CHAPTER XXIV.

“I NEVER SAW IT BEFORE.”

The frost still held. The river that ran through Cylmer’s Ferry was skimmed with ice; the lake at Marchant’s Hold was a shining, glittering thing as Ismay passed it on her way to keep her tryst at the stile. Only at one side, where a deep brook ran into it, was there a spot of black ice. Ismay passed it without a glance as she hurried on.

Wray had been at her elbow all the afternoon, hideous, revolting, stinging her with veiled hints of the price that she, and she alone, could pay for her mother’s safety. She had broken away from him at last, with the arrival of tea and Cristiane, and before the eyes of the heiress he had made no attempt to detain her. There was nothing she could do down here at Marchant’s Hold.

He laughed as he saw her hurrying out through the frozen park, as if to get away from an unclean atmosphere and drink deep of the stainless air.

And yet it was then that fate laughed, too, had he known it; laughed even at that luck of Marcus Wray that the agony of a frail girl would presently meet.

Cylmer, straight from the station, strode to meet Ismay as she reached the stile.

The place was silent, deserted, and he took her in his arms. She felt the cloth of his coat under her cheek, felt his arms tighten once more about her, steeled herself to meet his kiss.

Oh, God! In ten minutes, in five, would there be that between them that would stop his kisses forevermore?

“You’re pale.” He held her at arm’s length to look at her. “You’re cold. I was a brute to bring you out in this freezing weather.”

“No, no, I don’t feel it.” She led the way to the stile. “I think I am tired. Let us sit down,” with a smile that was not like her own.

“I thought I’d never get back,” he said, sitting down beside her, his arm round her to draw her close. “You were right, Ismay. It was an awful business. Don’t draw away from me, sweet! There’s not a soul to see.”

“Why was it awful?” For once her scarlet lips were dry. “Do you mean you’ve found the murderer?”

“No. But we shall; and the awful part is that it must have been a woman who poisoned him. But let us talk of something else, of you and me. I’m sick of the ugly side of life.”

Sick? What would he be when he knew it all?

“Tell me first. I like to know all you do, you know.” Would her heart ever beat again, would he feel her strained breathlessness as she sat within his arm?

“What an exacting child it is,” he said. “I’ll tell you, and then we’ll leave the whole hateful subject. When Kivers made that last search he found where the carpet stopped at the threshold just inside the bedroom a jewel, or a piece of one, wedged into the little crevice. It looked as if it might have been a charm.”

“A charm!” Mechanically she forced out the words. Oh, that tinkling bunch of golden toys her mother always wore on a chatelaine! Why, had she not long ago gone over them one by one?

“I think so. For it isn’t a thing a man would be likely to wear. What do you think?” Before she could draw her laboring breath he had laid something in the frightened, relaxed hand that lay on her knee. “I got Kivers to lend it to me. I wanted to look at it under a microscope.”

“This!” She was bolt upright, clear of his embrace, staring at the thing in her hand. “This!” relief that was agony in her voice. “I--I never saw it before.”

“Saw it before?” He stared at her. Then he laughed. “Saw one before, I suppose you mean, little silly! It is an Egyptian scarab, one of their sacred beetles that are so precious. Look at its color in the sunset.”

Golden green, turquoise blue, in its gold setting; the beetle that was older than Christianity glowed dully in her ungloved palm.

But it was not its beauty that made her eyes shine, nor anything but the rapture of knowing that never, never had her mother possessed a thing like it.

Had she been wronging her all this time? Had she been speaking the truth, and Abbotsford been done to death by another hand before ever she entered the house? If she had dared, she would have laughed out wildly, flung her hands out in delirious joy; but she must even turn her face from her lover, that he might not see the triumphant blood mantling in her cheeks.

There had been some one else in the room!

It was all she could do not to shriek it aloud.

“How excited you are!” he laughed. “Do you think you would make a good detective when a little thing like this turns your head?”

“Why should the thing have belonged to a woman?” she said irrelevantly.

“Because a man could only wear it set in a ring, and this was never in a ring. Don’t you see the light setting of gold round it and the broken catch of a tiny chain? It has been a pendant, hanging for luck on a woman’s bracelet. For deadly luck for some poor soul,” gravely.

“You are sure it wasn’t Lord Abbotsford’s own?” with a persistence that might make him wonder.

“Certain. If you had ever seen Abbotsford you would see the absurdity. He was never known to wear even a jeweled stud. He told me once that he always thought of the money that was sunk in women’s diamonds, and groaned inwardly at the waste of capital. He was never very free with money, poor chap. He was a man’s man, not a woman’s.”

“Yet you said he had a photograph that was not his fiancée’s?” wonderingly.

“Oh, that’s different.” Cylmer grew red under his bronze. “But you wouldn’t understand, and I don’t want you to. Come home, darling mine; it’s too cold for you here.”

Home, to Marcus and his evil plots; to the mother she had wronged in her thoughts ever since that awful day, but who, innocent or guilty, was putting her head blindly into another noose.

“I wish I were going home with you,” she cried, with a shyness that made her hide her face the second the words were out. “I hate Marchant’s Hold!”

“You could come to-morrow if you would let me have my way,” rapture at her avowal in his voice. “Look up, Ismay. Don’t be ashamed. There is nothing that can’t be said between you and me.”

“I wish I thought so,” she murmured with sudden significance. “Perhaps I shall some day. What are you and the detectives going to do?” she asked, holding the little beetle tight.

“Find out who the woman is who was in his rooms that day--and then, I suppose, I’ll strain every nerve to keep her from being hanged as she deserves,” with a laugh at his own weakness. “Women have always been kind to me, my Ismay,” simply and without the least conceit, as though such kindness were a debt he must repay. But she guessed shrewdly that many a woman had loved Miles Cylmer, and worn sorrow at her heart for her folly.

“Miles, if I had done it could you love me still?” she said, on an impulse.

“You? Don’t even in fun class yourself with a woman like that!” sternly.

“Well, then, my mother!” It was almost a cry. “If she had done it would you marry me? Tell me.”

Cylmer was absolutely truthful. For a moment he looked away from her, awkwardly.

“Ismay, don’t ask me,” he answered very low. “I--I don’t know.”

And he never turned to see that the knife had gone home to the hilt.

“You’re quite right,” she spoke slowly, flatly. “I shouldn’t have said it. Take me home now. You’ll tell me, won’t you, if you think you are going to find--that woman?”

“Yes,” reluctantly. “But I wish I had never named a woman like that to you. Wait, Ismay,” with a motion of his broad shoulders, as if he shook off the memory of a distasteful burden, “I want to give you something first.”

He drew a case from his pocket, and even in the light that was nearly gone from the sky she saw something flash as he opened it. The next instant he slipped a band of great diamonds, each one a fortune, on her smooth white finger.

“With my body I thee worship,” he quoted softly, his eyes, that were her heaven, bent on her changing face. “I will say that once more when I put another ring on your finger.”

For a moment her hard-held composure was gone.

“Mark,” she stammered, “I can’t wear it.”

“Mark! My name isn’t Mark.” He looked at her hardly, sharply in the dusk. “What do you mean, Ismay? Are you dreaming, or do you think you are talking to another man?”

Appalled by her own slip of the tongue, she could not speak. What was this love doing to her, that she was losing her nerve, her self-command?

“Ismay, answer me!” How stern his voice was. “Is there any other man who ever said he loved you, that you should think of him now?”

With the sure instinct that the truth alone could answer him, she turned to him, her face white and hard as he had never seen it.

“Did you think I meant you when I said ‘Mark’? I meant”--somehow, she seemed as tall as he as she faced him--“the man my mother means to marry me to. He is staying with us now. When I said his name and not yours I meant that with his eyes on me I would never dare to wear it.”

“Staying with you now? What for?” His heart revolted at the thought of guests in a house of mourning. “And why should you mind his seeing it? What is he to you?”

“Nothing. A thing so small that I would kill myself before I fell into his hands. And that is what would happen if he saw me wearing your ring.”

“Ismay, don’t speak in riddles. Tell me what you mean. What right has any man to object to your wearing my ring?”

“Don’t speak to me like that. I can’t bear it.” To his shame he saw that she was crying. Ismay, who never cried, to whose eyes tears were strangers!

“Oh, he can do anything, anything,” she sobbed. “He--he knows something about my mother; she is afraid of him.”

“My sweet, my poor sweet.” The man who had done his best to threaten that mother into leaving Marchant’s Hold felt suddenly guilty and ashamed. “What can I say to you? But if you would listen to me and get your mother on my side I think I could make short work of him for her.”

“Can you blot out the past?” said Ismay Trelane.

She wiped away her tears that shamed her; was she no stronger than Cristiane that she must cry in her pain?

Very pitifully the man kissed her.

“I would do anything on earth for you!” he whispered. “Can’t you tell me what it is he knows?”

“She’s my mother.” Once more she held her head up, proudly, lest he should see her wince at her mother’s shame. “And as for Marcus Wray, I will beat him yet, and then you can marry me--if you will.”

“I’d rather help you.” But she made no answer as they hurried homeward, his ring still on her finger, the little scarab, that he had forgotten, safe inside the palm of her other hand.

“I’m coming over to-morrow to see Cristiane,” he threatened, as he left her in the garden.

“Oh, Miles, don’t,” she cried sharply; “or, if you come, wait for me there by the lake behind those cedars. I daren’t see you before Marcus Wray. And yet I may want you.”

“What do you mean, sweet?”

But she only laughed, and the laugh was not good to hear.

“I don’t know; but you’ll see,” and she was gone. There was nothing to tell him that by to-morrow she thought to catch Marcus Wray red-handed, and so would never fear him any more. Her heart was lighter than for many a day as she locked away the little blue-green beetle that Cylmer had forgotten. The diamond ring she hid away with it. Never till the owner of his scarab was found would she dare to put it on. And, oh! would it be to-morrow?

But at the thought her heart sank again. The owner of the lost scarab must be found first, and how was she to do it?