THE hatch of the Steward’s House stood open, and Mr. Larkin entered. There was a girl’s voice crying in the room next the hall, and he opened the door.

The little girl was sobbing with her apron to her eyes, and hearing the noise she lowered it and looked at the door, when the lank form of the bald attorney and his sinister face peering in met her eyes, and arrested her lamentation with a new emotion.

“It’s only I— Mr. Larkin,” said he. He liked announcing himself wherever he went. “I want to know how Mrs. Mervyn is now.”

“Gone dead, sir — about a quarter of an hour ago;” and the child’s lamentation recommenced.

“Ha! very sad. The doctor here?”

“He’s gone, sir.”

“And you’re certain she’s dead?”

“Yes, sure, sir,” and she sobbed on.

“Stop that,” he said, sternly, “just a moment — thanks. I want to see Mr. Dingwell, the old gentleman who has been staying here — where is he?”

“In the drawing-room, sir, please,” said the child, a good deal frightened. And to the drawing-room he mounted.

Light was streaming from a door a little open, and a fragrance also of a peculiar tobacco, which he recognised as that of Mr. Dingwell’s chibouque. There was a sound of feet upon the floor of the room above, which Mr. Larkin’s ear received as those of persons employed in arranging the dead body.

I would be perhaps wronging Mr. Dingwell, as I still call him, to say that he smoked like a man perfectly indifferent. On the contrary, his countenance looked lowering and furious — so much so that Mr. Larkin removed his hat, a courtesy which he had intended studiously to omit.

“Oh! Mr. Dingwell,” said he, “I need not introduce myself.”

“No, I prefer your withdrawing yourself and shutting the door,” said Dingwell.

“Yes, in a moment, sir. I merely wish to mention that Lord Verney — I mean your brother, sir — has fully apprized me of the conversation with which you thought it prudent to favour him.”

“You’d rather have been the medium yourself, I fancy. Something to be made of such a situation? Hey! but you shan’t.”

“I don’t know what you mean, sir, by something to be made. If I chose to mention your name and abode in the city, sir, you’d not enjoy the power of insulting others long.”

“Pooh, sir! I’ve got your letter and my brother’s secret. I know my strength. I’m steering the fire-ship that will blow you all up, if I please; and you talk of flinging a squib at me, you blockhead! I tell you, sir, you’ll make nothing of me; and now you may as well withdraw. There are two things in this house you don’t like, though you’ll have enough of them one day; there’s death up stairs, sir, and some thing very like the devil here.”

Mr. Larkin thought he saw signs of an approaching access of the Dingwell mania, so he made his most dignified bow, and at the door remarked, “I take my leave, sir, and when next we meet I trust I may find you in a very different state of mind, and one more favourable to business.”

He had meditated a less covert sneer and menace, but modified his speech prudently as he uttered it; but there was still quite enough that was sinister in his face, as he closed the door, to strike Mr. Dingwell’s suspicion.

“Only I’ve got that fellow in my pocket, I’d say he was bent on mischief; but he’s in my pocket; and suppose he did, no great matter, after all — only dying. I’m not gathering up my strength; no — I shall never be the same man again — and life so insipid — and that poor old doll up stairs. So many things going on under the stars, all ending so!”

Yes — so many things. There was Cleve, chief mourner today, chatting now wonderfully gaily, with a troubled heart, and a kind of growing terror, to that foolish victim who no more suspected him than he did the resurrection of his uncle Arthur, smoking his chibouque only a mile away.

There, too, far away, is a pale, beautiful young mother, sitting on the bed-side of her sleeping boy, weeping silently, as she looks on his happy face, and —thinks.

Mr. Dingwell arrayed in travelling costume, suddenly appeared before Lord Verney again.

“I’m not going to plague you — only this. I’ve an idea I shall lose my life if I don’t go to London to-night, and I must catch the mail train. Tell your people to put the horses to your brougham, and drop me at Llwynan.”

Lord Verney chose to let his brother judge for himself in this matter, being only too glad to get rid of him.

Shrieking through tunnels, thundering through lonely valleys, gliding over wide, misty plains, spread abroad like lakes, the mail train bore Arthur Verney, and also — each unconscious of the other’s vicinity — Mr. Jos. Larkin toward London.

Mr. Larkin had planned a checkmate in two moves. He had been brooding over it in his mufflers, sometimes with his eyes shut, sometimes with his eyes open — all night, in the corner of his carriage. When he stepped out in the morning, with his despatch-box in his hand, whom should he meet in the cold gray light upon the platform, full front, but Mr. Dingwell. He was awfully startled.

Dingwell had seen him, too; Larkin had felt, as it were, his quick glance touch him, and he was sure that Dingwell had observed his momentary but significant change of countenance. He, therefore, walked up to him, touched him on the arm, and said, with a smile —

“I thought, sir, I recognized you. I trust you have an attendant? Can I do anything for you? Cold, this morning. Hadn’t you better draw your muffler up a little about your face?” There was a significance about this last suggestion which Mr. Dingwell could not mistake, and he complied. “Running down again to Malory in a few days, I suppose?”

“Yes,” said Dingwell.

“So shall I, and if quite convenient to you, I should wish, sir, to talk that little matter over much more carefully, and — can I call a cab for you? I should look in upon you today only I must be at Brighton, not to return till tomorrow, and very busy then, too.”

They parted. Dingwell did not like it.

“He’s at mischief. I’ve thought of every thing, and I can’t see any thing that would answer his game. I don’t like his face.”

Dingwell felt very oddly. It was all like a dream; an unaccountable horror overcame him. He sent out for a medicine that day, which the apothecary refused to give to Mrs. Rumble. But he wrote an explanatory note alleging that he was liable to fits, and so got back just a little, at which he pooh’d and psha’d, and wrote to some other apothecaries, and got together what he wanted, and told Mrs. Rumble he was better.

He had his dinner as usual in his snuggery in Rosemary Court, and sent two letters to the post by Mrs. Rumble. That to Lord Verney contained Larkin’s one unguarded letter inviting him to visit England, and with all the caution compatible with being intelligible, but still not enough — suggesting the audacious game which had been so successfully played. A brief and pointed commentary in Mr. Dingwell’s handwriting, accompanied this.

The other enclosed to Wynne Williams, to whose countenance he had taken a fancy; the certificate of his marriage to Rebecca Mervyn, and a reference to the Rev. Thomas Bartlett; and charged him to make use of it to quiet any unfavourable rumours about that poor lady, who was the only human being he belie............