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I could not remain in the room, because the sight of blood always turns me faint and sick. I retired to my own apartment and remained there until the arrival of Lady Helena Powyss." There was one fact, the Chesholm Courier did not chronicle, concerning Miss Catheron's evidence the formal, constrained manner in which it was given, like one who repeats a well-learned lesson by rote.
A banker's daughter, a brewer's daughter, they were prepared to accept banking and brewing are genteel sort of things. But a soap-boiler! and married in secret! and a baby born in lodgings! and Miss Catheron jilted in cold blood! Oh it was shameful! shameful! No, they could not call upon the new Lady Catheron well, at least until they saw whether the Lady Helena Powyss meant to take her up.
She rose hurriedly to go. "Will you come to Powyss Place on Thursday next?" she asked. "I hardly like to press you, Inez, under the circumstances. For poor Victor's sake I want to make the best of it. I give a dinner party, as you know; invite all our friends, and present Lady Catheron. There is no help for it. If I take her up, all the country will; but if you had rather not appear, Inez "
The story, though they tried to hush it up, got in all the papers 'Romance in High Life, they called it. Everybody talked of it it was the nine-days' wonder of town and country. The actors in it, one by one, disappeared. Lady Helena shut up Powyss Place and went abroad; Sir Victor vanished from the world's ken; the heroine of the piece no doubt went back to her native land.
Sir Victor came in while she was still there, and without taking any notice of me, told her he had received a note from Lady Helena Powyss saying Squire Powyss had had a stroke, and that he must go at once to Powyss Place. He said he thought he would be absent all night, that he would return as soon as he could, and that she was to take care of herself. He kissed her good-by and left the room.
He asked her no questions he was afraid. His heart sank within him, she lay so cold, so white, so utterly indifferent whether he came or went. He was nothing to her nothing. Would he ever be? Lady Helena, less in love, and consequently less a coward, asked the question her nephew dared not ask: "What had brought Mr. Charles Stuart to Powyss Place? What had made her, Edith, faint?"
Let it be the work of the coroner and his jury to discover the terrible secret, to bring the wretch to justice. And it is the duty of every man and woman in Chesholm to aid, if they can, that discovery." From Tuesday's Edition. The inquest began at one o'clock yesterday in the parlor of the Mitre Inn, Lady Helena Powyss, of Powyss Place, and Miss Inez Catheron being present.
THE CORONER. "Young woman we don't want to hear what Jane Pool said and did. We want to know what you saw yourself." "Very well, that's what I'm trying to tell you. If Jane Pool hadn't said Sir Victor had gone off to Powyss Place, and that she didn't think it would be proper to disturb my lady just then, I would have gone up to my lady for orders.
Sir Victor was immersed in his building projects and his lady-love; Lady Helena, ever since the coming and going of the lady in black, had not been the same. Powyss place was a pleasant house, but enough was enough. They were ready to say good-by and be off to "fresh fields and pastures new."
The bridemaids would arrive at ten the Earl of Wroatmore, the father of the Ladies Gwendoline and Laura Drexel, was to give the bride away. They would return to Powyss Place and eat the sumptuous breakfast then off and away to the pretty town in North Wales. That was the programme. "When to-morrow comes," Edith thinks, as she wanders about the house, "will it be carried out?"
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