CHAPTER XXXV

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GOOD-BY.

But it was not to Levallion Castle that Adrian Gordon came in the crisp blue and gold of the autumn evening.

Ravenel, seated on her bed, with her sluggish blood barely moving in her veins, leaped to her feet as her door opened.

“You!” she cried, and if for an instant her face was transfigured, the next she put out her trembling hands as if to warn him to stay where he was. “How did you get in?”

“As men do who storm a city wall,” he might have answered truly; but he only said: “Quite easily,” and let his eyes look their fill on the face of the only woman in the world.

The matron after one shrewd glance turned her back on them. But it was trouble wasted; neither of them thought of her. Her eyes were on him as his on her. And the dead, ugly pallor of her face, that had been like a rose, the black circles round her dull eyes, the thin transparency of her hands, made him catch his breath for agony of pity; but she never saw how worn he was because she was looking in his eyes that she had never hoped to see again.

“Seventeen days of it,” he thought, “and she looks like this! How will she look after months--years?” For they would never dare to hang her, to break that slender neck with a rope in a prison yard. Yet he knew after one look at her that if she were found guilty, even of manslaughter, it meant death for her! Death in a prison cell, alone.

The man’s heart-break choked him.

Six feet of bare floor lay between them, that was all; yet shame and the grave could part them no more utterly.

“Nel,” he said, for the minutes were flying, “I had to come. You’re not angry?”

“No,” she whispered. And if for a minute she had thought he brought her good news, she knew now he had none. Gordon turned and saw the matron. Before he could speak she deliberately put her fingers in her ears. Ten juries might ask her what they said, and she could tell them nothing. The look in the woman’s eyes sent Adrian to Ravenel’s side.

“Nel,” he whispered, “tell me, for God’s sake! who you saw in that room, and why you lied at the inquest? Did you think it was I?”

“I know it wasn’t, now. I might always have known, but I couldn’t think--afterward.”

“But you did see some one?”

“I said not,” quietly. “It wouldn’t do me any good now to let them know I lied.”

“If I had done it twenty times I wouldn’t have had you hold your tongue to save me.” He was hoarse with pain. “How could you think that I, who’d gone to London, was in Levallion’s house?”

“I didn’t think.” She met his eyes with hers, dull from nights of agony. “I took down the bottle; looked up, and thought I saw you going out the door! I was frightened. I felt as if I had seen a ghost! When Jacobs growled and bristled I ran. And then--the stuff killed him.” Horror twisting her pale lips. “How could I tell? How was I to know you had not come back, for some reason? I--I never for one second thought you killed him.”

“My own heart,” said the man, with a breath like a sob, “don’t defend yourself to me. I know you never thought that. But if you won’t tell about the figure you saw, I will. Don’t you know some one must?”

“You’d do no good,” gently. “Only make me a liar. And even now, Adrian, I couldn’t swear the figure was real and not my fancy. I’d been trying all that day to put you out of my mind.”

“But you said the bottle was warm!”

“Quite warm,” she shuddered, “like blood. But that was what frightened me--afterward. I remembered what you’d said about poisoning him--and yet I wouldn’t, wouldn’t believe it!”

“Some one had been carrying it in a hot hand,” he cried. “The same person who put those bottles in your room. Did you think I would have done that?” bitterly.

“I knew you wouldn’t, but you must remember that I knew nothing about those bottles till my evidence was finished,” simply.

“There’s a God, they say!” he said, between his teeth. “If there is, He won’t let the guilty escape. Nel, promise me something. Trust me, even if things come to the worst. There’ll be help somewhere!” very low.

“Not for me,” quietly. “You’ve been trying all this time and found out nothing. I see it in your face.”

“I thought of Mrs. Murray,” he said painfully, “and I’m afraid I’m wrong. She had nothing to gain and revenge to lose. The talk would have been worse than death to him.”

A quick look of pain came to her face.

“I know,” she muttered. “The duchess told me.”

He answered with that utter honesty she had loved in him.

“Nel, you would not believe what Hester says about Levallion. He never went to that house in Eaton Place, except once, when they thought the boy was dying. He gave her money, but she lies when she says he kept on going there. You knew him better than that.”

“I never believed it,” she answered quietly, loyal to the dead, as she had been to the living.

“Now you know why I could not answer you about ‘Mrs. Gordon,’” he whispered, thinking that assuredly no wickeder woman than Hester Murray trod the earth. “It was she herself!”

“Never mind her,” with sudden passion she caught his arm. “Let her be! Adrian, do you think I’ll ever see you again, face to face, like this? For I sha’n’t! Talk of yourself, talk of something I may remember when”--sharply--“till I die.”

“I’ll see you hundreds of times, please God. Day in and day out,” but his eyes were not on hers.

“You won’t, you can’t!” The self-control that had held her since that dreadful night gone now. “Adrian!” she cried, wild, terrified, broken, “they’ll hang me. I can’t prove I did not do it. Help me, comfort me, make me brave.”

If ten matrons had been looking on he would have caught her to him.

“Never,” he said, low, in her ear. “Not while I can speak and see.” But what he meant never dawned on her.

“Put that thought from you. I swear you can.” For with that rag--and his tweed suit could easily be torn--there was one way open still.

“If they let me go to-morrow, the world would think we did it,” she gasped. “There’s blood between us. We’d be as far apart as if I died.”

“If I never see you on this side the grave,” the man cried passionately, “do you think I’ll ever be really parted from you? What are a few years--when some time we’ll wake and find it’s the Resurrection Day? Love, don’t grieve!”

For as he spoke she remembered how once it was she who had meant to creep to his side when the dead came out of their graves, and now God had made that the only hope left.

“Listen,” he said, “I’ll have to go in a minute. I came to tell you something. I let you think I’d found out nothing; I’ve found out one way. There’ll be no death for you, my sweetheart, no prison. I can’t tell you what I know, but it will set you free.”

“No, no, no!” Tears blinded her. She caught him to her madly. “Not that, never that.”

“Not that.” He hushed her like a child; and if ever a lie was pardoned, his was. “Be at peace; not that. Oh! what did we do that we should end like this?” he broke out fiercely, more to himself than to her.

“My heart, we’ll wake some day in paradise,” she said, very low, for his passion steadied her. “And perhaps it won’t be long.”

He stooped and kissed her as a man whose minutes are numbered; held her close in agony that hurt her and him.

“Be brave,” he muttered, for he was broken utterly. “Remember you’re safe. Eat what they give you,” and the homely, kindly detail was dreadful in its tender care. “Think of Tommy and of me, who’ll be happy--and God knows how happy--when you’re free.”

Somehow he put her away from him as the warden knocked at the door.

But outside in the free air he shut his teeth and prayed he had not lied to her. For suppose what he had in his mind was not enough to set her clear! It was not hope that had brought him to Valehampton Jail. If there were none at Levallion Castle--and there could be none----

“I pray God my shoulders are broad enough,” he thought, turning away.

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