The Under Secretary Part 26

"You!" he gasped, white-faced and haggard. "You! Miss Mortimer! To what cause, pray, do I owe this nocturnal visit to my study?" he demanded in a stern and angry voice.

"The reason of my presence here was the wish to find a novel to read in bed, Mr. Chisholm," she answered with extraordinary firmness. "Its result has been to save you from an ignominious death."

Erect, almost defiant, she stood before him. Her face in the heavy shadow was as pale as his own, for she perceived his desperate mood and recognised the improbability of being able to grapple with the situation. He intended to end his life, while she, on her part, was just as determined that he should live.

"You have been in this room the whole time?" he demanded, speaking quite unceremoniously.

"Yes."

"You have heard my words, and witnessed all my actions?"

"I have."

"You know, then, that I intend to drink the contents of that gla.s.s and end my life?" he said, looking straight at her.

"That was your intention, but it is my duty towards you, and towards humanity, to prevent such a catastrophe."

"Then you really intend to prevent me?"

"That certainly is my intention," she answered. Her clear eyes were upon him, and beneath her steady gaze he shrank and trembled.

"And if I live you will remain as witness of my agony, and of my degradation?" he said. "If I live you will gossip, and tell them of all that has escaped my lips, of my despair--of my contemplated suicide!"

"I have seen all, and I have heard all," the girl answered. "But no word of it will pa.s.s my lips. With me your secret is sacred."

"But how came you here at this hour?" he demanded in a fiercer tone.

"As I've already told you, I came to get a book before retiring, and the moment I had entered you came in. Because I feared to be discovered I hid behind the curtains."

"You came here to spy upon me?" he cried angrily. "Come, confess the truth!"

The curious thought had crossed his mind that she had been sent there by Claudia.

"I chanced to be present here entirely by accident," she answered. "But by good fortune I have been able to rescue you from death."

He bowed to her with stiff politeness, for he suspected her of eavesdropping. He felt that he disliked her, and in no half-hearted fas.h.i.+on. Besides, he recollected the prophetic warning of the colonel.

It was more than strange that he should discover her there, in that room where his valuable papers were lodged. He scented mystery in her action, and fiercely resented this unwarrantable intrusion upon his privacy.

"My own behaviour is my own affair, Miss Mortimer," he said in a determined voice.

"Yes, all but suicide," she a.s.sented. "That is an affair which concerns your friends."

"Of whom you are scarcely one," he observed meaningly.

"No," she replied, stretching forth her hand until it rested upon his arm. "You entirely misunderstand me, Mr. Chisholm. As in this affair you have already involuntarily confided in me, I beg of you to rely upon my discretion and secrecy, and to allow me to become your friend."

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

REQUIRES SOLUTION.

With his face to the intruder, Chisholm stood leaning with his hand upon the back of a chair.

"Friends are to me useless, Miss Mortimer," he answered her.

"Others perhaps are useless, but I may prove to be the exception," she said very gravely. "You want a friend, and I am ready to become yours."

"Your offer is a kind one," he replied, still regarding her with suspicion, for he could not divine the real reason of her visit there, or why she had concealed herself, unless she had done so to learn, if possible, his secret. "I thank you for it, but cannot accept it."

"But, surely, you do not intend to perform such a cowardly act as to take your own life," she said in a measured tone of voice, looking at him with her wide-open eyes. "It is my duty to prevent you from committing such a mad action as that."

"I quite admit that it would be mad," he said. "But the victim of circ.u.mstances can only accept the inevitable."

"Why, how strangely and despondently you talk, Mr. Chisholm! From my hiding-place at the back of those curtains, I've been watching you this hour or more. Your nervousness has developed into madness, if you will permit me to criticise. Had it not been for my presence here you would by this time have taken your life. For what reason? Shall I tell you?

Because, Mr. Chisholm, you are a coward. You are in terror of an exposure that you dare not face."

"How do you know?" he cried fiercely, springing towards her in alarm.

"Who told you?"

"You told me yourself," she answered. "Your own lips denounced you."

"What did I say? What foolish nonsense did I utter in my madness?" he demanded, the fact now being plain that she had heard all the wild words that had escaped him. The old colonel had warned him that this woman was not his friend. He reflected that, at all costs he must silence her. She paused for a few moments in hesitation.

"Believing yourself to be here alone, you discussed aloud your secret in all its hideousness--the secret of your sin."

"And if I did--what then?" he demanded defiantly. His courtliness towards her had been succeeded by an undisguised resentment. To think that she should have been brought into his house to act as eavesdropper, and to learn his secret!

"Nothing, except that I am now in your confidence, and, having rescued you from an ignominious end, am anxious to become your friend," she answered in a quiet tone of voice. Her face was pale, but she was, nevertheless, firm and resolute.

He was puzzled more than ever in regard to her. With his wild eyes full upon her, he tried to make out whether it was by design or by accident that she was there, locked in that room with him. That she was an inveterate novel-reader he knew, but her excuse that she had come there to obtain a book at so late an hour scarcely bore an air of probability.

Besides, she had exchanged her smart dinner-gown for a dark stuff dress. No, she had spied upon him. The thought lashed him to fury.

"To calculate the amount of profit likely to accrue to oneself as the result of a friend's misfortune is no sign of friends.h.i.+p," he said in a sarcastic voice. "No, Miss Mortimer, you have, by thus revealing your presence, prolonged my life by a few feverish minutes, but your words certainly do not establish the sincerity of your friends.h.i.+p. Besides,"

he added, "we scarcely know each other."

"I admit that; but let us reconsider all the facts," she said, leaning a little toward him, across the back of a chair. "Your actions have shown that the matter is to you one of life or death. If so, it manifestly deserves careful and mature consideration."

He nodded, but no word pa.s.sed his lips. She seemed a strangely sage person, this girl with the fair hair, whose parentage was so obscure, and whose invitation to his house was due to some ridiculous _penchant_ felt for her by Claudia. Why she had ever been invited puzzled him. He would gladly have asked her to return to town on the day of her arrival if it had been possible to forget the laws of hospitality and chivalry.

The whole matter had annoyed him greatly, and this was its climax.

"Well, now," she went on, in a voice which proved her to be in no way excited, "I gather from your words and actions that you fear to face the truth--that your guilt is such that exposure will mean ruin. Is this so?"

"Well, to speak plainly, it is so," he said mechanically, looking back at the gla.s.sful of death on the table.

"You must avoid exposure."

"How?"

"By acting like a man, not like a coward."