“You are not well, Mrs. Mellish,” he said, as he took her hand.
“No, not very well. This oppressive weather makes my head ache.”
“I am sorry to see you looking ill. Where shall I find John?” asked Mr. Bulstrode.
Aurora’s pale face flushed suddenly.
“I—I—don’t know,” she stammered. “He is not in the house; he has gone out—to the stables—or to the farm, I think. I’ll send for him.”
“No, no,” Talbot said, intercepting her hand on its way to the bell. “I’ll go and look for him. Lucy will be glad of a chat with you, I dare say, Aurora, and will not be sorry to get rid of me.”
Lucy, with her arm about her cousin’s waist, assented to this arrangement. She was grieved to see the change in Aurora’s looks, the unnatural constraint of her manner.
Mr. Bulstrode walked away, hugging himself upon having done a very wise thing.
“Lucy is a great deal more likely to find out what is the matter than I am,” he thought. “There is a sort of freemasonry between women, an electric affinity, which a man’s presence always destroys. How deathly pale Aurora looks! Can it be possible that the trouble I expected has come so soon?”
He went to the stables, but not so much to look for John Mellish as in the hope of finding somebody intelligent enough to furnish him with a better account of the murder than any he had yet heard.
“Someone else, as well as Aurora, must have had a reason for wishing to get rid of this man,” he thought. “There must have been some motive: revenge—gain—something which no one has yet fathomed.”
He went into the stable-yard; but he had no opportunity of making his investigation, for John Mellish was standing in a listless attitude before a small forge, watching the shoeing of one of his horses. The young squire looked up with a start as he recognized Talbot, and gave him his hand, with a few straggling words of welcome. Even in that moment Mr. Bulstrode saw that there was perhaps a greater change in John’s appearance than in that of Aurora. The Yorkshireman’s blue eyes had lost their brightness, his step its elasticity; his face seemed sunken and haggard, and he evidently avoided meeting Talbot’s eye. He lounged listlessly away from the forge, walking at his guest’s side in the direction of the stable-gates; but he had the air of a man who neither knows nor cares whither he is going.
“Shall we go to the house?” he said. “You must want some luncheon after your journey.” He looked at his watch as he said this. It was half-past three, an hour after the usual time for luncheon at Mellish.
“I’ve been in the stables all the morning,” he said. “We’re busy making our preparations for the York Summer.”
“What horses do you run?” Mr. Bulstrode asked, politely affecting to be interested in a subject that was utterly indifferent to him, in the hope that stable-talk might rouse John from his listless apathy.
“What horses!” repeated Mr. Mellish vaguely. “I—I hardly know. Langley manages all that for me, you know; and—I—I forget the names of the horses he proposed, and—”
Talbot Bulstrode turned suddenly upon his friend, and looked him full in the face. They had left the stables by this time, and were in a shady pathway that led through a shrubbery towards the house.
“John Mellish,” he said, “this is not fair towards an old friend. You have something on your mind, and you are trying to hide it from me.”
The squire turned away his head.
“I have something on my mind, Talbot,” he said quietly. “If you could help me, I’d ask your help more than any man’s. But you can’t—you can’t!”
“But suppose I think I can help you?” cried Mr. Bulstrode. “Suppose I mean to try and do so, whether you will or no? I think I can guess what your trouble is, John; but I thought you were a braver man than to give way under it; I thought you were just the sort of man to struggle through it nobly and bravely, and to get the better of it by your own strength of will.”
“What do you mean!” exclaimed John Mellish. “You can guess—you know—you thought! Have you no mercy upon me, Talbot Bulstrode? Can’t you see that I’m almost mad, and that this is no time for you to force your sympathy upon me? Do you want me to betray myself? Do you want me to betray—”
He stopped suddenly, as if the words had choked him, and, passionately stamping his foot upon the ground, walked on hurriedly, with his friend still by his side.
The dining-room looked dreary enough when the two men entered it, although the table gave promise of a very substantial luncheon; but there was no one to welcome them, or to officiate at the banquet.
John seated himself wearily in a chair at the bottom of the table.
“You had better go and see if Mrs. Bulstrode and your mistress are coming to luncheon,” he said to a servant, who left the room with his master’s message, and returned three minutes afterwards to say that the ladies were not coming.
The ladies were seated side by side upon a low sofa in Aurora’s morning-room. Mrs. Mellish sat with her head upon her cousin’s shoulder. She had never had a sister, remember; and gentle Lucy stood in place of that near and tender comforter. Talbot was perfectly right; Lucy had accomplished that which he would have failed to bring about. She had found the key to her cousin’s unhappiness.
“Ceased to love you, dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Bulstrode, echoing the words that Aurora had last spoken. “Impossible!”
“It is true, Lucy,” answered Mrs. Mellish, despairingly. “He has ceased to love me. There is a black cloud between us now, now that all secrets are done away with. It is very bitter for me to bear, Lucy; for I thought we should be so happy and united. But—but it is only
