The Ashiel mystery Part 32

Gimblet told them, besides, that he had succeeded in finding the widow of the respectable plumber named Harsden, whom Julia had mentioned as being her father. Mrs. Harsden corroborated the story, and said that it was certainly the Countess Romaninov to whom Mrs. Meredith had consigned the little girl they had given her.

Widely distributed advertis.e.m.e.nts also brought to light the nurses of the two children; both the nurse who had taken Julia out to Russia and the woman who had been with Mrs. Meredith when she took over the charge of the McConachan baby, quickly claiming the reward that was offered for their discovery. There was no longer any room for doubt that Juliet Byrne was the same person as Juliana McConachan, or that Julia Romaninov had begun life as little Judy Harsden.

All this scarcely sufficed to rouse Juliet from the apathy into which she had fallen. To her it seemed incredible to think with what excitement and delight such news would have filled her a few months earlier.

Now, since David plainly no longer cared for her, nothing mattered any longer. Her depression was put down to the shock she had suffered, and efforts were made to feed her up and coddle her, which she ungratefully resented.

She had nothing in life to look forward to now, so she told herself, except the horrible ordeal of the trial which she would be obliged to attend.

It was in the dejection now becoming habitual to her, that she sat idly one fine October morning in her little sitting-room at the consulate. She had refused to play tennis with her stepsisters, not because she had anything else to do, but because nothing was worth doing any more, and because it was less trouble to sit and gaze mournfully through the open window at the yellow leaves of the poplar in the garden, as from time to time one of them fluttered down through the still air.

How unspeakably sad it was, she thought to herself, this slow falling of the leaves, like the gradual but persistent loss of our hopes and illusions, which eventually make each human dweller in this world of change feel as bare and forlorn as the leafless winter trees.

On a branch a few feet away, a robin perched, and after looking at her critically for a few moments lifted up its voice in cheerful song.

But she took no heed of it, and continued to brood over her sorrows.

All men were faithless. With them, it was out of sight, out of mind, and she would a.s.suredly never, never believe in one again. The best thing she could do, she decided, was to put away all thought of such things, and forget the man whom she had once been so vain as to imagine really cared for her.

And just as she told herself for the hundredth time that she had given up all hope and had resigned herself to the role of broken-hearted maiden, the door opened, and David was shown in.

By good luck, she was alone. Lady Byrne was not yet down, and her stepsisters were out; so there was no one to see her blushes and add to her embarra.s.sment.

In the surprise of seeing him, all her presence of mind vanished, leaving her speechless and trembling with agitation.

For his part, David approached her with a confusion as obvious as her own.

"Juliet," he stammered as soon as they were left alone together, "I know I oughtn't to have come, but I simply couldn't keep away."

"Why oughtn't you to have come?" was all she could ask foolishly.

"Because I know you can't want to see me," said the absurd young man, "though I do think you liked me pretty well before, didn't you? when Maisie Tarver tied my tongue; or ought to have, I'm afraid I should say. But she had enough sense to drop me when I was arrested. She couldn't stand a man arrested for murder any more than you or anyone else could?"

He said the last words with an air of shamefaced interrogation.

"Why," said Juliet, who was being carried off her feet on the top of a rapturous flood, "what nonsense! You were as innocent as I was. What would it matter if you were arrested twenty times!"

"Well, I shouldn't care to be, myself," said David, without apparently deriving much satisfaction from such a suggestion. "Once is enough for me. And anyway," he added inconsequently, "you can't very well marry a fellow who is first cousin to a man who's as good as hanged already!"

"Oh, David, David," cried Juliet; "as if that mattered! But who do you suppose I am-don't you know that he's my first cousin just as he is yours?"

"By Jingo," said David, "I never thought of that, somehow. Then we're both in the same boat!" And he stepped forward and caught her by the hands.

"Yes, David," she said, as he drew her to him tenderly, "both in the same boat. And what can be nicer than that?"

THE END