第37章

FATHER BENWELL'S CORRESPONDENCE.

I.

_To Mr.Bitrake.Private and Confidential._SIR--I understand that your connection with the law does not exclude your occasional superintendence of confidential inquiries, which are not of a nature to injure your professional position.The inclosed letter of introduction will satisfy you that I am incapable of employing your experience in a manner unbecoming to you, or to myself.

The inquiry that I propose to you relates to a gentleman named Winterfield.He is now staying in London, at Derwent's Hotel, and is expected to remain there for a week from the present date.His place of residence is on the North Devonshire coast, and is well known in that locality by the name of Beaupark House.

The range of my proposed inquiry dates back over the last four or five years--certainly not more.My object is to ascertain, as positively as may be, whether, within this limit of time, events in Mr.Winterfield's life have connected him with a young lady named Miss Stella Eyrecourt.If this proves to be the case it is essential that I should be made acquainted with the whole of the circumstances.

I have now informed you of all that I want to know.Whatever the information may be, it is most important that it shall be information which I can implicitly trust.Please address to me, when you write, under cover to the friend whose letter I inclose.

I beg your acceptance--as time is of importance--of a check for preliminary expenses, and remain, sir, your faithful servant,AMBROSE BENWELL.

II.

_To the Secretary, Society of Jesus, Rome._I inclose a receipt for the remittance which your last letter confides to my care.Some of the money has been already used in prosecuting inquiries, the result of which will, as I hope and believe, enable me to effectually protect Romayne from the advances of the woman who is bent on marrying him.

You tell me that our Reverend Fathers, lately sitting in council on the Vange Abbey affair, are anxious to hear if any positive steps have yet been taken toward the conversion of Romayne.I am happily able to gratify their wishes, as you shall now see.

Yesterday, I called at Romayne's hotel to pay one of those occasional visits which help to keep up our acquaintance.He was out, and Penrose (for whom I asked next) was with him.Most fortunately, as the event proved, I had not seen Penrose, or heard from him, for some little time; and I thought it desirable to judge for myself of the progress that he was making in the confidence of his employer.I said I would wait.The hotel servant knows me by sight.I was shown into Romayne's waiting-room.

This room is so small as to be a mere cupboard.It is lighted by a glass fanlight over the door which opens from the passage, and is supplied with air (in the absence of a fireplace) by a ventilator in a second door, which communicates with Romayne's study.Looking about me, so far, I crossed to the other end of the study, and discovered a dining-room and two bedrooms beyond--the set of apartments being secluded, by means of a door at the end of the passage, from the other parts of the hotel.Itrouble you with these details in order that you may understand the events that followed.

I returned to the waiting-room, not forgetting of course to close the door of communication.

Nearly an hour must have passed before I heard footsteps in the passage.The study door was opened, and the voices of persons entering the room reached me through the ventilator.I recognized Romayne, Penrose--and Lord Loring.

The first words exchanged among them informed me that Romayne and his secretary had overtaken Lord Loring in the street, as he was approaching the hotel door.The three had entered the house together--at a time, probably, when the servant who had admitted me was out of the way.However it may have happened, there I was, forgotten in the waiting-room!

Could I intrude myself (on a private conversation perhaps) as an unannounced and unwelcome visitor? And could I help it, if the talk found its way to me through the ventilator, along with the air that I breathed? If our Reverend Fathers think I was to blame, I bow to any reproof which their strict sense of propriety may inflict on me.In the meantime, I beg to repeat the interesting passages in the conversation, as nearly word for word as I can remember them.

His lordship, as the principal personage in social rank, shall be reported first.He said: "More than a week has passed, Romayne, and we have neither seen you nor heard from you.Why have you neglected us?"Here, judging by certain sounds that followed, Penrose got up discreetly, and left the room.Lord Loring went on.

He said to Romayne: "Now we are alone, I may speak to you more freely.You and Stella seemed to get on together admirably that evening when you dined with us.Have you forgotten what you told me of her influence over you? Or have you altered your opinion--and is that the reason why you keep away from us?"Romayne answered: "My opinion remains unchanged.All that I said to you of Miss Eyrecourt, I believe as firmly as ever."His lordship remonstrated, naturally enough."Then why remain away from the good influence? Why--if it really _can_ be controlled--risk another return of that dreadful nervous delusion?""I have had another return."

"Which, as you yourself believe, might have been prevented!

Romayne, you astonish me."

There was a time of silence, before Romayne answered this.He was a little mysterious when he did reply."You know the old saying, my good friend--of two evils, choose the least.I bear my sufferings as one of two evils, and the least of the two."Lord Loring appeared to feel the necessity of touching a delicate subject with a light hand.He said, in his pleasant way: "Stella isn't the other evil, I suppose?""Most assuredly not."

"Then what is it?"