Mr. Carruthers was an early man; no danger of any skulking among the numerous hands which found employment on the Poynings estate. If the eye of the master be indeed the spur of the servant, Mr. Carruthers's dependents had quite enough of that stimulant. He made his rounds every morning at an hour which the in-door servants, who were obliged to have breakfast ready on his return, considered heathenish, and the out-door servants declared savoured of slave-driving. Mrs. Brookes knew that she should have no difficulty in procuring a private interview with her mistress on the morning following Mr. Dalrymple's visit, as an hour and a half always elapsed between Mr. Carruthers's leaving the house and his wife's ringing for her maid. The old woman looked worn and weary and very old, as she peered from behind a red-cloth door, which shut off the corridor on which Mr. Carruthers's dressing-room opened from the grand gallery, and watched her master take his creaking way down the staircase, looking as he went more full of self-importance than usual, and treading more heavily, as if the weight of the Home Office communication had got into his boots.  
When he had disappeared, and she had heard the click of the lock as he opened the great door and went out into the pure fresh morning air, Mrs. Brookes emerged from behind the partition-door, and softly took the way to Mrs. Carruthers's bedroom. The outer door was slightly open, the heavy silken curtain within hung closely over the aperture. The old woman pushed it gently aside, and, noiselessly crossing the room, drew the window curtain, and let in sufficient light to allow her to see that Mrs. Carruthers was still sleeping. Her face, pale, and even in repose bearing a troubled expression, was turned towards the old woman, who seated herself in an arm-chair beside the bed, and looked silently and sadly on the features, whose richest bloom and earliest sign of fading she had so faithfully watched.
 
"How am I to tell her?" she thought. "How am I to make her see what I see, suspect what I suspect? and yet she must know all, for the least imprudence, a moment's forgetfulness, would ruin him. How am I to tell her?"
 
The-silver bell of a little French clock on the chimney-piece rang out the hour melodiously, but its warning struck upon the old woman's ear menacingly. There was much to do, and little time to do it in; she must not hesitate longer. So she laid her withered, blanched old hand upon the polished, ivory-white fingers of the sleeper, lying with the purposelessness of deep sleep upon the coverlet, and addressed her as she had been used to do in her girlhood, and her early desolate widowhood, when her humble friend had been well-nigh her only one.
 
"My dear," she said, "my dear." Mrs. Carruthers's hand twitched in her light grasp; she turned her head away with a troubled sigh, but yet did not wake. The old woman spoke again: "My dear, I have something to say to you."
 
Then Mrs. Carruthers awoke fully, and to an instantaneous comprehension that something was wrong. All her fears, all her suspicions of the day before, returned to her mind in one flash of apprehension, and she sat up white and breathless.
 
"What is it, Ellen? Has he found out? Does he know?"
 
"Who? What do you mean?"
 
"Mr. Carruthers. Does he know George was here?"
 
"God forbid!" said the old woman, in a trembling tone.
 
She felt the task she had before her almost beyond her power of execution. But her mistress's question, her instinctive fear, had given her a little help.
 
"No," she said, "he knows nothing, and God send he may neither know nor suspect anything about our dear boy! but you must be quiet now and listen to me, for I must have said my say before Dixon comes--she must not find me here."
 
"Why are you here?" asked Mrs. Carruthers, who had sat up in bed, and was now looking at the old woman, with a face which had no more trace of colour than the pillow from which it had just been raised. "Tell me, Ellen; do not keep me in suspense. Is anything wrong about George? It must concern him, whatever it is."
 
"My dear," began Mrs. Brookes--and now she held the slender fingers tightly in her withered palm--"I fear there is something very wrong with George."
 
"Is he--is he dead?" asked the mother, in a faint voice.
 
"No, no; he is well and safe, and far away from this, I hope and trust."
 
Mrs. Carruthers made no answer, but she gazed at her old friend with irresistible, pitiful entreaty. Mrs. Brookes answered the dumb appeal.
 
"Yes, my dear, I'll tell you all. I must, for his sake. Do you know what was the business that brought that strange gentleman here, he that went out with master, and dined here last night? No, you don't. I thought not. Thank God, you have got no hint of it from any one but me."
 
"Go on, go on," said Mrs. Carruthers, in a yet fainter voice.
 
"Do you remember, when George was here in February, you gave him money to buy a coat?"
 
"Yes," Mrs. Carruthers rather sighed than said.
 
"He bought one at Evans's, and he was remarked by the old man, who would know him again if he saw him. The business on which the strange gentleman came to master was to get him to help, as a magistrate, in finding the person who bought that coat at Evans's, Amherst."
 
"But why? What had he done? How was the coat known?"
 
"My dear," said Mrs. Brookes--and now she laid one arm gently round her mistress's shoulder as she leaned against the pillows--"the wearer of that coat is suspected of having murdered a man, whose body was found by the river-side in London the other day."
 
"My God!" moaned the mother, and a hue as of death overspread her features.
 
"My dear, he didn't do it. I'm sure he didn't do it. I would stake my soul upon it. It is some dreadful mistake. Keep up until I have done, for God's sake, and George's sake, keep up--remember there is no danger unless you lose courage and give them a hint of anything. Be sure we shall find he has sold the coat to some one else, and that some one has done this dreadful thing. But you must keep up--here, let me bathe your face and hands while I am talking, and then I'll go away, and, when Dixon comes, you must just say you are not well, and don't mean to get up to breakfast, and then I shall have an excuse for coming to you. There! you are better now, I am sure. Yes, yes; don't try to speak; I'll tell you without asking," she went on, in a rapid whisper. "The strange gentleman and master saw Evans, and he told them when he sold the coat, and the sort of person he sold it to; but Gibson and Thomas say he could not have told them distinct, for they heard the strange gentleman saying to master, in the carriage, that the description was of no use. And I am certain sure that there is not the least suspicion that he has ever been in Amherst since he bought the coat."
 
"I don't understand," stammered Mrs. Carruthers. "When--when did this happen?"
 
"A few days ago: it's all in the papers."
 
Mrs. Carruthers groaned.
 
"Nothing about George, but about finding the body and the coat. It is all here." The old woman took a tightly folded newspaper from her pocket. The light was too dim for her to read its contents to her mistress, who was wholly incapable of reading them herself. Mrs. Brookes, paper in hand, was going to the window, to withdraw the curtain completely, when she paused.
 
"No," she said; "Dixon will be here too soon. Better that you should ring for her at once, and send her for me. Can you do this, my dear? keeping yourself up by remembering that this is only some dreadful mistake, and that George never did it--no, no more than you did. Can you let me go away for a few minutes, and then come back to you? Remember, we cannot be too careful, for his sake; and if Dixon found me here at an unusual hour, the servants would know there is some secret or another between us."
 
"I can bear anything--I can do anything you tell me," was Mrs. Carruthers's answer, in a whisper.
 
"Well then, first lie down, and I will close the curtains and leave you. When I have had time to get to my room, ring for Dixon. Tell her you are ill. When she lets the light in she will see that for herself, and desire her to send me to you."
 
In another minute the room was once more in darkness, and Mrs. Brookes went down the grand staircase, in order to avoid meeting any of the servants, crossed the hall, and gained her own apartment without being observed. A short time, but long to her impatience, had elapsed, when Mrs. Carruthers's maid knocked at the door, and having received permission to enter, came in with an important face. She delivered the message which Mrs. Brookes was expecting, and added that she had never seen her lady look so ill in all her born days.
 
"Looks more like a corpse, I do assure you, than like the lady I undressed last night, and circles under her eyes, dreadful. I only hope it ain't typus, for I'm dreadful nervous, not being used to sickness, which indeed I never engaged for. But, if you please, Mrs. Brookes, you was to go to her immediate, and I'm to let Miss Carruthers know as she's to make tea this morning for master, all to their two selves, which he won't like it, I dare say."
 
Then the talkative damsel went her way to Miss Carruthers's room, and Mrs. Brookes hurried to that of her unhappy mistress. She had again raised herself in the bed, and was looking eagerly towards the door, with hollow haggard eyes, and lips ashy pale, whose trembling she in vain tried to control.
 
"Lock both doors, Ellen," she said, "and tell me all. Give me the paper; I can read it--I can indeed."
 
She took it and read it steadily through--read it with the same horrible emotion, a thousand times intensified, which had agitated the faithful servant a few hours previously. Standing by the bedside, Mrs. Brookes gazed upon her pale, convulsed features, as she read, and ever, as she saw the increasing agony which they betrayed, she murmured in accents of earnest entreaty:
 
"Don't, my dear, for God's sake, don't, not for a moment, don't you believe it. He sold the coat, depend upon it. It looks very bad, very black and bad, but you may be sure there's no truth in it. He sold the coat."
 
She spoke to deaf ears. When Mrs. Carruthers had read the last line of the account of the inquest on the body of the unknown man, the paper dropped from her hand; she turned upon the old nurse a face which, from that moment, she never had the power to forget, and said:
 
"He wore it--I saw it on him on Friday," and the next moment slipped down among the pillows, and lay as insensible as a stone.
 
The old woman gave no alarm, called for no assistance, but silently and steadily applied herself to recalling Mrs. Carruthers to consciousness. She had no fear of interruption. Mr. Carruthers invariably went direct to the breakfast-room on returning from his morning tour of inspection, and Clare would not visit Mrs. Carruthers in her own apartment unasked. So Mrs. Brookes set the windows and doors wide open, and let the sweet morning air fan the insensible face, while she applied all the remedies at hand. At length Mrs. Carruthers sighed deeply, opened her eyes, and raised her hand to her forehead, where it came in contact with the wet hair.
 
"Hush, my dear," said Mrs. Brookes, as she made an almost inarticulate attempt to speak. "Do not try to say anything yet. Lie quite still, until you are better."
 
Mrs. Carruthers closed her eyes again and kept silent. When, after an interval, she began to look more life-like, the old woman said, softly:
 
"You must not give way again like this, for George's sake. I don't care about his wearing the coat. I know it looks bad, but it is a mistake, I am quite sure. Don't I know the boy as well as you do, and maybe better, and don't I know his tender heart, with all his wildness, and that he never shed a fellow-creature's blood in anger, or for any other reason. But it's plain he is suspected--not he, for they don't know him, thank God, but the man that wore the coat, and we must warn him, and keep it from master. Master would go mad, I think, if anything like suspicion or disgrace came of Master George, more than the disgrace he thinks the poor boy's goings on already. You must keep steady and composed, my dear, and you must write to him. Are you listening to me? Do you understand me?" asked the old woman, anxiously, for Mrs. Carruthers's eyes were wild and wandering, and her hand twitched convulsively in her grasp.
 
"Yes, yes," she murmured, "but I tell you, Ellen, he wore the coat--my boy wore the coat."
 
"And I tell you, I don't care whether he wore the coat or not," repeated Mrs. Brookes, emphatically. "He can explain that, no doubt of it; but he must be kept out of trouble, and you must be kept out of trouble, and the only way to do that, is to let him know what brought the strange gentleman to Poynings, and what he and master found out. Remember, he never did this thing, but, my dear, he has been in bad hands lately, you know that; for haven't you suffered in getting him out of them, and I don't say but that he may be mixed up with them that did. I'm afraid there can't be any doubt of that, and he must be warned. Try and think of what he told you about himself, not only just now, but when he came here before, and you will see some light, I am sure."
 
But Mrs. Carruthers could not think of anything, could not remember anything, could see no light. A deadly horrible conviction had seized upon her, iron fingers clutched her heart, a faint sickening terror held her captive, in body and spirit; and as the old woman gazed at her, and found her incapable of answering, the fear that her mistress was dying then and there before her eyes took possession of her. She folded up the newspaper which had fallen from Mrs. Carruthers's hand upon the bed, replaced it in her pocket, and rang the bell for Dixon.
 
"My mistress is very ill," she said, when Dixon entered the room. "You had better go and find master, and send him here. Tell him to send Dr. Munns at once."
 
Dixon gave a frightened, sympathizing glance at the figure on the bed, over which the old woman was bending with such kindly solicitude, and then departed on her errand. She found Mr. Carruthers still in the breakfast-room. He was seated at the table, and held in his hand a newspaper, from which he had evidently been reading, when Dixon knocked at the door; for he was holding it slightly aside, and poising his gold eye-glass in the other hand, when the woman entered. Mr. Carruthers was unaccustomed to being disturbed, and he did not like it, so that it was in a tone of some impatience that he said:
 
"Well, Dixon, what do you want?"
 
"If you please, sir," replied Dixon hesitatingly, "my mistress is not well."
 
"So I hear," returned her master; "she sent word she did not mean to appear at breakfast. He said it rather huffily, for not to appear at breakfast was, in Mr. Carruthers's eyes, not to have a well-regulated mind, and not to have a well-regulated mind was very lamentable and shocking indeed.
 
"Yes, sir," Dixon went on, "but I'm afraid she's very ill indeed. She has been fainting this long time, sir, and Mrs. Brookes can't bring her to at all. She sent me to ask you to send for Dr. Munns at once, and will you have the goodness to step up and see my mistress, sir?"
 
"God bless my soul," said Mr. Carruthers, pettishly, but rising as he spoke, and pushing his chair away. "This is very strange; she has been exposing herself to cold, I suppose. Yes, yes, go on and tell Mrs. Brookes I am coming, as soon as I send Gibson for Dr. Munns."
 
Dixon left the room, and Mr. Carruthers rang the bell, and desired that the coachman should attend him immediately. When Dixon had entered the breakfast-room, Clare Carruthers had been standing by the window, looking out on the garden, her back turned towards her uncle. She had not looked round once during the colloquy between her uncle and his wife's maid, but had remained quite motionless. Now Mr. Carruthers addressed her.
 
"Clare," he said, "you had better go to Mrs. Carruthers." But his niece was no longer in the room; she had softly opened the French window, and passed into the flower-garden, carrying among the sweet, opening flowers of the early summer, and into the serene air, a face which might have vied in its rigid terror with the face upstairs. When Mr. Carruthers had come in that morning, and joined Clare in the pretty breakfast-room, he was in an unusually pleasant mood, and had greeted his niece with uncommon kindness. He had found everything in good order out of doors. No advantage had been taken of his absence to neglect the inexorable sweepings and rollings, the clippings and trimmings, the gardening and grooming. So Mr. Carruthers was in good humour in consequence, and also because he was still nourishing the secret sense of his own importance, which had sprung up in his magisterial breast under the flattering influence of Mr. Dalrymple's visit. So when he saw Clare seated before the breakfast equipage, looking in her simple, pretty morning dress as fair and bright as the morning itself, and when he received an intimation that he was not to expect to see his wife at breakfast, he recalled the resolution he had made last night, and determined to broach the subject of Mr. Dalrymple's visit to his niece without delay.
 
A pile of letters and newspapers lay on a salver beside Mr. Carruthers's plate, but he did not attend to them until he had made a very respectable beginning in the way of breakfast. He talked to Clare in a pleasant tone, and presently asked her if she had been looking at the London papers during the last few days. Clare replied that she seldom read anything beyond the deaths, births, and marriages, and an occasional leader, and had not read even so much while she had been at the Sycamores.
 
"Why do you ask, uncle?" she said. "Is there any particular news?"
 
"Why, yes, there is," replied Mr. Carruthers, pompously.
 
"There is a matter attracting public attention just now in which I am, strange to say, a good deal interested--in which responsibility has been laid on me, indeed, in a way which, though flattering--very flattering indeed--is, at the same time, embarrassing."
 
Mr. Carruthers became more and more pompous with every word he spoke. Clare could not repress a disrespectful notion that he bore an absurd resemblance to the turkey-cock, whose struttings and gobblings had often amused her in the poultry-yard, as he mouthed his words and moved his chin about in his stiff and spotless cravat. His niece was rather surprised by the matter of his discourse, as she was not accustomed to associate the idea of importance to society at large with Mr. Carruthers of Poynings, and cherished a rather settled conviction that, mighty potentate as he was within the handsome gates of Poynings, the world outside wagged very independently of him. She looked up at him with an expression of interest and also of surprise, but fortunately she did not give utterance to the latter and certainly predominant sentiment.
 
"The fact is," ............