“No, my dear,” answered the Vicar, decidedly. “First and foremost he is a Treverton, and comes of a stock I love and honour; and, secondly, I have lived in friendship with him for the last six months; and I don’t think I’m such a fool that I could live so long upon intimate terms with a murderer and not find him out. No, my dear, I believe your husband has been weak and guilty: but I do not believe—I never will believe—that he has been a cold-blooded assassin.”
“God bless you for those words,” said Laura, as the Vicar left her.
“If Mrs. Treverton will go to bed and get a little rest after all this agitation, I shall be glad of some further conversation with you before I go home,” said Sampson, when the door had closed upon Mr. Clare.
Laura assented, turning her white, weary face to her husband, with a look full of trust and love, as he went with her to the bottom of the staircase.
“God bless and keep you, love,” he whispered. “You have shown me the way out of all my difficulties. I can afford to lose everything except your affection.”
He went back to Tom Sampson, who was scribbling in his notebook, in a brown study.
“Now, Sampson, we are alone. What have you to say to me?”
“A great deal. You’ve got yourself into a pretty fix. Why didn’t you trust me from the beginning? What’s the use of a man having a lawyer if he keeps his affairs dark?”
“We won’t go into that question now,” said John Treverton. “I want your advice about the future, not your lamentations over the past. What do you recommend me to do?”
“Get away from this place tonight, on the best horse in your stable. Take the first train at the furthest station you can reach by daybreak to morrow. Let me see. It’s not much over thirty miles to Exeter. You might get to Exeter on a good horse.”
“No doubt. But what would be gained by such a course?”
“You would get out of the way before you could be arrested on suspicion of being concerned in your first wife’s murder.”
“Who is going to arrest me?”
“Edward Clare means mischief. I am sure of that. If he has not already given information to the police, depend upon it he will do so without delay.”
“Let him,” answered Treverton. “If he does, I must stand my ground. I got out of the way once; and I feel now that in so doing I committed the greatest mistake of my life. I am not going to fall into the same blunder again. If I am to be arrested—if I am to be tried for murder, I will face my position. Perhaps it would be the best thing that could happen to me, for a trial might elicit the truth.”
“Well, perhaps you are right. Anything like running away would tell against you. But I recommend you to get to the other side of the channel without an hour’s loss of time. It is of vital importance for you to find out your first wife’s antecedents. If you could be fortunate enough to discover that she was a married woman when she left Auray, that she had a husband living at the time of your marriage—”
“Why do you harp so upon that string?” asked Treverton, impatiently.
“Because it is the only string that can save your estate.”
“I have no hope of such a thing.”
“Will you go to Auray and hunt up your wife’s history? Will you let me go with you?”
“I have no objection. A drowning man will cling to a straw. I may as well cling to that straw as to any other.”
“Then we’ll start by the first train tomorrow. We’ll leave the place in the openest manner. You can tell people you are going to Paris on business; but, if young Clare does set the police on your track, I think they’ll find it hardish work to catch us.”
“Yes, I’ll go to Auray,” said John Treverton, frowning meditatively at the fire. “In my wife’s antecedents there may lie the clue to the secret of her miserable death. Revenge must have been the motive of that murder. Who was it whom she had so deeply injured, that nothing but her life could appease his wrath?”
“Who, except a deserted husband or lover?” urged Sampson.
“Yet we lived together for two years in Paris, and no one ever assailed us.”
“The husband, or lover, may have been out of the way—beyond seas, perhaps—a sailor, very likely. Auray is a seaport, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
It was agreed that they should start for Exeter by the seven o’clock train from Beechampton, catch the Exeter express for Southampton, and cross from Southampton to St. Malo by the steamer which sailed on Monday evening. From St. Malo to Auray would be only a few hours’ journey. They might reach Auray almost as soon as they could have reached Paris.
XXXIII
At the Morgue
It was midnight when John Treverton went upstairs to his study, where there were lighted candles, and a newly-replenished fire; for it was one of his habits to read or write late at night. This evening he was in no mood for sleep. He lifted the curtain that hung between the two rooms, and looked into the bedroom. Laura had sobbed herself to sleep. The disordered hair, the hand convulsively clasped upon the pillow, told how far from peace her thoughts had been when she sank into the slumber of mental exhaustion. John Treverton bent down and kissed the tear-stained cheek, and then turned from the bed with a sigh.
“My
