object of this plot was to part me from you," added Richard Lambert more calmly and firmly, "I am absolutely confident; what its deeper motive was I dare not even think. It was known that I . . . loved you, Sue . . . that I would give my life to save you from trouble . . . I was your slave, your watch-dog. . . . I was forcibly removed, torn from you, my name disgraced, my health broken down. . . . But my life was not for them . . . it belongs to my lady alone. . . . Heaven would not allow it to be sacrificed to their villainous schemes. I fought against sickness and death with all the energy of despair. . . . It was a hand-to-hand fight, for discouragement, and anon despair, ranged themselves among my foes. . . . And now I have come back," he said with proud energy, "broken mayhap, yet still standing . . . a snapped oak yet full of vigor, yet . . . I have come back, and with God's help will be even with them yet."
He had straightened his young figure, and his strong, somewhat harsh voice echoed through the oak-paneled hall. He cared not if all the world heard him, if his enemies lurked about striving to spy upon him. His profession of love and of service to his lady was the sole remaining pride of his life, and now that he knew that she believed and trusted him, he longed for every man to hear what he had to say.
"Nay! what you say, kind Richard, fills me with dread," said Sue after a little pause. "I am glad . . . glad that you have come back. . . . For some weeks, nay, months past, I have had the presentiment of some coming evil. . . . I have . . . I have felt lonely and. . . ."
"Not unhappy?" he asked with his usual earnestness. "I would not have my lady unhappy for all the treasures of this world."
"No!" she replied meditatively, striving to be conscious of her own feelings, "I do not think that I am unhappy . . . only anxious . . . and . . . a little lonely: that is all. . . . Sir Marmaduke is oft away: when he is at home, I scarce ever see him, and he but rarely speaks to me . . . and methinks there is but scant sympathy 'twixt Mistress de Chavasse and me, though she is kind at times in her way."
Then she turned her eyes, bright with unshed tears, down again to him.
"But all seems right again!" she said with a sweet, sad smile, "now that you have come back, my dear . . . dear friend!"
"God bless you for these words!"
"I grieved terribly when I heard . . . about you . . . at first . . ." she said almost gaily now, "yet somehow I could not believe it all . . . and now. . . ."
"Yes? . . . and now?" he asked.
"Now I believe in you," she replied simply. "I believe that you care for me, and that you are my friend."
"Your friend, indeed, for I would give my life for you."
Once more he stooped, but now he kissed her hand. He was her friend, and had the right to do this. He had gradually mastered his emotion, his sense of wrong, and with that exquisite selflessness which real love alone can kindle in a human heart, he had succeeded in putting aside all thought of his own great misery, his helplessness and the hopelessness of his position, and remembered only that she looked fragile, a little older, sadder, and had need of his help.
"And now, sweet lady," he said, forcing himself to speak calmly of that which always set his heart and senses into a turmoil of passionate jealousy, "will you tell me something about him."
"Him?"
"The prince. . . ." he suggested.
But she shook her head resolutely.
"No, kind Richard," she said gently, "I will not speak to you of the prince. I know that you do not think well of him. . . . I wish to look upon you as my friend, and I could not do that if you spoke ill of him, because . . ."
She paused, for what she now had to tell him was very hard to say, and she knew what a terrible blow she would be dealing to his heart, from the wild beating of her own.
"Yes?" he asked. "Because? . . ."
"Because he is my husband," she whispered.
Her head fell forward on her breast. She would not trust herself to look at him now, for she knew that the sight of his grief was more than she could bear. She was conscious that at her words he had drawn his hand away from hers, but he spoke no word, nor did the faintest exclamation escape his lips.
Thus they remained for a few moments longer side by side: she slightly above him, with head bent, with hot tears falling slowly from her downcast eyes, her heart well-nigh breaking with the consciousness of the irreparable; he somewhat below, silent too, and rigid, all passion, all emotion, love even, numbed momentarily by the violence, the suddenness of this terrible blow.
Then without a word, without a sigh or look, he turned, and she heard his footsteps echoing across the hall, then dying away on the threshold of the door beyond. Anon the door itself closed to with a dull bang which seemed to find an echo in her heart like the tolling of a passing bell.
Then only did she raise her head, and look about her. The hall was deserted and seemed infinitely lonely, silent, and grim. The young girl-wife, who had just found a friend only to lose him again, called out in mute appeal to this old house, the oak-covered walls, the very stones themselves, for sympathy.
She was so infinitely, so immeasurably lonely, with that awful, irretrievable day at Dover behind her, with all its dreariness, its silent solemnity, its weird finish in the vestry, the ring upon her finger, her troth plighted to a man whom she feared and no longer loved.
Oh! the pity of it all! the broken young life! the vanished dreams!
Sue bent her head down upon her hands, her lips touched her own fingers there where her friend's had rested in gratitude and love, and she cried, cried like a broken-hearted woman, cried for her lost illusions, and the end of her brief romance!
CHAPTER XXVII
LADY SUE'S FORTUNE
Less than an hour later four people were assembled in the small withdrawing-room of Acol Court.
Master Skyffington sat behind a central table, a little pompous of manner, clad in sober black with well-starched linen cuffs and collar, his scanty hair closely cropped, his thin hands fingering with assurance and perfect calm the various documents laid out before him. Near him Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse, sitting with his back to the dim November light, which vainly strove to penetrate the tiny glass panes of the casement windows.
In a more remote corner of the room sat Editha de Chavasse, vainly trying to conceal the agitation which her trembling hands, her quivering face and restless eyes persistently betrayed. And beside the central table, near Master Skyffington and facing Sir Marmaduke, was Lady Susannah Aldmarshe, only daughter and heiress of the late Earl of Dover, this day aged twenty-one years, and about to receive from the hands of her legal guardians the vast fortune which her father had bequeathed to her, and which was to become absolutely hers this day to dispose of as she list.
"And now, my dear child," said Master Skyffington with due solemnity, when he had disposed a number of documents and papers in methodical order upon the table, "let me briefly explain to you the object . . . hem . . . of this momentous meeting here to-day."
"I am all attention, master," said Sue vaguely, and her eyes wide-open, obviously absent, she gazed fixedly on the silhouette of Sir Marmaduke, grimly outlined against the grayish window-panes.
"I must tell you, my dear child," resumed Master Skyffington after a slight pause, during which he had studied with vague puzzledom the inscrutable face of the young girl, "I must tell you that your late father, the noble Earl of Dover, had married the heiress of Peter Ford, the wealthiest merchant this country hath ever known. She was your own lamented mother, and the whole of her fortune, passing through her husband's hands, hath now devolved upon you. My much-esteemed patron — I may venture to say friend — Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse, having been appointed your legal guardian by the Court of Chancery, and I myself being thereupon named the repository of your securities, these have been administered by me up to now.