CHAPTER III.

THE ROSE-COLORED ROOM.

“Look.” Mrs. Trelane’s face was radiant as she threw a note across the luncheon-table to Ismay the next day. It was from Lord Abbotsford. “Look, he wants to see me this afternoon. He’s ill, can’t come out, and he’s sent me this latch-key so that I can go in without his man seeing me. He must be going to do something for me.”

“Will you go? I wouldn’t,” Ismay said slowly. She was weary from a stormy morning; sickened by the abuse of the two maid servants who had smelled disaster and departed after vainly demanding their wages.

“Go! What else should I do?” Mrs. Trelane seized the note again and rose to leave the room. “Three o’clock, he says, and it’s two now. I’ll go and dress.”

“Where does he live?” the girl asked idly, yet with intention. Somehow she did not like this expedition.

“Not far; he has a house in Onslow Place.”

“Well, if I were you, I would ring the bell and go openly; have the servant announce you! I wouldn’t creep in with a key.”

But Mrs. Trelane took no notice.

It was a dark afternoon, and Onslow Place was very quiet. No one saw her as she opened Lord Abbotsford’s door with the little latch-key. She met no one as she went softly up the carpeted stair to his sitting-room. She had been there before once, and knew the way.

The room was strangely quiet as she opened the door. It was all hung with pale pink, and furnished in a darker pink brocade; not like a man’s room at all. There were bowls of hothouse carnations everywhere, each great flower a fiery rose; and the silver lamps were already lit under their rose-colored shades.

Mrs. Trelane shut the door behind her, and as she did so a faint rustle in the next room could easily have passed unheard.

“Abbotsford,” she said softly, looking very young and handsome in her plain tailor-made gown, “are you here?”

A screen was drawn round the hearth, with room enough for a sofa between it and the fire. A table stood by the window, and at first Mrs. Trelane paid no heed to it, as she walked round the screen.

Abbotsford was on the sofa asleep, his head lying on his arm.

“Wake up, I’m here,” she said lightly. “I don’t wonder you’re asleep. Your flowers are too strong; they smell just like bitter almonds.”

Lord Abbotsford never moved; and once more the strange quiet of the room struck on Helen Trelane’s nerves.

“What’s the matter with you?” she said sharply. “Why can’t you wake up? And what are you doing with all that?” For the letter on the table had caught her eye; money, notes, and gold, in an open purple velvet box; diamonds, a necklace, bracelets, a tiara. Her heart gave a leap. Had he indeed repented and sent for her to give her these?

Something else on the table softened her heart, too: the only photograph she had ever had taken for years; it had been done for Abbotsford. She remembered how he had taken the negative from the photographer and broken it, for fear she might have more printed. He had loved her then. Oh, if she could only rouse that love again for one half-hour!

The silk linings of her dark purple dress rustled as she moved toward him where he slept, and sank on her knees beside him.

“Wake up, sleepy boy, you sent for me, you know.” His hand was strangely cool as she took it in hers; the next instant she had jumped to her feet.

“My God!” she cried, trembling like a leaf. “It can’t be.”

She lifted the arm that was over the face, and kept, she never knew how, from shrieking. John Inglesby, Lord Abbotsford, was dead--dead in the pink, luxurious chamber where the flowers smelled of almonds, where there was nothing to tell how he died.

Was it a trap? Had he killed himself on purpose? Sent for her?

Mrs. Trelane, with her skirts gathered up to make no sound, fled swiftly from the room. The house was quite quiet, the servants all down-stairs; the woman who had been young and radiant as she came in, slipped out of that horrible house wan as the man up-stairs. She dared not hurry away, though the early darkness of London was growing apace, and she could not if she had tried, for her feet would scarcely carry her.

Suddenly she stopped short, for quick steps came behind her. Had any one seen her go out? Had any one found that which lay up-stairs? She turned, ready to drop.

“Ismay!” The cry was hysterical, uncontrollable, for it was Ismay hurrying after her. “What are you here for?”

“Why not? I was going for a walk, and I came this way. What made you so quick? You have not been there five minutes--you can’t have.”

Her mother clutched her by the arm fiercely and whispered in her ear.

“Don’t stop like this! walk on,” the girl said, very low, yet with authority. “Did any one see you? You’re sure there was no one there?”

“No one.” Mrs. Trelane’s teeth were chattering.

“Is there anything in the room that might get you into trouble? Think, quick!”

“Oh, my photograph. It’s there on the table.” What a fool she had been not to bring it.

“Do the servants know you? Does any one know he was a friend of yours?”

“No; no one! I was very careful. I did not want my past to come up--if he married me.” The words were gasped out under her breath; for once terror was too much for her. “You don’t think they’ll bring me into it, Ismay?”

Ismay turned round.

“Go back,” she said, “quick, and get that photograph. It’s risky, but it’s your only chance. Don’t you see that you might be suspected through it?”

“I can’t,” but she had turned, too.

“You must! I’ll wait outside.”

She almost pulled the elder woman back to the house she had but just left; with a steady hand she fitted in the latch-key her mother could not turn. Sick with fright, but desperate, she pushed her gently into the dim hall and closed the door softly behind her. Helen Trelane, like a guilty thing, crept back to that room of horror, and her daughter strolled quietly along outside in terror. Suppose she had done just the wrong thing?

Ismay shivered in her thin coat, and then turned back in time to see what made her blood thicken with a worse chill than the November air.

A hansom cab was stopping at Abbotsford’s door. A tall man in a loose overcoat, that was like every other fashionable overcoat in London, jumped out and put his hand in his pocket to pay his fare.

He was going into the house! He would find her mother, find Abbotsford; he would find out, perhaps, more! With a horrible clearness those words of her own mother’s came back to the girl.

“I will pay him for it all if I kill him.”

In her sick horror the girl’s breath failed her; before she could draw it again the man, whose back was still turned to her in the dusk, had put a key in the door--Lord Abbotsford was evidently generous with keys--and disappeared within the house.

If Ismay Trelane had thought it would have availed her anything, she would have fallen on her knees in the street--and prayed!