Chapter 50 - Page 2

you might not have answered her at all!

I left them to talk together, and took a turn in the room, considering with myself what we were to do next.

It was not easy to say. The barren information which I had received from my darling was all the information that I possessed. Nugent had unflinchingly carried his cruel deception to its end. He had falsely given notice of his marriage at the church, in his brother's name; and he was now in London, falsely obtaining his Marriage License, in his brother's name also. So much I knew of his proceedings--and no more.

While I was still pondering, Lucilla cut the Gordian knot.

"Why are we stopping here?" she asked. "Let us go--and never return to this hateful place again!"

As she rose to her feet, we were startled by a soft knock at the door.

I answered the knock. The woman who had brought Lucilla to the hotel appeared once more. She seemed to be afraid to venture far from the door. Standing just inside the room, she looked nervously at Lucilla, and said, "Can I speak to you, Miss?"

"You can say anything you like, before this lady and gentleman," Lucilla answered. "What is it?"

"I'm afraid we have been followed, Miss."

"Followed? By whom?"

"By the lady's maid. I saw her, a little while since, looking up at the hotel--and then she went back in a hurry on the way to the house--and that's not the worse of it, Miss."

"What else has happened?"

"We have made a mistake about the railway," said the woman. "There's a train from London that we didn't notice in the timetable. They tell me down-stairs it came in more than a quarter of an hour ago. Please to come back, Miss--or I fear we shall be found out."

"You can go back at once, Jane," said Lucilla.

"By myself?"

"Yes. Thank you for bringing me here--here I remain."

She had barely taken her seat again between Oscar and me, before the door was softly opened from the outside. A long thin nervous hand stole in through the opening; took the servant by the arm; and drew her out into the passage. In her place, a man entered the room with his hat on. The man was Nugent Dubourg.

He stopped where the servant had stopped. He looked at Lucilla; he looked at his brother; he looked at me.

Not a word fell from him. There he stood, fronting the friend whom he had calumniated and the brother whom he had betrayed. There he stood--with his eyes fixed on Lucilla, sitting between us--knowing that it was all over; knowing that the woman for whom he had degraded himself, was a woman parted from him for ever. There he stood, in the hell of his own making--and devoured his torture in silence.

On his brother's appearance, Oscar had risen, and had