Part 30 (1/2)
”Have I checkmated you?” thought Margaret. ”You dread the delay of four weeks? Yes, you do, I see it in your wicked face, and I say to myself, 'Well done, Margaret!'”
”I have no motive beyond your own welfare,” responded the lover, ”when I urge you to place the day of your answer a little nearer.”
”Is that a threat? Shall I turn round and tell Mrs. Chetwode that Colonel Brand has threatened me because I cannot promise to accept him without deliberation?”
”You have misunderstood me, then I shall say to your housekeeper. I shall explain that your weak health reminded me of the danger of protracted anxiety, and that then I urged you, for your own welfare, to place the day of your answer a little nearer.”
There was a pause, and the two antagonists eyed each other firmly.
”In spite of the danger to my welfare,” said Margaret, with unmistakable emphasis, ”I must insist on taking a month to consider your proposal. I shall take as much care as possible of my health meanwhile, so that you may have no reason to complain of my imprudence.”
”You are determined, then?” said the colonel, rising, with cold fury in his eyes. His repressive power was almost forsaking him, and it was with difficulty that he preserved that decorous gentleness of manner which he had donned with such care.
”Yes, I am determined.”
There she stood, waiting with freezing smile for him to go. No gentleman could decently stay another moment under such circ.u.mstances.
A sudden impulse, quick as thought, moved Margaret to accompany him to the door; a certain expression on his face stirred up a Babel of memories; it was gone, and they were gone, but she would sound the same waters again.
”Keep the door shut, John, because of the draft,” she said to the servant, pa.s.sing out under the stars with her adorer.
”I shall feel obliged if you only communicate with me through Mr.
Davenport,” said she, touching the stone lintel with her hand, ”until the next four weeks elapse. I shall specially invite you to the castle should I wish to see you at any time, and I expect you to obey the call.”
The colonel bowed silently.
A wild, wan moon came out through a riven cloud and shone on Castle Brand. The man on the lowest step and the woman on the highest, gazed fixedly into each other's faces; his, fierce, envious, and distrustful, hers, watchful, cold, and unflinching.
Waiting breathlessly for that wave of memory to beat upon the sands again, it came with the grouping of certain incidents, and with the magic spell of a.s.sociation.
The time had come when the false seeming of this man should drop like a garment. The time had come when a light from the past should break upon Margaret with the suddenly s.h.i.+ning moon. The time had come when their souls were revealed to each other and doomed to recognition despite the most perfect masking which rascality could a.s.sume to compa.s.s its end or purity devise to hide from peril.
These two had stood thus before, the moon gleaming coldly on both--his horse pawing in the shadow, a dying woman in the Brand state chamber.
Margaret turned suddenly on her heel and shut the door. She leaned against the staircase pillars and clasped her hands under the eyes of the astonished John.
”I know him now,” she muttered; ”he was here the night of Mrs. Brand's death. His name was _Roland Mortlake_!”
CHAPTER XVI.
UNVAILING AN IMPOSTOR.
Margaret stole to her chamber and bolted the door, and leaned her dizzy head upon her hand.
Gradually the first surprise of her mind gave way before a dreadful despondency, and she revolved the revelation in ever increasing alarm.
”He is cleverer than I am,” she a.s.sured herself, ”and he will most likely win the contest. He has come out of a past which I shall never be able to trace to personate St. Udo Brand, and his resemblance is the weakest instrument he uses. He has appeared like a horrible phantom in St. Udo's guise, and he defies me to tear his mask from him. He is no mere adventurer who has traded upon an accidental likeness to Colonel Brand and stepped into his shoes upon the day of his death--he is a deliberate scoundrel who probably was arranging his plot upon the night on which he came from Regis with Captain Brand's letter. He has waited for St. Udo's death to step into his place and enact his life from the point where he laid it down on the battle-field. Has he anything to do with the sudden end of that life? Has he murdered St. Udo Brand? Great Heaven! am I to unvail an impostor and find an a.s.sa.s.sin in this man?”