Ah, how happy Aurora was, seated by the side of the man whose love had outlasted every trial! How happy now that the dark wall that had divided them was shattered, and they were indeed united! John Mellish was as tender and pitying towards her, as a mother to her forgiving child. He asked no explanations; he sought to know nothing of the past. He was content to believe that she had been foolish and mistaken; and that the mistake and folly of her life would be buried in the grave of the murdered trainer.
The lodge-keeper at Felden Woods exclaimed as he opened the gates to his master’s daughter. He was an old man, and he had opened the same gates more than twenty years before, when the banker’s dark-eyed bride had first entered her husband’s mansion.
Archibald Floyd welcomed his children heartily. How could he ever be otherwise than unutterably happy in the presence of his darling, however often she might come, with whatever eccentricity she might time her visits?
Mrs. Mellish led her father into his study.
“I must speak to you alone, papa,” she said; “but John knows all I have to say. There are no secrets between us now. There never will be again.”
Aurora had a painful story to tell her father, for she had to confess to him that she had deceived him upon the occasion of her return to Felden Woods after her parting with James Conyers.
“I told you a story, father,” she said, “when I told you that my husband was dead. But Heaven knows, I believed that I should be forgiven the sin of that falsehood, for I thought that it would spare you grief and trouble of mind; and surely anything would have been justifiable that could have done that. I suppose good never can come out of evil, for I have been bitterly punished for my sin. I received a newspaper within a few months of my return, in which there was a paragraph describing the death of James Conyers. The paragraph was not correct, for the man had escaped with his life; and when I married John Mellish, my first husband was alive.”
Archibald Floyd uttered a cry of despair, and half rose from his easy-chair; but Aurora knelt upon the ground by his side, with her arms about him, soothing and comforting him.
“It is all over now, dear father,” she said; “it is all over. The man is dead. I will tell you how he died by-and-by. It is all over. John knows all; and I am to marry him again. Talbot Bulstrode says that it is necessary, as our marriage was not legal. My own dear father, there is to be no more secrecy, no more unhappiness—only love, and peace, and union for all of us.”
She told the old man the story of the trainer’s death, dwelling very little upon the particulars, and telling nothing of her own doings that night, except that she had been in the wood at the time of the murder, and that she had heard the pistol fired.
It was not a pleasant story, this story of murder and violence and treachery within the boundary of his daughter’s home. Even amid Aurora’s assurances that all sorrow was past, that doubt and uncertainty were to vanish away before security and peace, Archibald Floyd could not control this feeling. He was restless and uneasy in spite of himself. He took John Mellish out upon the terrace in the afternoon sunshine, while Aurora lay asleep upon one of the sofas in the long drawing-room, and talked to him of the trainer’s death as they walked up and down. There was nothing to be elicited from the young squire that threw any light upon the catastrophe, and Archibald Floyd tried in vain to find any issue out of the darkness of the mystery.
“Can you imagine anyone having any motive for getting rid of this man?” the banker asked.
John shrugged his shoulders. He had been asked this question so often before, and had been always obliged to give the same reply.
No; he knew of no motive which anyone about Mellish could be likely to have.
“Had the man any money about him?” asked Mr. Floyd.
“Goodness knows whether he had or not,” John answered carelessly; “but I should think it wasn’t likely he had much. He had been out of a situation, I believe, for some time before he came to me, and he had spent a good many months in a Prussian hospital. I don’t suppose he was worth robbing.”
The banker remembered the two thousand pounds which he had given to his daughter. What had Aurora done with that money? Had she known of the trainer’s existence when she asked for it? and had she wanted it for him? She had not explained this in her hurried story of the murder, and how could he press her upon so painful a subject? Why should he not accept her own assurance that all was over, and that nothing remained but peace?
Archibald Floyd and his children spent a tranquil day together; not talking much, for Aurora was completely worn out by the fatigue and excitement she had undergone. What had her life been but agitation and terror since the day upon which Mr. John Pastern’s letter had come to Mellish to tell her of the existence of her first husband? She slept through the best part of the day, lying upon a sofa, and with John Mellish sitting by her side keeping watch over her. She slept while the bells of Beckenham church summoned the parishioners to afternoon service, and while her father went to assist in those quiet devotions, and to kneel on his hassock in the old square pew, and pray for the peace of his beloved child. Heaven knows how earnestly the old man prayed for his daughter’s happiness,
