“Oh, it is too much, too much!” exclaimed the girl, covering her ears with her hands as if to shut out a chorus of voices that cried aloud to her. “All that is past and gone forever. Ida, Ida, where is she now!”
She went hurriedly back to the house and straight to her own room, where she shut herself in with her pen and ink.
The sun went down, the dinner-bell clanged through the house, the moon rose high above the oaks and elms in the park, but still Juliet sat writing there, slowly, carefully, painfully, as if each word she wrote held a life’s sentence in it.
And if one had looked over her shoulder he would have seen that her letter was addressed to Clive, and that from its first to its last line it was about Ida, and Ida only.
XI
Clive did not need to wait for Juliet’s reply to his letter in order to obtain Captain Culvers’s address. On the day of his arrival in Paris there was delivered to him a letter from his father, which made him feel that he had done well to break his journey there.
“Since I said goodbye to you last week,” Mr. Redway wrote, “a strange circumstance has occurred. A lawyer—Phillips by name—with whom I have been casually brought into contact, told me, in the course of conversation, of a curious letter that he said he had received from a member of a family in which he knew that I and my son were interested.
“This letter, which he subsequently showed me, was dated from 15, Rue Vervien, Paris, and was signed Sefton Culvers. In roundabout fashion the writer asked for advice for a friend, who he said wished to borrow a few thousand pounds on a clause in his wife’s marriage settlement, which provided that, if she died childless, her whole fortune over one hundred thousand pounds—would revert to him. There were no children, Captain Culvers went on to say, nor any likelihood of any, as the husband and wife had quarrelled and separated, and he had now every reason to suppose that reconciliation between them would be impossible.
“Captain Culvers further stated that his friend’s need for money was immediate and pressing. He was willing to pay a high percentage for even a small loan so long as it could be had at once, and without the trouble of legal formalities that might necessitate negotiation or correspondence with his wife’s family.
“Now it doesn’t require a wiseacre to come to the conclusion that the friend, for whom Captain Culvers made these enquiries, was the best of all his friends—himself; and that the letter would never have been addressed to Phillips if Culvers had known that I was likely to have dealings with him.
“But the most important part of the whole letter, to my way of thinking, is the phrase, ‘the husband and wife have quarrelled, separated, and there is now every reason to suppose that reconciliation between them would be impossible.’
“Of course, the most charitable supposition would be that Captain Culvers made use of these expressions wholly and solely for the purpose of facilitating and expediting the loan of which he is so much in need, that there may not be a grain of truth in them, and that he may be as much in the dark as to his wife’s movements as we are.
“On the other hand, there is the possibility that in speaking thus, he was speaking of matters within his knowledge. Juliet has, you say, spoken of serious quarrels that took place during the engagement. Some such a quarrel may have occurred on the day before the wedding—which, to save an open scandal, was allowed to go on—it may even have been continued during the drive from the house to the graveyard, and Captain Culvers may thus have been in some sort prepared for his wife’s disappearance. Subsequently she may have written to him, and his words, ‘there is now every reason to suppose that reconciliation between them would be impossible,’ may point to the fact that he will not consent to certain conditions his wife wishes to impose upon him, or that she refuses consent to terms proposed by her husband.
“I confess that from the first my suspicions have pointed in this direction rather than towards Juliet, who I think has been somewhat unjustly suspected on the matter. If you remember, she hinted to you that it would be as well to keep an eye on Captain Culvers, who probably knew more than anyone imagined of her sister’s movements. His letter to Phillips, to my way of thinking, gives colour to the idea, and allows us to conjecture that, negotiations with his wife having come to nothing, he has tried to raise money on her property without her knowledge. If I were in Lord Culvers’s place I would let every other theory go and concentrate attention in this quarter. It would not in the least surprise me to learn that Ida, as well as her husband, is in Paris. My own belief is that she is safe and well wherever she may be, and is only deterred from communicating with her own people by the fear that they may compel her to make terms with her husband, and to live with him as his wife.”
To this letter was added a postscript, which ran thus:
“By the way, I am told on good authority, that the house where Captain Culvers has taken up his abode No. 15, Rue Vervien—does not bear a very good reputation. It is kept
