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Seymour Michael saw; but he knew that he had no case. "And you believe this man before you believe me?" said Michael. It is strange how often one hears the word "believe" on the lips of those whose veracity is doubtful. Now it happened that Mr. Hethbridge had spoken of Wynderton at breakfast that morning in terms which left no doubt as to the untruth of the statement just made in regard to him.
Secondly, the Mutiny broke out, and India lay before the ambitious young officer a very land of Ophir. He promptly decided to cut the first string of his bow. Anna Hethbridge was now useless nay, more, she was a burthen. Hence the letter which lay half-written on the table of his bungalow. He paused before this wrong to a blameless woman, and contemplated the perpetration of a greater.
He weighed pro and con carefully withholding from the balance the casting weight of Right against Wrong. Then he took up the letter and slowly tore it to small pieces. He had decided to leave the report of his death uncontradicted. It was morally certain that five weeks before that day Anna Hethbridge had read the news in the printed column lying before him.
Above all, Miss Hethbridge seemed to want the marriage, and so it came about. If Anna Hethbridge had been asked at that time why she wanted it, she would probably have told an untruth. She was rather given, by the way, to telling untruths. Had she, in fact, given a reason at all, she would perforce have left the straight path, because she had no reason in her mind.
Anna Hethbridge had therefore been annexed en passant. In person she was youthful and rather handsome her fortune was extremely handsome. So Seymour Michael went out to India engaged to be married to this girl who was unfortunate enough to love him. In India two things happened. Firstly, Seymour Michael met a second young lady with a fortune twice as large as that of Miss Anna Hethbridge.
And somehow she was no longer Anna Agar, but Anna Hethbridge. She was no longer the fond mother whose whole world was filled by thoughts of her son a miserable, thoughtless, haphazard world it was but again she was the wronged woman, moved by the one great passion that had stirred her sordid soul, a fearsome hatred for Seymour Michael.
Seymour Michael carried this code to the farthest limit of safety. All through the months that followed he went about his business with a clear conscience and a heart slightly relieved by the removal of Anna Hethbridge from his path to prosperity.
Glynde, never dreamt of such a possibility until, in the form of a fact, it was confided to her by Miss Hethbridge, one afternoon soon after her arrival at the rectory. "Confound it, Maria," exclaimed the Rector testily, when the information was passed on to him later in the evening. "Why could you not have foreseen such an absurd event?" Poor Mrs. Glynde looked distressed.
Something urged her to go on with her pointless questions the same inevitable Fate which, according to the Italians, "stands at the end of everything," and which had prompted Mr. Hethbridge to bring this stranger into the drawing-room. "But how did you find it out?" "Oh, I did not do it all at once. I first began by a mere trifle.
The name did not strike me until you mentioned the county. I wonder if the lady is now your step-mother." "My step-mother's name was Hethbridge," replied Jem Agar. "The same. How strange!" said the General indifferently. "Well, she has probably forgotten my existence these thirty years. She has one son, you say?" "Yes, Arthur. He is twenty-three five years younger than myself."
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