Part 54 (1/2)
”Well, yes. You deserve to be sent to prison for robbing an honest man of his character, but for the information I want I will pay the price of silence.”
”You take your oath on it?”
Madeline hesitated for a moment. She would like to clear Rufus Sterne's character if possible. But he had just as much proof of perjury as she had unless this man confessed, and he refused to confess unless she promised secrecy.
”I take my oath on it,” she answered.
”Then he paid me twenty pounds.”
”Only twenty pounds?”
”He offered me five at first, then ten, then fifteen; but when he rose to twenty it was too much to resist. He said 'twouldn't harm Sterne.
That every gentleman got drunk now and then, and that as he was drunk it might be as well to prove he got drunk here as anywhere else.”
”And you didn't serve him with any drink?”
”I never served him with a drink in my life. He pa.s.sed the ”Three Anchors” that night, but he didn't call.”
”Thank you; that is all I wish to know.”
”And you'll not set the police on me?”
”No.”
She rode home by another way, and rode slowly. She was not an expert horsewoman yet, though she was rapidly becoming one.
She entered the house without anyone seeing her, and went at once to her own room. She wanted time to think, to shape her plans for the future.
Her life's programme had been torn into shreds. She would have to begin over again. But how, or when, or where?
After lunch she took a stroll on the Downs and along the cliffs. ”I shall never come back here again,” she said to herself. ”This must be my farewell.”
She walked slowly, and with many pauses. She half hoped she would see Rufus Sterne. She wanted to say good-bye to him, and in saying it tell him that she believed in him.
But Rufus was busy elsewhere that afternoon, and they did not meet. She looked in all directions as she strolled back across the Downs to the Hall, and with a little sigh she pa.s.sed through the lodge gates.
Another chapter had been completed in the story of her life. To-morrow a fresh page would be turned.
CHAPTER x.x.x
THE TOILS OF CIRc.u.mSTANCE
Madeline never felt so helpless or friendless as when she left with the Tregonys for the South of France. She had no one to advise her, no one to whom she could turn for a word of counsel. She wished a thousand times that her father had never made Sir Charles her trustee and guardian. He did so with the best intentions, no doubt. He was proud of the distant relations.h.i.+p, flattered by the Baronet's attention, and enamoured of the prospect for his only child; but for her it had meant disillusion and disappointment.
She had not courage enough to tell Sir Charles and Gervase what she had discovered. The Baronet almost over-awed her at times, while the Captain was possessed of a dogged tenacity and determination that were anything but easy to deal with. She felt almost like a bird in a cage--a cage into which she had deliberately walked, or had been cleverly lured. To all appearances she was free, and yet in a very real sense she was a prisoner. The meshes of the net had been so deftly and so silently woven round her, that she was not conscious of the fact until the last loophole was closed.
What could she do now? To whom could she go? There was the old solicitor in New York City, but there was no time to write to him and get an answer back. Her step-mother was travelling from place to place, and might be on the Pacific slope for all she knew, or in the South Seas, or j.a.pan. She had a good many friends--rich and influential people in the States--but they were often on the wing, and they might be ”doing Europe” or enjoying themselves in London or Paris.
Besides, how could she explain the peculiarities of the position in which she found herself, and if she tried to explain she questioned if she would get any sympathy? She would have to bide her time till she was of age, and trust in Providence for the rest.