Cynthia Wakeham's Money Part 28

"Very well," he rejoined, with some wistfulness, and turned with his usual impetuosity towards the door. "I will go to Dr. Sellick's, then, at once, that I may receive your sister's communication the sooner. Tell her every moment will be an hour till it is in my hands."

"Doris will carry it to you as soon as it is dark. Had we known you were going to stop here, she might have had it ready now. As it is, look for it as I have said, and may it bring you no deeper pain than the mystery of our seclusion has already done. Hermione has n.o.ble qualities, and if her temper had never been injured by the accident which befell her in her infancy, there might have been no call for Doris' errand to-night."

"I will remember that," said he, and left the house with the confident smile of a man who feels it impossible to doubt the woman towards whom his heart has gone out in the fullest love.

When the door was shut behind him, Hermione came stealing again down-stairs.

"Does he--is he--prepared to receive the letter?" she asked.

Emma nodded. "I promised that it should go as soon as it is dusk."

"Then send Doris to me in half an hour; and do not try to see me again to-night. I must bear its long and tedious hours alone." And for a second time Hermione disappeared from the room.

In half an hour Doris was sent upstairs. She found Hermione standing in the centre of her room with a thick packet in her hand. She was very pale and her eyes blazed strangely. As Doris advanced she held out the packet with a hand that shook notwithstanding all her efforts to render it firm.

"Take this," she said; "carry it to where Mr. Etheridge stays when here, and place it in his hands yourself, just as you did a former note I entrusted to you."

Doris, with a flush, seized the letter, her face one question, but her lips awed from speaking by the expression of her mistress' face.

"You will do what I say?" asked Hermione.

The woman nodded.

"Go then, and do not wait for an answer; there will be none to-night."

Her gesture of dismissal was imperative and Doris turned to go.

But Hermione had one word more to say. "When you come back," she added, "come to my door and tap on it three times. By that I shall know you have delivered the letter; but you need not come in."

"Very well, Miss," answered the woman, speaking for the first time. And as Hermione turned her back, she gave her young mistress one burning, inquisitive look and then slid out of the room with her eyes on the packet which she almost seemed to devour with her eyes.

As she pa.s.sed the laboratory door she detected the thin weasel-like face of Huckins looking out.

"What is that?" he whispered, pointing eagerly at the packet.

"Be in the highway at Dobbins' corner, and I'll tell you," she slyly returned, going softly on her way.

And he, with a chuckle which ought to have sounded through that house like a premonition of evil, closed the laboratory door with a careful hand, and descending the twisted staircase which led to the hall below, prepared to follow out her injunction in his own smooth and sneaking way.

"I think I'll spend the evening at the prayer-meeting," he declared, looking in at Emma, as he pa.s.sed the sitting-room door. "I feel the need of such comfort now and then. Is there anything I can do for either of you up street?"

Emma shook her head; she was glad to be rid of his company for this one evening; and he went out of the front door with a quiet, benevolent air which may not have imposed on her, but which certainly did on Doris, who was watching from the garden to see him go.

They met, as she had suggested, at Dobbins' corner. As it was not quite dark, they walked into a shaded and narrow lane where they supposed themselves to be free from all observation.

"Now tell me," said he, "what your errand is. That it is important I know from the way you look. What is it, good, kind Doris; anything that will help us in our plans?"

"Perhaps," said she. "It is a letter for Mr. Etheridge; see how big and thick it is. It ought to tell a deal, this letter; it ought to explain why she never leaves the house."

The woman's curious excitement, which was made up of curiosity and a real desire to know the secret of what affected her two young mistresses so closely, was quickly communicated to the scheming, eager old man.

Taking the packet from her hand, he felt of it with trembling and inquisitive fingers, during which operation it would have been hard to determine upon which face the desire to break the seal was most marked.

"It may contain papers--law papers," he suggested, his thumb and forefinger twitching as they pa.s.sed over the fastening.

But Doris shook her head.

"No," she declared vivaciously, "there are no law-papers in that envelope. She has been writing and writing for a week. It is her secret, I tell you--the secret of all their queer doings, and why they stay in the house so persistently."

"Then let us surprise that secret," said he. "If we want to help them and make them do like other reasonable folks, we must know with what we have to contend."

"I am sure we would be justified," she rejoined. "But I am afraid Miss Hermione will find us out. Mr. Etheridge will tell her somebody meddled with the fastening."

"Let me take the letter to the hotel, and I will make that all right. It is not the first----" But here he discreetly paused, remembering that Doris was not yet quite ready to receive the full details of his history.

"But the time? It will take an hour to open and read all there is written here, and Miss Hermione is waiting for me to tell her that I have delivered it to Mr. Etheridge."

"Tell her you had other errands. Go to the stores--the neighbors. She need never know you delivered this last."

"But if you take it I won't know what is in it, and I want to read it myself."

"I will tell you everything she writes. My memory is good, and you shall not miss a word."

"But--but----"

"It is your only chance," he insinuated; "the young ladies will never tell you themselves."

"I know it; yet it seems a mean thing to do. Can you close the letter so that neither he nor they will ever know it has been opened?"

"Trust me," he leered.

"Hurry then; I will be in front of Dr. Sellick's in an hour. Give me the letter as you go by, and when I have delivered it, meet me on my way back and tell me what she says."

He promised, and hastened with his treasure to the room he still kept at the hotel. She watched him as long as he was in sight and then went about her own improvised errands. Did she realize that she had just put in jeopardy not only her young mistresses' fortunes, but even their lives?

XIX.

A DISCOVERY.

Frank Etheridge waited a long time that night for the promised communication. Darkness came, but no letter; eight o'clock struck, and still there was no sign of the dilatory Doris. Naturally impatient, he soon found this lengthy waiting intolerable. Edgar was busy in his office, or he would have talked to him. The evening paper which he had brought from New York had been read long ago, and as for his cigar, it lacked flavor and all power to soothe him. In his exasperation he went to the book-shelves, and began looking over the numberless volumes ranged in neat rows before him. He took out one, glanced at it, and put it back; he took out another, without even seeing what its t.i.tle was, looked at it a moment, sighed, and put that back; he took out a third, which opened in his hand at the t.i.tle-page, saw that it was one of those old-fashioned volumes, designated _The Keepsake_, and was about to close and replace it as he had done the others, when his attention was suddenly and forcibly attracted by a name written in fine and delicate characters on the margin at the top. It was no other than this:

HARRIET SMITH Gift of her husband October 3rd 1848

_Harriet Smith!_ Astounded, almost aghast, he ran to Edgar's office with the volume.

"Edgar! Edgar!" he cried; "look here! See that name! And the book was in your library too. What does it mean? Who was, who is Harriet Smith, that you should have her book?"