Having seen the chief representative of Pergament and Pergament, placed his interests in the hands of that respectable house, and chosen the advocates who were to defend his cause, should this pretended cousin of his dare to assert her rights in a court of law, Churchill Penwyn felt himself free to go back to Cornwall by the mid-day train. He had an uneasy feeling in being away from home at this juncture—a vague sense of impending peril on all sides—a passionate desire to be near his wife and child.

He had ample time for thought during that long journey westward; time to contemplate his position in all its bearings, to wonder whether his wisdom might not, after all, be folly, beside Madge’s clear-sighted sense of right.

‘She spoke the bitter truth,’ he thought. ‘Wealth and estate have not brought me happiness. They have gratified my self-esteem, satisfied my ambition, but they have not given me restful nights or peaceful dreams. Would it be better for me to please Madge, throw up the sponge, and go to the other end of the world, to begin life afresh, remote from all old associations, out of reach of the memory of the past?’

‘No!’ he told himself, after a pause. ‘There is no new life for me. I am too old for beginning again.’

He thought of his triumphs of last session, those bursts of fervid eloquence which had startled the House into the admission that a new orator had arisen, as when the younger Pitt first demonstrated to the doubtful senate that he was a worthy son of the great Commoner.

He was just at the beginning of a brilliant Parliamentary career, and with him ambition was an all-powerful passion. To let these things go, even for Madge’s sake, would be too great a sacrifice. And his boy, was he to bequeath nothing to that beloved son? Neither fortune nor name?

‘I could more easily surrender Penwyn than my chances of personal distinction,’ he said to himself.

It was nine o’clock in the evening when he arrived at Seacomb. He had telegraphed for his groom to meet him with the dog-cart; and, as the train steamed slowly into the station, he saw the lamps of that well-appointed vehicle shining across the low rail which divided the platform from the road. A dark night for a drive by that wild moorland way.

‘Shall I drive, sir?’ asked the groom.

‘No,’ Churchill answered shortly; and the next minute they were flying through the darkness. The light vehicle swayed from side to side on the stony road.

‘It would be a short cut out of all my difficulties if I were to come to grief somewhere between this and the Manor House,’ thought Churchill. ‘A sudden fall upon a heap of stones, a splintered skull, an inquest, and all over. Poor Madge! It would be bad for her, but a relief perhaps—who can tell? She has owned that her life has been bitterness since that fatal day! Her very love for me is a kind of martyrdom. Poor Madge! If it was not a cowardly thing to give up all at the first alarm, I very believe I could bring myself to turn my back upon Penwyn Manor, take my wife and child out to Sydney, and try my luck as a barrister in a colonial court. For her sake—for her sake! Would not the humblest life be happiness with her?’

Things seemed to take a new shape to him during that swift homeward drive. He passed the shadowy plantations—the trees of his planting—bowled smoothly along the well-made road that crossed his own estate, and thought with a curious wonder, how little actual happiness his possessions had given him—how small a matter it would be, after all, to lose them.

The lighted windows of the north lodge shone out upon him as he mounted the crest of the last hill, and saw Manor House and gardens, pine groves and shrubberies, before him.

‘Rebecca is keeping later hours than usual, isn’t she?’ he asked.

‘She’s very ill, sir, at death’s door, they do say,’ answered the groom, ‘but that queer young granddaughter of hers has kept it dark, as long as she could, on account of the drink being at the bottom of it, begging your pardon sir.’

‘Do you mean that Rebecca drinks?’

‘Well, yes, sir, on the quiet; I believe she have always been inclined that way. Excuse me for mentioning it, sir, but you see a master is always the last to hear of these things.’

They were at the gates by this time. Elspeth came out of the lodge as they drove up.

‘Take the dog-cart round to the stables, Hunter,’ said Churchill, alighting. ‘I am going in to see Rebecca.’

‘Oh, sir, your dear lady is here—with grandmother,’ said Elspeth.

‘My wife?’

‘Yes, sir. She came down this afternoon, hearing grandmother was so bad. And Mrs. Penwyn wouldn’t have any one else to nurse her, though she’s been raving and going on awful.’

Churchill answered not a word, but snatched the candle from the girl’s hand, and went up the narrow staircase. A wild, hoarse scream told him where the sick woman was lying. He opened the door, and there, in a close room, whose fever-tainted atmosphere seemed stifling and poisonous after the fresh night air, he saw his wife kneeling by a narrow iron bedstead, holding the gipsy’s bony frame in her arms. He flung open the casement as wide as it would go. The cold night breeze rushed into the little room, almost extinguishing the candle.

‘Madge! are you mad? Do you know the danger of being in this fever-poisoned room?’

‘I know that there would have been danger for you had I not been here, Churchill,’ his wife answered gently. ‘I have been able to keep others out, which nothing less than my influence would have done. Half the gossips of Penwyn village would have been round this wretched creature’s bed but for me. And her ravings have been dreadful,’ with a shudder.

‘What has she talked about?’

‘All that happened—at Eborsham—that night,’ answered Madge, in an awe-stricken whisper. ‘She has forgotten no detail. Again and again, again and again, she has repeated the same words. But Mr. Price says she cannot last many hours—life is ebbing fast.’

‘Did Price hear her raving?’

‘Not much. She was quieter while he was here, and I was trying to engage his attention, to prevent his taking much notice of her wild talk.’

‘Oh, Madge, Madge, what have you not borne for me! And now you expose yourself to the risk of typhoid fever for my sake.’

‘There is no risk of typhoid. This poor creature is dying of delirium-tremens, Mr. Price assured me. She has lived on brandy for ever so long, and brain and body are alike exhausted.’

A wild scream broke from Rebecca’s pale lips, and then, with an awful distinctness, Churchill heard her tell the story of his crime.

‘Drunk was I?’ cried the gipsy, with a wild laugh. ‘Not so drunk but I could see—not so drunk but I could hear. I heard him fire the shot. I saw him creep out from behind the hedge. I saw him wipe his blood-stained hands. I have the handkerchief still. It’s worth more to me than a love-token—it’s helped me to a comfortable home. Brandy—give me some brandy, my throat is like a lime-kiln!’

Madge took a glass of weak brandy and water from the table, and held it to the tremulous lips. The gipsy drank eagerly, but frowningly, and then struggled to free herself from Madge Penwyn’s embrace.

‘Let me get at the bottle,’ she gasped. ‘I don’t want the cat-lap you give me!’

‘Let me hold her,’ said Churchill. ‘Go home, dearest, I will stop to the end.’

‘No, Churchill, you would be less patient than I. And if you nursed her it would set people talking, while it is only natural for me to be with her.’

Elspeth opened the door a little way and peeped in, asking if she could be useful.

‘No, Elspeth, there is nothing for you to do. I have done all Mr. Price directed. Go to bed, child, and sleep if you can. There is nothing more to be done.’

‘And she’ll die before the night is out, perhaps,’ said the girl, with a horror-stricken look at the emaciated figure on the bed. ‘Mr. Price told me there was no hope.’

‘You should not have let her drink so much, Elspeth,’ said Madge gently.

‘How could I help it? If I’d refused to fetch her the brandy she would have turned me out of doors, and I should have had to go on the tramp; and that would have been hard after I’d got used to sleeping in a house, and having my victuals regular. I daren’t refuse to do anything she asked me for fear of the strap. She wouldn’t hesitate about laying in to me.’

‘Poor, unhappy child. There, go to your room and lie down. I will take care of you henceforward, Elspeth.’

The girl said not a word, but came gently in to the room, knelt down by Mrs. Penwyn, and took up the hem of her dress and kissed it, an almost Oriental expression of gratitude and submission.

‘I’ve heard tell about angels, but I never believed in ’em till I came to know you,’ she said tearfully, and then left the room.

Rebecca had sunk back upon the pillow exhausted. Madge sat beside her, prepared for the next interval of delirium. Churchill stood by the window, looking out at the pine grove, and the dark sea beyond.

And thus the night wore on, and at daybreak, just when the slate-coloured sea looked coldest, and the east wind blew sharp and chill, and the shrill cry of chanticleer rang loud from the distant farmyard, Rebecca Mason’s troubled spirit passed to the land of rest, and Churchill Penwyn knew that the one voice which could denounce him was silenced for ever.

Before breath had departed from that wasted frame the Squire had examined all boxes and drawers in the room—they were not many—lest any record of his secret should lurk among the gipsy’s few possessions. He had gone downstairs to the sitting-room for the same purpose, and had found nothing. Afterwards, when all was over, he found a little bundle rolled up in a tattered old bird’s-eye neckerchief under the dead woman’s pillow. It contained a few odd coins, and the handkerchief with which James Penwyn’s murderer had wiped his ensanguined hand. All Churchill’s influence had been too little to extort this hideous memento from the gipsy while life remained to her. Madge was kneeling by the open window, her face hidden, absorbed in silent prayer, when her husband discovered this hoarded treasure. He took it down to the room below, thrust it among the smouldering ashes of the wood fire, and watched it burn to a grey scrap of tinder which fluttered away from the hearth.

A little after daybreak, Elspeth was up and dressed, and had sped off to the village in search of a friendly gossip, who was wont to perform the last offices for poor humanity. To this woman Madge resigned her charge.

‘Lord bless you, ma’am!’ cried the village dame, lost in admiration. ‘To think that a sweet young creature like you should leave your beautiful home to nurse a poor old woman!’

Madge and her husband went home in the cold autumn dawn—grave and silent both—with faces that looked wan and worn in the clear grey light. Some of the household had sat up all night. Churchill’s body servant, Mrs. Penwyn’s maid, and an underling to wait upon those important personages.

‘There is a fire in your dressing-room, ma’am,’ said Mills, the maid. ‘Shall I get you tea or coffee?’

‘You can bring me some tea presently.’ And to the dressing-room Mr. and Mrs. Penwyn went.

‘Madge,’ said Churchill, when Mills had brought the tea-tray, and been told she would be rung for when her services were required, and husband and wife were alone together,—‘if I had needed to be assured of your devotion, to-night would have proved it to me. But I had no need of such assurance, and to-night is but one more act of self-sacrifi............