Mr. Conroy departed for London immediately after that momentous walk with Ella Winter, which would never be forgotten by either of them. There was a last pressure of the hands, a last look into each other's eyes, and he was gone. She wished their engagement not to be spoken of at present, and he willingly complied.

The days wore on. When three had passed, and there came no tidings of Hubert Stone, old Aaron grew somewhat perplexed. What could he mean by absenting himself? That so good a swimmer and strong a man, as Hubert was, had failed to reach the shore, no one who knew him entertained any fear. Where was he, then?

On the fourth day Aaron presented himself before his mistress, who was alone in her own sitting-room.

"No news yet of that scapegrace lad, ma'am!" he said, a quaver of trouble in his voice. "He must have swum off to get succour for you, Miss Ella, as it was his duty to do; but Heaven alone knows where he's got to."

Ella smiled. She believed Hubert to be perfectly safe and quite able to take care of himself, but she wished to set the old retainer's doubts at rest.

"Be at ease, Aaron. After a feat like that your nephew would naturally need some recreation; I dare say he has gone away for a few days' holiday. We shall see him back again shortly."

"What I can't get out of my head is this: that he might have been left on board. And oh, my dear young mistress, that night the wreck went to pieces in the gale!"

"He was not left on board, Aaron; rely upon that: and one of the boatmen, you know, saw him swimming towards the shore. It must have been he; nobody else was out. Believe me," impressively added Miss Winter, "there is not, so far as I believe, the slightest cause for alarm. Hubert is gone away, perhaps on business, combining that at least with pleasure, and you will soon have him at home again. Such is my opinion, and I have good grounds for it."

Aaron felt reassured. He acknowledged that it might be so.

"Not but what the careless young jackanapes ought to have told me before he went, Miss Ella!" he urged.

"Or have written to you," replied Ella.

But as more days passed on and Hubert neither came nor sent, other people as well as Aaron began to wonder; and the question, What could have become of him? made the chief topic of the neighbourhood. That he had undertaken this bout of swimming to obtain succour for Miss Winter, none disputed, and Ella did not undeceive them. The real facts, there could be little doubt, were these. Upon Hubert's forcing the closed door and finding Miss Winter senseless on the deck, he must at the same time have seen the little boat coming to her rescue. Fearful that her first words might be to denounce him, and probably feeling heartily ashamed of himself, he must have plunged into the sea to swim ashore, not choosing to stay and face the result.

But on what part of the shore had he landed, and where could he be staying? What, in fact, had become of him? Aaron and his wife grew strangely uneasy: if anything were detaining him, business or pleasure, surely he would write, they said to one another.

"He has not got so much as a clean shirt with him--or a collar," lamented Dorothy. "What _can_ he do without them?"

"Oh, drat the shirts and collars!" retorted Aaron, not less crusty and contradictory than usual. "As if he couldn't buy himself things o' that sort!"

There came a relief to their fears. Dr. Jago, hearing that the old people were becoming seriously alarmed, avowed that Hubert Stone had got safely to land that night, after his swimming-feat, and had made his way at once to his house. Here he had put on dry clothes, some things of the young man's happening to be at the Doctor's, had borrowed a little money of him, and had gone away again, saying he had business at a distance.

"And why couldn't you have told this afore, sir?" grumbled Aaron, when he had heard Dr. Jago's narrative.

"Because Hubert asked me not to mention it until he was back again," replied the little Doctor. "But I thought it might be better to do so now, as he stays away so long and you seem to be getting into a fever over it."

"Do you know where he went to, sir?"

"No; I do not. He is all right, depend upon it, Aaron; he'll be turning up one of these fine days."

"All the same, he might have writ to me just a line," contended the old man.

Miss Winter was nearly as anxious as Aaron for the return of Hubert. She had determined to question him further upon that strange assertion he had made--that she had no right to Heron Dyke--and to insist upon a full and explicit answer. A thought crossed her mind sometimes that possibly Hubert might be fearing this very questioning, and was staying away in consequence.

And the time again rolled on. Three weeks came and went, and Hubert Stone remained to them all as one dead.

"He does not return, Miss Ella," cried Aaron to his mistress one morning; and there was a worn, pitiful look on his face that she had never seen before. "Dorothy's fretting frightfully: she will have it, something dreadful has happened to him, and that we shall never set eyes on him again."

Involuntarily there came into Ella's memory what Dorothy had told her about the dread apparition seen by her that midnight in the shrubbery. She herself had no faith in such superstitious fancies, but she could quite understand the hold they would have over the mind of a woman like Dorothy Stone.

"It is strange," she replied, "I grant that; and, as you say, he might have written. Still, had any harm befallen him you would surely have heard of it from one source or another. I have felt no fear since I heard the report of Dr. Jago."

"But he stays so long, ma'am."

"We can only go on hoping for the best. Young men have sometimes strange fancies for roving, and they do not always think of those to whom their absence or silence may cause grief."

"He's gone to London, mayhap, that wild place, and won't come back till he's parted with his last shilling," suggested Aaron, anxious to snatch a morsel of comfort anyhow. "I'd once a fling of that sort myself, ma'am, when I was a young fellow, only I got no further than Norwich. They thought I had drowned myself; and father, he had Wippenham Pond dragged for me."

"Let us hope that Hubert's freak may prove no worse than yours," said Ella, cheeringly. "Wait a moment; don't go; I want to speak to you."

Failing Hubert, Miss Winter had made up her mind to question Aaron as to whether he knew anything or not, for her suspense was becoming intolerable.

"Aaron," she began very gravely, "when your grandson Hubert was on board the wreck with me that afternoon, now three weeks ago, he told me something which made a very great impression upon me at the time, and which I cannot forget since. It is in my mind every hour of the day--a source of annoyance. As he does not return, I must question you."

Aaron gazed at his mistress. She thought he looked uneasy.

"What he said was this: 'A dozen words from me, and Heron Dyke would know you as its mistress no more. What you hold, you hold by fraud.' Now, Aaron Stone, I ask you, as my uncle's old and faithful servant, to tell me what meaning was hidden in your grandson's words, when he spoke to me thus."

Aaron's face was turning livid; he stood a picture of abject terror. Twice he essayed to speak, and twice no sound came from his dry lips. Miss Winter noted the emotion.

"What he knows--if there is anything to know--I think you must know; and I ask you, Aaron, what he meant."

"I know no more than the dead what he meant," gasped the old man in a husky whisper. "He must have been mad--mad!"

"Can you attach no meaning to his words?"

"None, ma'am; none whatever. He must have been quite mad."

"No, he was not mad, I think. He spoke those words as a truthful man speaks. It seemed to me then, it seems to me still, that there was truth in them: though I don't know how much."

"Miss Ella," cried the old man eagerly, "you know what has been said--that a keg o' spirits was on board below. Hubert must have got to it."

That this was to a certain extent true, she believed; but not that he had taken sufficient to induce him to invent such a thing.

"His mother died in an asylum, poor thing," resumed Aaron, catching up his labouring breath; "and at times--only at times, you know, ma'am--I have not been able to rightly make him out, and I've fancied that he might have a touch of her complaint, and wasn't altogether his own master. It must have been so that afternoon."

Aaron's hands trembled like those of a man afflicted with palsy, and the muscles of his face twitched convulsively as he spoke. His mistress could scarcely find in her heart to question him further.

"And yet it was a very strange assertion for Hubert to make," she said, speaking gently. "He stated distinctly that I held Heron Dyke by fraud. Now, were such the case, Aaron, you, as my uncle's confidential servant, must surely be aware of it. Hubert would not know what you do not, especially of a grave secret."

"That he'd not," affirmed the old man. "I knew more of the Squire's secrets, Miss Ella, than any man living. Were he alive this moment he'd tell you so."

"Then there was--there is--no fraud, as far as you are aware?"

"Certainly not, ma'am. How would it be possible?"

"That I cannot guess."

"Look here now, Miss Ella, there _couldn't be_. The Squire's will was drawn up by Lawyer Daventry, and signed by himself in the presence of witnesses. Everything but a few legacies was to come to you, as he had meant it to all his life. Fraud, ma'am! if he had left it away from you one might talk of fraud; not as it is. No, no! That wretched lad--and won't I give it him!--was in one of his wild fits when he said such words, not rightly accountable."

Could Miss Winter say more? She asked Aaron no further questions, but let him go. Still, in her own mind she could not feel satisfied. What brought that look of terror into Aaron's face when she repeated to him Hubert's words? Why had he trembled to that strange excess? and why had his emotion been so great?

And the more Miss Winter strove to assure herself that there was no cause to fear things were not honest and straightforward, the less she thought them so, and she resolved to speak to her uncle's lawyer, Mr. Daventry. Walking into Nullington, she found him at his office, and saw him alone.

"I have come to seek your advice on what seems to me a very important matter," she began, when she was seated. "I could not rest without coming to you."

"I need hardly say, my dear Miss Winter, that I am entirely at your service," he replied.

"It has been intimated to me that fraud of some kind has been at work in connection with my inheritance of Heron Dyke," she continued, having previously determined to avoid if possible the mention of Hubert's name. "I am precluded from telling you in what way this information reached me; but it was declared to me, in unmistakable terms, that I had no more right to the property than you have."

Lawyer Daventry's eyebrows went up in utter surprise. He drew his chair a little closer to that of Miss Winter, and began to bite his quill pen meditatively, as he waited to hear more.

"You, Mr. Daventry, had the management of all my uncle's most important affairs. You drew up his will; you were, I believe, present when he signed it; and you, I am sure, would not lend yourself to deceit of any kind; tell me then what, in your opinion, this information can mean."

"My opinion, Miss Winter, is that there is not an iota of truth in it. The chances are that it will turn out to be nothing more than an attempt to extort money."

"It will certainly not prove to be that," replied Ella, decisively. "On that point I can speak with confidence."

"You will not tell me who it was who gave you this information?"

"I would rather not; at least, at present. It was--I think I ma............