Wyllard's Weird (Mystery Classics Series). Mary Elizabeth Braddon

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      “Don’t talk in riddles, Bothwell. Tell me the plain truth, however bad it may be. You know you can trust me.”

      “I do, dear soul, as I trust Heaven itself. But there are some things a man must not tell. Yes, Dora, I have my secret, and it is a hard one to carry—the secret of a man who is bound in honour to one woman while he fondly loves another.”

      “Bothwell, I am so sorry for you,” said his cousin softly.

      She put her arms round his neck as if they had still been boy and girl. She put her lips to his fevered forehead. She comforted him with her love, being able to give him no other comfort.

      * * * * *

      Hilda Heathcote came up the avenue ten minutes later, escorting a matchless donkey, which was of so pale a gray as to be almost white. It was a donkey of surpassing size and dignity, and gave itself as many airs as if it had been a white elephant. It carried a pair of panniers, highly decorated in a Moorish fashion, and in the Moorish panniers sat Edward Heathcote’s twin daughters.

      The twins were as like as the famous Corsican Brothers in person, but they were utterly unlike in disposition, and the blue and pink sashes which they wore for distinction were quite unnecessary; since no one could have mistaken Minnie, the overbearing twin, for Jennie, the meek twin. People only had to be in their company half an hour to know which was which for ever after. Whereas Jennie was quite a baby, and could hardly speak plain, Minnie was preternaturally old for her years, and expressed her opinion freely upon every subject. Minnie always came to the front, was always mistress of the situation, and where Jennie shed tears Minnie always stamped her foot. Needless to say that Minnie was everybody’s favourite. Naughtiness at four years old, a termagant in miniature, is always interesting. Mr. Heathcote was the only person in Cornwall who could manage Minnie, and who properly appreciated Jennie’s yielding nature. Jennie felt that her father loved her, and used to climb on to his knee and nestle in his waistcoat; while Minnie was charming society by those little airs and graces which were spoken of vaguely as “showing off.”

      To-day Minnie was in a delightful humour, for she was being escorted in triumph to a long-promised festival. Since the very beginning of the summer the twins had been promised that they should go to drink tea with Mrs. Wyllard some day when they had been very good. Jennie had done everything to deserve the favour; but Minnie had offended in somewise every day. She had been cruel to the dogs—she had made an archipelago of blots in her copybook, while her pothooks and hangers were a worse company of cripples than Falstaff’s regiment. She had been rude to the kind Fräulein. She had been rebellious at dinner, had protested with loud wailings against the severity of seven-o’clock bed. Only towards the end of August had there come a brief interval of calm, and Hilda had been quick to take advantage of these halcyon days, knowing how soon they would be followed by storm.

      The tea-table was laid in the yew-tree arbour, such a table as little children love, and which has an attractive air even to full-grown humanity. Such a delicious variety of cakes and jams and home-made bread, such nectarines and grapes. Minnie shouted and clapped her hands at sight of the feast, while Jennie blushed and hung her head, abashed at the dazzling apparition of Mrs. Wyllard in an Indian silk gown with a scarlet sash, and flashing diamond rings. Hilda had no such jewels on her sunburnt fingers.

      “What a nice tea!” cried Minnie, when the blue and the pink twin had each been provided with a comfortable seat, each in a snug corner of the arbour, banked in by the tea-table. “Why do we never have such nice teas at home? Why don’t we, Aunt Hilda?” she repeated, when her question had been ignored for a couple of seconds.

      “Because such nice things would not be wholesome every day,” replied Hilda.

      “I don’t believe that,” said Minnie.

      “O Minnie!” cried Jennie, with a shocked air. “You mustn’t contradict people. You mustn’t contradict Aunt Hilda, because she is old.”

      “If cakes weren’t wholesome she wouldn’t have them,” said Minnie, ignoring the blue twin’s interruption, and pointing her chubby finger at Mrs. Wyllard. “She can have what she likes, and she is grown up and knows everything. She wouldn’t give us unwholesome things. I know why we don’t have such nice teas at home.”

      “Why not, Minnie?” asked Dora, to encourage conversation.

      “Because Fräulein is too stingy. I heard cook say so the other day. She is always grumbling about the cream and butter. You don’t grumble about the cream and butter, do you?” she asked, in her point-blank way.

      “I’m afraid I’m not so good a housekeeper as the Fräulein,” answered Dora.

      “Then I like bad housekeepers best. I shall be a bad housekeeper when I grow up, and there shall always be cakes for tea—ever so many cakes, as there are here. I’ll have some of that, please,” pointing to an amber-tinted pound-cake, “first.”

      By this Minnie signified that she meant to eat her way through the varieties of the tea-table.

      “And what will Jennie take?” asked Dora, smiling at the blue twin.

      “Jennie’s a bilious child,” said Minnie authoritatively; “she ought to have something plain.”

      Jennie, with her large blue eyes fixed pathetically on the pound-cake, waited for whatever might be given to her.

      “Do you think just one slice of rich cake would make you ill, Jennie?” asked Dora.

      “I am sure it would,” said Minnie, ploughing her way through her own slice. “She’s always sick, if she eats rich things. She was sick when we went to see grandma. Grandma isn’t rich, you know, because her husband was a clergyman, and they’re always poor. But she gives us beautiful teas when we go to see her, and lets us run about her garden and pick the fruit, and trample on the beds, and do just as we like; so we don’t mind going to tea with grandma, though she’s old and deaf. Jennie had cherries and pound-cake the last time we went to see grandma, and she was ill all night. You know you were, Jennie.”

      The blue twin admitted the fact, and meekly accepted a hunch of sanitarian sponge-cake.

      “You must not talk so much, Minnie; you are a perfect nuisance,” said Hilda; and then she looked round hesitatingly once or twice before she asked, “What has become of Mr. Grahame? He generally honours us with his company at afternoon tea.”

      “Bothwell has been a little worried this morning,” faltered Dora. “He is not very well.”

      Her heart sank within her at the thought that this girl—this girl whom she had once thought of as Bothwell’s future wife—would come in time to know the dark suspicion which hung over him like a poisonous cloud. She would be told by and by that people thought of him as a possible murderer, a wretch who had assailed a defenceless girl, set upon her as a tiger on his prey, hurled her to a dreadful death. She would learn that there were people in the neighbourhood capable of suspecting this very Bothwell Grahame, gentleman and soldier, of so dastardly a crime.

      Dora had hardly been able to realise the awfulness of the situation yet. In her desire to comfort her cousin she had made light of the unspoken slander, the cruel taint which had been breathed upon his name. But now as she sat at her tea-table ministering to her two little guests, trying to appear interested in their prattle, her heart was aching as it had not ached since she had been forgiven by Edward Heathcote. From that hour until the strange girl’s death her life had been cloudless. And now a СКАЧАТЬ