On leaving his wife John Clare engaged a hansom and was driven direct to Gray\'s Inn Square. His object was to find Kirby Griggs and hear again from his lips the story which had already been told him by Everard Lisle. The lawyer\'s clerk was on the point of going out for his midday meal, so John secured him, and, taking him to a restaurant at which it was possible to engage a private room, he treated him to what Griggs later termed to his wife "a sumptuous repast," and did not let him go till he had drawn from him every scrap of information which bore in any way on the facts he was bent on investigating.
With the aid of the light which his wife\'s narrative had thrown on the affair, the mystery which had heretofore enshrouded the proceedings and conduct of Martha Griggs was in a great measure dispelled. There could be no doubt that when her mistress was seized with fever and taken to the hospital, the temptation to decamp with the latter\'s money and luggage had proved too potent for the woman\'s ill-balanced mind. Having once crossed the narrow boundary which divides honesty from its opposite, it was characteristic of her flighty disposition, surcharged with feminine vanity, that she should masquerade in her mistress\'s gowns and jewellery and pass herself off under a preposterous name culled from one of her favourite penny romances. What had been her intentions with regard to the disposal of the child after she should have reached England could not even be surmised. Her death, so sudden and unforeseen, had put an end to everything as far as she was concerned.
It would be a difficult matter to analyse John Clare\'s thoughts and feelings as he journeyed homeward after parting from Kirby Griggs. That which had been no more than a supposition when he left the Chase a few hours before, had now been converted into an indisputable fact. He was going back home to greet his new-found daughter, and that daughter was none other than she who had hitherto been known to the world as Ethel Thursby!
Now did he understand how it happened that from the first he had felt himself so unaccountably drawn towards her. He had read something in her face which had at once puzzled and attracted him; it had been to him like one of those faces which sometimes confront one in dreams, which one seems to know vaguely, but which utterly sets at defiance all one\'s efforts to endue it with a personality. But surmise and conjecture were at an end. She was his child--his own! He had proved it beyond the possibility of a doubt. So strange, so bewildering, and yet so wonderfully sweet did it seem, that for the time he was as a man walking in a phantasy.
Everard Lisle, on reaching London, had found Luigi Rispani and had obtained from him the address he subsequently gave John Clare, which enabled the latter to go direct to the boarding-house where his wife was staying.
Luigi was in doleful dumps. The bill for one hundred and twenty pounds, which bore the joint signatures of himself and his uncle, had fallen due, and the sum total which the pair of them could scrape together towards meeting it did not amount to much over thirty pounds. To make matters worse for the younger man, for the last few days Captain Verinder had been missing both from his lodgings and his usual haunts, nor did anyone seem to know what had become of him. But pity in such cases is but cold comfort, and he did not content himself with that. Before parting from Luigi he put into his band a cheque for the full amount of the promissory note.
Everard Lisle\'s capital did not amount to much more than three hundred pounds in all, and was made up of a small legacy bequeathed him by a relative, supplemented by his own savings, for he had no extravagances and was of a thrifty disposition. To finish with this incident, it may be recorded that about a fortnight later John Clare asked Everard to be the bearer of a cheque for a hundred and twenty pounds from him to Luigi Rispani. He had been reading over for the second time the notes of the interview between Luigi and Sir Gilbert, after the former\'s release from the strong room, as transcribed by Everard from his shorthand memoranda, after which he had gone to his father and made certain representations to him, the outcome of which was the cheque in question.
Great was John Clare\'s surprise when told that the promissory note had already been met and by whom. He made no attempt to press the cheque on Everard, but quietly put it back into his pocket. He would not spoil the aroma of a fine action by bringing it down to a cash level.
To return.
When Everard got back from London, bringing with him Mrs. Clare\'s address, he found that in the course of the afternoon Mrs. Forester had driven over from the Shrublands--the house at which Lady Pell had been visiting previous to coming to the Chase--and had insisted upon carrying Lady Pell and Miss Thursby back with her, with the understanding that they were not to return to Withington till the morrow.
Although he had not seen Ethel for a week, not since he had parted from her before setting out on that journey to America which had been stopped short at Liverpool, it was yet a secret relief to him to learn that, at the earliest, they could not meet for another day. And in twenty-four hours much might happen.
Everard Lisle was too clear-sighted not to perceive in what direction, when duly sifted, the evidence bearing on Ethel\'s parentage, which he had been enabled to bring together, all tended. As yet there was one big gap which required to be filled up, but it might well be that Mr. John Clare\'s investigations on the morrow would prove successful in bridging over the hiatus, or, in other words, in forging the last link in a chain of evidence which would then be complete and perfect in every part. Well, and what then? he asked himself. Should the foreshadowed end come to pass, ought he to be anything but glad, jubilant, happy? Certainly he ought to be all that and more, because in that case into his darling\'s life there would come a happiness greater and richer than her dreams had ever pictured.
And yet!--and yet!--There are two sides to every question, and when Everard thought of the other side to this one his heart grew faint within him. "I trust that I shall at least know how to do my duty," he said to himself with proud bitterness.
After his interview with Kirby Griggs, John Clare got back to the Chase in ample time for dinner. On leaving home in the morning he had merely told his father that a pressing matter of business would take him to London for a few hours, and Sir Gilbert had asked no questions. This evening father and son dined alone. A note from Lady Pell had come to hand in the course of the afternoon, stating that she had been persuaded into staying another day at The Shrublands, but that she and Miss Thursby would be back at the Chase without fail on the morrow.
John Clare kept his news to himself till dinner was over, and Trant had finally shut the dining-room door, leaving the two gentlemen over their dessert. John would not tell it before, fear............