Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 September 1894 — UNITED AT LAST [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

UNITED AT LAST

BY MISS M E BRADDON

CHAPTER XXVl—Continued Gilbert Sine air felt as if this world and this life were one inextricable confusion. The anonymous letter had told him where and v hen to watch and the writer of that letter had kept Jaith wit <. him so far. since he had not watched in vain - bat this suectacle of Innocent repose, the mother sleet ing near the child, was hardly in keeping; Gilbert paused irresolute, and then went to his wife’s bedside and roused her roughly with his strong hand unon her arm. The dark blue eyes opened suddenly and looked at him iu.l of bewilderment. “Gilbert. Baek to-night? Ididn'texpect you. Why do you look at me like that? What has happened?” “Can’t you guess? You didn’t expect me. You had made your plans accordingly. You had made an appointment with your loves'.” “Gilbert, are you mad?” “He has not disappointed you—he is here. Get up and come see him. Quick. He is waiting.” “Gilbert, what have you been doing? Where have you been? Calm youreelf, for Heaven’s sake.” “Come,” he said, grasping her wrist, *1 am too much a gentleman to let vour lover wait yonder—on the threshold of his own house, too. Strange that he should try to sneak in like a burglar, when he will be master here In a few days.” He dragged her into the next room, and to the balcony. “Pra.v, don't be so violent, Gilbert. I will come any where you please,” she «aid. gravely. From the balcony she saw that prostrate figure at the foot of the stairs, and gave a faint cry of horror. “Gilbert, what have you done?” “My duty as a man. I should loathe myself if i had done less.” She followed him down the stairs, trembling in every limb, and clung to him as he knelt by the motionle-s figure, and turned the face upward to the faint light of the new risen moon.

“Gilbert, what have you done?” repeated Con dance, sobbing hysterically. “Murder” answered ter husband, with a stolid despair. “I hated this fellow badly enough, but I didn’t mean to kill him. I meant to kill Sir Cyprian Davenant, with whom you had made an appointment to night, counting on my absence. ” “Gilbert, what have I ever done that you should think me the vilest of women? I have never wronged you by one thought about Cyprian Davenant which you might not know, I have never spoke a woid to him which you might not hear—you and all the world. Your jealousy oi him has ended in murder. ” “I have been trapped somehow. Some enemy has set a snare for me. ” “What are you to do? Oh, Gilbeit is he dead?” “Yes; the bullet finished him. I aimed under his shoulder, where I knew it would be fatal. What am Ito do?—cut and run, I suppose.” “Yes, go, go: it is your on’y chance. No one knows yet. Go, for God’s sake, this moment.” “And leave you with a corpse on the premises—rather cowardly that.” “Don t think of me -it is life or death for you. You must go, Gilbert. There Is no help. Go, or you will be taken and tried and hanged,” cried Constance, clinging to the iron rail, trembling, very cold, the ground reeling under her feet.

“Yes, that's the natural sequence. Fool, fool, fool! An anonymous, scribbler. "What can have brought him here, and to the windows of your room? ■Constance, what does it mean? To you know why this man came?” But Constance could not answer him. She had fallen, fainting, on the iron stair. It was not quite midnight when Mr. Sinclair drove up to his hotel—a small house in St. James’, chiefly affected by men about town. “Room ready, James? Yes, of course it is. You got my telegram ye terday. Been dining with some fellows. You can bring me a brandy and soda up stairs. That’s all.” “Sorry the horse lost, sir,” said the man, with respectful sympathy. “What hor. e?” asked Gilbert with a vacant look. “Eeg your pardon, sir—Goblin,'Sir. Thought he was safe to win the cup. Took the liberty to make my litt e venture on'him. ' You bein’ an bld customer, you seo, sir, and all of us feelin’ interested in him on th t account.” “That was agood fellow. The ground was top hard for him —goes better in the dirt.” He went up to his bed-room after this brief colloquy, leaving the head waiter under the impression that Mr. Sinclair had been dining rather mare freely than usual. “.Didn't seem to understand me when I snoke to him about his owu ’oss,” Bail the waiter t> his friends in council: “stored at me reg’lar mazed.” “Ah, pore feller, he’s 'it pretty ’ard to-day, you may deeped.” Mr. Sinclair’s last order to the waiter . who carried the brandy and soda to his bed-rc< m was to be called at half-past re:;.’; morning. “You’ll have a cab at the door at a quarter past 7,” he said: “I want to catch the 7:10 train into Kent. I ought to have got home to-night if I could have done it.” “Yes, sir—half-past 7, sir. Anything particular you would like for breakfast?” “Oh. am thing.” “A bit of ii h, sir, and a spatch-cock, or a devil?” suggested the waiter, pertinaciously. Nothing can subdue that solicitude to obtain an order which is the waiter’s ruling passion. “Fish—flesh—anything," cried Gilbert, kicking off his boots. “A salmon cutlet, sir, with Dutch BOSS?" “An elephqnt, if you like. Get me the cab at a quarter past seven. A hansom, with a good horse.” “Yes, sir; an 'ansom and a fast ’oss. Yes, sir. Tea < r coffee, sir?” Mr. Sinclair banged his door in the waiter's face. “The ‘Baron Osy’ starts at eight to-

morrow,” said Gilbert, referring to his Braishaw, the only literature he carried about him constantly. “I shall be in Antwerp on Saturday.” Then, after a pause, he asked himself: “Might it not be wiser to hold my ground and trust to the chapter of accidents? Who is to bring taat t aitor's death home to mo? I sleep here tonight. No one saw me at Davenant.” He went to the mantel-piece, where a pair of wax ca idles were burning with that air of elegant luxury by wnich your skilled hotel-keep jr seeks to reconcile his customers to the extravagance of his ccarges, and to k James Wyatt’s letters out of his breast pocket. The first three or four he looked at were business letters, chie.jy entreaties to "renew” or carry over, or provide for some little bill just falling due, “like tee best of good fellows.” These Gilbert lail aside after a glance; but there was one at which he started as if he had touched a snake. It was in the same hand as the anonymous let.er that made him a mutderer. This, in plain words, was the gist of the letter—badly spelled, with a foreigner's uncout i orthography: curiously worded, with a mixture of foreign idioms and iliil erate English. “You tell me that all your promises anouit to nothing—that you never neant to marry me. Bather hard to discover this after having nursed my decision so long. I was to be a lady. I was to take my place in the world. Bah. all lies! Les, like your pretended love —your pretended admiration. You ask me to go back to ray country, and promise if I consent to this 1”shall be provided for—handsomely—with nfty pounds a year for life —whether I remain single or marry —an independence for a girl like me, you say. Soit. But who is to secure to me this independence? It may be paid for a year—two years perhaps—and then cease. It must that I see you, Mr. Wyatt. It must I hear of your own lips what you mean. Yoar sol t tongue is too strong for me. You could p<r uade me to do anything, to go anywhere, to serve and obey you at your slave, but I cannot obey to your letters. Ido not understand. I want to see things clearly—to have your views explained to me. “You say that I am passionate—vindictive—and that when last we met—and, ah! how kind it was of you to come here at my request—my violence almost frightened you. Believe me, I wi 1 not so offend again. Come but once more —only come and assure me with your own lips that this miserable pittance shall De paid to me honorably year by year—give me but your word for that, and I will go back to my friends in the south of France—ah — co si me ce sera loin de toi, m n ami—and you shall hear of me nei er again. “ You tell me that you are no longer friends with Mr. Sinclair, and that you eann .t c me to this house, and that if I want to see you it must be that I come to you That is not possible without throwing up my place alt - gether, for the housekeeper here is of the most tyrannical, and gives no servant leave to absent herself, and I will not give up 1 his service until I am assured of my future. Give me, then, a proof of your go d faith by coming here. Give me my pittance a year in advance and sh ,w me how it is to bo afterward paid me, and I will trouble you no more.

“It will be very easy for you to come on the evening of the 1 th. Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair are going to Ascot on the 15th; they will be absent some days. You know your way to the balcony room. I shall be waiting for you there between 10 and 11 on Thurscay evening, and I wi 1 show a light in the center window as' a signal that the coast is clear. “Come if you wish me to trust you. Come if you do not wish me to betray you. Yours, as you treat me, “Melanie Dufort." This letter showed Gilbert Sinclair the diabolical trap that had been set for James Wyatt and for himself. He had been made the instrument of the French woman’s revenge. In the face of this revelation what was he to do? Carry out his intention; go to South America, and leave his wife in the powsr of this fiend. Gilbe t Sinclair was not bad enough for that. “I’ll risk it, and go back to Dave nant, ” he said. “How do I know what this wretch might do? She might lay her lover’s death at my wife’s door, drag my wife’s name in the gutter. No; at any hazai d to myself 1 must be there, and. if nece-sary, this letter must be shown at the inquest.”

CHAPTER XXVII. CROWNBB’S QUEST. “What a horful thing!” said one house-maid, and “Who could have done it?” ejaculated another, as the news of the catastrophe spread through the house. Who was to tell Mrs. Sinclair?” Martha Briggs took that office upon herself. She had just filled Miss Christabel’s bath, but the darling was not awake yet, and Mrs. Sinclair was most likely still asleep. “111 teli her when I take her cup 'of tea at half past seven.” said Martha, looking pale and scared. “Where s Melanie?” asked the upper hpuse-maid. “She aiked leave to go to London early this morning to get herself some things, as if Maidstone wasn’t good enough for her. She wanted to go by the first train to have a long day of it, she said. The first train goes at fix. She must have left this house at half past five.” “That's queer,” said the house-maid; “but I never had much opinion of foreigners.” “What could have brought Mr. Wyatt heie last night, and t > the bottom of those steps?” speculated Martha Briggs. “Why didnt he gj io the hall-doer as usual? It seems so strange .” “it seems stranger that there should be any one there to shoot him,” remarked the house-maid. Mrs. Sinclair heard of the morning's disc >very with a calmness which astonished her hand-maiden. “I must telegraph for my husband,” she said; and a telegram was dispatched without dela/addressed to Gilbert at his hotel in St. James’. The police were on the alert by this time, examining the scene of the murder. The coroner appointed 3 o’clock in the afterno m for his inquiry, which was to b? held in t -e hall at Davenant. This would give time for summoning the jury. Constance was sitting at breakfast, very pa e but quite self-possessed, when Gilbert Sinclair walked in from the lawn.

“Gilbert,” she cried, “what folly! I thought you were miles away—across the channel by this time." “No, Constance, I am not such a poltroon. We have not been a very happy couple, ycu and I, and God knows I am heartily tired of my life in this coun-

try, but I a-n not base en ugh to leave you in the lurch. Who can tell what scandal might arise against vou? No. my dear, I shall stop, even if the end shall be a rope.” “Gilbert, for mercy’s sake! Oh, Gilbert!" she cried, wringing her hands, “how could you do this dreadful thing?” “How could I? I thought I was doing my duty as a man. I was told that a man was to be here—your secret visitor. The man was here at the very hour 1 had been told to exiect him. I saw him entering your room bystealth. What could I think but the worst? And thinking as I did, Iha 1 a right to kill him." “No, Gilbert, no. God has given no man the right to shed his brother’s blood.” “Except Jack Ketch. I suppose. God has given men the instinct of honor, and honor teaches every honest man to kill the seducer of his wife or daughter. The inquest was held at three. Gilbert and several of his household, notably the gardener who found the body, were examined. Dr. Webb gave his evidence as to the nature of the wound, and the hour at which death must, in all probability, have occurred. "Did you sleep at Daveaant last night, Mr. Sinclair?” asked the coroner.

“No; I only came up fr m Ascot yesterday evening, and spent the night in London. ” “ Where?” “At Hildred’s Hotel, Jermyn street.” “Did you dine at the hotel.-” “No; I dined at Francatelli’s." This was a venture. 1< rancatelli’s would dou itless have been crowded on the night after Ascot, and it would be difficult for the waiter 3 to assert that Mr. Sinclair had not dined there. “ You dined at Francatel i's. Where is that?” asked one of the jury with rural innocence. “It is a hotel and restaurant in Piccadilly.” “How long were you at Francatelli’s?” asked the coroner. “1 really can not tell. My horse had been running at Ascot, and losing. I was somewhat excited. I may have gone into Francatelli’s at eight, and gone out again between nine and ten.” “And from Francatelli’s you went to your hotel?” “No,” said Gilbert, ‘eeling that there was a hiatus of a couple of hours here. “I went into the Haymarket Theater for an hour or two. ” “If this fellow asks me what I saw there. I'm done for,” he thought; but happily the coroner was not so much on the alert as to put that question. “nave you any idea what brought the deceased t > your house lad night, when you were known to be absent?” “1 have a very clear idea.” “Be kind enough to tell us all you can. ” “Coming from the station this morning by a foot-path through the park, the way by which the decea ed always came to my house when he did not drive from the station, I found a lettei which it seems to me that he must ■ have dropped there last night." “You f und a etter dropped by the deceased in Davenant Park.-” “I found this leiter addressed to Mr. Wyatt, which I cone ude must have been dropped by him last night.” |TO BE CONTINUED. |