The Greatest Works of Anna Katharine Green. Анна Грин

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      Mr. Gryce’s smile conveyed a reproach which I could not but acknowledge I amply merited. Had he spent evening after evening at my house, entertaining me with tales of the devices and the many inconsistencies of criminals, to be met now by such a puerile disclaimer as this? But beyond that smile he said nothing; on the contrary, he continued as if I had not spoken at all.

      “But appearances,” he declared, “will not stand before the insight of a girl like Lucetta. She has marked the man as guilty, and we will give her the opportunity of proving the correctness of her instinct.”

      “But Mr. Trohm’s house has been searched, and you have found nothing—nothing,” I argued somewhat feebly.

      “That is the reason we find ourselves forced to yield our judgment to Lucetta’s intuitions,” was his quick reply. And smiling upon me with his blandest air, he obligingly added: “Miss Butterworth is a woman of too much character not to abide the event with all her accustomed composure.” And with this final suggestion, I was as yet too crushed to resent, he dismissed me to an afternoon of unparalleled suspense and many contradictory emotions.

Chapter XXXIX.

       Under a Crimson Sky

       Table of Contents

      When, in the course of events, the current of my thoughts receive a decided check and I find myself forced to change former conclusions or habituate myself to new ideas and a fresh standpoint, I do it, as I do everything else, with determination and a total disregard of my own previous predilections. Before the afternoon was well over I was ready for any revelations which might follow Lucetta’s contemplated action, merely reserving a vague hope that my judgment would yet be found superior to her instinct.

      At five o’clock the diggers began to go home. Nothing had been found under the soil of Mother Jane’s garden, and the excitement of search which had animated them early in the day had given place to a dull resentment mainly directed towards the Knollys family, if one could judge of these men’s feelings by the heavy scowls and significant gestures with which they passed our broken-down gateway.

      By six the last man had filed by, leaving Mr. Gryce free for the work which lay before him.

      I had retired long before this to my room, where I awaited the hour set by Lucetta with a feverish impatience quite new to me. As none of us could eat, the supper table had not been laid, and though I had no means of knowing what was in store for us, the sombre silence and oppression under which the whole house lay seemed a portent that was by no means encouraging.

      Suddenly I heard a knock at my door. Rising hastily, I opened it. Loreen stood before me, with parted lips and terror in all her looks.

      “Come!” she cried. “Come and see what I have found in Lucetta’s room.”

      “Then she’s gone?” I cried.

      “Yes, she’s gone, but come and see what she has left behind her.”

      Hastening after Loreen, who was by this time half-way down the hall, I soon found myself on the threshold of the room I knew to be Lucetta’s.

      “She made me promise,” cried Loreen, halting to look back at me, “that I would let her go alone, and that I would not enter the highway till an hour after her departure. But with these evidences of the extent of her dread before us, how can we stay in this house?” And dragging me to a table, she showed me lying on its top a folded paper and two letters. The folded paper was Lucetta’s Will, and the letters were directed severally to Loreen and to myself with the injunction that they were not to be read till she had been gone six hours.

      “She has prepared herself for death!” I exclaimed, shocked to my heart’s core, but determinedly hiding it. “But you need not fear any such event. Is she not accompanied by Mr. Gryce?”

      “I do not know; I do not think so. How could she accomplish her task if not alone? Miss Butterworth, Miss Butterworth, she has gone to brave Mr. Trohm, our mother’s persecutor and our life-long enemy, thinking, hoping, believing that in so doing she will rouse his criminal instincts, if he has them, and so lead to the discovery of his crimes and the means by which he has been enabled to carry them out so long undetected. It is noble, it is heroic, it is martyr-like, but—oh! Miss Butterworth, I have never broken a promise to any one before in all my life, but I am going to break the one I made her. Come, let us fly after her! She has her lover’s memory, but I have nothing in all the world but her.”

      I immediately turned and hastened down the stairs in a state of humiliation which should have made ample amends for any show of arrogance I may have indulged in in my more fortunate moments.

      Loreen followed me, and when we were in the lower hall she gave me a look and said:

      “My promise was not to enter the highway. Would you be afraid to follow me by another road—a secret road—all overgrown with thistles and blackberry bushes which have not been trimmed up for years?”

      I thought of my thin shoes, my neat silk dress, but only to forget them the next moment.

      “I will go anywhere,” said I.

      But Loreen was already too far in advance of me to answer. She was young and lithe, and had reached the kitchen before I had passed the Flower Parlor. But when we had sped clear of the house I found that my progress bade fair to be as rapid as hers, for her agitation was a hindrance to her, while excitement always brings out my powers and heightens both my wits and my judgment.

      Our way lay past the stables, from which I expected every minute to see two or three dogs jump. But William, who had been discreetly sent out of the way early in the afternoon, had taken Saracen with him, and possibly the rest, so our passing by disturbed nothing, not even ourselves. The next moment we were in a field of prickers, through which we both struggled till we came into a sort of swamp. Here was bad going, but we floundered on, edging continually toward a distant fence beyond which rose the symmetrical lines of an orchard—Mr. Trohm’s orchard, in which those pleasant fruits grew which—Bah! should I ever be able to get the taste of them out of my mouth!

      At a tiny gateway covered with vines, Loreen stopped.

      “I do not believe this has been opened for years, but it must be opened now.” And, throwing her whole weight against it, she burst it through, and bidding me pass, hastened after me over the trailing branches and made, without a word, for the winding path we now saw clearly defined on the edge of the orchard before us.

      “Oh!” exclaimed Loreen, stopping one moment to catch her breath, “I do not know what I fear or to what our steps will bring us. I only know that I must hunt for Lucetta till I find her. If there is danger where she is, I must share it. You can rest here or come farther on.”

      I went farther on.

      Suddenly we both started; a man had sprung up from behind the hedgerow that ran parallel with the fence that surrounded Mr. Trohm’s place.

      “Silence!” he whispered, putting his finger on his lips. “If you are looking for Miss Knollys,” he added, seeing us both pause aghast, “she is on the lawn beyond, talking to Mr. Trohm. If you will step here, you can see her. She is in no kind of danger, but if she were, Mr. Gryce is in the first row of trees to the back there, and a call from me——”

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