"Please, mum, it's a somebody to see you without ever sending his card!" "Show him in directly, James!" And he was ushered into a spacious drawing "Is it a game at Ombre?" broke in the medieval knight, advancing. "I shall have pleasure in appropriating you for the quadrille form-room, dimly lighted, where he deposited the ing." bundle upon a small teapoy farthest from the And bowing to Eagleston he would have led light. her away, but that she lingered to say: "You remind me of some one." "Yes, of Monsieur Paul Frederic," trembling in his shoes. "No!" peremptorily. "I have brought it," he said; "the musicbox." She made a rush toward it. "Oh! oh! Mine? And where did you "And you will not get it?" tell me about my music-box?" Then recollecting herself into the stately courtesy of the lady; "and who are you, that I may thank you ?" "You said there should be no questions "You have a music-box, then?" said the asked," he muttered. shadow. "Madame," interrupted the knight, "we shall lose the quadrille as well as the music-box, and that is my affair, is it not?" a little tenderly. He had made it so most decidedly, for the identical thing lay upon a tripod in that gentleman's private dressing-room, secure from feminine inspection; and there Eagleston found it half an hour afterward, when, retiring to arrange his mask and observe if any thing could have betrayed him, he, by mistake, took the wrong door. There it lay under his very eyes, the actual discoloring of Maud's tears on the polished lid, and her name inside in his own hand! Monsieur Paul had probably reasoned thus: "Mrs. Ollendorff estimates absurdly this bauble; there must be more in it than appears. She clings to it; she must cling to me. Out of sight, out of mind. We will remove it till she belongs to me, when it can be easily discovered at a pawnbroker's." So he had done it. Who the partner was he included in the "we" I do not know, unless it was the But what am I saying? Monsieur L'Ombre did not wait to break bread with this Pharisee, nor drop his mask at the feast, though Undine and others waited and wondered thereat; but he took the music-box beneath his ample domino and departed, with no one the wiser. V. "True!" retiring and trembling, "I will ask none. But are you sure it is the one? Let me examine." She rang for a taper. "You're not going to call the watch ?" "Certainly not; haven't I given you my word?" "How do I know that you are to be trusted, that your word to-day is what it was yesterday?" This was an odd position of affairs, she thought, but answered, smiling, "I haven't changed; see, I do not arouse the domestics, except this maid-thank you, Bessy, that will do-nor arrest you, but simply dismiss you with this!" and she proffered a purse, between whose meshes the gold pieces smouldered as though they would burn their way through; he balanced it a moment on his finger and flung it upon the nearest table! "What! Is it not enough ?" "Not enough!" "But you have not counted it!" She brought her taper to the teapoy, as if she would see what this audacious burglar most resembled. She spread the pieces upon the box and told them off. Suddenly he laid a detaining hand beside her own, on the polished wood, not brown with any craft, but white and smooth and shapely. And suddenly, as if responsive to the touch, a little gurgle of tune uprose, and where it had broken off its burden the music-box was taking it up again-- "A long time ago a long time ago," Some half dozen evenings after this the door- and slowly, softly, lingeringly ringing out the bell at Ollendorff Place was pulled lustily; a melody. Then in a momentary kind of fearfootman opened to a somewhat tall person wear-less forgetfulness she glanced up. A new and ing a long black cloak and broad sombrero, and sweet revelation smote upon her with quick, carrying a bundle, who spoke with a foreign ac- convincing ray. cent that I will not attempt to render. "I must see Madame!" "Oh, Eagleston!" she cried, and I think you and I had better leave the room. ARMADALE. BY WILKIE COLLINS, AUTHOR OF "NO NAME," "THE WOMAN IN WHITE," ETC. BOOK THE SECOND. CHAPTER IV. THE SHADOW OF THE PAST. cabin door, and roofed in the cabin stairs. The wheel-house had been removed, the binnacle had been removed; but the cabin entrance, and all that belonged to it, had been left untouched. The scuttle was on, and the door was ONE the dark shelter of NE stepping back under the dark shelter of closed. in the yellow light of the moon, the two friends turned face to face on the deck of the timber ship, and looked at each other in silence. The next moment Allan's inveterate recklessness seized on the grotesque side of the situation by main force. He seated himself astride on the bulwark, and burst out boisterously into his loudest and heartiest laugh. "All my fault," he said; "but there's no help for it now. Here we are, hard and fast in a trap of our own setting-and there goes the last of the doctor's boat! Come out of the dark, Midwinter; I can't half see you there, and I want to know what's to be done next." Al Midwinter neither answered nor moved. lan left the bulwark, and, mounting the forecastle, looked down attentively at the waters of the Sound. "One thing is pretty certain," he said. "With the current on that side, and the sunken rocks on this, we can't find our way out of the scrape by swimming, at any rate. So much for the prospect at this end of the wreck. Let's try how things look at the other. Rouse up, messmate!" he called out, cheerfully, as he passed Midwinter. "Come and see what the old tub of a timber ship has got to show us astern." He sauntered on, with his hands in his pockets, humming the chorus of a comic song. His voice had produced no apparent effect on his friend; but at the light touch of his hand, in passing, Midwinter started, and moved out slowly from the shadow of the bulwark. "Come along!" cried Allan, suspending his singing for a moment, and glancing back. Still, without a word of answer, the other followed. Thrice he stopped before he reached the stern end of the wreck the first time, to throw aside his hat, and push back his hair from his forehead and temples; the second time, reeling giddily, to hold for a moment by a ring bolt close at hand; the last time (though Allan was plainly visible a few yards ahead) to look stealthily behind him, with the furtive scrutiny of a man who believes that other footsteps are following him in the dark. "Not yet!" he whispered to himself, with eyes that searched the empty air. "I shall see him astern, with his hand on the lock of the cabin door." The stern end of the wreck was clear of the ship-breaker's lumber, accumulated in the other parts of the vessel. Here, the one object that rose visible on the smooth surface of the deck, was the low wooden structure which held the On gaining the after-part of the vessel, Allan walked straight to the stern and looked out to sea over the taffrail. No such thing as a boat was in view any where on the quiet moon-brightened waters. Knowing Midwinter's sight to be better than his own, he called out, "Come up here, and see if there's a fisherman within hail of us." Hearing no reply, he looked back. Midwinter had followed him as far as the cabin, and had stopped there. He called again, in a louder voice, and beckoned impatiently. Midwinter had heard the call, for he looked up-but still he never stirred from his place. There he stood, as if he had reached the utmost limits of the ship, and could go no further. Allan went back and joined him. It was not easy to discover what he was looking at, for he kept his face turned away from the moonlight; but it seemed as if his eyes were fixed, with a strange expression of inquiry, on the cabin door. "What is there to look at there?" Allan asked. "Let's see if it's locked." As he took a step forward to open the door Midwinter's hand seized him suddenly by the coat-collar and forced him back. The moment after the hand relaxed, without losing its grasp, and trembled violently, like the hand of a man completely unnerved. "Am I to consider myself in custody?" asked Allan, half astonished and half amused. "Why, in the name of wonder, do you keep staring at the cabin door? Any suspicious noises below? It's no use disturbing the rats-if that's what you mean-we haven't got a dog with us. Men? Living men they can't be; for they would have heard us and come on deck. Dead men? Quite impossible! No ship's crew could be drowned in a landlocked place like this, unless the vessel broke up under them-and here's the vessel as steady as a church to speak for herself. Man alive, how your hand trembles! What is there to scare you in that rotten old cabin? What are you shaking and shivering about? company of the supernatural sort on board? Mercy preserve us !—as the old women say—do you see a ghost?" Any "I see two!" answered the other, driven headlong into speech and action by a maddening temptation to reveal the truth. "Two!" he repeated, his breath bursting from him in deep, heavy gasps, as he tried vainly to force back the horrible words. "The ghost of a man like you, drowning in the cabin! And the ghost of a man like me, turning the lock of the door on him!" Once more young Armadale's hearty laugh ter rang out loud and long through the stillness from Midwinter's hold. of the night. "Turning the lock of the door, is he?" said Allan, as soon as his merriment left him breath enough to speak. "That's a devilish unhandsome action, Master Midwinter, on the part of your ghost. The least I can do, after that, is to let mine out of the cabin, and give him the run of the ship." With no more than a momentary exertion of his superior strength he freed himself easily "Below there!" he called out, gayly, as he laid his strong hand on the crazy lock and tore open the cabin door. "Ghost of Allan Armadale, come on deck!" In his terrible ignorance of the truth he put his head into the doorway, and looked down, laughing, at the place where his murdered father had died. "Pah!" he exclaimed, stepping back suddenly, with a shudder of disgust. "The air is foul already-and the cabin is full of water." It was true. The sunken rocks on which the winter's face, which grieved and perplexed him. "You're not angry with me?" he said, in his simple, sweet-tempered way. "All this is my fault, I know-and I was a brute and a fool to laugh at you, when I ought to have seen you were ill. I am so sorry, Midwinter. Don't be angry with me!" vessel lay wrecked had burst their way through her lower timbers astern, and the water had welled up through the rifted wood. Here, where the deed had been done, the fatal parallel between past and present was complete. What the cabin had been in the time of the fathers, that the cabin was now in the time of the sons. Allan pushed the door to again with his foot, Midwinter slowly raised his head. His eyes a little surprised at the sudden silence which ap-rested with a mournful interest, long and tenpeared to have fallen on his friend, from the mo- derly on Allan's anxious face. ment when he had laid his hand on the cabin lock. When he turned to look, the reason of the silence was instantly revealed. Midwinter had dropped on the deck. He lay senseless before the cabin door; his face turned up, white and still, to the moonlight, like the face of a dead man. In a moment Allan was at his side. He looked uselessly round the lonely limits of the wreck, as he lifted Midwinter's head on his knee, for a chance of help, where all chance was ruthlessly cut off. "What am I to do?" he said to himself, in the first impulse of alarm. "Not a drop of water near but the foul water in the cabin." A sudden recollection crossed his memory; the florid color rushed back over his face; and he drew from his pocket a wicker-covered flask. "God bless the doctor for giving me this before we sailed!" he broke out fervently, as he poured down Midwinter's throat some drops of the raw whisky which the flask contained. The stimulant acted instantly on the sensitive system of the swooning man. He sighed faintly, and slowly opened his eyes. "Have I been dreaming?" he asked, looking up vacantly in Allan's face. His eyes wandered higher, and encountered the dismantled masts of the wreck rising weird and black against the night sky. He shuddered at the sight of them, and hid his face on Allan's knee. "No dream!" he murmured to himself, mournfully. "Oh me, no dream!" "You have been over-tired all day," said AlIan; "and this infernal adventure of ours has upset you. Take some more whisky-it's sure to do you good. Can you sit by yourself, if I put you against the bulwark, so ?" "Why by myself? Why do you leave me?" asked Midwinter. Allan pointed to the mizzen shrouds of the wreck, which were still left standing. "You are not well enough to rough it here till the workmen come off in the morning," he said. "We must find our way on shore at once, if we can. I am going up to get a good view all round, and see if there's a house within hail of us." Even in the moment that passed while those few words were spoken Midwinter's eyes wandered back distrustfully to the fatal cabin door. "Don't go near it!" he whispered. "Don't try to open it, for God's sake!" "No, no," returned Allan, humoring him. "When I come down from the rigging I'll come back here." He said the words a little constrainedly; noticing, for the first time while he now spoke, an underlying distress in Mid "Angry?" he repeated, in his lowest, gentlest tones. "Angry with you?-Oh, my poor boy, were you to blame for being kind to me when I was ill in the old west-country inn? And was I to blame for feeling your kindness thankfully? Was it our fault that we never doubted each other, and never knew that we were traveling together blindfold on the way that was to lead us here? The cruel time is coming, Allan, when we shall rue the day we ever met. Shake hands, brother, on the edge of the precipice-shake hands while we are brothers still?" Allan turned away quickly, convinced that his mind had not yet recovered the shock of the fainting-fit. "Don't forget the whisky!" he said, cheerfully, as he sprang into the rigging, and mounted to the mizzen-top. It was past two; the moon was waning; and the darkness that comes before dawn was beginning to gather round the wreck. Behind Allan, as he now stood looking out from the elevation of the mizzen-top, spread the broad and lonely sea. Before him, were the low, black, lurking rocks, and the broken waters of the channel, pouring white and angry into the vast calm of the westward ocean beyond. On the right hand, heaved back grandly from the waterside, were the rocks and precipices, with their little tablelands of grass between; the sloping downs, and upward-rolling heath solitudes of the Isle of Man. On the left hand, rose the craggy sides of the Islet of the Calf-here, rent wildly into deep black chasms; there, lying low under long sweeping acclivities of grass and heath. sound rose, no light was visible, on either shore. The black lines of the topmost masts of the wreck looked shadowy and faint in the darkening mystery of the sky; the land-breeze had dropped; the small shoreward waves fell noiseless; far or near, no sound was audible but the cheerless bubbling of the broken water ahead, pouring through the awful hush of silence in which earth and ocean waited for the coming day. No Even Allan's careless nature felt the solemn influence of the time. The sound of his own voice startled him, when he looked down and hailed his friepd on deck. "I think I see one house," he said. "Hereaway, on the main land to the right." He looked again, to make sure, at a dim little patch of white, with faint white lines behind it, nestling low in a grassy hollow, on the main island. "It looks like a stone-house and inclosure," he resumed. "I'll hail it, on the chance." He passed his arm round a rope to steady himself; |