News travels fast at Ripley. The Bishop's illness was known all over the town, and the reports were grossly exaggerated.

Beatrice Carew arrived at the Palace at half-past nine to inquire after the Bishop's health, on behalf of her father, and heard of the accident to Mabel. When she was told that a nurse had been sent for, she volunteered to act in that capacity herself. Her nursing capabilities were well known, and the offer was not to be despised, but Miss Cardew, much to her surprise, had also volunteered for the post, and seemed so genuinely concerned that Beatrice grew suspicious.

Lady Hester had not yet appeared upon the scene. She made the Bishop's illness her excuse for keeping to her own apartments. As a matter of fact, she was afraid to face Caroline after last night's adventure. She was expecting a _coup de grâce_ from the Bishop's sister. It all depended upon how much she had heard of the quarrel in the smoking room.

A hundred times the wretched woman had recalled the conversation as far as she could remember it, and devoutly hoped and believed that there was nothing said which an eavesdropper could understand as revealing the one terrible secret of her relationship to the swindler.

What had passed between the two after she left could only be learned from Bannister himself.

The news of Mabel's accident drove her nearly crazy; for her love for her child was stronger than her love for the Bishop. It had come upon her with overwhelming intensity, dwarfing for the moment every other passion and interest in life. For Mabel's sake she was prepared to go to any length--except facing Caroline. So she remained in her room, and begged almost piteously for news from the servants as they passed to and fro.

The Bishop complicated matters by insisting on getting up, and declaring that he was quite well enough to attend to several matters that were overwhelmingly urgent. The doctor spoke as plainly as he dared, warning him of the danger he ran, and entreated him to remain quiet.

Mr. Bannister joined Jack at the breakfast table. His appearance there was a surprise. Such early rising was amazing, but his appetite was poor, and he talked platitudes about the Bishop's health. He spoke feelingly about his daughter, but was not nearly so concerned as Jack felt the circumstances demanded. Consequently the young man was rather short with his father-in-law, and ate what little he could choke down in silence.

Mr. Bannister, with studied thoughtfulness, instructed Gray to take up breakfast to Miss Cardew, with his compliments, and request that she would not overtire herself in waiting on his daughter. He desired her also to accept his most heartfelt gratitude for her prompt and efficient assistance, and hoped that after breakfast he would be allowed to see his child.

The message arrived, with the tray, in Mabel's room, but it had become rather garbled in transition. Beatrice, who was sitting on one side of the bed, opposite the old lady, watched the play of her features with some curiosity.

"My compliments to Mr. Bannister," was Aunt Caroline's reply, "and I'll bring him the time table in the library after breakfast."

As the servant was leaving the room, she called her back.

"Has her ladyship been down stairs yet?"

"Not that I'm aware of, ma'am."

"Let me know if she goes down stairs."

"Aunt Caroline is suspicious," thought Beatrice. "I wonder what is afoot."

Miss Cardew's pointed message reached Bannister while Jack was present, and he, too, drew deductions. Bannister only smiled; but Jack loudly protested that his father-in-law could not go away with Mabel ill in the house.

"Your aunt thought it would be better," Bannister explained. "But I am entirely at your disposal, my dear boy. I naturally feel very anxiously about my daughter, and could not possibly think of going until there was a turn for the better. At best, concussion of the brain is a very serious and dangerous thing. She may never recover consciousness again."

Jack groaned, and paced the breakfast room in misery. He could not eat; he could not rest; and they would not allow him to go up to his wife. He marvelled at Bannister's calmness, and wondered how he could possibly read his morning paper while his child lingered between life and death upstairs.

As a matter of fact, Bannister's calmness was assumed. He was anxious and secretly excited. Things were at a crisis. The Bishop's sister was evidently sincere in her desire to buy him off, and his fingers were itching to handle her money. If she were willing to pay handsomely now, more might be expected from her presently. It was unfortunate that Mabel was _hors de combat_.

Jack left his father-in-law walking on the terrace, and crept up to his wife's room. Beatrice answered his gentle knock, and came out onto the corridor.

"How is she, Beatrice?"

"She is better. She has been muttering. I don't think it's so very bad, Jack. She opened her eyes just now."

"Thank God for that!"

Then, laying her hand on his arm, Beatrice looked Jack full in the eyes. "Jack, I know!"

"What, has she been wandering?"

"Yes, she has been going over the marriage service, and talking to Tom Nestor."

"With Aunt Caroline there?"

"Yes; but she wasn't one little bit surprised, nor was I--much."

"Phew!" Jack wiped the perspiration from his brow, and walked up and down in some agitation. Not a thought did he give to Beatrice, nor did he realize what an effort it had cost to warn him. Any wild hope she may have had of becoming Jack's wife was dashed forever. She had been loyal in championing the girl of his choice; and now she knew everything. Aunt Caroline's vigorous prophecies and threats that the marriage would never come off had raised just one gleam of hope; but it was all over now, and she was calm and resigned. Her heart ached and throbbed with leaden strokes.

"How did Aunt Caroline take it?"

"I told you. She didn't seem in the least surprised."

"Perhaps she didn't understand," whispered Jack anxiously.

"She understood right enough. She looked across at me, and said, 'Do you hear?' and I nodded, and then Mabel talked of something else."

Beatrice did not add that she bit her lip till the blood came to stifle the sob that had risen in her throat. Nor did she add that Aunt Caroline had put out a hand to her across the bed, and clasped her fingers in a silent embrace of sympathy.

The secret was out. Everybody knew it but the Bishop, and the situation was trying in the extreme.

The doctor came again at eleven o'clock, and insisted on the Bishop going back to bed. He brought a nurse with him, ostensibly for Mabel, but in reality for the Bishop, because his professional eye saw signs of strain in Lady Hester, who was well nigh useless, and suffering sadly. She could hardly listen to three consecutive sentences without her mind wandering, her lips moving, and her eyes roving restlessly, as if in imaginary argument with some person not present.

"We shall have you ill next, Lady Hester," said the doctor, taking her hand in professional fashion, and feeling her pulse. "The best thing you can do is to take a little exercise in the open air. Get out of doors--get away from the sick room--and, above all, don't worry."

"Don't worry!" she echoed, passing her white hand across her aching brow. "It is easier said than done."

"It is easier accomplished out of doors. Come, now, promise that you will go out. Go down stairs. Don't remain up here."

The wretched woman was really afraid to go down. She must face Bannister, but she did not mind that; there was Aunt Caroline to be reckoned with, and she had no means of knowing how much the old lady had overheard.

"I will take your advice, doctor, and go down."

"I saw a motor car in the stable yard. Can't you go for a drive, now?"

"There is no immediate danger?"

"No danger at all. Miss Bannister is progressing most favorably, and all your husband needs is quiet. He will rest better when he cannot talk to you and there is a comparative stranger attending upon him."

"I will try--I will try," murmured Lady Hester, and she left the room, full of a new idea. It was necessary to see Dick, to ask what had transpired between him and Aunt Caroline. Until she knew that there was no hope of peace.

She found the lower rooms empty, but met Beatrice Carew at the foot of the stairs, coming up with a bag of ice for her patient.

"Have you seen Mr. Bannister?" asked Lady Hester, without so much as a good morning, or a word of surprise at finding her in the house.

"He was walking on the terrace just now, and I heard Jack say he would take him round to look at the hired car. You don't ask how Mabel is?"

"Ah, how is she?"--this eagerly.

"She is better--much."

"Thank God!" murmured the wretched mother fervently, and Beatrice stared to see her friend's agitation. "Is Miss Cardew with her?"

Beatrice nodded. At this moment Bannister entered from the garden, smoking a cigar.

"Oh, Mr. Bannister, the doctor says I must get out into the air, and recommends a drive in your motor car."

"I should esteem it an honor, Lady Hester. My own car is not here; but the one Jack came from town in is a very respectable vehicle, and the chauffeur seems intelligent. I will go and put on my things."

Voss passed along the gallery above. Bannister's eyes shifted quickly, and he suffered a momentary anxiety. Voss's behavior had been abominable since their quarrel, and he was afraid of what the fellow might do. Beatrice was quick to notice everything. She saw glances passing between Lady Hester and her guest, and was rather disgusted at her ladyship's eagerness to get away in the motor. But she was not by nature uncharitable, and, taking into account her knowledge of the real state of affairs between Jack and Mabel--knowledge that was doubtless shared by her ladyship--she tried to think that there was nothing very unusual in the close friendship between Lady Hester and Jack's father-in-law.

Bannister had run upstairs after her ladyship, and whispered a few sentences that were inaudible to the girl, passing on her way to the sick room. But she caught the word "emeralds." It conveyed no meaning, but it stuck in her memory, and she overheard Bannister warning Lady Hester to beware of Voss.

* * * * * * *

Mr. Richard Bannister and Lady Cardew took the air in the hired motor car. They sat in the tonneau as far away from the chauffeur as possible, and there was a glass screen behind the man, which made it difficult for him to overhear the conversation. They talked rapidly.

"What happened last night after I left?"

"The old woman burst in on me and told me that she had overheard."

"Overheard what! For God's sake, tell me! What does she know?"

"She knows that Mabel is our daughter, for one thing."

The wretched mother groaned and hid her face in her hands. "What else?" she asked hoarsely.

"Nothing more of importance. She supposes our relationship was of the usual order. She did not credit you with so much virtue in your youth that you insisted on being married before you ran away with me."

"Then she has no idea who you really are?"

"Not the slightest--except what she has learned from Mr. Crick. But she has formed a shrewd estimate on her own account, and has offered me a very handsome sum of money to go away and take Mabel with me."

"Offered you money to take Mabel away?"

"Of course. Could you expect so virtuous a spinster to countenance the presence of a supposed child of sin in her brother's palace?"

"What did you say?"

"I startled her with the news that Jack and Mabel could not be so easily separated, because they were married already; and she did not seem much surprised, nor did she regard it as an unanswerable argument. She thrust her offer of money upon me again, on the assumption that Jack and Mabel must part, in any case."

"Why?"

"Because of her parentage, first of all. Secondly, because Aunt Caroline does not approve of Jack's father-in-law. She's a queer old stick; but she's rich, and I could get what I liked out of her."

"You won't, Dick--oh, promise me you won't. She is right in her way. She does it for the best. She hates me like poison, and now she knows--oh, God help me! What will happen?"

"She won't tell the Bishop."

"How do you know?"

"Her first anxiety is to stifle scandal and keep all worry from her brother's ears. To that end she offered me twenty thousand pounds to go away."

"Twenty thousand pounds!" cried Hester incredulously.

"Well, not exactly so much, but she would spring that if I agreed to her terms. But it does not suit my convenience. She wants me and Mabel to go away abroad, and supposes that Jack would take the business lying down."

"You won't take her money, Dick--you can't!"

"No, my darling. But money I must have--to make me thoroughly respectable. You see, I have practically bought Dingle Hall, Jack and Mabel are married, and--you and I are beginning to understand one another."

He took her hand and held it.

"Don't--don't, Dick! You make me sick when you say such things. Can't you see that I am nearly crazy--that you terrify me?"

"Not so bad as that, surely," he laughed, and changed his seat that he might come closer to her. She tried to draw her fingers free, but he held her fast.

"I think you have realized, my dear wife, that you must do as I say, that I hold the balance of power, and can dictate my own terms. We can snap our fingers at Aunt Caroline. She is crazy about Jack, and the boy will give her a bad quarter of an hour if he gets an inkling of what she's at. He will pulverize her and break her silly old heart. No, it is purely a question of money; and you will find my plan best, Hester. Leave the window of your dressing room unfastened, and the door of your safe unlocked. There will be a burglary, and the emeralds will be stolen. I shall be fast asleep in my room, and Voss will catch sight of a burglar disappearing down the ivy outside the house. It is his own plan, and a good one. You have no use for the jewels, whereas I have great need of the money they will fetch. It will be my last coup--the end of my Satanic career. Ever after I shall live happy and good, and as content as Little Jack Horner."

"Is that all you want?" she asked sarcastically. But he mistook her meaning, and looked earnestly into her eyes. He gripped her fingers more fiercely.

"No, by heaven, no! You know that isn't all. I regard the Bishop's emeralds as ransom and hush money. He has had my wife too long. I want her now to come back and be--friends with me."

"Do you think me so vile that I could live on in deceit? You are mad."

"My dear Hester, you have no option. You are utterly at my mercy. Don't drive me too far. Do you want me to cry aloud your sin from the house tops, and tell everybody that you hoodwinked the Bishop of Ripley into marrying you by posing as a spinster when you were a widow--and not even a widow?"

"Don't, don't!" she pleaded pitifully.

"Mabel and her husband will have to live on undisturbed, and Jack must be kept in complete ignorance of her relationship to you."

"I shall tell my husband everything," cried the woman recklessly, and wringing her hands in that weak, hysterical fashion that had become common to her of late.

"I am your husband, darling. Don't get misled. You wouldn't like me to sue for divorce and make your Bishop the co-respondent."

This was a new terror, which she had not contemplated. She stared at him in wild horror. He laughed callously, because the idea was manifestly absurd on the face of it.

"A Bishop in a divorce court! How do you like the idea?"

"You are not a man--you are a fiend."

"I am very much a man, my darling. It is just that which troubles me." He drew closer to her side, and spoke so softly that his words were almost drowned in the whirl of the motor. "If I were less of the man and more of the monster I should insist on your handing over the emeralds at once, on pain of my going straight to the Bishop and demanding hush money. But I want more than money. I want you, my sweet flower."

He glanced swiftly from left to right to see that they were not observed. They were passing through flat, open, deserted country. He put his arm about her waist.

"Don't, don't!" she gasped, shrinking from him. "We might be seen. Keep away. I can stand no more. If you touch me I shall jump out of the car and kill myself."

"No, my dear Hester, you are not of that sort. If you were inclined to do harm to your beautiful person you would have done it long ago. No, you make a great fuss, you pose to yourself as a heroine, and then you climb down and crawl round corners, and present a fair face to the world. You must come round my corner now. I love you, Hester. Upon my soul, I do. I have never forgotten--but I can forgive."

"Take your arm away; for God's sake, leave me alone! I'll do anything you like--only, don't touch me, I beg."

"You were not so shy once upon a time, my dear Hester. You knew how to cling and to kiss. You shall kiss me now."

He put his arm behind her. She instinctively raised her hand to protect her face, but he grasped her wrist, and drew her all the closer. She moaned like a thing in pain as he crushed her back against the soft cushions and pressed kisses on her lips. She tried to call out, even to the driver, but the car roared on ahead, and her cries were stifled in his beard.

"Ah, you are getting used to me again now. It is quite like old times, is it not?"

"Yes," she hissed. "It is hell again."

He dropped her suddenly, but his hand closed upon her wrist like an ever-tightening chain. The intensity of his anger and his passion were expressed in that grip, and a sense of powerlessness overcame her. She was frightened. She knew that when he was angered and hurt he could be cruel and brutal as the veriest ruffian. He would be sorry for it afterwards, perhaps, for, personally, he regarded all ruffians as fools, and any outbreak of vigorous, natural feeling, was contrary to his nature; but he was vindictive, and she prepared for the worst.

He dropped her wrist, and rested back in his seat with affected unconcern until the fit was passed and he could master his speech.

"The ways of heaven are sometimes dull, my dear Hester," he observed, after a pause, "and a taste of hell will do you good after so much sanctity in the shadow of a cathedral. According to your religious code, you are running a great risk of going to that most unpleasant place hereafter by breaking an important commandment and living in sin with a church dignitary. You are my wife. I claim. I'll have you back."

"No, no!" she pleaded; "I didn't mean what I said, Dick. You must know perfectly well that my life for the last twenty years has not been all that I could have wished. If we could have lived happily--and you could have been a good man--it would have been different. You would have been different, too, Dick. You had some good in you in those days. You had mercy, at any rate, and you were never really brutal to me. You are trying to drive me to kill myself."

"Indeed, no; that is the last thing I desire. I want you to live--for a little while, at any rate, while the Bishop remains on earth, which cannot be for very long after his stroke."

She said nothing, and schooled herself to make no reply to his callous heart thrusts.

"There is only one difficulty in the way, that I see. That infernal old Caroline. But I think I can manage her. I haven't played my last card yet. The Rev. Judd--you remember the gentleman----"

She shuddered.

"Was a fine rascal, and I know pretty well the whole of his life. It was lucky he confided to me the story of his elopement with Miss Cardew. It gives me a hold over her."

"There is nothing in it that will give you a 'hold over her,' as you call it."

"That is where you are wrong, my dear. Her brother did not hear the true facts of the case. He heard the lady's statement, to the effect that she ran away with the man as far as Dover, but, discovering his vile intentions, returned by the next train. She found the explanation smug and appropriate, and it reflected credit upon the lady. If you were to go back over the years and follow the lady's movements, you would find that, after recovering from the first shock of her disillusionment, she found it necessary to travel and recover her equilibrium. She went to Switzerland----"

"She always goes to Switzerland."

"Just so--just so. She went to Switzerland and traveled for a year. She returned a grim, sullen, merciless woman."

"She goes to Switzerland every year."

"Yes; she goes to visit a little grave."

"A grave?"

"My dear Hester, you are very obtuse. The grave of her dead child."

"Good heavens!--Caroline?" cried Hester, startled into momentary forgetfulness of her own troubles by the revelation. "I don't believe it."

"Neither do I."

"Then why tell me such a hideous story?"

"Because I shall tell it to the Bishop if the old lady compels me to use the weapon against her. I have no other."

"She would deny it."

"To deny such a story is difficult. The assertion once made sticks forever. It is so plausible. Oh, you needn't look at me like that. I'm not going to wreck the old lady's career just because, when she was thirty, she ran away with a man ten years younger than herself. I admire her pluck. But in playing a bold game, my dear Hester, one cannot be too particular about the weapons one uses."

"You horrify me. You were not like this once. You have changed miserably. No weapon is too unclean, no lie too foul."

"I have no mercy for silly women, especially those who interfere in other people's affairs. I never felt real tenderness for any woman except you. If you had not deserted me perhaps I should have come to look upon life more from your point of view. But you soured me, and I quickly realized that great fundamental truth which was recently crystallized in a remarkably clever music hall song, 'What's the good of anythink?--nothink.' That is my philosophy. I made one reservation, however, to the universal rule. There is one good thing that a man must have, and that is comfort. Money is a means for that end. I once thought there was one good woman in the world, but it seems I was mistaken even there, so you cannot blame me. But the woman, who was once good in heart, is still beautiful to look upon, and delicious in her sweet influence over the pulses of the heart, and is still able to provoke madness in man. She also provides a possibility of sport of the rarest and most amusing order--the Bishop's lady and the Squire of Dingle Hall meeting by stealth, loving in secret, and conducting a liaison! when all the time it is make-believe, and the lady's conscience is quite clear, because her lover will be her own husband, and the Bishop the cuckold left out in the cold! Your married life at the Palace has ended, my dear Hester. You may remain there if you like. I think it would be rather unkind to the Bishop if you continued your present relationship--now that you know your husband is alive. Indeed, it would be wicked, and contrary to the commandments."

She had collapsed, and lay back, pale and still, listening to his cynical dissertation without the power of feeling. She had reached the end of her tether. Misery held nothing worse for her than this cold, calculating villainy.

He watched her with changing expression. First, keen anger--for she had bitterly stung him--then softening, and finally a troubled kind of admiration. Her physical influence over him was more than he could bear. All his cynicism and callous brutality melted under the influence of that sweet personality. He wanted to say that he was sorry, to take her hand and kiss it, and beg for forgiveness, and pray for a little kindness--a little of the old love--a flash of the old gay, reckless Hester, who ran away with him and cried "Go hang!" to the world.

She was quiet for such a long time that he feared she had fainted. He put his hand upon her gently. She drew away with a shudder, and looked at him as at a monster.

His good resolutions died, strangled at their birth. He laughed bitterly and lighted a cigar. She regarded this as a signal that he had finished, and they were free to return.

For one wild moment she thought of denouncing him at the Palace as a swindler and a rascal. She could, at least, deny any outrageous assertions he might make concerning her past, and the police would take him away if she gave them certain information--at least, she supposed they would.

But, then, there was Mabel, a girl pure and innocent, Jack's wife, who would go down in the ruin of her father's reputation.

Only the miserable emeralds seemed to be standing in the way--for she did not think his passion for herself would be greater than his cupidity, or that he would press her far if she gave up the jewels and made it a condition that he should never cross her path again. Yet, of what use were conditions with such a man! He would promise anything and break his word at the first opportunity.

His caresses had produced a revulsion of feeling amounting to positive hatred. She looked at him out of the corners of her eyes, as he lolled there smoking, and apparently enjoying the scenery, and wondered if she could summon courage enough to kill him. The blood lust was on her for a few moments. She could have opened a door and thrust him out while the car. was going at top speed if she could have been certain that it would kill him.

"Shall we return now?" he asked. "We have come a good many miles. I am sure you must be anxious to know how the dear Bishop is progressing."

She nodded acquiescence. He gave the order to the chauffeur, and for a long time there was silence, broken at last by the man.

"Have you decided?"

"About the emeralds?"

"Yes."

"You shall have them--if you must."

"Ah, I thought your rigid morality was more elastic than you pretended. When shall they be--stolen?"

"Whenever you like. But I make my conditions."

"Indeed! I was not aware that you were in a position to make terms."

"I make them, nevertheless. When the emeralds go, you go too."

"That would be most impolitic, even suspicious. I shall remain to advise you and the Bishop, and help in the hue and cry."

"If I let you have the emeralds you must go abroad. You must abandon Mabel to me, and you must never set foot in England again."

He laughed derisively. "My dear Hester, you are humorous. You are as despotic as Aunt Caroline."

"Then, what am I to do?" she cried, weakly; "what am I to do?"

"Do, my dear Hester? accept the situation in its inevitableness. Leave your safe door unlocked. You need not hand over the jewels at all. Surely that will be a balm to your feminine conscience. Leave things alone and don't worry. Jack must tell his father of the marriage--when the old gentleman is better--and you, my wife, must be the Bishop's wife in name only, until such a time as it pleases Heaven to make you an ecclesiastical widow--when you will fall under the fascination of the Squire of Dingle Hall and marry again. It will be a pretty comedy, and it will all end happily. I am positively yearning for that sort of respectability, and aching for the services of a nice smug valet, a good chef, and a smart, amiable household of servants devoted to my needs. I want rest--and love. There is no stimulant for a man like an honest passion for a beautiful woman. If she happens to be his wife, and he has to pursue her over again and enslave her afresh, so much the better."

He talked on in this strain with all the egotism of the criminal, and thoroughly believed what he said. The woman endured it, and felt like a condemned wretch listening to the monotonous sentences of the Burial Service on her way to execution. The conviction was forced upon her that she was weak as water. She was already subdued and conquered, and quite incapable of battling with the remorseless threatenings of this unscrupulous, masterful man.