The Ladies Lindores

extraordinary revelation with an almost stupefying sense of how far the imagination had gone. What was it his countrymen thought him guilty of? Was it murder⁠—murder? The light seemed to fail from his eyes for a moment; his very heart grew sick. He had time to run through all the situation while the old man laboured slowly through this speech, hesitating often, pausing for the most lenient words, anxiously endeavouring to work upon the feelings of the supposed culprit. With horror and a sudden panic, he perceived how all the circumstances fitted into this delusion, and that it was no mere piece of folly, but a supposition which might well seem justified. He remembered everything in the overpowering light thus poured upon the scene: his torn coat, his excitement⁠—nay, more, the strong possibility that everything might have happened just as his neighbours had imagined it to have happened. And yet it had not been so; but how was he to prove his innocence? For a moment darkness seemed to close around him. Sir James’s voice became confused with a ringing in his ears; his very senses seemed to grow confused, and failed him. He heard the gasp in his own throat to get breath when silence ensued⁠—a silence which fell blank around him, and which he maintained unconsciously, with a blind stare at his accuser’s most gentle, most pitying countenance. How like it was to the scare and terror of blood-guiltiness suddenly brought to discovery!

But gradually this sickness and blankness cleared off around him like a cloud, and he began to realise his position. “Sit down,” he said, hoarsely, “and I will tell you every particular I know.”

XXXII

Left to themselves, Millefleurs and Beaufort stood opposite to each other for a moment with some embarrassment. To have anything to do with a quarrel is always painful for the third person; and it was so entirely unexpected, out of the way of all his habits, that Beaufort felt himself exceptionally incapable of dealing with it. “Millefleurs,” he said with hesitation, “I don’t understand all this. That was a very strange tone to take in speaking to⁠—a friend.”

He felt for the first time like a tutor discharging an uncomfortable office, knowing that it must be done, yet that he was not the man to do it, and that of all the youthful individuals in the world, the last person to be so lectured was Millefleurs.

“Naturally you think so. The circumstances make all the difference, don’t you know,” said Millefleurs, with his ordinary composure. “And the situation. In ’Frisco it might not have been of any great consequence. Helping a bully out of the world is not much of a crime there. But then it’s never hushed up. No one makes a secret of it: that is the thing that sets one’s blood up, don’t you know. Not for Torrance’s sake⁠—who, so far as I can make out, was a cad⁠—or poor Lady Car’s, to whom it’s something like a deliverance⁠—”

“Torrance!” cried Beaufort, with a gasp. “Lady⁠—Car! Do you mean to say⁠—”

“Then⁠—” said Millefleurs, “he never told you? That is a curious piece of evidence. They do things straightforward in Denver City⁠—not like that. He never spoke of an event which had made the country ring⁠—”

“Torrance!” repeated Beaufort, bewildered. The world seemed all to reel about him. He gazed at his companion with eyes wide opened but scarcely capable of vision. By-and-by he sat down abruptly on the nearest chair. He did not hear what Millefleurs was saying. Presently he turned to him, interrupting him unconsciously. “Torrance!” he repeated; “let there be no mistake. You mean the man⁠—to whom Carry⁠—Lady Caroline⁠—was married?”

Millefleurs fixed upon him his little keen black eyes. He recalled to himself tones and looks which had struck him at the moment, on which he had not been able to put any interpretation. He nodded his head without saying anything. He was as keen after any piece of human history as a hound on a scent. And now he was too much interested, too eager for new information, to speak.

“And it happened,” said Beaufort, “on Thursday⁠—on the day I arrived?” He drew a long breath to relieve his breast, then waved his hand. “Yes; if that is all, Erskine told me of it,” he said.

“You have something to do with them also, old fellow,” said Millefleurs, patting him on the shoulder. “I knew there was something. Come along and walk with me. I must see it out; but perhaps we had better not meet again just now⁠—Erskine and I, don’t you know. Perhaps I was rude. Come along; it is your duty to get me out of harm’s way. Was there anything remarkable, by the way, in the fact that this happened just when you arrived?”

Beaufort made no reply; he scarcely heard, so violently were his pulses beating in his ears, so high was the tide of new life rising in his veins. Who can think of the perplexities, even the dangers, of another, when something unparalleled, something that stirs up his very being, has happened to himself? But he allowed himself to be led out into the open air, which was a relief⁠—to the road leading to Lindores, from which they soon came in sight of Tinto dominating the country round from its platform. Millefleurs stopped at the point where this first came in view, to point out how high it rose above the river, and how the path ascended through the overhanging woods. The Scaur itself was visible like a red streak on the face of the height. “You can see for yourself that horse or man who plunged over that would have little hope,” Millefleurs said. But Beaufort did not hear him. He stood and gazed, with a sense of freedom and possibility which went to his head like wine. Even the ordinary bonds of nature did not seem to hold him. His mind seemed to expand and float away over the wide