Part 9 (1/2)

”Fit? Some scoundrel of a London tramp scaled the balcony, they say.

Fine plunder, the rascal! All those diamonds.”

”Which she might have left her sister, and then perhaps they would have come to you, Matt.”

”Don't talk stuff.”

”Stuff? Why, you are besieging the belle. But, I say, I have my own theory about that murder.”

”Eh, have you?” cried the great dragoon, staring open-mouthed.

”Egad! yes, Matt. It was not a contemptible robbery.”

”Wasn't it? You don't say so.”

”But I do,” cried Sir Harry seriously. ”Case of serious jealousy on the part of some lover of the bewitching creature. He came in the dead o'

night and smothered the Desdemona with a pillow. What do you say, Rockley?”

The Major had strolled across the mess-room and heard these words.

”Bah! Don't ridicule the matter,” he said. ”Change the subject.”

”As you like, but the feeble flame only wanted a momentary touch of the extinguisher and it was gone.”

At the house on the Parade there had been terrible anguish, and Claire Denville suffered painfully as she pa.s.sed through the ordeal of the examination that ensued.

But everything was very straightforward and plain. There were the marks of some one having climbed up the pillar--an easy enough task. The window opened without difficulty from without, a pot or two lay overturned in the balcony, a chair in the drawing-room, evidently the work of some stranger, and the valuable suite of diamonds was gone.

The constable arrested three men of the street tumbler and wandering vagrant type, who were examined, proved easily that they were elsewhere; and after the vote of condolence to our esteemed fellow-townsman, Stuart Denville, Esq, which followed the inquest, there seemed nothing more to be done but to bury Lady Teigne, which was accordingly done, and the princ.i.p.al undertaker cleared a hundred pounds by the grand funeral that took place, though it was quite a year before Lady Drelincourt would pay the whole of his bill.

So with Lady Teigne the horror was buried too, and in a fortnight the event that at one time threatened to interfere with the shopkeepers' and lodging-letters' season was forgotten.

For that s.p.a.ce of time, too, the familiar figure of the Master of the Ceremonies was not seen upon the Parade. Miss Denville was very ill, it was said, and after the funeral Isaac had to work hard at answering the door to receive the many cards that were left by fas.h.i.+onable people, till there was quite a heap in the old china bowl that stood in the narrow hall.

But the outside world knew nothing of the agonies of mind endured by the two princ.i.p.al occupants of that house--of the nights of sleepless horror pa.s.sed by Claire as she knelt and prayed for guidance, and of the hours during which the Master of the Ceremonies sat alone, staring blankly before him as if at some scene which he was ever witnessing, and which seemed to wither him, mind and body, at one stroke.

For that fortnight, save at the inquest, father and daughter had not met, but pa.s.sed their time in their rooms. But the time was gliding on, and they had to meet--the question occurring to each--how was it to be?

”I must leave it to chance,” thought the Master of the Ceremonies, with a s.h.i.+ver; and after a fierce struggle to master the agony he felt, he knew that in future he must lead two lives. So putting on his mask, he one morning walked down to the breakfast-room, and took his accustomed place.

Outwardly he seemed perfectly calm, and, save that the lines about his temples and the corners of his lips seemed deeper, he was little changed; but as he walked he was conscious of a tremulous feeling in the knees, and even when seated, that the curious palsied sensation went on.

On the previous night Morton had come in from a secret fis.h.i.+ng excursion, to find the house dark and still, and he had stood with his hands in his pockets hesitating as to whether he should go and take a lesson in smoking with Isaac in the pantry, steal down to the beach, or creep upstairs.

He finally decided on the latter course, and going up to the top of the house on tiptoe, he tapped softly at Claire's bedroom door.

It was opened directly by his sister, who had evidently just risen from an old dimity-covered easy-chair. She was in a long white dressing-gown, and, seen by the light of the one tallow candle on the table, she looked so pale and ghastly that the lad uttered an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n and caught hold of her thin, cold hands.

”Claire!--Sis!”

They were the first warm words of sympathy she had heard since that horrible night; and in a moment the icy horror upon her face broke up, her lips quivered, and, throwing her arms around her brother's neck, she burst into such a pa.s.sion of hysterical sobbing that, as he held her to his breast, he grew alarmed.