The doctor reluctantly yielded his consent, and then Madge slipped from the room with a wildly beating heart. Instead, however, of turning along the corridor towards the rooms occupied by Cyril, Wayne and Jack, she swiftly descended the stairs, and reaching the study door flung it wide open.
"Come!" said she, addressing Jack--she did not look at Cyril--"your father sent me to your room to call you--to your _room_!" She paused a moment, and then continued, with flashing eyes and a bitter emphasis: "Oh, deceive him still, if you can! If you can keep him from learning to what you have fallen, do so! You need expect no opposition from me--for his sake, but never, never, dare to speak to me again!"
"Jack is not to blame in the least," said Cyril, quietly. "I am the culprit; he is as innocent as you are, Miss Westbrook."
Madge started and blanched; that coolly-worded confession seemed to stab her like a knife. Then like lightning there flashed across her brain the request she had overheard for a loan of twenty-five pounds. Oh, this was all so horrible--so incomprehensible! Jack had lifted his head as Cyril spoke, but had quickly let it fall again.
"Jack followed me, only to watch me," continued Cyril, in the same even tones. "He was caught by the closing of the door when I opened the drawer--you know how it works--that is all as far as he is concerned. I throw myself on your mercy, Miss Westbrook. I offer no useless excuses. If I dared ask a favour of you I would say, keep my secret--at least until I am free of Highbank."
Madge paused a moment, overwhelmed; then she turned on him with passionate scorn. "Oh, how you have deceived us! Then all the time you have been here you were only a thief--a common thief, at heart. Oh!"--she waved her hand with a gesture of horror--"you acted well as a pretender, a masquerader, a specious, lying counterfeit of honesty." She turned to her cousin: "Jack! Jack! speak!"
"For Heaven's sake, Madge, don't go on so. I--I can't stand it, I tell you," exclaimed Jack, violently. "I--I----"
[Illustration: "SHE TURNED ON HIM WITH PASSIONATE SCORN."]
"Hush! hush! There is no need to say anything further," broke in Cyril, hastily. "Miss Westbrook will keep silence, I am sure. I only ask for a few hours' grace."
Madge swept out of the study without another word. Cyril pushed the reluctant Jack and then followed him. At the doctor's door Madge left them and, her heart broken with passion, sought her room. The old man had been awaiting the arrival of the young men in a fever of impatience. The first excitement consequent on the capture of the burglars having subsided somewhat, he had had time to reflect. It had occurred to him then that the thieves must have effected their entrance by the study door; they could scarcely have done so by the window. In this case they had, he thought, probably entered by means of a skeleton key and had escaped in the same manner.
It was a pitiful, distasteful farce to Cyril, but it had to be acted through to the finale. The birds had flown, of course, and equally of course by the French window found open in the corridor.
Search parties were sent out, and Cyril wondered with a pang what could be Madge's feelings as the flickering lights wandered to and fro in the garden on their wild-goose chase.
The next day Madge did not leave her room, and Cyril Wayne, feeling that he was the cause, hastened his departure. One more lie, he bitterly told himself, and his career of deception was concluded. It was an intense relief, sore as his heart might be, to get away as far as possible from Highbank. He had spent there the happiest and the most painful hours of his existence.
* * * * *
In less than a fortnight after Cyril's departure Jack Selden was watching, with a feeling of considerable satisfaction, from the deck of a "liner," the English coast-line fading in the distance. His debts had been paid and a hardly-won consent obtained to try the experiment of sheep-farming in Australia. His father, aunt and Madge had accompanied him to Tilbury Docks; and Jack was wondering vaguely, as he puffed his cigar and the summer night gathered round, what Madge was at that precise moment thinking of him.
Before leaving he had written a letter for Madge, which she would have received on her return to the hotel from the docks. In it Jack had done full justice to Cyril Wayne. He had concealed nothing relating to the crime which he had so nearly committed, and which Cyril, to shield him, had so quixotically taken upon his own shoulders. In conclusion he had begged Madge to keep his secret from his father, and to consider that as far as he, Jack, was concerned she was free.
Madge had found Jack's letter on her dressing-table, and had read its frank out-pouring with quickened pulse, flushed cheeks, and sparkling eyes. What a dull, crushing weight it had suddenly lifted from her heart! She did not attempt to analyze her feelings, but the crime seemed nearly trivial now that she knew it was Jack's. And then an uncontrollable desire seized her to make amends to Cyril. Jack had evidently anticipated this; for, with wonderful thoughtfulness, he had supplied the address, and Madge recognised with a thrill that it was not distant more than five minutes' walk from the spot where she was at that moment standing.
Should she write to Cyril or should she go to him? A moment's thought decided that question. The cruel words she had used could only be withdrawn personally; so, without bestowing a moment's reflection on the proprieties, she crushed Jack's precious epistle in her hand and, hurrying down the stairs, left the hotel.
It was with a beating heart that she presently found herself at the house where Cyril was living. He was acting as _locum tenens_ for a friend who was enjoying his holiday abroad. The servant, thinking she was a late patient, ushered her into a little waiting-room, and from there, a few moments later, into the consulting-room. Cyril, who was standing at the window, turned and started in astonishment as he recognised her.
"What! Miss Westbrook!" he exclaimed, as he hurried forward. "The doctor----?"
Madge held out her hand impulsively.
"No," said she; and then, without further preamble, she plunged tumultuously into the reason that had brought her there.
"I have come to beg your pardon. Oh, you must forgive me for what--what I said. I'm so sorry--oh, so sorry; but I couldn't help it. Please read this before you say anything."
She thrust Jack's letter into Cyril's hand. The young man took it, glanced at the super-scription, and flushed.
"Ah! so Jack has betrayed me!" said he, as he commenced to read. "And you are not angry at my deception?" He looked into her eager, appealing face. "It is I who must ask forgiveness, but----"
"But you hurt me very much indeed," broke in Madge. "You should not have done it; no, you should not. I said things--I misjudged you, because you--oh, you had disappointed me--wounded me so much." Her eyes grew humid and her last words faltered and fell almost to a whisper.
"I--I thought the end justified the means," stammered Cyril. He scarcely knew what to say. He turned to the letter again.
There followed a momentary silence while Cyril read on. Suddenly his heart bounded wildly, and the writing swam before his eyes as he came to Jack's declaration of freedom. He dropped the letter and turned to her.
"Miss Westbrook--Madge--tell me--you must! Did you love him?"
"I--I had promised," she whispered, with drooping eyelids.
"Promised! Promised! Only promised? I always thought you loved him," exclaimed Cyril.
Madge did not reply, but the colour surged sudden and warm into her half-averted cheek.
"My dear! my dear!" said he, passionately, as he caught both her hands in his. "It was I that loved you after all--not Jack. I deceived you for your sake, not for his. What could I do? Could I see you suffer? I have loved you from the first, but I never thought to tell you this. Is it useless for me to do so now? Madge, dear, is it? Is it?"
[Illustration: "HE CAUGHT BOTH HER HANDS IN HIS."]
There was no reply, but as he drew her unresisting form towards him he read his answer in her uplifted, happy eyes.
[Illustration: CHILDHOOD IN PICTURES]
By S. K. LUDOVIC.
[Illustration: "ASLEEP."
_From the Painting by F. Charderon._
By permission of Braun, Clément, & Co.]
Childhood's joys and childhood's sorrows, its beauty, and even its little frailties--in fact, everything connected with the dawn of life, has its own especial charm. It is, perhaps, not given to all of us to detect with a sympathetic eye the picturesque in a very naughty young person, who hits at every moment on a fresh idea to make his fellow-creatures uncomfortable: nor is the spectacle of children in their best-loved state of dirty happiness too pleasing to the average observer. But the artist's eye sees things differently. Happily so; his imaginative brain sees the humour of the little self-assertions, and the pathetic side of the joy of living even in the gutter. Yet, after all is said, it remains, of course, a certain truth that there are many aspects of child-life which can only in reality be fully understood by mothers.