She had heard this talk of love, she, the forsaken and crime-stained one. I shuddered and laid my hand on Miss Althorpe’s.
But I did not seek to stop the conversation, for as our looks met, the sick woman fell back and lapsed, or seemed to lapse, into immediate insensibility again.
“Is Miss Oliver worse?” inquired Miss Althorpe.
I rose and went to the bedside, renewed the bandages on my patient’s head, and forced a drop or two of medicine between her half-shut lips.
“No,” I returned, “I think her fever is abating.” And it was, though the suffering on her face was yet heart-rendingly apparent.
“Is she asleep?”
“She seems to be.”
Miss Althorpe made an effort.
“I am not going to talk any more about myself.” Then as I came back and sat down by her side, she quietly asked:
“What do you think of the Van Burnam murder?”
Dismayed at the introduction of this topic, I was about to put my hand over her mouth, when I noticed that her words had made no evident impression upon my patient, who lay quietly and with a more composed expression than when I left her bedside. This assured me, as nothing else could have done, that she was really asleep, or in that lethargic state which closes the eyes and ears to what is going on.
“I think,” said I, “that the young man Howard stands in a very unfortunate position. Circumstances certainly do look very black against him.”
“It is dreadful, unprecedently dreadful. I do not know what to think of it all. The Van Burnams have borne so good a name, and Franklin especially is held in such high esteem. I don’t think anything more shocking has ever happened in this city, do you, Miss Butterworth? You saw it all, and should know. Poor, poor Mrs. Van Burnam!”
“She is to be pitied!” I remarked, my eyes fixed on the immovable face of my patient.
“When I heard that a young woman had been found dead in the Van Burnam mansion,” Miss Althorpe pursued with such evident interest in this new theme that I did not care to interrupt her unless driven to it by some token of consciousness on the part of my patient, “my thoughts flew instinctively to Howard’s wife. Though why, I cannot say, for I never had any reason to expect so tragic a termination to their marriage relations. And I cannot believe now that he killed her, can you, Miss Butterworth? Howard has too much of the gentleman in him to do a brutal thing, and there was brutality as well as adroitness in the perpetration of this crime. Have you thought of that, Miss Butterworth?”
“Yes,” I nodded, “I have looked at the crime on all sides.”
“Mr. Stone,” said she, “feels dreadfully over the part he was forced to play at the inquest. But he had no choice, the police would have his testimony.”
“That was right,” I declared.
“It has made us doubly anxious to have Howard free himself. But he does not seem able to do so. If his wife had only known—”
Was there a quiver in the lids I was watching? I half raised my hand and then I let it drop again, convinced that I had been mistaken. Miss Althorpe at once continued:
“She was not a bad-hearted woman, only vain and frivolous. She had set her heart on ruling in the great leather-merchant’s house, and she did not know how to bear her disappointment. I have sympathy for her myself. When I saw her—”
Saw her! I started, upsetting a small workbasket at my side which for once I did not stop to pick up.
“You have seen her!” I repeated, dropping my eyes from the patient to fix them in my unbounded astonishment on Miss Althorpe’s face.
“Yes, more than once. She was—if she were living I would not repeat this—a nursery governess in a family where I once visited. That was before her marriage; before she had met either Howard or Franklin Van Burnam.”
I was so overwhelmed, that for once I found difficulty in speaking. I glanced from her to the white form in the shrouded bed, and back again in ever-growing astonishment and dismay.
“You have seen her!” I at last reiterated in what I meant to be a whisper, but which fell little short of being a cry, “and you took in this girl?”
Her surprise at this burst was almost equal to mine.
“Yes, why not; what have they in common?”
I sank back, my house of cards was trembling to its foundations.
“Do they—do they not look alike?” I gasped. “I thought—I imagined—”
“Louise Van Burnam look like that girl! O no, they were very different sort of women. What made you think there was any resemblance between them?”
I did not answer her; the structure I had reared with such care and circumspection had fallen about my ears and I lay gasping under the ruins.
XXV
“The Rings! Where Are the Rings?”
Had Mr. Gryce been present, I would have instantly triumphed over my disappointment, bottled up my chagrin, and been the inscrutable Amelia Butterworth before he could say, “Something has gone wrong with this woman!” But Mr. Gryce was not present, and though I did not betray the half I felt, I yet showed enough emotion for Miss Althorpe to remark:
“You seemed surprised by what I have told you. Has anyone said that these two women were alike?”
Having to speak, I became myself again in a trice, and nodded vigorously.
“Someone was so foolish,” I remarked.
Miss Althorpe looked thoughtful. While she was interested she was not so interested as to take the subject in fully. Her own concerns made her abstracted, and I was very glad
