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CHAPTER VII.

IT was many weeks after my narrow escape on the journey to Bristol before Mr. Leighton would hear of my undertaking any large or difficult commission for him.

"You are too confident, Mrs. Delamere," he said gravely, when I urged him to give me some work worth doing, "too reckless. Certainly you manage to escape scathless from danger in the most wonderful manner, but you know in all cases of risk it is only a question of time. Sooner or later I am afraid something bad will happen to you, and then how should I forgive myself?"

"Nonsense, Mr. Leighton," I said, "you are over-cautious and over-sensitive. You are giving me, at my earnest desire, the opportunity to earn a comfortable living in a congenial way. If you take it from me, then I must become a governess, or a companion, or a typist, | | 110 or something equally arduous, and for an income that will only just clothe me. Surely you have nothing to blame yourself for, whatever happens."

"Well," he answered, "a woman, and especially a wilful one, generally manages to get her own way. Since you insist, Mrs. Delamere"--he handed me a letter that had been lying on his desk.

It was a very ordinary letter, and worded in a terse business-like manner that did not suggest any possible romance. The writer said that, having heard of Mr. Leighton's reputation as a pearl merchant, and being anxious to match exactly two pearl earrings, he would be obliged if some trustworthy and intelligent person could be sent to see him, and to take his order. He named a day and hour.

The letter was signed, Arnold Gervoise, and addressed from St. Bernard's Mansions, some new flats in Mayfair.

I folded the note up and put it in my card-case; then rose, and holding out my hand to Mr. Leighton, said: "Good-bye. I will be at | | 111 St. Bernard's Mansions punctually at ten on Thursday."

Mr. Leighton smiled.

"No hesitations?" he said; "no suspicions, Mrs. Delamere? How do you know this is not a fresh plot against you personally?"

"I am convinced it is not," I answered; "and, anyhow, I'm going, Mr. Leighton." And I left the office before he could raise any fresh objections.

Thursday came, and at ten o'clock I found myself in a charming room, half dressing-room, half boudoir, awaiting the pleasure of Mr. Arnold Gervoise.

Presently the door opened, and a wheel-chair, propelled by its owner, appeared.

He piloted himself in skilfully, shut the door, and then came quite close to me, saying apologetically:

"I am extremely sorry to have kept you waiting; I had no idea Mr. Leighton's representative was a lady, but in any case it was unavoidable. I hope you will excuse me."

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"Certainly," I said; "it does not matter at all; I am not in any hurry. Mr. Leighton entrusted this business to me because I have done a good deal of work for him before."

He looked at me with increased scrutiny and, while feigning to glance in another direction, I returned his criticising glances in a mirror that reflected him.

He was young and handsome, though with a weary, worried look about him that told of some mental strain in addition to his physical incapacity.

"I am a wretched cripple, as you see," he broke out impatiently, "and therefore dependent on others for the management of my affairs to a great extent; but I wish to keep this matter entirely between ourselves. I trust that I may count on you not to mention it to any of my household?"

I bowed.

"I shall certainly not do so," I said.

He looked at me questioningly for an instant, and then wheeled himself to the door and disappeared.

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When he came back he had a small velvet case in his hand.

"I want you to take the exact design of these," he said, showing me a pair of magnificent earrings. "You can make a drawing of them if you like, only you must be very quick. And I want you to bring me a pair that will match these exactly in three days."

I obeyed his first directions in silence. When I had finished a rapid sketch, I observed:

"These will be very expensive, and I cannot promise them faithfully in three days, though we will do our best. The black pearls will be the difficulty."

The earrings were two splendid diamonds set in a circle of large white pearls, and each depending from a single black pearl.

The setting was peculiar and old-fashioned. He seized the case from me, and hurried once more out of the room.

When he returned he seemed more tranquil and relieved.

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"I am greatly obliged to you," he said, "and I shall be still more so if you can accomplish the copies successfully within the three days."

I assured him that Mr. Leighton would do his best, and took my leave, not without some wondering questions in my mind as to the meaning of all that had happened.

I had reached the public staircase, and was waiting for the lift, when it ascended, and a very beautiful woman alighting from it gave me a glance of curiosity, and passed on to the flat I had just left. She was exquisitely dressed, tall and graceful, and, before the lift descended with me, I had time to see that, on the opening of the front door, she walked straight in without inquiry. She was, I felt sure, the wife of the man who had given me the order for the pearls.

I fulfilled Mr. Gervoise's commission by dint of much perseverance and trouble, and managed to get the earrings completed within half-an-hour of the time he had appointed for my arrival at the flat with them.

I hoped that this slight difference of time would not matter, and when I was shown into | | 115 the same room as before, I expected that Mr. Gervoise would make his appearance at once, and that the whole affair would be speedily settled.

But one quarter of an hour passed, and another, and yet another, and still I was sitting alone with no sign, either visible or otherwise, from Mr. Gervoise.

I began to feel very uncomfortable.

Had he not laid such stress on my secrecy, I should have rung the bell and sent a message to him; as it was I did not know what to do. But my patience was very nearly exhausted, and I decided at last that I would stay only five minutes longer, and would then quietly take my departure, and wait for further instructions through Mr. Leighton.

The time had almost expired when the door suddenly opened, and there swept into the room the same woman I had seen in the lift.

I was struck anew with her extraordinary beauty, and with a strange, startled expression in one of the loveliest pairs of eyes that I have ever seen.

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She stopped dead on seeing me, and Mr. Gervoise, who was wheeling himself rapidly after her, stopped also, and made me a signal that seemed to be of entreaty.

" What do you want?" she said quickly and imperiously; "are you waiting to see me? I was not told that anyone was here."

I had already risen, and I answered quietly, though I felt I was in a awkward dilemma: "Perhaps there is some mistake. I fancied that this was the flat to which I was sent for on business, but--"

I concluded by answering Mr. Gervoise's look of appeal with one commanding him to speak.

"Of course," he said, "it is someone for our predecessor again, Vera. We have only just taken this flat," he continued, to me, "perhaps it was Mr. Thurston you wanted." This time his look was one of the most agonised entreaty.

I bowed, and walked towards the door.

"I am sorry," I said, "that there has been a mistake. I did not know that Mr. Thurston had let his flat to you."

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And, having reached the passage, I fled to the door and let myself out without further delay, mentally resolving never to enter it again.

I had no desire to be mixed up in Mr. Gervoise's mysteries, and I felt that I had been very unfairly treated, and was well out of an uncomfortable situation.

But the next day came a letter, addressed to Mr. Leighton, to be handed to me, in which Mr. Gervoise apologised for having given me a fruitless errand, and said that he would fully explain everything if I would call at six o'clock on the following afternoon, and that he must beg that I would not transfer the matter to other hands, but would come myself.

I confess that my curiosity to learn the secret of all this mystery greatly helped his persuasions, and I found myself quite unable to resist going, in spite of my former resolves.

At six o'clock therefore I found myself again in the little room, and in the presence of Mr. Arnold Gervoise.

"Look here, Mrs. Delamere," he said, "I am going to make a clean breast of it to you. | | 118 You must think it all very queer and suspicious, and I am anxious to avoid suspicion. If you will consent to keep my confidence, I should prefer to confide in you. I am sure I can trust you."

I told him that I thought it would be best for him not to confide any secret he might have to a total stranger like myself, and that if he would kindly settle for the pearls I could take my leave, and the matter would be ended.

But he was, as I could see, an impressionable and excitable person, and this did not suit him.

"Here is the cheque," he said, handing me an envelope. "But I must ask you to listen to me, and to hear my explanation of what cannot but seem to you my unusual conduct.

"It is like this. I have a wife to whom I am passionately devoted. She was penniless, and she married me for a home, not for love. I am determined to win her in time, though, and I will let nothing stand in the way of it. A few months ago I had an accident out hunting, and was disabled for a time; I shall get over it | | 119 presently. Some friends of mine lent me their country house to rest in and get convalescent.

"My wife went there with me. Our hostess has some fine jewels, and one evening she showed them to my wife, and told her the value of a particular pair of earrings. Soon after, she and her husband went away to Monte Carlo, leaving us in their house, which they offered for our use while they were away. One night"--he bent forward, and his voice sank to a whisper with repressed agitation--"I saw my wife get up, and go out of our room. I watched for her return, and when she came back she had these earrings in her hand. She put them into a secret compartment of her dressing-case and locked them up. The next day I asked her if she knew where our hostess kept her jewels, and whether she had taken them abroad with her. My wife told me that she knew where they were kept usually that, in fact, she had been told the word which would open the lock of the American safety-lock, to open which you must set the correct password, but she added that | | 120 she had forgotten the word and also that she believed our hostess had taken all her jewels with her. Then I knew that she was a thief; that my wife, the woman whom I worshipped, had stolen the earrings deliberately. I tried every plan to lead her to confess, but she wouldn't.

"Finally, hearing that our hostess was on her way home, I came up here and determined to match the earrings; to place the new ones in the secret drawer of my wife's dressing-case, and to get the original ones conveyed in some way to their rightful owner. As you have helped me in the first part of my scheme, will you help me with the second? Will you try to think of a plan to get the jewels back without rousing their owner's suspicions against my wife?"

Amazing as this story was, there was no doubt about its truth, and that Mr. Gervoise was thoroughly in earnest in his resolution to hide his wife's crime, and yet to atone for it.

"Give me the earrings now," he said, "and I will put them in the dressing-case, and hand | | 121 the others to you, if meanwhile you have thought of any way to return them. My wife is out, and this may be our only opportunity."

He took the case, looked at the earrings, and admired the exactness of every tiny detail to the pattern ones, and was wheeling himself towards the door when it was flung open, and Mrs. Gervoise came in, carrying a small silver lamp.

"Oh, you are here, Arnold," she exclaimed, "and in the dusk too. What are you--" she caught sight of me and stood still, the lamp in one hand and the other resting on her husband's shoulder.

"Who is this lady?" she said. "Was she not here the night before last?"

He did not answer, and she stamped her foot with annoyance.

I felt exceedingly annoyed myself, but there was no escape.

Then she saw the case in his hand.

"What is that?" she demanded. "I insist on seeing."

She snatched it from him, and gave a cry of | | 122 astonishment or alarm--I could not quite tell which.

"What is the meaning of this?" she said. "Mrs. Hamilton's earrings' here! What are you doing with them? Good Heavens, Arnold, you are not--" she faltered--and then burst out again--"how did you get them?--speak--tell me at once, or I shall think you are a thief."

He caught her hand.

"You know I am not," he said; "I want to replace those that have been stolen."

"Stolen!" she echoed. "Are you mad, Arnold? If they are stolen, you must have taken them yourself."

They had both of them forgotten me completely, so absorbed were they in their own impetuous feelings.

"Oh, Vera, Vera," he said, "why won't you acknowledge that you stole them? I would forgive you, darling--I have forgiven you already--if you would only--" He caught her hand, but she wrenched it free. Her eyes were blazing with anger, and she could hardly speak for rage and agitation.

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"How dare you say that to me?" she stammered; "to accuse me--" she choked with passion. He clasped her hand again, and was going to speak, when, freeing herself with a violent gesture, she dropped the lamp which she had been holding, and in an instant, with the crash of splintering glass, a liquid stream of fire began to spread itself like lightning over the carpet.

I had involuntarily sprung forward as she dropped it, and the swift flame caught the edge of my dress, which, being of light material, blazed up at once.

In my panic I was going to lose my head and rush from the room, but Mrs. Gervoise caught me, threw me down and rolled me in an Indian rug, extinguishing the flames.

Meanwhile the servants, in answer to her screams, had come and managed to put out the fire.

Then I fainted, and when I came to myself I was in bed in the Gervoises' spare room, and my scorched ankles had been bound up with some soothing ointment.

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For some days I was too ill to be moved, and both the Gervoises were kindness itself to me, though I could see that they were not on friendly terms with each other.

At last, when I had been carried to the sofa in the boudoir, Mr. Gervoise offered to read to me, and as soon as we were alone told me all that had been happening.

"My wife is furious with me," he said. "She declares I stole the earrings myself, and invented the whole story in order to get power over her. She insisted on sending the original ones back anonymously to their owner, and she will not speak to me on the subject again. I can see she hates me. What am I to do?"

"It is very singular," I mused. "A theory has occurred to me, Mr. Gervoise. I wonder if you would be willing to make an experiment."

"Anything you like," he answered, "provided she forgives me."

It was a very simple little plot, and before I left them we carried it out, and I proved that my surmise was a correct one.

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Mrs. Gervoise was, unknown to her husband and even to herself, a somnambulist, and was in the habit, if anything had interested or excited her brain, of walking in her sleep, and doing things of which she had no remembrance afterwards.

She had slept in the room with me the first two nights after the fire, because I was feverish from the shock and the pain of my burns; and it was her walking about and talking in her sleep that gave me the possible solution to her husband's mysterious story about the earrings. She was quite unaware that she had gone to her friend's jewel-case, made use of her knowledge of the pass-word, and, taking out the earrings, had hidden them away. When the truth came out, she was touched with her husband's goodness to her, in spite of his knowledge of her theft, and I think she learnt to care for him more as a result of this experience than she ever would have done otherwise.

At all events, when I parted from them, they were the best of friends, and she had graciously accepted the gift of the second pair of earrings | | 126 from Mr. Gervoise. I was lame for some time afterwards, but otherwise there was no ill result from what might have been a serious, if not fatal, accident to all three of us.