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

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СКАЧАТЬ the world did you hear that? Mother told all the servants they were not to mention it to you. One of them must have disobeyed her. Who was it, Hilda? If Minnie—”

      Hilda caught the girl’s hand and laid it against her cheek.

      “I can’t tell you how I heard it, Mavis—I promised not to, dear. It really does not matter—a thing like that was sure to come to my ears sooner or later. But I am answered—it is true, then?”

      “It is true she had a letter—” Mavis began, looking at her brother perplexedly.

      “To be correct, it is true that she said she had had a letter from Nurse Marston, written that night,’’ Arthur interposed, “but the letter itself she said she did not keep, so that we only have her word for it.”

      “Still,” Mavis said, “Superintendent Stokes told Garth that he had made inquiries and Nurse Marston did have a letter posted, Arthur, and this Nurse Gidden bears a very high character too, he said. I don’t think there is any reason to doubt her.”

      “Oh, dear, no! I didn’t mean to throw any aspersion on her character or general credibility,” Sir Arthur observed as he went back to the easel. “From all I hear she seems to be a most exemplary woman; but what I mean to say is that when a person cannot produce a letter, has lost or destroyed it, one cannot exactly take that person’s account of what was written in the said letter as if it were gospel truth, especially in a case like this, when her first impression would doubtless be coloured by what she had heard later on.”

      A faint smile curved Hilda’s lips, though her eyes looked wistful and troubled.

      “I think, Sir Arthur, that tells me what I wanted to know. This Nurse Gidden says that Nurse Marston recognized me, does she not, and implies that it was something discreditable that she knew about me?”

      “Oh, no, no!” Mavis said quickly. “All Nurse Giddens said was that Nurse Marston said that no one knew who you were, and that she had seen you in circumstances which she thought ought to be told to my mother at once. That really tells us nothing, because we have no idea what the circumstances may have been. A nurse sees all sorts of people, and naturally she would know what trouble your loss might be causing to your people, so that it was her duty to go to mother at once.”

      “I see,” Hilda said, leaning her head on her hand and drawing herself a little away from Mavis. “And I see too that everybody will say that it was in discreditable circumstances that she saw me—that there is something against me. The worst of it is that it may be true, Mavis. I don’t know what I may have been. Have you ever realized it? I may have done anything. You would all be much wiser not to have anything to do with me.”

      Mavis laughed.

      “Should we? I think I can guarantee that you will not turn out to be anything very dreadful. What do you say, Arthur?”

      “I could stake my life on it,” replied the young man with unusual fervour.

      “Well, at any rate you have obtained one backer, Hilda,” said Mavis.

      The girl hardly seemed to heed her words; she was wrinkling up her brows, her mouth was twitching nervously.

      “If I could only remember one little thing, anything, however slight, that happened to me before that night. But, do what I can, try my very hardest, as I may, it is no use. I cannot even remember my own name, my own surname, and though I suppose I must have been called Hilda it does not seem a bit familiar to me.”

      “Now don’t get morbid,” Mavis reproved brightly. “Surely you can’t see to paint by this light, Arthur,” as her brother took up his palette again.

      He fidgeted about restlessly.

      “Oh, the light is good for half an hour yet! Here is Davenant coming up the drive, Mavis.”

      “Oh!” His sister’s cheeks flushed rosily, a new light shone in her brown eyes. “I didn’t think he would be back so soon; he went up to town yesterday. He—he promised to do some commissions for me.”

      Arthur laughed.

      “No excuse is needed, Mavis. We quite understand that you wish to have a few words quietly with your young man before introducing him to the family circle,” he said with brotherly candour. “Run along, we will make all due allowances for you.”

      “How absurd you are, Arthur! It is only that I asked him—”

      “Don’t trouble to particularize,” Arthur said, with a flourish of his paint-brush, “or you may miss your opportunity—

      Garth’s voice became audible in the hall.

      “I will be back in a minute,” his sister said with a vengeful glance in his direction as she gave Hilda a hasty kiss. “You are better, now, aren’t you, Hilda? I will tell Dorothy to come to you. She is playing to mother in the drawing-room.”

      There was a silence when she had left the room—one of those silences which seem to be pregnant with electric meaning. Sir Arthur was mixing a colour; mechanically he squeezed the tube until almost the whole contents lay on the palette; then with a guilty feeling he glanced at Hilda.

      She was half leaning, half lying on the wide couch on which she had posed for Elaine, but evidently her thoughts were far away from the picture.

      She looked up at the same moment. As her eyes met his gaze, she started violently, her colour deepened, and she put up her hand to her hair with a gesture at once confused and conscious. Sir Arthur threw down his palette and crossed to her.

      “Hilda, I—you must know what I want to say,” he cried in a low voice of intense feeling, “that I love you —that I have loved you ever since I first saw you. Dear, tell me, is there any hope for me?”

      “No, no!” Hilda cried pushing him from her as he would have knelt beside her. “No, no! I cannot! Don’t you see that I cannot—” covering her face with her hands.

      Sir Arthur’s forehead flushed a dull crimson; his eyes dwelt eagerly on the loveliness of the girl’s half-averted face.

      “I see my own unworthiness plainly enough, Hilda,” he answered simply. “Is that what you mean, dear?”

      Hilda turned her face farther towards the cushions.

      “No, no, you know it is not that,” she said in a muffled voice.

      Something in her accent seemed to raise Sir Arthur’s hopes. He dropped on one knee and ventured to take the hand that was hanging limply by her side.

      “What then, Hilda? Will you not let me try to teach you to care for me?”

      The girl sat up and threw the cushions behind her.

      “Don’t you see that that is not the question—that it is beside it altogether—that such things are not for me”—her delicate hands pulling the lace on her bodice to pieces—“a nameless nobody?”

      Sir Arthur did not move away.

      “Ah, how can you? But let me give you a name, Hilda—my name—be my wife, dear?” he urged.

      The girl gave a little СКАЧАТЬ