Annie Haynes Premium Collection – 8 Murder Mysteries in One Volume. Annie Haynes

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СКАЧАТЬ sister-in-law's dismissed maid, that you could walk with her, kiss her—Ah, you did not know I saw that—has altered my feeling towards you entirely."

      She drew the glittering circlet from the third finger of her left hand, and held it out to him.

      "Will you take this, please?"

      He let her put the ring in his hand. "You loved me once, Peggy," he said imploringly. "You will again; you will let me give you back the ring."

      "Never!" the girl exclaimed with sudden fire. "I was flattered by your attentions when we first met, Lord Chesterham. I liked you, but I never loved in the true sense of the word. I know that now, never at all."

      "And who has made you so wise now?" he sneered. "But I need not ask, it is your good friend, Stephen Crasster, of course."

      For a moment Peggy went very white; her great brown eyes blazed back their scorn at him, then the colour flowed slowly back to her cheeks, she held her small head very high.

      "Stephen has never said a word of love to me," she said slowly. "Not a word. But it may be that from his chivalry I have learned the difference between love and what passes as love with such men as you."

      "Have you really?" Chesterham laughed recklessly. His eyes were glittering, his face was red and puffy, the restraint that had marked his relations with Peggy was disappearing. "Ah, well, I am not going to lose you, my pretty Peggy; if you do not come to me for love, you shall for fear."

      "Fear!" Peggy echoed disdainfully. The courage of her ancestors sounded in the thrill of her sweet young voice, she drew up her long, slim throat. "Do you imagine that I am afraid of you—of anything that you can do?"

      "Not for yourself," Chesterham said slowly. As his bloodshot eyes wandered over the tall svelte figure, the charming riante face, the sullen anger in them changed to an unwilling admiration. "But for those you love."

      "Those I love," Peggy said blankly. "What do you mean?" shrinking a little as if some cold wind touched her.

      "Those you love," Chesterham repeated deliberately. "You would do a great deal to save them from danger, it may be from death itself, wouldn't you, Peggy? You would even for their sakes keep your promise to me," with a laugh that drove the colour from Peggy's cheeks once more.

      "Will you explain yourself?" she said. "You are talking in riddles. If there is anything in your words beyond a mere empty threat you must be more definite, please."

      "It is no mere empty threat," he said slowly. "A word from me would bring disgrace and ruin upon Heron's Carew. Such disgrace and ruin as you have never dreamed of. It is for you, Peggy, to say whether that word shall be spoken."

      Something in his tone carried the conviction home to Peggy that he was not speaking without foundation, and for the moment her brave young spirit quailed.

      "I have said that you must be more explicit," she found herself saying in a dull, level voice that did not sound in the least like her own. "Disgrace and ruin are strange words to use in connexion with Heron's Carew."

      Chesterham pulled his long moustache; his eyes watched her in a savage underhand fashion. "A word from me would send your sister-in-law to prison—it might even be to the scaffold itself—would bring such a terrible disaster upon Heron's Carew as you have never dreamed of."

      Peggy gathered up her courage in both hands. She looked him in the face fully, contemptuously.

      "It is a lie!" she said very deliberately. "Will you kindly allow me to pass? I have nothing more to say to you."

      "But I have something to say to you," Chesterham said grimly. He bent forward and caught her slender wrists in a grip of iron. "You can go to your sister-in-law; you can tell her what I say; I will give you a week to think it over, and then, unless you keep your promise to me, I shall speak and the blow will fall."

      Peggy did not speak, she only looked up at him with big, wide-opened eyes in which there lay something of the anguish of a wild trapped thing; then made her way gropingly across the lawn to the house.

      A mist seemed to rise up before her and all the pleasant familiar surroundings. The scene she had witnessed in the Lount Wood earlier in the day had shocked her, had completed the tearing of the veil from her eyes that Chesterham's own words with regard to Stephen Crasster had begun, but it had not prepared her for the crass cowardliness, the depth of moral turpitude this interview with the man she once thought she loved had revealed.

      From her window she saw Chesterham walk across the lawn to his car, and then, with a curt word to his chauffeur, drive out of the gate.

      She had hardly had time to realize the meaning of his threats against Judith; that he should have any power to carry them into effect was impossible, she told herself. Yet Judith had altered so strangely, so terribly of late. The girl remembered her own misgivings, her fear that something was wrong between Judith and Anthony, her certainty that ill-health alone would not account for everything. Her doubt became a certainty that Chesterham's words held a key to the mystery. Not that Peggy believed that Judith's silence veiled any guilty secret. She trusted her sister-in-law too well to think that; but she did fancy that Judith's past might hold some mystery, innocent enough in itself, Out of which Chesterham was trying to make capital. One thing grew clearer out of the chaos in which Peggy's mind was enveloped—the only person who could help her now was Judith.

      At this hour Judith was pretty sure to be found at home and alone. She would go to her. Peggy caught up her hat, and without giving herself time to change her mind set off through the Home Wood to Heron's Carew. Judith was not on the lawn; Peggy found her in the morning-room, lying back on the couch among her cushions, looking white and wan.

      She started up with a cry of alarm as she saw her young sister-in-law's face.

      "What is wrong, Peggy?"

      "Nothing much, I hope; but that is what I have come to you to find out," the girl answered vaguely, as she put her arms round Judith and made her lie back. "It may be that everything is right instead of wrong," she went on, while Judith waited, watching her with a nameless fear, her breath coming and going in soft gasps. "I have broken off my engagement with Lord Chesterham."

      "You have broken off your engagement to Lord Chesterham!" Judith echoed; then, to Peggy's consternation, she burst into tears. "Oh, it is because I am so glad, Peggy," she sobbed. "So glad; he is a bad man; I don't like him, I am afraid of him."

      "Yes," said Peggy softly, taking Judith's hands in hers, and chafing them against her warm young cheek.

      "Why didn't you tell me so before, Judith?"

      "Oh, it wouldn't have been any use," Judith said beneath her breath. "You wouldn't listen to Anthony or to Stephen."

      "No," Peggy said, still keeping the cold hands against her cheek. "But I think I should have listened to you, Judith, if you had told me everything."

      "Told you everything?" Judith tore her hands away, she raised herself on one elbow and stared at the girl. "What do you mean?"

      Peggy pressed her soft red lips to the pale cheek. "If you had told me all you knew of Chesterham. Do you know that when I told him just now that all was over between us, that I could not marry him, he said that I must, for your sake. That if I did not he would bring some terrible trouble upon you—upon Heron's Carew?"

      Judith sat as if she had СКАЧАТЬ