Norman found his mother very ill. The doctor did not forbid all hope; but a crisis was approaching. They could only wait. Norman was very fond of his mother, and greatly upset, and he put off writing his letter to Trafford until the morrow; and in the morning he, of course, read the news of the duke’s sudden death.

He would have dashed off to Belfayre then and there, but he could not leave his mother; and he did the next best thing to going—sat down and wrote a letter to Trafford—the letter of a close and dear friend—and adding that the moment he could leave his mother he would hasten to Belfayre on the chance of being some use. He sent his love to Esmeralda, and his “kind regards” to Lilias. Then he posted his letter with his own hands, and returned to his mother’s bedside to mourn; for the duke had always been very good to him, and he loved the old man.

The letter reached Belfayre the next morning, and was carried[253] up with scores of others in the post-bag, which was placed on a side-table in the breakfast-room.

For the last two days Lady Ada had opened the bag, and helped read and answer the letters, and this morning Lilias gave the key to her almost as a matter of course.

Almost the first envelope that fell from the bag as she emptied it on the table was Norman’s, addressed to Trafford. She recognized the handwriting in a moment, and her face grew hot. Norman writing to Trafford! What could he have to say? News of Esmeralda! She turned the letter over in her hand with a thirsty longing; then she opened it. It would be easy to say that she had opened it by mistake.

Its contents amazed her. Norman wrote as if his mother were actually ill, and as if—as if he were innocent.

She stood gaping at the badly written scrawl—Norman was anything but literary in his tastes—as if she could scarcely credit her eyes. Norman innocent! Then where was Esmeralda? She looked at the postmark; it bore the Oakfield stamp right enough; the letter had been posted there. She was confused and bewildered, and had the letter still in her hand when Lilias entered the room. She slipped the letter in her pocket, and went on opening the others.

“Here is a telegram from Trafford,” said Lilias in the hushed voice in which they all spoke now. “He lost the train last night, but will come by this morning’s. Esmeralda”—Lady Ada started and turned her pale face—“Esmeralda is ill. She is at Deepdale with Lady Wyndover. Trafford says it is the shock, and that she will not be able to come down for some days—perhaps a week. I—I am almost glad that she is not here. I will write to her to-day. Poor Esmeralda! I know exactly how she feels.” She sighed. “Are there many letters? Any that must be answered?”

“There are a great many; they are all condolences as far as I have got,” replied Lady Ada, with a peculiar dryness in her voice.

Was it true that Esmeralda was at Deepdale? If so, Trafford had seen her, had become reconciled, perhaps.

Trafford arrived in the afternoon and went straight to the library, and Lilias found him there, seated at the table, with his head in his hands.

He looked up and tried to smile as she entered, but the attempt was a ghastly failure.

“Esmeralda?” was Lilias’s first word.

He looked down and pulled some letters toward him.

[254]

“She is at Deepdale,” he said. “She—she is ill. The shock—”

“Yes, I can understand that,” said Lilias. “Did she look very ill?”

“I—I did not see her,” he said, with feigned easiness. “There was no time. I saw Lady Wyndover. Esmeralda—there is nothing serious—she is prostrated—just that. She will be better—” The string of falsehoods broke off short, and with a gesture of impatience he took up a pen. “Are these all the letters?” he asked.

He had already searched among them, hoping against hope, for a letter, line, one word, from Esmeralda.

“Those are all,” said Lilias. “Ada has been attending to them;” and she looked gratefully at Lady Ada as she entered the room at that moment.

Ada’s hand, as it hung at her side, could feel the sharp edge of Norman’s letter in her pocket. Should she take it out and give it to him? She glanced at his face covertly, and its haggardness encouraged her. She had heard him say that he had not seen Esmeralda. They were still apart, wherever she might be; he still thought her guilty. She would keep the letter from him and trust to chance. Fate seemed to be playing the game for her still.

The day of the funeral arrived, and the black-clad crowd of friends and neighbors, gentle and simple, followed the old duke to his last resting-place in the huge marble vault in the crypt of Belfayre church. He had been very popular as well as great, and there were many wet eyes among the multitude; and not a few were moved to tears as much by the sight of the son—the new duke—as by the remembrance of the father; for Trafford looked like one who sorrows without hope of comfort. There was something awe-inspiring in the death-like calm of his face, in which every clear-cut feature seemed drawn and sharpened, and his most familiar friends among the mourners watched him aghast and somewhat puzzled.

“I am afraid that Trafford must be anxious about his wife,” said one. “She is at Deepdale—that place of Lady Wyndover’s, you know—ill. I saw it in the papers. I hope she isn’t worse than we think.”

When the funeral was over and the somber guests had departed, Trafford shut himself up in the library and remained there alone till far into the night. There was a mass of papers on the table before him—for with his dukedom his new responsibilities had commenced and were clamoring for attention—but he looked at none of them. He could not[255] even think of his dead father. Esmeralda, Esmeralda—it was all Esmeralda!

In the morning Lilias came to him with the red rings round her eyes.

“Do you think I might go up to Esmeralda, Trafford?” she said. “Ada has offered to stay—she is so good and kind—and I could come back this evening.”

She put the question wistfully, and was rather startled by his manner of receiving it and refusing it.

“Certainly not,” he said, almost harshly. “You can not leave Belfayre just now. You must remain here. Besides, I am going to her to-day.” He felt that he should go mad if he remained in the vast house with the echoes of Esmeralda’s voice and laugh alone breaking the silence; for wherever he went he seemed to see and hear her, and everything he saw and touched seemed associated with her.

He went up to town and wandered from his rooms to the club, from the club to his rooms. Men and women greeted him with hushed voices and sympathetic looks, and he returned their greetings with the unnatural calmness which had fallen upon him since he had discovered her flight; but very often he did not know to whom he was speaking. He was leading a life in death, moving and speaking like a man in a dream. He had promised Lady Wyndover that he would seek for Esmeralda at once; but he did not seek for her; he felt that it was of no use. By this time she and Norman were hidden away beyond pursuit.

And he missed Norman by just a few yards and a few minutes. For as he walked out of the Marlborough, with his head bent low and his hot eyes fixed on the pavement, Norman turned the corner of St. James’s Street. They were actually within hail of each other. If they had but known it!

The crisis they had been anxiously waiting for at Oakfield was past, and Lady Druce was better; so much better that Norman could leave her for a few hours, though not long enough to go down to Belfayre. He had seen the paragraph in the papers stating that Esmeralda was ill at Deepdale, and he thought that he might, at any rate, run down there and hear how she was. Lady Wyndover would see him for a few minutes, and he should have tidings of—of all at Belfayre, and Lilias. And Lady Druce urged him to go.

“I am going to get well quite quickly now, dear, and”—she added, mother-like—“I don’t like to think of your being shut up here in this dull place. Yes; go, Norman!”

He had to go to London to buy some articles of mourning—gloves[256] and a hat-band, and so on, which he could not obtain in primitive Oakfield—and so he passed down St. James’s Street within a stone’s-throw of Trafford.

He walked from the station to Deepdale and rang the bell. No one came immediately, and the door being open, he walked into the little hall. As he did so, he heard a faint cry of amazement, and—as it seemed to him, horror—and turning sharply, saw, through the door of the drawing-room, Lady Wyndover standing looking at him with white face and startled eyes, as if she had sprung up at the sound of his footsteps.

He entered the room with outstretched hand.

“Lady Wyndover, I am sorry I startled you. Please forgive me!”

She did not seem to see his hand, but stared at him breathlessly.

“You! Where is—Esmeralda?” she gasped.

With his hand still extended, Norman returned her gaze with one almost as startled and bewildered as her own.

“Esmeralda!” he echoed; and he looked up at the ceiling helplessly. “Esmeralda? Where? She is here, is she not?”

Lady Wyndover stifled a cry and pointed a shaking hand at the door.

He closed it and stood regarding her wonderingly. Had she taken leave of her senses? She looked ill and anxious, and her manner was fearfully strange.

“How—how dare you come here?” she said at last, her indignation at his presence, at his offer of his hand, overwhelming for the moment her anxiety respecting Esmeralda.

“How dare I? For God’s sake, what do you mean?” he exclaimed. “Why do you look at me like this—why do you talk to me! What about Esmeralda? She is here, isn’t she?” And he looked round vaguely.

Lady Wyndover approached him unsteadily, her eyes distended.

“Do you mean to say that you don’t know?” she whispered. “Are you trying to deceive me, to—to brazen it out? You know that she is not here!”

“Not here? I saw in the papers that she was here—ill. Where is she, then?”

“You know!” she repeated, fiercely. “You are acting! Norman, you are a scoundrel!”

He scarcely started. Just as she had deemed Trafford mad, so Norman deemed her. What other explanation of her manner and words could there be?

[257]

“What is it you mean, Lady Wyndover?” he said, almost soothingly, certainly without any resentment—as yet. “Tell me as quickly as you can why you call me—what was it?—a scoundrel?”

His manner, the steady regard of his blue, honest eyes staggered her. She sunk on to a couch, and pressed her hand to her heart.

“Either you are a devil of deceit, or you—you have been wronged!” she gasped. “Esmeralda is not here; we—none of us know where she is; but we believe that she is with you!”

He started and gazed at her with wild eyes.

“Esmeralda with me? Why should she be with me, instead of here or at Belfayre? Explain!”

He spoke with the air of command which few women can resist. Lady Wyndover insensibly grew calmer.

“God forgive you if you are deceiving me, Norman!” she breathed. “We think that she has gone with you. She has left Belfayre—suddenly, without a word. You took her away with you!”

Norman’s face went white, and he bit his lip till the blood came.

“She has left Belfayre? When?”

“The morning the duke died. And left no word! Oh, you know—you know! Why do you stand there so shamelessly?&rdquo............