The White Virgin

“Poisoned!” cried Martha, as Dinah looked up wildly at her father. “Impossible, sir. I’ve kept it in a bottle tied down and locked up where no one could find it but myself.”

“Kept what?” cried the Major.

“The arsenic for the rats, sir.”

“But this is something worse, woman. There is no doubt about it. There are the signs. Some scoundrel has given him strychnia, and it must be one of those ruffians from the mine.”

A low, piteous sigh escaped from Dinah’s lips, as she softly laid the dog’s head on the stones, and then with a quick glance of apprehension, she rose and took hold of her father’s arm.

“Yes, my dear,” he said. “Poor Rollo was too true a servant, and watched for the pitiful purloiner. Now let him beware of my gun, for, by Jove, if I find any marauding scoundrel within shot, he shall certainly have the contents.”

Dinah said no word, but as Martha stood there holding the lamp, the light shone upon her dilated eyes, and lit up her white, contracted face, which seemed to have grown suddenly hard and stern. It was as if her father’s words had sent a sense of satisfaction through her, and she was looking out into the darkness of the night for the cowardly wretch who had robbed her of another friend, that he might come on once more and meet his fate.

She shivered the next moment, and clung to her father’s arm.

“I mean it,” he said fiercely. “I am a peaceful, quiet man, but I can be roused to action, and then – ”

He looked at Martha with his eyes flashing, and a fierce glow in his face that transformed him at once into the old man of war.

“Master!” whispered the old servant, with a low sob, and there was an appeal in her tones which seemed to calm him.

“Yes,” he said, as he gazed straight away into the darkness. “Whoever did this deed is mistaken in his man.”

A sigh escaped from Dinah’s lips, and she drew herself up as she clung more tightly to her father. Two of her protectors gone that night, but there was still a third, and a feeling of confidence strengthened her heart as she gripped her father’s arm.

“Sooner or later I shall square accounts with this man,” said the Major, as he walked slowly toward the door. “Oh, if I only knew!”

“If I only knew. If I only knew!” The words kept on repeating themselves in Dinah’s brain as she sought her room that night, till she found herself repeating them – “If he only knew – if he only knew!”

She had not commenced undressing, and in her agitated, nervous state every sound about the house attracted her attention, so that she listened eagerly as she suddenly heard a light tapping sound, followed by – “Yes, sir, what is it?”

“I didn’t want to disturb you, Martha; but have you moved my gun?”

“No, sir. It’s in the corner of your study between the window and the bookcase.”

“No, it is not there, but I am certain it was this afternoon.”

“I’m sure it was there to-night, sir, just before Mr Reed went away.”

“Very well, good-night,” said the Major; and he went back into the little study, and looked carefully round again.

“Why, of course!” he exclaimed, “I must have stood it in my room.”

Chapter Twenty Three.

The Tare Sowing

A man was going through the street with his pole extinguishing the gas lamps, as the hansom cab bearing Clive Reed went along at a sharp trot toward Russell Square. The waning light looked ghastly and strange, and well in keeping with his anxious state of mind, for in spite of all his genuine love for Dinah, it was impossible not to feel a thrill of misery akin to despair when reminded of one with whom so much of his boyhood and the later past had been mingled.

“Poor, passionate, weak girl!” he said to himself again and again, as he journeyed on, and his heart was full of sympathy for her and indignation against his brother, whom he connected with the trouble, whatever it might be.

“Sick unto death,” he muttered. “Heartbroken and despairing after finding him out. Oh, how can a man be so base?”

Then all kinds of projects had flashed across his mind as to what might be done. Janet would certainly separate sooner or later from Jessop, and when she did, as the Doctor had intimated, she would return to her old home, and then why should not Dinah help him to soften her hard lot?

“No,” he said, directly after. “It would be madness – impossible. Janet’s is not the nature to assimilate with Dinah’s. I am not so weak and blind to all her faults as I was then. Poor girl! Poor girl! Her life wrecked, and by my own brother too.”

At last!

The cab drew up at the great blank-looking door of the Doctor’s house, and Clive leaped out, paid the man, and hurried up the broad steps in the cold, grey morning. How many times, full of expectation and delight, he had hurried to that door bearing presents or bouquets; and now he was there once more – to hear what news of the bright, handsome girl whom he had made his idol from a boy?

His hand was upon the heavy knocker, but it dropped to his side, and he rang the night-bell, and then stood listening to the distant wheels of the cab in which he had come.

“Who is it?” came in a husky whisper from the mouth of the speaking-tube, and he answered back —

“I: Clive Reed.”

“Down directly.”

Five minutes later the door was opened by the Doctor himself, and quite at home there, Clive Reed sprang in to face his old friend standing in dressing-gown and slippers.

“How is she?” he cried, in a low excited whisper. “How is she?” repeated the Doctor, as he closed the door. “Here, come this way.”

He took a chamber candlestick from where he had set it down on the hall table, and led on into his consulting-room, with its walls adorned with grim-looking engravings of medical magnates, and its table with books and inkstand, two stethoscopes standing upright on the chimneypiece like a pair of very ancient attenuated vases.

“You came up at once, then?” said the Doctor grimly.

“Of course. I caught the mail; but don’t keep me – in suspense,” Clive was about to say, but he checked himself, for positions had altered now, and he had no right to be in suspense, so he used the word “waiting.”

“Waiting!” said the Doctor. “What do you mean?”

“Your telegram – about Janet. Is she very bad?”

“Confound Janet for a weak-minded idiot!” cried the Doctor testily. “Nothing of the kind. I wired to you to come up about this cursed mine.”

“Oh!” ejaculated Clive, with a feeling of relief. “Your telegram explained nothing, and I thought the poor girl was ill.”

“Ill! No: I wish she were. Be a lesson to her – a hussy. Now, then, what am I to do? Nice business this, sir. Here, on the strength of your representations, I put a life’s savings in that cursed mine, and they’re pretty well all swept away.”

Clive looked at him, as if doubting his old friend’s sanity.

“Don’t stand staring at me like a confounded stock-fish, sir. You’ve got me into this scrape, now tell me how to get out of it. Hang it all, Clive, I’ve been like a second father to you, and the least you could have done would have been to give me fair warning, so that I might have – have – hedged – yes, that’s the word my lovely son-in-law would have used. Now, then, before it is too late. I daresay I could get them back from him, as I only saw him to-night. Can you help me to make a better price?”

Clive seated himself, for he was weary, and the Doctor, after setting down his candlestick, was walking up and down the room as he talked.

“My dear Doctor,” said Clive, “will you explain what you mean? Cursed mine – too late – get them back from him. To begin with, who is ‘him’?”

“Who is ‘him’?” cried the Doctor furiously. “Why, that confounded brother of yours. After all that has passed, I was obliged to go to him hat in hand, and humble myself so as to try and save what I could out of the fire.”