern" really meant the Carlton Hotel and that

there was a rehearsal of a new and modern play at two o'clock, she

entered the theatre and sat, her veil undrawn, in the wings, whereby

from time to time the acquaintances of old time must pass her. So dark

was it that she feared no recognition. Those who came in and out,

pinched girls who had lunched off a sponge-cake and a cup of cocoa;

heavy-jowled men whose mid-day refreshment had been distilled from

juniper; sleek youths with a new rendering of Hamlet in their

pockets--the success, the fortunes, the hopes, the disappointments of

each chained his tongue and directed his eyes to that man or woman

alone who had the patience and the good-nature to hear a recital of

them. None paid attention to Evelyn, or as much as remarked her

presence in the sombre light. Even little Dulcie Holmes passed her by

unnoticed; and as for the melancholy Lucy Grey, she was too full of her

own troubles so much as to think of anyone else's. "I wish I were

dead," she had just said to Dulcie--and this was as much as to say, "I

have no part in the new play, and God knows how I shall pay for my

lodging."

Evelyn had a little difficulty in restraining herself from declaring

her identity to the girls; but an incurable love of dramatic effect

came to her aid and, perhaps, the vain desire to be discovered more

worthily by that great man, Mr. Charles Izard. Aware that she was

waiting there as the humblest suppliant for the theatre's favors, she

perceived presently that the iron door between stage and auditorium

stood open; and, slipping through, she entered a stage-box and there

waited in better security. One by one now the "stars" entered the

theatre and took up their positions upon the dimly-lighted stage. A

chatter of conversation arose, amidst which the stage-manager's voice

could be heard in heated argument with a lady whose part had been cut.

All waited for the great man; and when he appeared a hush fell as

though upon a transformation scene in a country pantomime. Lo, he had

come--fresh from a long cigar and a bottle of what he called

"noots"--meaning the excellent wine of Burgundy known as Nints. What

bustle, what activity upon the part of the underlings now! How busy

the principals appear to be! How white in the gloom are the faces of

the girls, who lately spoke of fortune and furs and a furore of

applause!

The new play was also a new entertainment. It appeared to Evelyn to be

a hash-up of drama and ballet, with a comedy scene in each act,

introduced for the sole purpose of exploiting a lady who could imitate

wild animals. That it might succeed in an age which has almost

forgotten the bombastics of the ancient drama, and cares not a straw

what an entertainment may be called so long as it is amusing and

provokes a rhythmical nodding of heads, was very probable. Mr. Izard,

at least, had few doubts about the success of it; and yet he could have

wished it otherwise. "They ask me to elevate the people," he would

remark in confidential moments--"why, sir, the people that want

elevating had better go up in elevators. I'm here to run a theatre,

not a Tower of Babel, and that's so. Just walk round to some of these

fine-mouthed folk and ask them what they will pay down in dollars for

the good of humanity and the British stage. If you can buy a ten-cent

collar with the proceeds of that hat-box, I'll set a stone up to your

memory. No, sir, the world's too tired to think. Give 'em a great

actress and they don't have to think. That's what I'm looking for,

like a man who's dropped a thousand-dollar scarf-pin on the beach at

Atlantic City. Since Etta Romney walked out--but what's the good of

talking about that? When she comes back I'll begin to think about the

people's good health again. Sir, she made the rest of them look like

thirty cents, and that's gospel truth."

The confession would end with a sigh and a new application to the

business of tragic-burlesque-comedy. Smarting from the pink lash of a

half-penny evening paper, which had, in a leading article that

afternoon, cast italicized reflections upon "the porcine Paladius of

the people's palaces," the great man was in no very pleasant mood; and

this he made manifest directly rehearsal began. Scarcely a dozen lines

had been repeated before the leading lady was in tears and the old

stock actor sulking at a public-house round the corner. Ladies at

twenty-three shillings a week heard themselves addressed in terms which

implied their fitness for the position of dummies in a side-show. The

stage-manager would infallibly have been visited with blindness if the

great man's appeals to unknown powers had been heard. When calm fell,

Izard settled himself frettingly in a stall and there simmered a long

while in silence. Not for half an hour did an exclamation escape him,

and then it came almost involuntarily. He seemed to be waging a battle

between his contempt for the leading lady and his fear that she would

walk out of the house; and the latter being worsted, he cried aloud,

almost like one in despair:

"Etta Romney--Etta Romney--what, in God's name, keeps you out of my

theatre!"

A dead silence fell. Everyone was awed by the real pathos of this

regret, drawn from a man who had never been the servant of a sentiment.

And when a musical voice answered him from the stage-box, opposite

prompt, then, indeed, did Charles Izard come as near to collapsing as

ever he had done in his unemotional life.

"Nothing keeps me, Mr. Izard. I am here."

"Etta Romney, by God!" he exclaimed, and in the same breath he told

them that the rehearsal was over.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE IMPRESARIO'S PRAYER

So the Lady Evelyn had become Etta Romney once more, the child of the

theatre, the daughter of a mystery which London was upon the eve of

solving. The events which brought her to this resolution are briefly

outlined in a letter which she wrote to her father upon the morning

after her interview with the great Charles Izard at the Carlton

Theatre. No longer ashamed of her resolution, she took up her

residence boldly at the Savoy Hotel and entered her own name in the

visitors' book, afraid of none.

SAVOY HOTEL,

_Thursday._

_My dear Father:_

I am here in London, according to my determination already announced to

you. I shall live a little while at this hotel, and afterwards where

my profession may make it necessary. Believe me, my dear father, that

this life alone is best for me, and best for you at this moment. I

could live no longer in a house where, rightly or wrongly, I have

always felt a stranger--and my love for Gavin forbids me to hear those

things which I must hear every day in my old home. Now that I am

mistress of my own actions, you will be able to find an answer in my

independence to those who are not to be answered in any other way.

Should Count Odin follow me to London, he will learn that I am neither

without friends nor resources; and I shall not hesitate to call upon

both for my protection. It is my intention to establish myself here

until such time as news of Gavin's welfare may come to me or that I

may, myself, go to seek it. That he has been the victim of foul play I

am sure; and I will not rest until the truth is known. Dear father, if

you must suffer because of me, forgive and forget, and be sure always

of my love for you and my desire for your happiness. We are outcasts

of fortune both, and while the world is enjoying our position, we know

that it is false, that we are but intruders by accident, and that our

past is rising up every day to laugh our ambitions to scorn. Happier

far when we were wanderers and poor, with days of love and hope to live

and no debt to pay to a great and insupportable heritage. Dear father,

you will next hear of me as Etta Romney, the actress--but never forget

that Evelyn will return to you if you have need of her; and that her

love for you is imperishable. Willingly would she take your burdens

upon her own shoulders, and give you those years of rest and peace

which are your heart's desire. But, for the time being, she must live

alone for the sake of the man who has befriended her and to whom she

has given her love.

Dearest Father,

Your loving EVELYN always.

From which it is clear that the month of November found Gavin Ord still

in Roumania and Count Odin again in Derbyshire. The latter had

returned from Bukharest early in the month of September, and,

dismissing his friends, the gypsies, had settled down at Melbourne Hall

as one who, at no distant date, would be its master. That the Earl

acquiesced in this assurance convinced Evelyn finally that she did not

possess the whole of her father's story. Either he was a coward (and

this she would never believe), or some mystery of her own past or his

abetted the Count's pretensions. No other explanation of the matter

was possible; nor could she foresee a day which would rid her of the

presence of a man who ever spoke to her of the heritage her mother's

country had bequeathed to her and its penalties.

She had always feared Count Odin, and she feared him now when the true

meaning of a man's love had been made known to her and her daily prayer

was for Gavin's safety. Not that she doubted herself or the truth of

her love, but that she feared that something in her blood which might

bring her to the Count's arms and mock for all time her faith in her

own womanhood and her spoken word that she would be Gavin's wife upon

his return. So greatly did this fear haunt her that the days of

waiting became almost insupportable. She would rise with the sun each

morning and say, "to-day his letter will come." The nights found her

brooding and restless and fighting ever against the insidious advances

of a man who made love to her with a Southern tongue--and when he was

repulsed had no shame to threaten her.

"Your English friend was a fool to go to the mountains," he would say;

"we cannot protect him there--my Government is helpless. The prison in

which my father lies, sent there by the man who should have been his

friend, will not open to an Englishman's knock. If I could have helped

your friend, I would have done so because he was your friend. You say

that he loves you. I will believe it when the sun shines in England.

My dear lady, your heart is in the South with the vine and the

pomegranates. All your life has not made an Englishwoman of you. You

are like a flower that cries for the sun all day and withers because

there is no sun. I will take you to a land of roses and set your feet

upon golden sands. We will visit the East together--the color, the

life, the music of it, shall enthrall us. There they will teach you

how to love. In England your hearts are ice--but you have not an

English heart."

Day by day these vehement protests would be made; day by day he

whispered them in her ear, following her at home and abroad, in the

galleries of Melbourne Hall, and to the glades and the thickets of the

park. And her father abetted him, not openly by word but silently by

impotent consent he acquiesced in her persecution, protesting that

Georges Odin's son had a claim of hospitality upon him, and that he

could not shut the gates of the house in his face. In plain truth,

Robert Forrester sinned not of his will but of despair. He did not

dare to tell Evelyn that, by the English law, Dora d'Istran might not

be recognized as his wife at all and that she, his daughter, had

therefore but a dubious claim to that dignity which the accidents of

fortune had thrust upon him. He loved her, understood every whim of

that strange, romantic mind, and believed, it may be, that the young

Count would not be an unworthy husband for her. But the fear that she

would charge him with the shame prevailed above other thoughts. He

would not that she should pay the price for the follies and the amours

of his youth.

And what of Evelyn herself, meanwhile? She was as one to whom the

heaven of life has been suddenly revealed after long years of darkness

and doubt. If she understood the meaning of womanhood, that of manhood

was not hidden from her. In Gavin Ord she had, for the first time, met

and known intimately an Englishman; understood the nobility of man, the

resolution, the courage of those reticent personalities by which the

nation has been made great and its children sent out to rule the new

countries of the world. Such a knowledge uplifted her and revealed

truths which had been hidden during her childhood. By Gavin's love

would her soul be re-born; by faith in him would the victory over her

heritage be won. This had become her credo, sustaining her in the

conflict, and sending her to London with a brave heart and an

unconquerable determination to win independence and freedom. More than

this, she believed that the great city would give her friends; and that

these friends would tell her how to find Gavin, and, if need be, to

save him. No longer could she hide it from herself that something

beyond the quest for Georges Odin kept her English friend in Roumania.

She had received but two letters from him, and these had been written

during the early days of his journey. The rest was silence and a

dreadful doubt creeping upon her as a shadow; the doubt which said, "he

may have given his life for you; he may never return."

We have said that Evelyn took up her residence at the Savoy Hotel,

fearing no longer the disclosure of her identity. Thither upon the

second morning came little Dulcie Holmes and the melancholy Lucy Grey,

entering her splendid room with timid steps and altogether abashed by

the changed circumstances under which they found their friend. Their

introduction of themselves was characteristic. Dulcie, unable to

restrain her impulse, threw herself into Evelyn's arms and waited to

apologize until she had kissed her. Lucy Grey stood bolt upright and

rebuked her friend with almost tearful melancholy.

"Oh, how can you, Dulcie ... and it's all in the papers too."

"I don't care a bit," rejoined the unabashed Dulcie. "I must kiss her

if she'll kill me for it." And then to Evelyn she said: "Oh, you

darling Lady Etta, oh, I am glad; I can't believe it's really true.

But I've always said you'd come and I've told Mr. Izard so--and there's

the gold watch you sent me, round my neck where it's always been since

the day it came--and, oh, Etta, what times we will have again--what

times!"

Lucy Gray appeared altogether dumbfounded by the familiarity.

"You forget yourself, Dulcie," she protested again and again, "after it

being in the papers too--you certainly forget yourself. How can you

say such things--to her ladyship as we all know after what's in the

papers. I'm sure, miss, your ladyship won't think any the worse of

Dulcie for this. It's her bringing up, that's what it is."

Evelyn was very much amused; but she hastened to reassure them, and,

insisting upon their relating all their personal troubles (which they

did with many exclamations and minute particulars), she ventured to

asked them what the papers really had said and why it should make a

difference to them. To this they answered in a breath that the Carlton

would reopen in a fortnight with "Haddon Hall" and Miss Etta Romney in

the title-role.

"And it says you're a Duchess, and Mr. Izard wouldn't say so before

though he knew it all the time." Dulcie added with considerable

enthusiasm, "Oh, Etta, how you kept it from us all, just as though you

had been no different to anybody else. But I knew you were; I said you

were no ordinary human being, and Lucy knew it. My life's never been

the same since you went away, Etta. You won't leave us again, will

you?"

They rambled on alternately in confusion and delight while Evelyn sent

for the morning papers and read the news they spoke of. There, sure

enough, was the story written for all to read.

"Many will hear with pleasure," said the "Daily Shuffler," "that one of

the most capable and finished of our younger actresses is about to

return to the stage. Some months ago, all dramatic London was not

ashamed to be curious concerning the Romney Mystery. A new play

presented to us an artiste of no common order. Scarcely had we settled

down to admire her when she disappeared from our ken, and, while we do

not doubt that certain of her friends were in the secret, this was well

kept and remained undiscovered by the public. Now we know that Etta

Romney is the _nom de theatre_ of Lord Melbourne's daughter, the Lady

Evelyn. Mr. Charles Izard informs us that he is about to present her

in the role already familiar to us and sure of a wide welcome. Etta

Romney, assuredly, will establish the success of the Carlton Theatre as

no other actress of our time could do. We offer our cordial greetings

upon her return to the stage, and congratulate all concerned upon the

clever advertisement achieved."

Evelyn cringed when she read the last words; but her sense of humor

proved greater than her annoyance.

"Did you believe, does anyone really believe, that I went away to

advertise myself?" she asked the girls.

They answered in a breath that all the world believed it.

"Why, what else should it have been for? They say you and Mr. Izard

did it, just as he lost Elsie Barton's jewels last year and had Billie

Dan photographed in a motor-car accident. People love anything like

that--they think it's so clever. There'll be such a scene when we

open, Etta, as never was known. Shall I call you Etta, though, or

should it be your ladyship?"

Etta was about to answer her as well as her amusement would let her

when a man-servant opened the door and announced a visitor.

"Mr. Charles Izard," he said, and the girls stood up abashed.

"Mr. Izard here, however shall I look him in the face!" cried Lucy in

an extremity of terror.

"I could drop through the ceiling for my nerves," said Dulcie, but she

did nothing of the sort; merely standing and giggling nervously while

the great man came panting in; and he, who had "presented" so many, now

presented himself with the air of a Rajah just dismounted from an

elephant, or a monarch about to address an assembly of barons.

"My dear," he said to Evelyn, "I've come to pay my respects to you, and

that's what I do to few of 'em. You've got London by the throat and

we'll both be rich before you let go. Didn't I say you'd come back to

me? Why, when I think how we've fooled the populace, I could shout

'bully' until my tongue's tied. Now, let these girls go their way and

we'll talk business. I've come to offer you a five years' engagement

certain, and there's no one in London is going to better my terms.

Three words and we settle it. Let 'em be spoken and we're friends for

life."

"Mr. Izard," said Etta quickly, "I will play at your theatre for three

months. Then I am going away. If I return, I will come to you again.

But I may never return, and so I cannot engage myself to do so. Should

my present determination be altered----"

Izard laughed hardly and almost impatiently.

"At coming or going, my dear, you have no equal in Europe," he admitted

gloomily ... and then quickly, fearing to offend her, he added, "Well,

have your own way. Take a fortune or leave one, Charles Izard will

always be your friend."

It was a great admission, honestly meant, though uttered with the

regret of one who saw a golden vision falling from his view. To

himself, the great man said: "There is a man and he is not in England.

The Lord send him a handsome funeral before the mischief is done."

CHAPTER XXIX

THE PRISONERS AT SETCHEVO

Gavin heard the tap of the blind man's stick as the old Chevalier felt

his way from the bare vaulted room in which a scanty supper had been

served to them; and a fit of despondency coming upon him, more bitter

than ordinary, he buried his face in his hands and uttered his

heart-stricken complaint aloud.

"What are they all doing, then--why has Chesny broken his promise.

Good God, Arthur, have we no friends at all? Is there no one who has

interested himself in our story? I can't believe it. It isn't the

English way. They must find out sooner or later. It can't be for all

time."

Arthur, whose arm and shoulder were bound up in a garment that might

have been a Moorish bernouse, smoked his pipe quietly and did not for a

little while know what to say. Bitterly as he had paid for that which

he called a "little trot to the Balkans," the English spirit forbade

the utterance of any reproach, or even a word that his friend might

take amiss.

"My people never trouble about me," he said. "They know me too well.

You see, I've only a couple of uncles and a maiden aunt to go into

hysterics; and my lawyers won't advertise while they can bank my

dividends. It's different with you, Gavin. I'll bet your people were

on the scent long ago; and that's to say nothing about Evelyn. Of

course, she has not held her tongue. No woman does when she's in love

with a man; and sometimes she can be eloquent when she is not. Oh,

yes, I'll go nap on Evelyn all the time. She must know that we

shouldn't stay in this cursed country for three months if we had the

train fare to get out. Of course, she'll cry out about it--and if she

cries loudly enough the Government will act. Not that I believe much

in Governments--they generally weigh in when the corpse is buried."

Gavin smiled but did not raise his head. A fire of logs burned in the

grate before them and filled the room with a haze of heavy smoke; the

tapping of a man's stick had ceased, and the house was without sounds

and void. In the hills above them a wild wind scoured the clefts and

sent whirling clouds of snow to cover all living things below. The

torrent beneath the drawbridge had become a monstrous scala of icy

steps, a ladder with glistening rungs which none but the eagle dared.

"Three months--is it really three months?" Gavin exclaimed in a tone of

unspeakable weariness; "three months in this awful den. Three months

listening to that blind devil and his insults. God, I would never have

believed that a man could go through so much and live. And you,

Arthur--not a word from you since the beginning. That's what hits me.

If you'd only speak out and tell me what I ought to hear, it would be

easier."

Arthur laughed and stooped to light his pipe by the fire again.

"What's the good of talking. A pal asks you to come and you go. Is it

his fault if a wheel comes off the coach? Let me have five minutes

alone with that blind scoundrel and I'll be eloquent enough. Otherwise

I intend to make myself as comfortable as I can under the

circumstances. There's no fun in boxing scimitars--as we both of us

have discovered."

They had discovered it, indeed. From the first day of their captivity

in the mountains, insult, foul, oft-repeated, revolting insult had been

their daily punishment. Coarse food, filthy rooms ... these they could

have suffered; but the blind man's tongue, the lash of the whip his

servants wielded, might have driven braver men to that last resource

which faith in God alone can question or deny. The very wound which

Arthur Kenyon made light of had been the first fruits of their English

temper. A gypsy had lashed him across the shoulder with a riding whip

and he had answered with an English left, straight and unerring. But

the blow had scarcely been struck before a wild horde filled the room,

its knives unsheathed, murder in its eyes--and from murder the terrible

voice of the blind man alone withheld it. So the two comrades spoke of

fighting scimitars, that was no jest at all.

"You are a friend in a hundred thousand," Gavin exclaimed as one who

spoke from his very heart. "I'm not going to thank you, Arthur. What

is the good of words between you and me? Here we are, worse than dead,

by God ... and not a ray of light, not a speck anywhere. How will it

end? How can it end? You heard him tell me this morning that Evelyn

will marry his rascally son in ten days' time. Well, to-night I'm just

in that humor which says, it may be true, he may have tired her out,

lied to her, promised her God knows what, my liberty perhaps and her

father's happiness afterwards. It might be that, Arthur. I try to put

it fairly, and yet I must say that it might be so----"

"There are a hundred things that might be so, old man. This house

might fall down the hill and the eagles carry you and me to the

tree-tops. We might have _pate de foie gras_ for supper and

eighty-four champagne to wash it down with. There's no greater rot

than the might-be-so. Tell me how to get out of this cursed den and

I'll listen with both ears. As for Lady Evelyn--she's too much a woman

to do any of the things you talk about. For all you know some sham

tale has been told her--telegrams sent in our name, or something to

lull her suspicions. When a man is travelling a thousand miles from

home, people don't get alarmed about him for a month or two. But this

I'll stake my existence upon, that once Evelyn guesses it's not all

right with us, she'll move heaven and earth to know the reason why.

That's what keeps me sane. I should kill this old man and myself

afterwards if it were not that I believe in my friends. Doing so, I

just sit down and wait like the Spaniards for to-morrow."

Gavin heard him in silence. This great room had become their

prison-house; refectory by day and dormitory by night. For an hour

each morning, they were permitted to go out into the court, where a

vista of the sky spoke to them of liberty and the massive portcullis of

the drawbridge mocked the idle word. "Until the Englishwoman is my

son's wife," had been the sentence pronounced by the old Chevalier; and

he repeated it day by day, tapping his way to their great bare cell,

striking at them with his stick, cursing them--a very fiend incarnate,

mad with the lust of money and the desire of revenge. And against such

an enemy they were doubly powerless--not only by reason of his

blindness, but by the knowledge that unseen eyes followed him to their

room and that his allies, the gypsies, hidden in the house of Setchevo,

were ready to do his bidding did he but raise his voice to call them.

Brave men, who do not know fear in a common way, may bend and break

before such torture as this ... the torture of impotence and of unseen

presences about them. Gavin had come to declare that he would sooner a

man had burned his hand in a flame than compelled him to listen each

day at dawn for the tapping of that stick upon the floor and the coming

of that terrible sightless figure. Even in his sleep the old Chevalier

would visit him, approaching with his claw-like hands extended and his

eyes seeming to shine as live coals in the darkness. Never had he

imagined that so much malignity, cunning, and vermin could be the

fruits of imagined wrong or be united in one personality. And all his

fine notions of retribution and reconciliation, of the old man's visit

to England and the Earl's reception of him there--how vainglorious they

had been and how childish, he said. Justly had such folly been

overtaken and punished. He realized that his knowledge of human nature

was pitifully small.

"Evelyn will help us if she can," he said at length, poking the fire

restlessly and listening as of habit for the dreaded beat of the blind

man's stick upon the stone floor without; "she will help us if she can,

but what can a woman do? Let's regard that view of it as out of the

question. What I would ask--what you have been asking--is just

this--why does Chesny do nothing? He must know that if all had been

well, we should have written and let him hear it. His Government could

have these rats out in five minutes. Why does he do nothing? He's an

old Winchester boy and could see us through if he knew. I can't think

that such a man as Chesny would sit on his back and just ask what's

happened. He's moving somewhere--pity it isn't on the road to

Setchevo."

"Perhaps it is, and they've lost the road," rejoined Kenyon with a

sarcasm he could not conceal. "Don't you see, Gavin, that these devils

will have been clever enough to have taken care of themselves. Of

course, they will. They give it out that we are making for the Castle

of Okna which may be any number of miles you like from Setchevo. The

escort--God save the mark!--knows better than to blab. Likely enough

Chesny has heard that we crossed the frontier into Servia. Those poor

devils who were killed are unlikely to be important enough to be

searched for. Life is cheap hereabouts--and what is a Turk more or

less? Chesny says we are all right and goes picnicking. Evelyn waits

for our letters and doesn't a bit understand why they don't come. We

must be patient, old chap--patient and brave. Nothing else will save

us."

Gavin assented, though he could admit to himself that the common

heroics of the nursery were the poorest food for a man in his

situation. His days of waiting, patience, and bravery were so many

hours of exquisite torture, like none he had imagined a man might

suffer and live through. Evelyn, what of her, he asked himself waking

and sleeping. Would the heritage in her blood deliver her to the

bondage prepared for her; or had she, in his absence, the will to

conquer it? He knew not what to think; his brain wearied of conjecture

and wakened only when, as now, the blind man's stick tapped the bare

stones and the sightless eyes looked into his own.

"Do you hear him, Arthur; he's coming to say Good-night to us."

"I hear, old chap--my God, if the man could only see----"

"Better blind--you would have killed him but for that, Arthur."

"It's true, Gavin, I would have killed him."

"And then--his friends. Better blind, Arthur."

Arthur said "Hush," for the sound of footsteps drew very near; and now

they could hear the old Chevalier panting and shuffling and plainly

approaching them. When he entered the room they perceived that

something had occurred beyond the ordinary. The hand upon the stick

quivered and trembled--the muscles of the forehead were twitching;

there were drops of sweat upon the man's forehead, and his voice echoed

the tumult of passion which shook him.

"One of you has written a letter to Bukharest," he cried hoarsely; "by

whose hand was that?"

The two men looked at each other amazed. Neither had written such a

letter nor knew aught of it.

"By whose hand?" the Chevalier continued, his anger growing as he

spoke; "silence will not serve you, gentlemen. By whose hand was that

letter written?"

Gavin now laughed aloud with a laugh that expressed both contempt and

defiance.

"Had I written it, I would not have answered you," said he; "as I have

not, your question merely arouses my curiosity."

Arthur did not answer at all; but he stood up as though fearing attack

and his hand rested upon the back of the heavy oak chair--one of the

few ornaments of that dismal room. His silence provoked Georges Odin

as no words could have done.

"Let your friend speak," he cried, advancing with stick upraised. "I

will know the truth; my servants shall flog it out of you--do you hear,

I will have you whipped--answer me, who wrote that letter?"

Kenyon said not a word; and now the old man struck at him with his

stick wildly and blindly, in a paroxysm of anger. One heavy blow fell

upon Gavin's shoulder and he stepped back with an oath; but the young

man's temper could not brook the new insult and he flung himself

heavily upon the Chevalier and they fell to the ground together.

"Arthur--for God's sake----" cried Gavin.

"It's all right, Gavin; I won't hurt him, but I must have that stick."

He staggered to his feet, the bludgeon in his hand; but the blind man

did not move. Fearing he knew not what, dreading the sudden apparition

of the gypsies who spied upon their every movement, Gavin snatched a

log from the fire, and, stooping, he held it up that he might look upon

the old man's face.

"He is dead," he said.

Arthur did not speak. The log blazed and crackled and ebbed to

darkness and still the two men did not move. Without, in the

courtyard, not a sound could be heard. The House of Setchevo might

have been a tomb of the living.

But the Englishmen knew that it concealed their hidden enemies and that

the dawn would bring them to the room to avenge the man who had been

their patron and their friend.

CHAPTER XXX

THERE IS NO NEWS OF GAVIN ORD

London, which loves a duchess or even personages of slightly less

degree, when it discovers them in the arena where all the world may

stretch out a finger to touch the noble pedestals, this London liked

the story of the Lady Evelyn and flocked to the Carlton Theatre to see

her and to criticise. The great Charles Izard, who measured all human

greatness by the box-office, did not hesitate to declare that business

to the extent of nineteen hundred pounds a week spoke more eloquently

than any critic ... and he would add triumphantly, "Why, I discovered

her, and she makes the rest of them look like thirty cents." By this

time he implied a general inferiority of other actresses who were not

filling their theatres to the extent of nineteen hundred pounds a week;

and, regardless of the plain fact that mere curiosity had become his

best friend, he continued to declare that he was the greatest and the

wisest of men and that Etta Romney would have been a dismal failure

under other management.

Evelyn certainly was a great success. No dinner party failed to

discuss her charm or to admit it. You heard of her every day in

theatrical clubs; a common question when people met was, "Have you seen

Etta Romney?" Returning to their first judgments, the critics recanted

nothing, though more than one really discerning writer perceived a

change in her. The splendid Watley, with some nice asides upon

Sophocles, Plautus, Judic, and Voltaire, admitted a difference:

"This is not the Di Vernon of the Spring," he wrote; "here is a newer

conception, something of Rejane, a voice of sincerity matured;

introspective comedy and the drama of pathos...."

The "Daily Shuffler," in plainer terms, said:

"Miss Romney does not let herself go--she appears to take poor Di's

troubles too greatly to heart. We confess to certain watery tributes

to her touching earnestness scintillating upon our manly cornea ... but

we would remind this charming young actress that we go to the theatre

to laugh as well as to cry ... and she has forgotten that. Perhaps the

November fogs have something to do with it. She came to us in the

Spring ... and with the Spring her lightness of heart may be given back

to her. One of her audience, at least, hopes that it will be so...."

No one was more conscious of this change than Evelyn herself. That

wild, almost uncontrollable passion of art, had left her. She liked to

think that she had conquered it, and became a new Etta, for the sake of

a man who loved her and had saved her from herself. Here she was,

lauded to the skies by critical London; asked to every house, fawned

upon, coveted, proclaimed a success beyond knowledge; and yet as far

from knowing the secrets of such success as ever she had been in all

her life. Anxiety for Gavin's safety attended every hour of her busy

day. Confident at first that his dogged perseverance, his stubborn

resolution, and his manifest prudence would be weapons enough for the

work he had to do in Roumania, she had paid but little heed to his

silence; for that she understood to be a wild country and one which

would not expedite his letters. When he ceased to write, she said that

he would have gone to the mountains. A longer spell of silence and the

first whisper of her alarms began to make itself heard. How if he

could not write to her because of accident or illness or even

conspiracy? Terrified by the phantoms of imagination which now crowded

upon her, she compelled her father to warn the Ministry at Bukharest,

the Foreign Office, the Consulate. The letters were answered by

promises as meaningless as they were futile. Gavin's few relatives in

England bestirred themselves with little result--while Bukharest

answered that the Englishmen had crossed the mountains into Servia and

that nothing further of them was known.

So Evelyn had come to London to save the man she loved, if her new

independence and her love might save him. She cared no longer that her

father should know of this determination; for she doubted both his will

to help her and the honesty of the declaration that he would do so. In

truth, Robert Forrester had been unable to give battle to those forces

which the years and his own youth had raged against him. To one who

had loved the wild life of an adventurer, who had sown tares in many

lands, the harvest time of age could support no pretentious dignity nor

long maintain those greater ambitions which had momentarily attended

his succession to the earldom.

He sank beneath the mental burdens; became an old man when he should

still have been in his prime; could utter but a senile assent to every

rogue who tricked him. Deep down in his heart lay hunger for the old

life. An evil cynicism laughed at the restraints which place and power

put upon him.

"Better a night on the hills with Zallony," he could tell himself,

"than a life's dominion in the realms of social fatuity." It would

have been so easy for him had Evelyn married Georges Odin's son. What

it might have meant to her he had hardly considered.

And yet possibly his love for Evelyn was the truest emotion of his

life. When her letter reached him and he could bring himself to

understand it, the blow fell with a stunning force which seemed to

shatter every remaining idol of his life. His beloved daughter! The

mistress of his house! Capering about upon a stage for the guineas of

a man he, Robert Forrester, could have bought up twenty times over.

Here was a debacle beyond any he had imagined. The humiliation of it,

the cruelty of it--more than that, the malice of her destiny! Was she

not Dora d'Istran's daughter, and had not this blood of rebellion run

in her veins since her childhood? What else could he have looked for,

he asked himself ... and in the same breath he set the logic of it

aside and sat down to write to her.

It was a pitiful letter, full of the tenderest expressions and the

bitterest reproach.

"Do you owe nothing to my name?" he asked her, and in the same sentence

could protest his love for her. "I am an old man and am alone and must

look to the newspapers for news of the daughter who is all to me. Is

this fame so much above a father's affection, then; so dear a thing

that his home must be a home no longer because of it? The people say

you are a great actress; some day you will ask yourself, Evelyn, if it

was worth being that to wound one who has had no greater desire than

the happiness of his only child...."

Just in such a strain had he delivered himself at home, and, now as

then, the words earned but a cold response. "There is some secret of

my father's life which is hidden from me," Evelyn said. What it could

be, why it should affect her, she knew not. When he spoke of his

failing health, the letter found her more sympathetic. She would have

gone to him at any cost had she understood that he was really ill; but

the general terms he used seemed to imply no immediate necessity ...

and was there not Gavin to be considered?

Indeed, this priceless gift of love now influenced every act and deed

of her life. She counted the hours which should bring her news of

Gavin, worshipped her own image of him upon the stage at night;

wrestled unceasingly with the voices which would speak of the Etta

Romney that had been; the child of passionate dreamings and of an

Eastern heritage no longer.

And her prayer was this, for Gavin's safety and her own salvation in

his love.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE HOUSE AT HAMPSTEAD

Evelyn had played Di Vernon's part for thirty nights exactly when just

as she was going on the stage, on the evening of the thirty-first day,

a call-boy put a telegram into her hand and she had scarcely opened it

when she discovered that it was from her father.

"I am passing through London upon my way to Paris," it said; "perhaps I

shall be in the theatre. If not, come to me afterwards to De Kyser's

Hotel. I will engage a room for you there."

She told the boy that there was no answer to the message and

immediately passed to the garden scene she had played so often and

always with such sweetness and light. The thought that her father

might be in the house excited her strangely. Difficult as it is for a

player upon the stage to identify those in the stalls, she peered

intently, nevertheless, at the serried ranks before her and was

conscious of a sense of disappointment when her search was vain. A

second thought suggested that her father might be hidden by the

curtains of a private box; and with this in her mind she found herself

playing, not, as it were, to an audience of strangers, but to one who

loved her and had never understood her. Surely her father would read

something of her own story, of her loyalty to her old home, and the

depth of feeling which had sent her from it when he listened to Di

Vernon and her sweet sincerity. This was her hope, though she knew not

whether the Earl were present or no. To her anxious questions during

the _entractes_, old Jacobs, the stage-door keeper, declared that no

one "hadn't come round from the front not since he'd drunk his supper

beer"--a vague answer, insomuch as the beer in question made its

appearance at six o'clock and continued to do so at short intervals

until eleven.

She must suffer her curiosity, therefore; and take what profit of it

she might. When the play was over and no news came from the front, she

concluded with a natural regret that her father had not been present;

and she was just wondering how she would get to De Kyser's Hotel and

exactly where it might be when old Jacobs himself, unable to find a

messenger, came round to tell her that a carriage stood at the door

ready for her ... and that it was a "nobby one" to boot.

"She's footlights enough for a ballet," the old man said, with the

patronizing air of one who did not keep motor cars and thought very

little of those who did. "He says he comes from your father, but I

shouldn't wonder if it were from Buckingham Palace. Will you go, Miss,

or shall I say something civil to him?"

Evelyn hastened to say that she would go; and, putting on her furs, she

went out to the carriage. This was waiting in the Haymarket, and the

driver appeared to be quite a boy, an open-faced, honest-looking lad,

who told her frankly that he was not to take her to De Kyser's Hotel,

but to a house at Hampstead where the Earl expected her.

"There's a Mr. Fillimore there, Miss," he said. "I think he's a

clergyman. They said you would know, and it would be all right for you

to stop the night. The gentlemen are going away early in the morning.

I believe--at least I heard the butler saying so----"

It was rather startling, but Evelyn suspected nothing. That old

chatter-box, the Vicar of Moretown, had relatives at Hampstead, she

knew, and nothing would be more natural than that he should have

accompanied her father to town. None the less, it was annoying to have

to go as she was; and nothing but the Earl's known intention to travel

abroad almost immediately induced her to consent.

"Could you bring me back to-night if I wished?" she asked the lad.

He answered: "Oh, certainly, Miss. I'm up half the night carrying

ladies about sometimes."

She entered the carriage without further parley and they drove swiftly

through Regent Street and Portland Place. Her desire to meet her

father betrayed her unconquered affection for him. She would tell him

frankly that she would not return to him until she went as Gavin Ord's

wife; and that her life from this time would be devoted to discovering

the result of Gavin's journey and the reasons which kept him in

Roumania. This would not be to say that he had ever dealt ungenerously

with her; far from it, the whole of his immense fortune had ever been

at her command; but the advantages which his money conferred upon her

entailed corresponding duties; and she did not believe that her love

for Gavin permitted her to live under the roof which also sheltered

Georges Odin's son. For these reasons she had left her home; and to

justify herself by them she now went to Hampstead at her father's

bidding.

There was much gray mist in the lowlands by Regent's Park; and although

the night became clearer as they climbed the height to Hampstead, it

remained dark and moonless, and rarely permitted Evelyn to say where

she was or how far they had driven. In no way concerned but very

tired, she closed her eyes and listened dreamily to the rolling sound

of wheels upon the wet road, telling herself that life was truly one

swift journey with the echo of the worldly wheels ever rolling in human

ears and saying "onward to an unknown goal; whether you will or no;

desiring to rest or zealous; still shall this coach of destiny hurry

you on by the houses of childhood, of love, and of death, to that

kingdom of mystery which all must enter." How happy had she been if

Gavin were beside her and they journeyed together to some haven of

their desires, while all the past should be written out and that peace

of understanding be truly found. Vain dream, sweet illusion--a voice

called her from it, the rush of cold air upon her face awakened her.

They had arrived at their destination and their journey was done.

Plainly an old house. Evelyn starting up from her dream perceived an

old-fashioned stone porch with clematis thick upon it, an open door

showing a brightly lighted hall within and a blazing welcome warmth

from an open grate beyond. To the footman who helped her from the

carriage she addressed a brief question.

"Is my father, is Mr. Fillimore here?" she asked.

The man bent his head; she understood him to be a foreigner; and,

impatient to know, she entered the hall and the great doors were

immediately closed behind her.

"This way if you would please, ladyship," the footman continued in such

execrable English that she would have laughed at it upon any other

occasion. "The gentlemen were here."

He opened a door upon the right-hand side of the hall and she found

herself in a small panelled boudoir; so perfect in its scheme of

decoration, so cozy, so warm, that she asked no longer why her father

had come to Hampstead.

"Please tell the Earl that I am here," she said--and remembered as she

said it that the Vicar's relatives had been spoken of at Moretown as

very prodigies of riches. The footman, in answer to her, nodded his

head as foreigners will; and venturing no more English phrases he left

her alone.

How cold she was! And what a picture of a room! The Japanese

panelling delighted her. The hangings in green silk delighted her.

What inexpressibly luxurious chairs! And books everywhere, books in

English, in French, in Italian--novels, biographies, picture-books.

Did a fire ever roar up a chimney with such a pleasant sound. The

warmth made the blood tingle in her veins; she bathed in it, stooped to

it, caressed it with hands outspread to the blaze. And this was her

occupation when she heard the door open behind her; and leaping up,

said, "Dear father--I am so glad."

"My dear lady, your father has not yet arrived."

She stood transfixed, realizing her situation and the peril of it in

one swift instant. Count Odin, the man she had fled from; Count Odin,

whose very name she had tried to forget, he was her host then. Not for

a moment would she deceive herself with the consideration of other

possibilities or likely accidents. She had been lured to the house by

a trick, and the intentions of those who brought her there could not

but be evil. So much she understood, and in understanding found her

courage.

"My father is not here," she repeated after him, guarding her

self-control and standing before him defiantly.

He answered her almost with humility.

"No, he is not yet come, I am sorry to say. It is not my fault. His

reasons are his own ... and, Lady Evelyn, there are many who will say

that he is right."

She looked at him amazed.

"Did you ask me here to justify myself?" she exclaimed, the blood

running to her cheeks and her flashing eyes. "Am I to answer, then, to

you? I will believe such an impertinence when I hear it." And turning

from him to the fire, she said, "How little you understand me--how

little you could ever know of any Englishwoman. To dare to bring me

here--to think that I should be afraid of you!"

He smiled at her contempt and came a little nearer to her.

"I never thought that," he said slowly. "I never accused you of want

of courage, Lady Evelyn. Perhaps I am guilty of an impertinence. You

shall tell me when you have heard my news--the news I bring you from

Roumania."

Evelyn turned about in spite of herself and looked him full in the face.

"The news from Roumania!"

"Certainly, news of your friend, Mr. Gavin Ord."

The plot had been well contrived, and it did not fail. Curiosity, nay,

fear almost, proved stronger than Evelyn's alarm or any thought of her

own safety. Vainly she tried to suppress her emotion; while the man,

for his part, followed every movement of her graceful figure with eyes

that devoured its contour and a purpose which said, "she shall be my

wife this night."

"Well?" she cried, her heart beating wildly, her hands clinched. What

hours of anxiety, of dread, of passionate regret that one word recalled

to her.

The Count drew a chair near the fire and motioned to her to sit. She

obeyed him with a docility which did not surprise him. He held the

master cards and would play them one by one.

"Well," he said lightly enough, "to begin with, your friend is still in

Roumania."

"Am I unaware of that?" she exclaimed.

"Of course, you would not be. He is still in Roumania and a prisoner."

"A prisoner--why should he be a prisoner?"

"Because, dear lady, he is my father's enemy."

She realized what it meant and sat resting her bowed head upon her

little hands.

"I will go to Roumania; I will see him," she said presently.

Odin smiled again at that.

"It would be a hazardous journey, and I fear an unprofitable one," said

he.

"It can be no less profitable than the silent friendship of those who

should speak. But we are talking in parables," she said quickly, "and

for once I believe that you are telling me the truth."

"A flattering admission. I will do my best to be worthy of it. Let us

continue the story as we began. Your friend is a prisoner in the house

of my friends. They will release him upon the day I command them to do

so--not an hour before. They are my servants, Lady Evelyn--and in the

Carpathians to obey is the only commandment known to them. Should I

say to them 'this man must not return to England,' then he would never

return. I think you can understand that. It rests with me to save

your friend's life or to ... but we are a long way from coming to that

yet."

Evelyn trembled but she did not speak. The plain issue of that duel of

sex could not be hidden from her. She was in the house of a man who

had brought her there by a trick; a scoundrel and an adventurer, and

she was alone. The price of Gavin Ord's liberty was the surrender of

her honor. She understood and was silent, and the man knew that she

understood.

"We are a long way from that," he continued, with a new note in his

voice which spoke chiefly of his passion for her. "I hope that we

shall never come to it. When I first saw you in London, Lady Evelyn, I

said that there should never be another woman for me. I say so again

to-night. If you do not marry me, I will never marry. Yes, I love

you, and I am of a nation that learns from its childhood how women

should be loved. Consent to be my wife and I will live for nothing

else but your happiness. Your English friend shall win his liberty

to-morrow; your father shall be my father's friend. I will live where

you wish to live, serve you faithfully, have no thoughts but those you

wish me to have. Evelyn--that is what I would first say to you

to-night--that I love you--that you must love me--that I cannot live

without you."

He bent over her and tried to touch her hand. She did not doubt that

she had become, as he said, the great hope of his life. And just as

she had said in Derbyshire, "Etta Romney would marry him," so now for

an instant did the same voice speak to her to tell her the truths of

such a passion as this and to put the spell of its great temptation

upon her. Then, white and trembling, the true Evelyn spoke.

"Count Odin," she said, "I love another man. I must answer you once

and forever--this cannot be; it is impossible."

He heard her patiently, did not yet threaten her, and, indeed,

continued to be such a lover as he had declared the men of his nation

to be.

"I believe nothing of the kind. This man has appeared before you as a

hero. He goes like a new Don Quixote to tilt against the windmills of

his folly. You do not love such a man--and he--he knows nothing of

what love is."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"I do love him," she said very calmly. "I love him, and I shall marry

him."

"When he returns from Roumania?"

"When he returns, or when I go to him there."

He laughed now at her earnestness.

"We will go together--you and I," he said. "We will start for Paris

to-morrow. It is a stage upon our journey. I sent for you so--to go

to Paris with me to-morrow. Of course, your father goes. He will tell

you so when he comes here. He goes with us, and is pleased to be out

of England. Why should he not be? Here is all the town gaping at his

daughter. That pains him. I, too, dislike it, for I do not wish the

world to call my wife an actress. No, Lady Evelyn, we shall prevent

it--your father and I. In France, you will forget all this. The day

will come when you will know that we have been your friends."

He would have had it appear that he spoke with sincerity and

earnestness; but Evelyn heard little of that which he said. The

deep-laid plot never for a moment deceived her. She knew that her

father was in no way concerned in it; she understood that she had been

brought to the house by a subterfuge and that courage alone would save

her.

"Count Odin," she said as she rose and faced him, "when my father

wishes me to go to Paris he will tell me so. Your threats I treat with

contempt. You are one of those men whose part in life is to be woman's

enemy. I know you now, and am not even afraid of you. Let me leave

this house quietly and I will forget that I ever came here. Compel me

to stay and I will find a way to the nearest police station in spite of

you. That is my answer. I have nothing further to say."

He listened to her as though he had expected just such an answer as

this.

"Dear lady," he said with provoking insolence, "do you know that it is

one o'clock and that we are nearly five miles from Charing Cross?"

"It would make no difference to me if we were fifty."

"But your father is coming here----"

"That is not true."

"Come, you compel me to be angry. Understand that I have no intention

whatever of letting you go. If you persist, I must speak more frankly."

"A new experience. Stand aside, please. I am going to leave this

house."

He laughed brutally.

"Go to your English friend. I will telegraph that you are coming. Go

to him--if he is still alive, dear lady."

She shuddered but did not flinch.

"I will tell the story where all the world may read it to-morrow."

"To-morrow--to-morrow, how far off is to-morrow sometimes. Beware of

to-morrow, Lady Evelyn."

He drew aside and opened the door for her; and she, wondering greatly

at his apparent compliance, put her furs about her shoulders. Just for

one instant she stopped and with a woman's instinct would have

bargained with him for Gavin's life.

"Give me your word of honor that no harm shall happen to Mr. Ord and I

will be silent," she said.

He crossed the room and looked closely into her face.

"We will speak of that to-morrow--when your father comes," he said.

The words perplexed her. She hesitated but had nothing more to say.

Outside in the hall, the fire still burned brightly in the open grate,

and the gas lamps were lighted. Not a sound could be heard; no human

being appeared to inhabit that remote and lonely tenement. Trembling

with excitement and afraid, she knew not of what, Evelyn had reached

the front door and was stooping to unbolt it when a pair of strong arms

were clasped suddenly about her and a heavy cloak thrown over her head.

Taken utterly by surprise, overwhelmed by terror of the circumstance,

she felt herself lifted from her feet and carried swiftly from the

hall. All her strength could not fling those strong arms from her nor

put aside the cloak which stifled her cries. Inanimate, afraid as she

had never been in all her life, she lay almost senseless in the man's

arms and let him do as he would with her.

For she knew that she was Odin's prisoner, and that no act or will of

hers could save her from the plot so subtly contrived.

CHAPTER XXXII

A SHOT IN THE HILLS

The two men sat in the great bare room of the House at Setchevo and

watched the ebbing firelight as it played upon the dead man's face and

declared the horror of it. Not a sound came to them but that of their

heavy breathing. They feared almost to raise a hand lest by any

movement the living should be called to avenge the dead. Just as he

had fallen, heavily and in anger, so the old Chevalier lay, his face

upturned, the sightless eyes still open as though gazing now upon the

eternal mysteries. And none knew better than Gavin Ord that death

might be their worst enemy, loosing upon them the worst passions of

their jailers and forbidding them any longer even to hope.

This he knew, and yet there came no profit of the knowledge. If he

feared death, it was for Evelyn's sake. Sitting there by the

firelight, waiting in tense doubt for the coming of the dead man's

friends, he could recall a picture of Evelyn as first he saw her in the

hall of the Manor. How stately she was; with what dignity she had

received him! And what an odd mental hallucination he had suffered

when he thought to hear her crying to him from the river. But was it

altogether an hallucination and did this explanation satisfy? Here,

to-night, it seemed that he must die because of his friendship for her.

How foolish, then, the call from the unseen world had been if its

meaning were so, and his own death had been the subject of the

prophecy! That he could not believe. The firm idea that he had been

chosen to love and befriend this beautiful girl remained his own even

in this momentous hour. He must suffer this to save her--how or by

what means he did not pretend to say--nor would he account death as

other than a friend if by death salvation came to one who alone among

women had taught him to say, "I love."

A wolf howled upon the hills without and the lingering, doleful cry,

taken up by a thousand lifted throats, came upon the silence as the

dead man's requiem. Arthur Kenyon shivered when he heard it and beat

the fire down as though darkness were preferable to this aureole upon

the staring face. When Gavin said "Hush," and bade him listen, he half

turned, upon an impulse, toward the dead man as though the dead were

about to speak. The terrible strain of that suspense had become

insupportable. What mattered it since the end must be the same--sooner

or later, to-night or to-morrow, the reckoning, the vengeance? He was

young, and life might have much in store for him; but travel had taught

him to say "Kismet" and he said it unflinchingly.

"There would be snow on the hills," he cried at last, as though his

thoughts were out there upon the lonely mountain road.

Gavin, for answer, gripped him by the arm and forced him to listen.

"Do you not hear!" he cried in a broken whisper; "some one is calling

the Chevalier?"

They bent together as though to hear more keenly. In the courtyard

without, footsteps could now be heard and a voice crying, "Master,

master!" The hour had come then! Here were those who sought them.

"Will you speak to them, Gavin?"

"Hush for God's sake--I must think, think----"

"That's a second footstep--can't you hear it? My God, Gavin, what

shall we do?"

"Let me think, Arthur, let me think."

He buried his face in his hands and could feel his temples throbbing.

For Evelyn's sake, for her--ah, if that miracle of love could but come

to pass! To open the gates, to defy the perils of the hills, to pass

as in flight by towns, rivers, cities, the abodes of men, the lonely

passes, the lights of towns, the storms of seas, to venture all for

Evelyn's sake. If it could be that? The voice of reason answered,

"Fool, the men are at the door."

He rose excitedly from his chair and gripped his friend by the arm.

"Tap the pavement," he said, "tap as the old Chevalier used to. I must

think, Arthur--for God's sake now tap with the stick."

Kenyon obeyed him as a child would have done. He tapped upon the stone

floor with the stick but did not speak a word. Gavin had him by the

arm now and appeared almost as one in a trance. His eyes were

half-closed; he muttered to himself, stretching out his hand and

feeling, as it were, for a path which the darkness would disclose to

him. And the word upon his lips was "Evelyn"--oft repeated, as though

she were near and did not hear him.

"What are you going to do, Gavin?"

"To lead you from this house, Arthur--do not speak to me; some one is

calling us, Arthur."

He passed out into the bare stone corridor leading to the banqueting

hall. From the shadows one of the gypsies appeared with the swiftness

of an apparition. He carried a lantern in his hand and lifted it while

he spoke.

"Master!" he cried, and then reeled back, the words broken upon his

lips.

They passed him by, leaving him cowering by the wall; he did not cry

after them or raise an alarm. And Gavin went on swiftly, still toward

the gate, as though his will would open it.

"No man could cross the hill road to-night," Kenyon said presently. He

was thinking that if they passed the gates, their allies would be the

wolves. Gavin did not answer him at all this time. He had come to the

gate by which you reach the courtyard, and, lifting the latch, he went

out unquestioned.

"You see," he said, "that fellow has just unlocked it. I knew it must

be so, Arthur."

"He has gone to bring the others, Gavin."

"They will not hear him. Or if they come, they will be powerless to

harm us, Arthur. It must be so. I hear Evelyn's voice. She would not

call me if the gates were shut."

Kenyon knew not what to say. Once or twice before he had known and

seen Gavin in such a mood as this, led by unseen hands and speaking

with another's voice. Never had he scoffed at it or misunderstood his

friend. He took it to be a force within that was beyond his own

experience. To-night, at least, it had led them out of the

death-chamber to look once more upon the heaven of stars above.

"I will follow wherever you lead, Gavin," he said in a whisper, "only

tell me what I must do."

"We are going to the bridge, Arthur. Tap as the old Chevalier did. I

shall cry 'Open!' when we come there. They will let us out and we

shall cross the mountains."

The idea in his head remained there ineradicably. Despite the horde of

gypsies that was concealed somewhere in the darkened rooms of that

weird house, Gavin pushed his way toward the portcullis and demanded

that the keeper should open to him. This was the first time he had

spoken aloud since he quitted the room where the dead man lay; and

instantly at his words the courtyard became alive with the murmur of

voices and the sounds of shuffling footsteps.

"Quick, Gavin, they are after us," Kenyon cried, holding his friend's

arm and trying to draw him aside to a place of safety.

Gavin would not move, however. Imitating, as well as he could, the

voice he had heard so often challenging the keeper of the bridge, he

continued to shout, "Open--I wait!" None the less, he knew that armed

men were all about him and that any moment might bring them at his

throat.

"Open--I wait!"

The gate-keeper, awakened from a heavy sleep, came from the rude

watch-tower above the bridge and stood there with a lantern in his

hand. Raising it he looked upon the faces of the men, and drew back

with hand uplifted.

"Why do you call to me in my master's voice?" he asked.

They could not answer him. A great shouting in the courtyard behind

them warned them that the truth was known. The gypsies had discovered

the dead man's body and pell-mell they began to swarm about those they

believed to be his assassins. Haggard, in the weird light, their

figures in phantom shapes, they pressed on, searching every nook and

cranny with the naked blade of sword and scimitar, wailing their

doleful lament and encouraging one another to the pursuit. Nor had

Gavin any belief that he could escape them. Called by the peril from

the unnatural trance which had fallen upon him, he swung round upon his

heel as though to protect his friend whose life he had thus

jeopardized; but in his heart he believed that nothing could save them.

This was the moment when the uttermost penalty of folly must be paid.

It found him ready with a dogged courage, but lacking all ideas except

that supreme determination too fight for his life to the end.

"Give me the bludgeon, Arthur--I am the stronger."

"Don't think of that--there's something left in my locker still. Side

by side, old chap, unto the end. What luck! We'd have been across the

bridge in another ten seconds."

"Some of them are going to remember us anyway. Stand close to me,

Arthur--it won't be long now."

Indeed one of the gypsies discovered him as he spoke and with a loud

cry to the others made known his news. The horde swept on with the

ferocity of wolves. Knives gleaming, eyes bright in the darkness, some

voices cursing, some howling in brutish anger, they came pell-mell

toward the gate. And then, as suddenly, they halted and a silence as

of the dead of night fell upon the house.

Some one upon the mountain road without had fired a rifle. The report

of it, echoing in the lonely hills, was like a sharp peal of thunder,

rattling from peak to peak with monstrous sounds near by and low

rumblings far away. To the gypsies it spoke a message which they alone

understood. They stood altogether, shivering and gibbering in the

darkness. Their muttered words were unintelligible to Gavin. Beyond

the sound of the rifle-shot he could hear nothing--or when the silence

was broken again, it was by the tongue of wolves indescribably haunting

and long drawn as a dirge of woe.

"There is some one on the mountain road and they are afraid of him," he

said quickly to Kenyon.

The idea of profit to come by the truce occurred to him in the same

breath; and, crying loudly, again he bade the doorkeeper to open.

"Open, open!"

Twenty voices took up the cry. The gypsies vied with each other in

shouting the summons. For they understood the signal. The rope was

about their own necks, they said. The last chance was to open the gate

to their prisoners. When the doorkeeper hesitated, trembling and

afraid, they stabbed him to the heart and he rolled headlong to the

foot of the bridge near by which his life had been lived.

But Gavin and Arthur Kenyon passed out to the mountain road, and

looking down to the valley they perceived the flame of bivouac fires in

the wood below; and they understood immediately that cavalry had been

sent from Bukharest to their aid and that the hour of their peril had

passed.

CHAPTER XXXIII

DJALA

Evelyn recovered consciousness after that which seemed a very night of

evil dreaming, but which was in reality no more than a brief half-hour

of insensibility. Greatly weakened by the struggle and the swoon

attending it, she lay for some while unable to lift herself upon the

bed where they had laid her or to take any notice of the room to which

she had been carried. When her strength returned somewhat, and a

sudden memory of the circumstances of her visit recurred to her, she

sat up immediately, a great fear at her heart and a dread upon her such

as she had never suffered before.

What house was it? Who was its owner? What was the meaning of the

insult placed upon her? The questions raced through her brain so

quickly that she found an answer to none of them. At one time she

could almost believe that her own father was privy to the outrage and

had led to this desperate course by his detestation of the role she

played in London. Rejecting this immediately because of her love for

him, she was then tempted to say that Odin relied upon his threats and

believed that she would submit to him to save Gavin's life. This

appeared the more plausible story. Was not the man from the East a

Roumanian with but primitive ideas of a modern civilization and the son

of a country wherein women were still little better than the silent

victims of men's passions? Perhaps he believed that he could carry her

out of England. It might be even that.

She was in a spacious bedroom, furnished, so far as the dim light would

permit her to see, in a modern style and with many evidences of

later-day luxury. A fresh fire, burning with a light flame in an open

grate, cast flashing rays upon darkly-papered walls and the heavy

pictures which ornamented them. A sofa had been drawn up before the

fire and showed its pattern in the fitful beams; there was an electric

chandelier above a dressing-table and a single reading lamp upon a

little table by the bedside. Afraid of the darkness in a degree

unknown to her, Evelyn tried to find the switch by which the lamp might

be lighted; but her cold hands bungled it and, despairing, she rose

from the bed and crossed the room toward the heavily-curtained window.

Was escape to be thought of? In sober reason, no; but sober reason

says nothing to a woman driven by the supreme dread of wrong and

guarding her courage even while she is afraid. Evelyn knew in her own

mind that so shrewd and daring a schemer as Count Odin would leave her

no loophole, neglect no precaution, nor spare any insult by which his

own safety might be assured. She knew it and yet must go to the window

and draw the curtains back and touch the heavy shutters and feel her

heart sink when she came to see that they were twice barred and that no

woman's hand could open them. Despair alone could have led her to

believe that the Count would be so foolish; but despair did not mock

her twice and she left the door untried lest she should brand her own

intelligence with contempt. Let it be sufficient that she was the

prisoner of the house, far from any human aid, alone with her own

courage for her friend. She admitted it and sank down upon the sofa,

to stretch her hands to the warming blaze, and to breathe that simple

prayer to God for aid which is the supreme pathos of womanhood.

The night was silent without the silence of mid-winter; the fire blazed

as though in enmity to the cold of the early morning hours. Evelyn had

no watch, nor did she know what hour it might be. When a distant bell

chimed, she caught a faint sound upon the still air, but it told her

nothing. And with the passing hours there came upon her a desperation

she could not master; a desire to kill this man who had so affronted

her, to brave him at whatever cost, even if it were to die at his feet.

Etta Romney lived again in this, the Etta of the East, the child of the

mountains which knew few laws but those of might. She was her mother's

daughter now; the voice of heritage spoke, and she would not still it.

The distant church clock chimed again and she counted three strokes

upon its bells. It was three o'clock in the morning then, and another

four hours must pass before dawn came. Or would it ever come in that

shuttered and curtained room which she must call her prison? Sometimes

she could have wished that the Count would throw down the challenge to

her and that she might answer him there and then. Suspense as ever

tortured her nerves; but in her case also contributed to the victory of

reason. For Gavin's sake the evil in her heart must die, she said.

She must act not only as a brave woman but as a wise one. Moreover,

her true self, beginning to speak, reminded her that there would be an

outcry through all London to-morrow, and that such a man as Count Odin

would never face the publicity of it; his one sure weapon was his

threat against her lover. At this she cowed and knew that her heart

had grown cold again.

Could she, indeed, save Gavin by a word? Had she believed it she would

have spoken that word, so greatly did she love. But she did not

believe it. Her faith in a brave man's resolution, in his daring and

success, remained unshaken. Gavin might even come to this house, she

thought; and dreamingly she sat very still by the fireside and listened

for the sound of his footstep. A profound silence followed upon the

foolish act. When next she moved it was with agitation and a sudden

spasm of fear she could not quell.

She was no longer alone in the room. How she had come to believe

herself so she could not even imagine. Out of the darkness a pair of

jet black eyes were looking up to her own. The wavering firelight

becoming stronger as the coal reddened and burst into brighter flame,

showed her the huddled figure of a young girl crouching by the grate

and watching her so intently that the very glance seemed a tragedy.

"Djala!" she cried in spite of herself--"Djala, the gypsy girl!"

She knew it was no other and her fear passed with the knowledge. Many

a day had she seen this child with the gypsies who had followed the

Count to England. That she should be in this house at such a time was

the greater mystery. Evelyn knew not whether the omen were good or bad.

"Why do you not speak to me?" she said; "why are you silent?"

The gypsy started up as though the sound of a voice had waked her also

from reverie.

"Excellency," she answered, speaking in such broken English that Evelyn

caught her meaning with difficulty; "excellency, I wait for my brother

and then we will go away."

"Who are you, child--how did you come here?"

"I am Zallony's daughter, excellency--my brother brought me across the

sea from my own country."

"Yes, yes, you were in Derbyshire at my father's house. When did you

leave there, child?"

"A month ago, excellency. My brother came to London. We had little

money and were poor. The Count would follow us, he said. So we

waited, but there was no message. Excellency, he should not have

treated us so ill, for he was my lover and owes it to me. He should

have come to us, excellency ... and then I would not have told them.

God help him now, for my brother will kill him. Yes, I followed him

here, but none knew of it. And to-night I told them the truth.

Excellency, had you not come here I never would have told them ... but

I have loved him and he has forgotten, and I must go back to my own

country alone and ashamed."

She spoke in such a low tone, the childish eyes were so wide open, the

heart beating so rapidly beneath the fine lace which covered her

breast, that one who knew nothing of her Eastern birth or of all that

the love of a man meant to her, might well have believed her story an

hysterical fiction and turned from it with just impatience. To Evelyn,

however, it spoke of danger as no other word of all that evil night had

done. The peril of the house, the vengeance which might fall upon

it--the price of the betrayal, her own silence when a word might save a

man from the penalty of his sins--this all flashed through her troubled

brain and left her with a new sense of helplessness and surpassing

dismay.

"How did you come here; how did you enter this room?" she asked quickly.

"Molines, my uncle, who brought you here--he keeps the keys,

excellency."

"Then he let you in--he knows of your being here?"

"He knows, excellency, and is afraid. We must save the English lady,

he said. That is why he sent me to you."

"I must see your uncle at once, Djala.... I must tell the Count. What

you speak of is a great crime. Let us make them hear us. Oh, my God,

we cannot be silent."

The doubt and suspense of it all became overwhelming, and she stood

groping in the dim light for the doorway and beating upon it with both

her hands. No one, however, answered her. The little gypsy crouching

by the fire seemed afraid to move or to speak. The silence of the

house remained unbroken. Evelyn turned away in such despair as seemed

to her scarcely human.

"When is your brother coming here?" she asked the child.

Djala answered without looking up.

"I do not know, but he will come, excellency ... and he will speak for

me to the Count. Yes, and then----"

The words were stilled upon her lips and she sat up to listen. A sound

of men's voices suddenly made itself audible in the room below. The

gypsy heard it first and spoke no more of her vengeance.

"That is my brother's voice," she said--and then, realizing what she

had done, she caught at Evelyn's dress with both her hands and implored

her pity.

"Save him, excellency, for Christ's dear sake, save the man I love,"

she implored.

"I cannot save him, Djala--am I not as helpless as you? ... I cannot

save him."

They waited together, hand in hand, listening to the story which the

voices told them. Now it would be to the voice of argument, then to

that of entreaty, ultimately to the swift interchange of phrase which

spoke of anger. When the duologue ceased, the silence had greater

terrors of doubt than any they had yet suffered. What had happened,

then? Why did none come to them? They could but hope that reason had

prevailed.

"Let us light a lamp, excellency; I am afraid of the dark."

"I cannot do it, Djala.... I cannot find the switch."

"Let us try together, excellency--how your hands tremble! And mine are

cold, so cold. Let us try to find the light."

They felt along the wall, gathering courage from their occupation. The

main switch was upon the landing outside the door, but they found the

plug of the bedside lamp and managed to fix it, getting for their

reward a little aureole of light upon the bed and greater shadows upon

the further walls. That, however, which pleased them better was a

green silken bell-rope hanging down by the bedside and revealed now by

the lamp. Evelyn took the cord in both her hands and pulled it thrice.

But no bell rang.

"It is broken, Djala; they did not mean us to ring

it--hush--listen--they are talking again--that is the Count's voice..."

She caught the child's hand impulsively and drew her to the door as

though it would help them to hear the voices more plainly. The

controversy below had been resumed suddenly and with a bare preface of

civil words. Loud above the other the Count's voice could be heard in

threatening expostulation. It ceased upon a haunting cry--lingering,

horrible, and to be heard by the imagination long after it had died

away.

Djala did not speak when she heard the cry; she seemed as one

transfixed by terror, unable to move from the place and afraid to learn

the truth. Presently low sobs escaped her; she became hysterical and

sank at Evelyn's feet, moaning and trembling.

"They have killed him, excellency ... oh, my God, my God!"

Evelyn could answer nothing. Stooping, she lifted the fainting girl

and laid her upon the bed. While she was not less afraid or distressed

than the gypsy, this nearer danger had quickened her faculties and

awakened her to action. Once more, though the act seemed folly, she

caught at the silken bell-rope and pulled it with all her strength.

The answer was a jarring tintinabulation heard clearly in the silence.

She stood to listen and knew that footsteps were approaching the

landing. Then the key turned in the lock and a man, whom she had seen

before, a Tzigany beyond all question, entered without ceremony.

"Lady," he said in broken English, "come with me--you must leave this

house."

"I will not go until I know the truth; I cannot leave the child," she

said, pointing to Djala.

"There are those who will care for her. As for the truth ... it is a

man's quarrel. They will be friends to-morrow, lady. Obey me and go

quickly."

"I will not leave the child," she protested--not knowing whether his

story were false or true and fearing greatly.

For answer, he took her by the arm menacingly and drew her toward the

door.

"Go before ill befall you. The child is our daughter. Are we of the

people who do not care for their own children? Go, lest worse follow!

The man will live--I, Molines, say it."

The words found her without argument. This child had been with the

gypsies at the Manor. What harm would befall her if she remained with

them here? And it was no time for woman's pity. The story of the

house lay upon her as a heavy shadow. She had the desire to flee far

from it; to blot it out of her dreams; to forget its humiliations; to

escape its darkness. A voice called her to the way of salvation and

she went with the gypsy.

"The carriage will take you as you came," he said; "ask no questions,

lady; do not betray us if you value your life and that of another.

That which has happened in this house to-night will never be known to

the world. Seek not the story, for it is not yours to seek."

She had no rejoinder for him. There were lamps still alight in the

hall as they descended the staircase and the door of a room upon the

right hand side was a little way open. Evelyn half-believed that she

saw the body of a man lying upon the table there as she passed swiftly

by; but the door closed immediately and the gypsy hurried her from the

house.

"Remember," he said, "be silent ... it is your only hope, lady."

She shuddered and drew away from him. The electric brougham which had

carried her from the theatre now rolled slowly up the drive. She

entered it without a word and so was driven swiftly away.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE SHADOW OF THE RIVER

It wanted an hour of dawn when Evelyn quitted the lonely house. She

had given no instructions to the driver, nor did he appear to expect

any. In truth, his orders were very far from being in accordance with

the old gypsy's promise. A deed of blood had been done and the

daylight would discover it. The woman who could tell something of the

story would tell it at once if liberty were given her. So said those

who entrapped her ... and, desiring to withhold liberty as long as

might be, they sent the carriage westward, away toward Harrow and the

villages.

Evelyn herself did not suspect this; nor would it have alarmed her had

she done so. As one awakened from a dream of death, she tried to shut

the picture of the house from her heavy eyes, to drown the cries she

had heard, to forget the humiliations. Dark and lonely as the way was,

the black shapes of the trees seemed emblems of her liberty; the silent

houses so many tokens of the world regained. She cared not where or

why, so long as she might breathe the sweet air and tell herself that

God's mercy had saved her. For Gavin would she live--her whole life

should be spent in quest of the man she loved; of one who seemed to

call her even from the darkness. And of Gavin were her thoughts when

the carriage stopped at last and the driver bade her descend.

She perceived him to be an African, of pleasant face and starlike eyes.

To all her questions, however, he did but shake his head and show

grinning teeth which would as well become a snarl as laughter, she

thought. It was dawn then, and there were gray mists drifting above

the hedges. They had stopped in a lane and nothing human was in sight.

"Very sorry, missy--go back now. No far to go, master says so."

"Where are we, where have you brought me?" she asked, obeying him in

some fear.

He answered her, still grinning:

"You get back to London, quick, missee. Master says so. Dis am his

carriage. Verry sorry, missy."

She perceived that he played a part and would contend with him no more.

Still nodding his black head and showing his white teeth, he turned the

carriage about and disappeared down the lane. When the rolling sound

of the wheels had quite died away, Evelyn began to walk along the lane

in that which she believed to be the direction of London. The mists

lifted as the sun began to warm them. She was terribly cold, chilled

to the very bone, and exhausted both bodily and mentally; but she

pushed on bravely and presently out of the mists a cottage appeared and

then another. Yet a hundred yards farther down the lane and she espied

some modern villas in the Queen Anne style and after that quite a

considerable village lying in the hollow.

It would have been about eight o'clock of the morning by this time; and

workmen passed her with the firm tread and the cheery "Good-morning,

miss," which are still to be seen and heard within ten miles of the

metropolis. At first she scarcely had the courage to ask where she

was; for she realized how strangely the question must fall upon other

ears at such a time and under such circumstances; but plucking up her

courage presently as a lad approached her, she stopped him and learned

that this was the village of Pinner, and that it lay just thirteen

miles from London.

"Yonder's the station, miss, just round there to the right. I suppose

you've walked over from Harrow. Lots of ladies do now they've took to

hockey. I don't like that--not me. It hurts the shins unless you've

got thick 'uns like the new girls has."

He was quite a conversationalist, the boy, and he rambled on with a

precise account of his own intimate affairs, dating from the happy

anniversary of a present of five shillings from a gentleman in a

"broke-in-half" motor car to the recent arrival of a little sister,

with whom he expected he would shortly quarrel. One of his most

cheerful items of information was that which revealed the near

proximity of an inn, styled by him "a public"; but which, nevertheless,

brought to Evelyn such visions of hot steaming coffee and new warm

bread and a fireside whereby she might thaw her frozen hands that she

bestowed a whole shilling upon him willingly; and for that he, as a

true cavalier, conducted her immediately to the hostelry.

"And I do hope you'll walk over from Harrow another morning, and that

I'll meet you in the lane," he said with an interested and mercenary

laugh delightful to hear. It was good after all to listen to the sound

of an honest voice. And this boy spoke in the accustomed tongue of men.

She found the people of the inn awake and bustling. The story told for

her by the loquacious lad was a very _open sesame_. A dear old lady

with a very dirty face ushered her into a prim parlor and put out the

Sunday tea service. Workmen in the bar raised their voices for her

benefit, and one of them narrated at length how formerly he had kept a

servant at "twenty shilling a week, same as you get, Bill." The

coffee, however, could not have been better. Evelyn drank it greedily,

and, learning that there were trains to London frequently, she caught

one at ten o'clock and by a little after half-past she was in a hansom

going down to Baker Street.

Her direction to the cabman had been "the Carlton Theatre"--why exactly

she could not say. Naturally, she felt shy for the moment of returning

to her hotel, dishevelled and weary as she was. The theatre would be

open, she knew; for a rehearsal had been called at twelve o'clock, and

the great Mr. Izard expected her there to hear of a new play which he

had already passed as "bully." Fortunately for her, she slipped by old

Jacob at the stage door so quietly that he was quite unaware of her

presence ... and then going to her own dressing-room, to her chagrin

she discovered it to be locked and remembered that her maid had the key.

They had set a scene upon the stage, the garden scene of "Haddon Hall";

and weird and cold and melancholy was its aspect in this morning light.

To Evelyn it seemed as an emblem of those scenes of her girlhood which

she had forever quitted. The loneliness of her life, the pity of it,

the quenched fires of ambition--thoughts of these came to her one by

one and said "there is no longer hope in the world." Etta Romney, that

daughter of passion and the soul's unrest, love had killed her, and

never would she be reborn. There stood in her place an Evelyn who

believed herself to be utterly alone, forsaken of all, even of him who

had taught her the supreme lesson of her being. For her father she had

an abiding pity. The harvest he had reaped had been of his own sowing;

but her affection for him rose above any consideration of judgment and

she accused herself because she had left him in the hour of trial. For

the rest the dreadful story of the night remained her chief burden. To

whom should she tell it; who must be her confidant? Should she run

hysterically to the police, saying, "I believe that a crime has been

committed in an unknown house at Hampstead?" To whose profit! The two

men might have met in fair fight according to the custom of their

country. And would anyone be found in the house by even the cleverest

detective after those hours had passed! She knew not which would be

the prudent course. Her own despair spoke louder than any claim of

human justice.

The great Mr. Izard appeared at the theatre at eleven o 'clock. His

first cheery greeting to her ended abruptly when he perceived the state

of distress into which she had fallen ... her haggard eyes, her white

face, the restlessness of mood and quick changing attitudes which

betrayed her.

"Miss Romney!" he exclaimed aghast, "are you ill, my dear? ... Good

God! what has happened?"

"I cannot play to-day," she said.... "I am going to my home, Mr.

Izard, to my father. I shall never play in your theatre again. My

acting days are done."

He saw that she was really ill and would not trouble her with any of

the old arguments. His own carriage, he said, should take her to the

station. Her assurance that she would go down to Derbyshire alone

troubled him, for he was a big-hearted man, as most of his kind. When

Evelyn left him, she knew that she was leaving a friend ... and how few

friends has any man or woman among us! Perhaps the truth of this

helped her upon her long journey to Derbyshire. She was going to her

father, to him who had loved her ... she was going to him to tell him

every word of that story and to say to him, "Take me to Gavin, let us

go together and forget that another has ever come between us." All else

in the world, its rewards, its prizes, its teachings, seemed less to

her than this gospel of love now warming her heart to life and bidding

her look up. By it should peace come to him--to them both if Gavin

lived!

Ah, if Gavin lived! How often by the way did that voice of doubt cry

the question in her ears? As a heavy cloud upon the garden of her

hopes so the thought recurred and would not be put away. If Gavin

lived! Evelyn heard the words wherever she turned; they were spoken to

her upon the breezes of that winter day, rolled out by the humming

wheels as the train carried her northward, uttered by unknown voices

which compelled her to listen. They followed her to Moretown; they

were with her when she dismissed the hired carriage at the gates of

Melbourne Hall and set out to walk across the park toward her home.

Her desire to enter the house without observation or effusive welcome

was in great part the fruit of her thoughts. She must be alone; she

must have the full command of herself before she told her father the

true story of yesternight.

The sun had set upon a glorious winter's day; a day of clear skies and

bright scenes and fresh invigorating breezes. Now when eve fell the

west wind ebbed away with the hours and left a twilight deeply still

and beautiful. Not a branch of the leafless trees stirred in all that

vast park about Melbourne Hall. Wide vistas of glade and avenue might

have known no human foot since their story began. The deer browsed or

moved with step so light that the quickest ear could not detect it. To

Evelyn it mattered not whether she trod the park at dawn or dusk.

Every landmark seemed as her own possession. Here was the dell

wherein, long ago, she had played Di Vernon's part to the summer skies;

there, the arbor to which she had carried the romances upon which her

young imagination feasted. Far away, dark and gray between the trees,

stood her home, offering her so chill a welcome that her heart sank

wearily and tears came to her burning eyes. How if her father also had

left her; if she found the great house empty and the gates of it shut!

Such an end to her journey was not impossible; but the dread of it was

in itself a heavy sorrow.

To be alone even at the gates of her home. Yes, it might be that.

Standing upon the little bridge that spanned the river; she listened to

its melancholy song and echoed it in her heart. Alone, it said--the

dream lived, love lost, the world empty. What mattered it now that

God's providence had saved her yesternight? Better, she thought in her

distress, that she lay in yonder silent pool, drifting upon the slow

eddies to rest and oblivion. For what had the world to give her? The

tears flowed fast at the remembrance of all she had hoped, all she had

suffered, all she had lost. "Gavin," she cried aloud, "save me, Gavin,

for I cannot live alone."

* * * * *

He came to her swiftly out of the darkness. But yesterday he had

returned from Bukharest and, just as she to-day, had gone to Melbourne

Hall to find it shuttered and empty. A good act of his destiny made it

known to him at Moretown station that the Lady Evelyn had returned from

London. He followed her swiftly and overtook her upon the bridge.

And so as in the dream of the unforgotten days he took her from the

shadow of the river to his heart and, holding her close, he said:

"Evelyn, beloved, I am here as you wish."

[Illustration: "Evelyn, beloved, I am here as you wish."]

EPILOGUE

THE DOCTOR DRINKS A TOAST

In the Spring of the year following upon Gavin Ord's return from

Bukharest, the Reverend Harry Fillimore playing, as he claimed, "the

game of his life" upon the links at Moretown, found himself to his

chagrin both oblivious of the troubles of others and utterly

unsympathetic toward his old friend Doctor Philips.

"My dear fellow," he would say, "what can you expect when you will take

your eye off the ball? Now do be patient. For my sake, be patient."

The doctor, driving his ball with savage ferocity into a deep and awful

pit, treated these observations with the just scorn they merited. He

neither criticised nor contested them; but having struck the offending

ball five times with little result, he picked it up deliberately and

uttered a remark which the vulgar at any rate might have considered

appropriate.

"She's at Gibraltar," he said without preface.

"Come, dear fellow--now do be patient. I will not encourage strong

language; you know that I will not."

Dr. Philips laughed such a melancholy laugh that even the good-natured

parson looked up from his beloved ball.

"I was talking of the Lady Evelyn," he said quietly.

"I'm sorry--I'd forgotten it, Fred."

"Oh, well, memory isn't a jewel in these cases. I had a letter from

the Earl this morning--eh, yes? He says the yacht's become a nest of

turtledoves. They're going on to Malta if the weather's not too hot.

He doesn't mean to come here at all this year, you see. That's what I

wanted to tell you. It seems that the man Odin went back to Bukharest

and is now fighting the Government for his father's property. They

confiscated it or something, according to the criminal law there. Pity

the gypsies didn't kill him at Hampstead--eh? They seem to have come

pretty near it by all accounts."

The vicar expressed the opinion that the gypsies were the only honest

men that Bukharest would be likely to send to Moretown; but neither

spoke of Evelyn again until they were alone with their cigars after

dinner that night. Then, as a sacred confidence between them, Harry

Fillimore confessed something that had long been on his mind.

"Father and daughter," he said, "shared the burden of a terrible

heritage. One might have said that they had been born under an Eastern

sun and had inherited Eastern passions. In all of us, as the novelist

Robert Louis Stevenson believed, there are two personalities--the good

and the evil; and our lives are lived as we conquer the one and foster

the other. Robert Forrester never made an honest effort to extirpate

those weaker traits of character which ruined his career at the

beginning. Evelyn, on her part, did not realize the meaning of her

life until Gavin Ord taught her to love him. Her escapade in London,

the craving for light and music and glitter ... there you had the East

speaking to her. But the man's voice was the voice of the West, and

she listened to it. Such a woman has found peace or none will ever

find it. Her will has saved both herself and her father. Let us

grudge her nothing of her happiness, Fred. You loved her? What man

that had not loved would not? But you'll wish a blessing on her and

lift a glass to her as I do, just because you're what you are--a great

big-hearted Englishman, who will share his joys with all, but will tell

his sorrows to none."

The doctor turned his head away. Very slowly and deliberately he

filled his glass, and, lifting it, he said:

"God bless her!"

THE END

Other Works by Max Pemberton

THE HUNDRED DAYS

_12mo, Cloth, $1.50_

Napoleonic history, or something near to it, will be found in Max

Pemberton's "The Hundred Days," a dashing romance with an English hero,

invincible, of course, and a French heroine of daring and

spirit._--Philadelphia Public Ledger_.

THE FOOTSTEPS OF A THRONE

_12mo, Cloth, $1.50_

Max Pemberton's new romance proves that the life of to-day may suggest

romance, mystery, incident, and adventure in as fascinating forms as

the life of the days of lance and armor. The novel deals with Russian

social and political intrigue, a field wherein he is fully at home. A

charming love story is carried through a stirring series of adventures

to a fortunate end.--_Washington Post_.

DR. XAVIER

_12mo, Cloth, $1.50_

Any story by Max Pemberton can be depended on to furnish mystery,

excitement, adventure and sensation to satisfy the most exacting

demands. His romance, "Dr. Xavier," has for its principal character a

scientist who is all but a magician, and about whom and his doings

there is something uncanny.--_Cleveland Plaindealer_.

THE CHALLONERS

_12mo, Cloth, $1.50_

THE QUEEN OF THE JESTERS

_12mo, Cloth, $1.50_

CHRISTINE OF THE HILLS

_12mo, Cloth, $1.25_

THE GARDEN OF SWORDS

_12mo, Cloth, $1.50_

SIGNORS OF THE NIGHT

_12mo, Goth, $1.50_

FEO

_12mo, Cloth, $1.50_

PRO PATRIA

_12mo, Cloth, $1.50_

LOVE THE HARVESTER

_12mo, Cloth, $1.50_

THE GOLD WOLF

_12mo, Cloth, $1.50_

A DAUGHTER OF THE STATES

_12mo, Cloth, $1.50_

BEATRICE OF VENICE

_12mo, Cloth, $1.50_

THE GIANT'S GATE

_12mo, Cloth, $1.50_

A GENTLEMAN'S GENTLEMAN

_Post 8vo, $1.25_

THE IMAGE IN THE SAND

_12mo, Cloth, $1.50_