“Is it possible, Natalie?” she asked. “Has Launcelot Linzie really been here, unknown to your father or to me?”
“Where is the harm if he has?” answered Natalie, with a sudden outbreak of temper. “Am I never to see my cousin again, because Mr. Turlington happens to be jealous of him?”
She suddenly turned away her head. The rich color flowed over her face and neck. Miss Lavinia, proceeding sternly with the administration of the necessary reproof, was silenced midway by a new change in her niece’s variable temper. Natalie burst into tears. Satisfied with this appearance of sincere contrition, the old lady consented to overlook what had happened; and, for this occasion only, to keep her niece’s secret. They would all be in Somersetshire, she remarked, before any more breaches of discipline could be committed. Richard had fortunately made no disco veries; and the matter might safely be trusted, all things considered, to rest where it was.
Miss Lavinia might possibly have taken a less hopeful view of the circumstances, if she had known that one of the men-servants at Muswell Hill was in Richard Turlington’s pay, and that this servant had seen Launce leave the grounds by the back-garden gate.
NINTH SCENE.
The Drawing-Room.
“Amelia!”
“Say something.”
“Ask him to sit down.”
Thus addressing one another in whispers, the three stepdaughters of Lady Winwood stood bewildered in their own drawing-room, helplessly confronting an object which appeared before them on the threshold of the door.
The date was the 23d of December. The time was between two and three in the afternoon. The occasion was the return of the three sisters from the Committee meeting of the Sacred Concerts’ Society. And the object was Richard Turlington.
He stood hat in hand at the door, amazed by his reception. “I have come up this morning from Somersetshire,” he said. “Haven’t you heard? A matter of business at the office has forced me to leave my guests at my house in the country. I return to them tomorrow. When I say my guests, I mean the Graybrookes. Don’t you know they are staying with me? Sir Joseph and Miss Lavinia and Natalie?” On the utterance of Natalie’s name, the sisters roused themselves. They turned about and regarded each other with looks of dismay. Turlington’s patience began to fail him. “Will you be so good as to tell me what all this means?” he said, a little sharply. “Miss Lavinia asked me to call here when she heard I was coming to town. I was to take charge of a pattern for a dress, which she said you would give me. You ought to have received a telegram explaining it all, hours since. Has the message not reached you?”
The leading spirit of the three sisters was Miss Amelia. She was the first who summoned presence of mind enough to give a plain answer to Turlington’s plain question.
“We received the telegram this morning, “she said. “Something has happened since which has shocked and surprised us. We beg your pardon.” She turned to one of her sisters. “Sophia, the pattern is ready in the drawer of that table behind you. Give it to Mr. Turlington.”
Sophia produced the packet. Before she handed it to the visitor, she looked at her sister. “Ought we to let Mr. Turlington go,” she asked, “as if nothing had happened?”
Amelia considered silently with herself. Dorothea, the third sister (who had not spoken yet), came forward with a suggestion. She proposed, before proceeding further, to inquire whether Lady Winwood was in the house. The idea was instantly adopted. Sophia rang the bell. Amelia put the questions when the servant appeared.
Lady Winwood had left the house for a drive immediately after luncheon. Lord Winwood—inquired for next—had accompanied her ladyship. No message had been left indicating the hour of their return.
The sisters looked at Turlington, uncertain what to say or do next. Miss Amelia addressed him as soon as the servant had left the room.
“Is it possible for you to remain here until either my father or Lady Winwood return?” she asked.
“It is quite impossible. Minutes are of importance to me to-day.”
“Will you give us one of your minutes? We want to consider something which we may have to say to you before you go.”
Turlington, wondering, took a chair. Miss Amelia put the case before her sisters from the sternly conscientious point of view, at the opposite end of the room.
“We have not found out this abominable deception by any underhand means,” she said. “The discovery has been forced upon us, and we stand pledged to nobody to keep the secret. Knowing as we do how cruelly this gentleman has been used, it seems to me that we are bound in honor to open his eyes to the truth. If we remain silent we make ourselves Lady Winwood’s accomplices. I, for one— I don’t care what may come of it—refuse to do that.”
Her sisters agreed with her. The first chance their clever stepmother had given them of asserting their importance against hers was now in their hands. Their jealous hatred of Lady Winwood assumed the mask of Duty—duty toward an outraged and deceived fellow-creature. Could any earthly motive be purer than that? “Tell him, Amelia!” cried the two young ladies, with the headlong recklessness of the sex which only stops to think when the time for reflection has gone by.
A vague sense of something wrong began to stir uneasily in Turlington’s mind.
“Don’t let me hurry you,” he said, “but if you really have anything to tell me—”
Miss Amelia summoned her courage, and began.
“We have something very dreadful to tell you,” she said, interrupting him. “You have been presented in this house, Mr. Turlington, as a gentleman engaged to marry Lady Winwood’s cousin. Miss Natalie Graybrooke.” She paused there—at the outset of the disclosure. A sudden change of expression passed over Turlington’s face, which daunted her for the moment. “We have hitherto understood,” she went on, “that you were to be married to that young lady early in next month.”
“Well?”
He could say that one word. Looking at their pale faces, and their eager eyes, he could say no more.
“Take care!” whispered Dorothea, in her sister’s ear. “Look at him, Amelia! Not too soon.”
Amelia went on more carefully.
“We have just returned from a musical meeting,” she said. “One of the ladies there was an acquaintance, a former school-fellow of ours. She is the wife of the rector of St. Columb Major—a large church, far from this—at the East End of London.”
“I know nothing about the woman or the church,” interposed Turlington, sternly.
“I must beg you to wait a little. I can’t tell you what I want to tell you unless I refer to the rector’s wife. She knows Lady Winwood by name. And she heard of Lady Winwood recently under very strange circumstances—circumstances connected with a signature in one of the books of the church.”
Turlington lost his self-control. “You have got something against my Natalie,” he burst out; “I know it by your whispering, I see it in your looks! Say it at once in plain words.”
There was no trifling with him now. In plain words Amelia said it.