While these things were taking place at Winchester, Margaret waited for the coming of her father. She waited until her heart grew sick, but still she did not despair of his return. He had promised to come back to her by ten o’clock upon the evening of the 16th; but he was not a man who always kept his promises. He had often left her in the same manner, and had stayed away for days and weeks together.
There was nothing extraordinary, therefore, in his absence; and if the girl’s heart grew sick, it was not with the fear that her father would not return to her; but with the thought of what dishonest work he might be engaged in during his absence.
She knew now that he led a dishonest life. His own lips had told her the cruel truth. She would no longer be able to defend him when people spoke against him. Henceforth she must only plead for him.
The poor girl had been proud of her father, reprobate though he was; she had been proud of his gentlemanly bearing, his cleverness, his air of superiority over other men of his station; and the thought of his acknowledged guilt stung her to the heart. She pitied him, and she tried to make excuses for him in her own mind: and with every thought of the penniless reprobate there was intermingled the memory of the wrong that had been done him by Henry Dunbar.
“If my father has been guilty, that man is answerable for his guilt,” she thought perpetually.
Meanwhile she waited, Heaven only knows how anxiously, for her father’s coming. A week passed, and another week began, and still he did not come; but she was not alarmed for his personal safety, she was only anxious about him; and she expected his return every day, every hour. But he did not come.
And all this time, with her mind racked by anxious thoughts, the girl went about the weary duties of her daily life. Her thoughts might wander away into vague speculations about her father’s absence while she sat by her pupil’s side; but her eyes never wandered from the fingers it was her duty to watch. Her life had been a hard one, and she was better able to hide her sorrows and anxieties than any one to whom such a burden had been a novelty. So, very few people suspected that there was anything amiss with the grave young music-mistress.
One person did see the vague change in her manner; but that person was Clement Austin, who had already grown skilled in reading the varying expressions of her face, and who saw now that she was changed. She listened to him when he talked to her of the books or the music she loved; but her face never lighted up now with a bright look of pleasure; and he heard her sigh now and then as she gave her lesson.
He asked her once if there was anything in which his services, or his mother’s, could be of any assistance to her; but she thanked him for the kindness of his offer, and told him, “No, there was nothing in which he could help her.”
“But I am sure there is something on your mind. Pray do not think me intrusive or impertinent for saying so; but I am sure of it.”
Margaret only shook her head.
“I am mistaken, then?” said Clement, interrogatively.
“You are indeed. I have no special trouble. I am only a little uneasy about my father, who has been away from home for the last week or two. But there is nothing strange in that; he is often away. Only I am apt to be foolishly anxious about him. He will scold me when he comes home and hears that I have been so.”
Upon the evening of the 27th August, Margaret gave her accustomed lesson, and lingered a little as usual after the lesson, talking to Mrs. Austin, who had taken a wonderful fancy to her granddaughter’s music-mistress; and to Clement, who somehow or other had discontinued his summer evening walks of late, more especially on those occasions on which his niece took he music-lesson. They talked of all manner of things, and it was scarcely strange that amongst other topics they should come by and-by to the Winchester murder.
“By the bye, Miss Wentworth,” exclaimed Mrs. Austin, breaking in upon Clement’s disquisition on his favourite Carlyle’s “Hero–Worship,” “I suppose you’ve heard about this dreadful murder that is making such a sensation?”
“A dreadful murder — no, Mrs. Austin; I rarely hear anything of that kind; for the person with whom I lodge is old and deaf. She troubles herself very little about what is going on in the world, and I never read the newspapers myself.”
“Indeed,” said Mrs. Austin; “well, my dear, you really surprise me. I thought this dreadful business had made such a sensation, on account of the great Mr. Dunbar being mixed up in it.”
“Mr. Dunbar!” cried Margaret, looking at the speaker with dilated eyes.
“Yes, my dear, Mr. Dunbar, the rich banker. I have been very much interested in the matter, because my son is employed in Mr. Dunbar’s bank. It seems that an old servant, a confidential valet of Mr. Dunbar’s, has been murdered at Winchester; and at first Mr. Dunbar himself was suspected of the crime — though, of course, that was utterly ridiculous; for what motive could he possibly have had for murdering his old servant? However, he has been suspected, and some stupid country magistrate actually had him arrested. There was an examination about a week ago, which was adjourned until to-day. We shan’t know the result of it till to-morrow.”
Margaret sat listening to these words with a face that was as white as the face of the dead.
Clement Austin saw the sudden change that had come over her countenance.
“Mother,” he said, “you should not talk of these things before Miss Wentworth; you have made her look quite ill. Remember, she may not be so strong-minded as you are.”
“No, no!” gasped Margaret, in a choking voice. “I— I— wish to hear of this. Tell me, Mrs. Austin, what was the name of the murdered man?”
“Joseph Wilmot.”
“Joseph Wilmot!” repeated Margaret, slowly. She had always known her father by the name of James Wentworth; but what more likely than that Wilmot was his real name! She had good reason to suspect that Wentworth was a false one.
“I’ll lend you a newspaper,” Mrs. Austin said, good-naturedly, “if you really want to learn the particulars of this murder.”
“I do, if you please.”
Mrs. Austin took a weekly paper from amongst some others that were scattered upon a side-table. She folded up this paper and handed it to Margaret.
“Give Miss Wentworth a glass of wine, mother,” exclaimed Clement Austin; “I’m sure all this talk about the murder has upset her.”
“No, no, indeed!” Margaret answered, “I would rather not take anything. I want to get home quickly. Good evening, Mrs. Austin.”
She tried to say something more, but her voice failed her. She had been in the habit of shaking hands with Mrs. Austin and Clement when she left them; and the cashier had always accompanied her to the gate, and had sometimes lingered with her there in the dusk, prolonging some conversation that had been begun in the drawing-room; but to-night she hurried from the room before the widow could remonstrate with her. Clement followed her into the hall.
“Miss Wentworth,” he said, “I know that something has agitated you. Pray return to the drawing-room, and stop with us until you are more composed.”
“No — no — no!”
“Let me see you home, then?”
“Oh! no! no!” she cried, as the young man barred her passage, to the door; “for pity’s sake don’t detain me, Mr. Austin; don’t detain me, or follow me!”
She passed by him, and hurried out of the house. He followed her to the gate, and watched her disappear in the twilight; and then went back to the drawing-room, sighing heavily as he went.
“I have no right to follow her against her own wish,” he said to himself. “She has given me no right to interfere with her; or to think of her, for the matter of that.”
He threw himself into a chair, and took up a newspaper; but he did not read half-a-dozen lines. He sat with his eyes fixed upon the page before him, thinking of Margaret Wentworth.
“Poor girl!” he said to himself, presently; “poor lonely girl! She is too pure and beautiful for the hard struggles of this world.”
Margaret Wentworth walked rapidly along the road that led her back to Wandsworth. She held the folded newspaper clutched tightly against her breast. It was her death-warrant, perhaps. She never paused or slackened her pace until she reached the lane leading down to the water.
She, opened the gate of the simple cottage-garden — there was no need of bolts or locks for the fortification of Godolphin Cottages — and went up to her own little sitting-room — the room in which her father had told her the secret of his life — the room in which she had sworn to remember the Henry Dunbar. All was dark and quiet in the house, for the mistress of it was elderly-and old-fashioned in her ways; and Margaret was accustomed to wait upon herself when she came home after nightfall.
She struck a lucifer, lighted her candle, and sat down with the newspaper in her hand. She unfolded it, and examined the pages. She was not long finding what she wanted.
“The Winchester Murder. Latest Particulars.”
Margaret Wentworth read that horrible story. She read the newspaper record of the cruel deed that had been done — twice — slowly and deliberately. Her eyes were tearless, and there was a desperate courage at her heart; that miserable, agonized heart, which seemed like a block of ice in her breast.
“I swore to remember the name of Henry Dunbar,” she said in, a low, sombre voice; “I have good reason to remember it now.”
From the first she had no doubt in her mind — from the very first she had but one idea: and that idea was a conviction. Her father had been murdered by his old master. The man Joseph Wilmot was her father: the murderer was Henry Dunbar. The newspaper record told how the murdered man had, according to his own account, met his brother at the Waterloo station upon the afternoon of the 16th of August. That was the very afternoon upon which James Wentworth had left his daughter to go to London by rail.
He had met his old master, the man who had so bitterly injured him; the cold-hearted scoundrel who had so cruelly betrayed him. He had been violent, perhaps, and had threatened Henry Dunbar: and then — then the rich man, treacherous and cold-hearted in his age as in his youth, had beguiled his old valet by a pretended friendship, had lured him into a lonely place, and had there murdered him; in order that all the wicked secrets of the past might be buried with his victim.
As to the robbery of the clothes — the rifling of the pocketbook — that, of course, was only a part of Henry Dunbar’s deep laid scheme.
The girl folded the paper and put it in her breast. It was a strange document to lie against that virginal bosom: and the breast beneath it ached with a sick, cold pain, that was like the pain of death.
Margaret took up her candle, and went into a neatly-kept little room at the back of the house — the room in which her father had always slept when he stayed in that house.............